Latest news with #UCSanDiegoSchoolofMedicine
Euronews
5 days ago
- Automotive
- Euronews
This cutting-edge paint can keep your car cool
Everyone suffering from heat waves in Europe knows the feeling of getting into the car that has been parked outdoors for hours. Car paints are usually made of resin, a material in which the molecules vibrate and generate heat under the sun, driving up the temperature. The temperature of a car dashboard can go up to 70 degrees Celsius in scorching summer, according to a study published by researchers from Arizona State University and the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Japanese carmaker Nissan is developing an automotive paint that can cool the vehicle down. Nissan's cool paint contains metamaterial with two microstructure particles – One to block and reflect near-infrared rays in the sunlight, and the other to convert heat into electromagnetic waves and release them to the space above Earth's atmosphere. This helps keep the temperature from rising. Testing results: Up to 12 degrees cooler The company says the effect is particularly noticeable when a vehicle is parked in the sun for an extended period. It also helps reduce the need to run the air-conditioning and unburden the engine, or if it's an electric vehicle, the battery. The white paint is still in the trial stage. In a field test conducted in August 2024 at Tokyo International Air Terminal in Japan, the cool paint managed to bring down exterior surfaces and cabin temperatures by 12 degrees Celsius and 5 degrees, respectively, compared to traditional automotive paint. For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.
New York Post
13-06-2025
- Health
- New York Post
Your cravings are fueling your cancer risk — 5 ways to reduce them
Do you crumble when you see cookies? Go nuts when you spot a charcuterie board? Cravings for sweet or savory treats can be a challenge to manage. While occasional indulgence is fine, frequently caving to food cravings can lead to weight gain, cavities, digestive problems and even chronic diseases like cancer. In his new book, 'Crave: The Hidden Biology of Addiction and Cancer,' biomedical scientist Raphael E. Cuomo reveals the everyday desires fueling our risk of cancer. 4 Biomedical scientist Raphael E. Cuomo wrote the new book 'Crave: The Hidden Biology of Addiction and Cancer.' 'The No.1 habit to lower cancer risk is certainly tobacco, and this is already quite well-established,' Cuomo, a professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, told The Post. 'Other than that, I would say added sugar is a huge contributor to cancer risk, especially given that it is everywhere, and this doesn't get nearly as much appreciation as it deserves.' Excessive sugar consumption is linked to obesity, a known risk factor for breast, colorectal and pancreatic cancers. Smoking causes nearly 90% of lung cancer cases and increases the risk of a dozen more cancers. Beyond sugar and tobacco, people also crave drugs, alcohol, digital stimulation and, shockingly, a bigger workload. We know these vices are bad for our health — Cuomo reports that they can discreetly rewire our biology in ways that promote cancer. So what should you do when the brain says no, but the mouth says go? Cuomo has five tips for curbing cravings. Spend 20 minutes a day without input Perhaps you've heard of the 'raw dogging' flight trend, where passengers do absolutely nothing to pass the time. That means no food, water, sleep or in-flight entertainment. 4 Try to 'raw dog' it for 20 minutes a day to alleviate cravings. WESTOCK – Likewise, Cuomo recommends putting down the phone, turning off the music and sitting by yourself with your thoughts for 20 minutes to ease temptations. 'This helps reset your brain's reward system and lowers the need to chase stimulation all day,' he explained. Use light like a tool Natural light is crucial for health because it synchronizes the body's 24-hour biological clock, increases vitamin D production, eases stress and boosts mood. Cuomo recommends bright natural light in the morning to help regulate the pleasure hormone dopamine and reduce afternoon cravings. 4 Get bright natural light in the morning to regulate dopamine and reduce afternoon cravings. Pixel-Shot – Artificial light, on the other hand, disrupts the 24-hour clock, potentially leading to sleep issues and increasing the risk of chronic diseases. 'In the evening, lower the lights and stay off screens to support melatonin and impulse control,' Cuomo advised. Melatonin is the body's natural sleep hormone — its production is sensitive to light. Give your brain a break from novelty 'Too much variety keeps the brain craving. Spend time doing something familiar and repetitive,' Cuomo said. 