Public Health researchers from UC San Diego have found that a 2016 increase in California's tobacco tax led to more people quitting.

Hope isn’t just wishful thinking — it’s a powerful emotional force that gives our lives meaning. Now, a new groundbreaking study from the University of Missouri shows it may be even more essential to well-being than happiness or gratitude.

For years, psychology has tied hope to goal-setting and motivation. But a team of researchers led by Megan Edwards and Laura King from Mizzou’s Department of Psychological Sciences is challenging that idea, showing that hope stands apart as one of the strongest positive emotions that directly fosters a sense of meaning.

An international team of scientists, co-led by researchers at Trinity College Dublin and the University of Florida, has cracked a decades-old mystery in human biology: how our bodies absorb a micronutrient that we rely on for everything from healthy brain function to guarding against cancer. Queuosine, a microscopic molecule first discovered in the 1970s, is a vitamin-like micronutrient that we can't make ourselves but can only get from food and our gut bacteria. It’s vital to our health, yet its importance went unnoticed for decades. Now, in a study published this week in leading international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers have discovered the gene that allows queuosine to enter the cells, a discovery that opens the door for potential therapies to be created to leverage the micronutrient’s role in cancer suppression, memory and how the brain learns new information. 

Most treatments for Parkinson’s disease (PD) only slow disease progression. Early intervention for the neurological disease that worsens over time is therefore critical to optimize care, but that requires early diagnosis. Current tests, like clinical rating scales and neural imaging, can be subjective and costly. Now, researchers in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry report the initial development of a system that inexpensively screens for PD from the odors in a person’s ear wax.