MAYWOOD, Ill. - New devices called stent retrievers are enabling physicians to benefit selected patients who suffer strokes caused by blood clots. The devices effectively stop strokes in their tracks. For the first time, new guidelines from the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association recommend the treatment for carefully selected patients who are undergoing acute ischemic strokes and who meet certain other conditions. Loyola University Medical Center stroke specialist Jose Biller, MD, is a member of the expert panel that wrote the guidelines, published ...

Infrared date from NASA's Aqua satellite spotted the strongest storms within newborn Tropical Depression 10W over the Philippine Sea today, July 2. It is expected to strength to a tropical storm, at which time it will be renamed "Linfa." A tropical cyclone is made up of hundreds of thunderstorms, and the highest storms are the coldest and most powerful. To identify those areas with the strongest storms, infrared data is used because it tells temperature. The higher the cloud top, the stronger the uplift in a storm and the colder the cloud top temperature will be. The ...

By growing two types of stem cells in a "3-D culture" and measuring their ability to produce retinal cells, a team lead by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital researchers has found one cell type to be better at producing retinal cells. The research not only reveals which stem cell type might be better for treating retinal degeneration, but it also demonstrates a standardized method for quantifying the effectiveness of different stem cells for such therapies. The research was led by Michael Dyer, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Developmental Neurobiology ...

Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) have a number of exercise options, including a mechanical bicycle bolted to the floor, a weightlifting machine strapped to the wall, and a strap-down treadmill. They spend a significant portion of each day working out to ward off the long-term effects of weightlessness, but many still suffer bone loss, muscle atrophy, and issues with balance and their cardiovascular systems. To counteract such debilitating effects, research groups around the world are investigating artificial gravity -- the notion that astronauts, ...

The latest Supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list of North American Birds was published this week in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, and includes several major updates to the organization of the continent's bird species. More than just a list, the Check-list groups birds into genera, families, and orders based on their evolutionary relationships, and some of the most significant changes in this year's Supplement involve the tanagers, family Thraupidae. "Recent genetic studies have overturned much of what we thought we knew about what constitutes a ...

July 2, 2015 - While heart disease is the number one cause of death in both sexes, it poses special considerations in women--with risks often beginning in childhood and changing at different stages of life. Insights on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in women and girls throughout the life span are shared in a special symposium feature in the June issue of The American Journal of Medical Sciences (AJMS). The official journal of the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation (SSCI), AJMS is published by Wolters Kluwer. Two symposium papers seek to increase understanding ...

ATLANTA - July 2, 2015-Cancer survivors who smoke report fewer negative opinions about smoking, have more barriers to quitting, and are around other smokers more often than survivors who had quit before or after their diagnosis, according to a new study appearing in Psycho-Oncology. The authors say these factors point to potential targets to help cancer survivors quit. Quitting smoking is important for cancer prognosis, but some cancer survivors continue to smoke. Although initial quit rates are high among those diagnosed with cancers strongly linked with smoking (e.g., ...

A group of scientists led by Dr Kara Hoover of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and including Professor Matthew Cobb of The University of Manchester, has studied how our sense of smell has evolved, and has even reconstructed how a long-extinct human relative would have been able to smell. The sense of smell plays a decisive role in human societies, as it is linked to our taste for food, as well as our identification of pleasant and unpleasant substances. We have about 4 million smell cells in our noses, divided into about 400 different types. There is tremendous ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Engineers at Oregon State University have invented a way to fabricate silver, a highly conductive metal, for printed electronics that are produced at room temperature. There may be broad applications in microelectronics, sensors, energy devices, low emissivity coatings and even transparent displays. A patent has been applied for on the technology, which is now available for further commercial development. The findings were reported in Journal of Materials Chemistry C. Silver has long been considered for the advantages it offers in electronic devices. ...

Research conducted in Okinawa, Japan, by graduate student Yu Miyazaki and associate professor James Davis Reimer from the University of the Ryukyus has found a very unusual new species of octocoral from a shallow coral reef in Okinawa, Japan. The new species can be considered a "living fossil", and is related in many ways to the unusual blue coral. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Unlike scleractinians, most octocorals lack a hard skeleton, and therefore many have the common name "soft coral". One exception is the endangered genus Heliopora, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - For years, news organizations that post content on the Internet have allowed readers to leave comments about stories. Often, these readers' comments become a forum for political debates and other communication that the news organizations do not consider important to their journalistic practices. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri School of Journalism have found that editors and owners of news organizations may want to pay more attention to what their readers are saying about their news stories in order to better serve their consumers. Timothy ...

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Poor sleep habits can have a negative effect on self-control, which presents risks to individuals' personal and professional lives, according to Clemson University researchers. In a study titled "Interactions between Sleep Habits and Self-Control," Clemson psychologists concluded a sleep-deprived individual is at increased risk for succumbing to impulsive desires, inattentiveness and questionable decision-making. "Self-control is part of daily decision-making. When presented with conflicting desires and opportunities, self-control allows one to maintain ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Everyone knows that exercise generally helps the cardiovascular system, but much remains unknown about how the benefits arise, and what to expect in different people who exercise to improve their health. To gain a more precise understanding of how exercise improves health and whom it helps most, researchers analyzed the results of 160 randomized clinical trials with nearly 7,500 participants. The review appears open access in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "Our meta-analysis is one of the first studies to systematically ...