'It lowers stimulation and gives your nervous system time to recover.' Stop eating when the craving disappears If you have food cravings, you're not alone. More than 90% of people admit to having them. 4 When indulging a food craving, be sure to stop when you feel emotional relief, not when you feel full. SASITHORN – Cuomo suggests putting the fork down when you no longer feel the craving — not when you feel full. 'Most people eat to shift their mood, not just to nourish their body,' he noted. 'Pay attention to the moment you feel emotional relief. That is often when you have had enough.' Reach for textured food instead of sugar If cravings persist, Cuomo encourages grabbing foods that are crunchy, chewy or spicy. 'Texture satisfies sensory urges without triggering the blood sugar spike that leads to rebound cravings,' he said.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New study retraces Covid's origins to bats in southwest China or northern Laos
The virus that causes Covid-19 followed the same evolutionary path as Sars, a coronavirus that jumped from bats to wildlife to people in the early 2000s, according to an analysis of their genomes. In a paper published in Cell journal, scientists compared the genomes of 250 coronaviruses to reconstruct how the pathogens evolved over time, potentially offering insights into how Covid-19 spilled into people – an unresolved question that's been thrust back into the spotlight since Donald Trump assumed office. The researchers found that both Sars viruses were circulating and changing inside bats in southern China and neighbouring countries for hundreds of thousands of years before emerging in humans. Bats have unusual immune systems which allow them to harbour coronaviruses, allowing them to mix and mutate into something new. By unpicking this 'recombination' process, the scientists were able to estimate when and where each of the two coronaviruses had emerged in bats. They found Sars was circulating in western China just one to two years before it jumped into humans in Guangdong, central China. Sars-Cov-2 followed an 'extremely similar' route, they say. It made its final recombination between 2012 and 2014 in bats in southwest China or northern Laos, five to seven years before sparking a human pandemic Wuhan. The researchers say it is striking that, in both instances, the virus was circulating in bats hundreds of miles from where humans were first infected. In the case of Sars, there is strong evidence that wildlife sold in wet markets bridged this geographical gap and carried the virus to humans. Researchers have previously established that the virus was present in palm civets and other wild mammals for sale in markets at the time of the first Sars outbreak in 2002. They concluded that it was the wildlife trade which transported the pathogens hundreds of miles, from bat caves to people. Prof Michael Worobey, head of the department of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona and a co-author of the paper, said that 'we're seeing exactly the same pattern with Sars-Cov-2'. Like Sars, Sars-Cov-2 evolved in bat caves hundreds of miles away from the spot humans were first infected. While the paper does not prove it was transported by the wildlife trade to the wet market around which the first human cases emerged in Wuhan, the authors said parallels between the two pandemics were too striking to be ignored. 'At the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there was a concern that the distance between Wuhan and the bat virus reservoir was too extreme for a zoonotic origin,' said Prof Joel Wertheim, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine's division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health. 'This paper shows that it isn't unusual and is, in fact, extremely similar to the emergence of Sars-Cov-1 in 2002,' he said. The question of how Covid-19 emerged has long been contentious, but tensions have ratcheted up since President Trump assumed his second term in office. Last month the White House created a website called 'Lab Leak: The True Origin of Covid 19', which suggests the pandemic was caused by human error in a Wuhan lab facility. Beijing then resurfaced its own conspiracy theory – believed by many in China – that the US's own high security labs were to blame. Prof Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine who was not involved in the paper, praised the new research for showing how the two Sars viruses had evolved. But he added that it could not settle the lab v natural origins debate. 'I sit in favour of the Huannan market [analysis], mainly because of all the other evidence. This paper adds another bit of evidence to that pile,' he said. 'But it's not going to quash the lab leak [hypothesis], and it won't persuade Donald [Trump].' Prof Stuart Neil, head of the department of Infectious Diseases at King's College London, also said the paper 'can't fill the gap between the bats and the market'. But he added that the evolution and geography of Sars and Sars-Cov-2 described in the paper clearly showed that both were able to fully emerge of their own accord in nature and that there was no reason it could not happen again. 'What [the paper] reinforces is that you need to control and monitor the most likely flash points for zoonotic emergence,' he said. Yet some remain sceptical of the idea that the wildlife trade carried the Sars-CoV-2 to Wuhan as happened with Sars in the 2002 outbreak. 'It's a very sophisticated analysis of the evolutionary origins of Sars viruses in their natural reservoir, however the analysis leaves two big gaps,' said Prof Mark Woolhouse, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh. 'The story [for Covid] stops some years short of 2020, and it also leaves a very big gap in terms of space. 'I don't agree with the inference in the paper that the only plausible way that the virus could have gone from its natural habitat to Wuhan is through the wildlife trade. 'For me, there's no convincing evidence that the animals implicated in the early spread of Sars-Cov-2 [such as racoondogs] were farmed in the region where Sars-Cov-2 is thought to evolve. So for me, the most likely route that it got from one place to the other is via people,' Prof Woolhouse said. Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
NDTV
08-05-2025
- Health
- NDTV
Covid-19 Likely Originated From Wildlife Trade, Not Lab Leak, Researchers Claim
A new genetic study bolsters the theory that COVID-19 originated from the wildlife trade, challenging claims of a lab leak. Researchers traced the virus's origins to animals sold in Wuhan markets, adding fuel to the ongoing debate amid US-China tensions. The findings, published in Cell on May 7, 2025, point to a natural spillover, highlighting the persistent risks of zoonotic diseases stemming from the wildlife trade. Researchers at the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and their colleagues concluded that the ancestor of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, emerged just years before the pandemic began. The virus left its origin in Western China or Northern Laos just years before the emergence, travelling nearly 2,700 kilometres to Central China. This timeframe is too short for natural dispersal by its primary host, the horseshoe bat, suggesting it "hitched a ride" via the wildlife trade, similar to the SARS outbreak in 2002. "When two different viruses infect the same bat, sometimes what comes out of that bat is an amalgam of different pieces of both viruses," said co-senior author Joel Wertheim, PhD, a professor of medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine's Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health. "Recombination complicates our understanding of the evolution of these viruses because it results in different parts of the genome having different evolutionary histories." To overcome this, the researchers focused on non-recombining regions of the viral genomes, allowing them to more accurately reconstruct the evolutionary history. The study indicates that sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 have circulated around Western China and Southeast Asia for millennia, spreading at similar rates as their horseshoe bat hosts. "Horseshoe bats have an estimated foraging area of around 2-3 km and a dispersal capacity similar to the diffusion velocity we estimated for the sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-2," said co-senior author Simon Dellicour, Ph.D., head of the Spatial Epidemiology Lab at Université Libre de Bruxelles and visiting professor at KU Leuven. The analysis further revealed that the most recent sarbecovirus ancestors of both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 left their points of origin less than 10 years before infecting humans more than a thousand kilometres away. "We show that the original SARS-CoV-1 was circulating in Western China - just one to two years before the emergence of SARS in Guangdong Province, South Central China, and SARS-CoV-2 in Western China or Northern Laos - just five to seven years before the emergence of COVID-19 in Wuhan," said Jonathan E. Pekar, PhD, a 2023 graduate of the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology programme at UC San Diego School of Medicine, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Health
- Daily Mail
People who smoke weed 20 times more likely to die from colon cancer, says shock study