Study found 35% fewer bird species in agricultural habitats Researchers say farmland is a poor substitute for natural areas but simple improvements could make a difference to biodiversity conservation Research led by the University of Exeter has found a substantial reduction in bird species living in cultivated mango orchards compared to natural habitats in Southern Africa. The results, which are published today in the journal Landscape Ecology, highlight the value of assessing habitats prior to land use change to predict the impact of agriculture on biodiversity. The ...

Wind turbines could be installed under some of the biggest bridges on the road network to produce electricity. So it is confirmed by calculations carried out by a European researchers team, that have taken a viaduct in the Canary Islands as a reference. This concept could be applied in heavily built-up territories or natural areas with new constructions limitations. The Juncal Viaduct, in Gran Canaria, has served as a reference for Spanish and British researchers to verify that the wind blowing between the pillars on this kind of infrastructures can move wind turbines ...

Amsterdam, July 2, 2015 - Biologically active molecules released by digesting bread and pasta can survive digestion and potentially pass through the gut lining, suggests new research. The study, published in the journal of Food Research International, reveals the molecules released when real samples of bread and pasta are digested, providing new information for research into gluten sensitivity. The research is in vitro - in the lab rather than in humans - and the authors of the study, from the University of Milan, Italy, say that more research is needed to determine what ...

With the number of individuals affected by cognitive decline expected to rise over the next few decades, investigating its potential causes is of major public health interest. Two new studies published today in the American Journal of Hypertension delve into the connection between hypertension and cognitive decline. Racial disparity in cognitive and functional disability in hypertension and its mortality Researchers assessed the prevalence and racial disparity of subjective cognitive and functional limitations and their impact on mortality in the hypertensive US ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the University of Tokyo and other institutions have begun a wide-area survey of the distribution of dark matter in the universe using Hyper Suprime-Cam, a new wide-field camera installed on the Subaru Telescope in Hawai'i. Initial results from observations covering an area of 2.3 square degrees on the sky toward the constellation Cancer revealed nine large concentrations of dark matter, each the mass of a galaxy cluster. Surveying how dark matter ...

The hormones testosterone and cortisol may destabilise financial markets by making traders take more risks, according to a study. Researchers simulated the trading floor in the lab by having volunteers buy and sell assets among themselves. They measured the volunteers' natural hormone levels in one experiment and artificially raised them in another. When given doses of either hormone, the volunteers invested more in risky assets. The researchers think the stressful and competitive environment of financial markets may promote high levels of cortisol and testosterone ...

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have found a way to stimulate the growth of axons, which may spell the dawn of a new beginning on chronic SCI treatments. Chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a formidable hurdle that prevents a large number of injured axons from crossing the lesion, particularly the corticospinal tract (CST). Patients inflicted with SCI would often suffer a loss of mobility, paralysis, and interferes with activities of daily life dramatically. While physical therapy and rehabilitation would help the patients to ...

For a number of years now, scientific literature has questioned whether mortality rates depend on socioeconomic differences among the population. Recently, a new study carried out in 15 European cities - including Barcelona and Madrid - detected inequalities for the majority of causes, concluding that higher levels of poverty are associated with higher mortality rates and there is a great deal of variation among areas. Social inequality is increasingly considered to be a public health problem. However, scant research has been carried out into associating these differences ...

A team comprised of scientists at VIB, KU Leuven and UZ Leuven has made significant progress in uncovering the connection between psychological factors and the immune system. Their findings are based on an investigation of a massive drinking water contamination incident in Belgium in 2010, and are now published in the leading international medical journal Gut. In December 2010, the Belgian communities of Schelle and Hemiksem in the province of Antwerp faced an outbreak of gastroenteritis, with more than 18,000 people exposed to contaminated drinking water. During the ...

Scientists have pioneered the use of a high-powered imaging technique to picture in exquisite detail one of the central proteins of life - a cellular recycling unit with a role in many diseases. The proteasome complex is present in all multicellular organisms, and plays a critical role in cancer by allowing cancer cells to divide rapidly. Researchers used a technique called electron cryo-microscopy, or 'cryo-EM' - imaging samples frozen to -180oC - to show the proteasome complex in such extraordinary detail that they could view a prototype drug bound to its active sites. The ...

This news release is available in German. Acute liver failure is a rare yet life-threatening disease for young children. It often occurs extremely rapidly, for example, when a child has a fever. Yet in around 50 percent of cases it is unclear as to why this happens. Now, a team of researchers working on an international research project headed by Technische Universität München (TUM), the Helmholtz Zentrum Munich and Heidelberg University Hospital have discovered a link between the disease and mutations in a specific gene. The researchers used whole genome ...

New research led by the University of Southampton is paving the way to protect the endangered European eel as they migrate through rivers to the ocean. The European eel, a fish of high cultural, commercial and conservation concern, has suffered a dramatic decline over recent decades, with the number of juvenile fish returning to rivers down by over 90 per cent. While several explanations (including overfishing, pollution and climate change) have been proposed for the cause of this demise, one of the key factors is river infrastructure, such as hydropower stations, ...