Smoking weed has been linked to colon cancer, one of the fastest-growing cancers, according to a shock new study. Consuming cannabis nearly every day increased the risk of dying from colon cancer by up to 20-fold, the research found. The findings challenge the long-held belief in some circles that cannabis can treat cancer - something scientists now say may be dangerously misleading. Researchers at the University of California San Diego tracked over 1,000 colon cancer patients and compared daily marijuana users to non-users. The difference was stark - people who used weed daily before their diagnosis had a 56 per cent chance of dying within five years of spotting the cancer. That was 11 times higher than those who never touched the drug. The outlook was even worse for patients who had an official cannabis addiction diagnosis. They were 24 times more likely to die than their peers within five years. The experts believe THC, the active ingredient in cannabis that causes hallucinogenic effects, may cause inflammation in the colon, which causes cancer cells to grow. THC may also block the production of disease-fighting T cells, which normally destroy cancer cells. Additionally, Cannabis use disorder (CUD) may lead to depression and anxiety, making patients less likely to commit to cancer treatments, the researchers said. However, just three per cent of participants had CUD, and it's unclear what stage their cancers were. The researchers said more studies are needed to understand how exactly cannabis addiction may increase the risk of colon cancer death. But the findings come at a critical time: cannabis use among young people has never been higher and a record number of youngsters are developing colon cancer. According to recent data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), 4.5 million young adults aged 18 to 25 in the U.S. reported using cannabis daily or nearly every day. And of them, eight in 10 daily users met the criteria for cannabis use disorder, indicating problematic patterns of use that can lead to health and social issues. Overall about 18million Americans of all ages use marijuana daily or nearly everyday. CUD is defined as using cannabis every day or nearly every day to the point where it negatively impacts a user's life, such as making it difficult to hold down a job. Dr Raphael Cuomo, associate professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine, said: 'This study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that heavy cannabis use may have underrecognized impacts on the immune system, mental health and treatment behaviors - all of which could influence cancer outcomes.' According to the latest data, early-onset colon cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are expected to rise by 90 per cent in people 20 to 34 years old between 2010 and 2030. In teens, rates have surged 500 per cent since the early 2000s. Cannabis use is also on the rise, largely due to recent decriminalization across the U.S. From 1992 to 2022, for example, daily and near-daily use has seen a 15-fold rise. The new study, published Monday in the Annals of Epidemiology, look at medical records from 1,088 colon cancer patients in the University of California Health system between 2012 and 2024. Of those, 34 were also diagnosed with CUD. The average age at colon cancer diagnosis was 59. On average, patients with CUD were diagnosed four months before learning they also had colon cancer. After accounting for other health factors like age, gender and disease severity, the researchers found the risk of dying within five years of diagnosis for patients with an active cannabis addiction was 56 per cent compared to five per cent in non users. Additionally, patients diagnosed with CUD before colon cancer had a 24-fold increased risk of death within five years of diagnosis. The researchers wrote: 'The results of this study indicate that a history of cannabis use disorder prior to colon cancer diagnosis is independently associated with an increased risk of mortality, even after adjusting for demographic and clinical confounders.' Dr Cuomo said further research is needed to understand the mechanisms of cannabis addiction and colorectal cancer. Indepedent researchers also emphasized the need for increased research but were also 'concerned' about the findings. Dr Rosario Ligresti, chief of gastroenterology at at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey who was not involved in the research, said: 'This study raises serious concerns about the potential health risks associated with cannabis use. 'While further research is needed to fully understand the underlying mechanisms, these findings underscore the importance of educating the public about the potential dangers of marijuana, particularly in relation to colon cancer.' Dr Ligresti also agreed marijuana may suppress T cells, leading to colon cancer developments. Despite the findings, Dr Cuomo emphasized the findings don't mean cannabis users have to quit entirely. He sadi: 'This isn't about vilifying cannabis. It's about understanding the full range of its impacts, especially for people facing serious illnesses. 'We hope these findings encourage more research - and more nuanced conversations - about how cannabis interacts with cancer biology and care.'
