NEW YORK -- June 29, 2015 /Press Release/ -- Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a new approach to build nearly complete genomes by combining high-throughput DNA sequencing with genome mapping. The methodology enabled researchers to detect complex forms of genomic variation, critically important for their association with human disease, but previously difficult to detect. The study was published today in Nature Methods, and is a collaboration with scientists at European Molecular Biology Lab, Weill Cornell Medical College, Cold Spring ...

Will next Saturday's Tour de France prologue in Utrecht get the winner it deserves? New aerodynamic research at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) shows that riders in a time trial can save vital seconds by riding closer to the following team car. Over a short distance like the prologue of the Tour de France, that can save as much as 6 seconds: enough to make the difference between winning and losing. On longer time trials and events like world championships, the effect can even add up to tens of seconds. Which is why aerodynamics professor Bert Blocken is advising ...

US researchers extol the virtues of high-altitude balloons for science education in a research paper published in the International Journal of Learning Technology. According to Jeremy Straub of the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, "High-altitude balloons can carry student and scientific payloads to the boundaries of space." This, he suggests, gives students the opportunity to carry out experiments in a cold, near-vacuum, higher-radiation environment at such very high altitudes. "In the process, students experience the awe of space exploration as, through their ...

Nyon, Switzerland - June 29, 2015 While there is good understanding of how bone mass, and more recently bone architecture, affects fracture risk, far less is known about the material properties of bone, or how these can impart resilience or fragility to the skeleton. This is changing thanks to the development of new state-of-the-art imaging and other technologies which now allow researchers to gain new insights into the different material properties of bone and their role in bone fragility. Bringing together eight invited contributions by the field's leading experts, ...

CHICAGO (June 29, 2015): A scoring system that can identify periods of high activity and increased trauma patient deaths in hospital emergency rooms may help hospitals better prepare for surges in trauma patient volume that come with catastrophic events like the Boston Marathon bombing (April 2013) or disasters like the Amtrak train crash (May 2015) in Philadelphia. Trauma surgeon Peter C. Jenkins, MD, MSc, and a team of investigators from Indiana University and multiple centers developed the scoring system, called the Trauma Surge Index (TSI). They reported their observations ...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2015 -- If you're firing up the barbecue this week for an Independence Day cookout, you don't want to miss this week's Reactions video. We've got chemistry knowledge that will impress your guests like, "Why is red meat red?" You'll also learn about the amazing Maillard reaction that turns that red meat into a delicious grilled brown. We also settle, once and for all, the age-old debate of gas vs. charcoal. It's all in our latest video: https://youtu.be/RqUEh-B-U-k. Subscribe to the series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions ...

HOUSTON, June 29 -- Many parents have heard the night-time cry of "my ear hurts." For some children, this might happen frequently beginning in infancy and even persist into adulthood. An international consortium led by those at Baylor College of Medicine may have taken the first step on the road to understanding why only some people get frequent painful or chronic middle ear infections. The culprit may be rare genetic variants in a gene called A2ML1. A report on their work appears online in the journal Nature Genetics. In studies led by Dr. Regie Lyn P. Santos-Cortez, ...

New research released today in Nature Neuroscience reveals for the first time that pain is processed in male and female mice using different cells. These findings have far-reaching implications for our basic understanding of pain, how we develop the next generation of medications for chronic pain--which is by far the most prevalent human health condition--and the way we execute basic biomedical research using mice. "Research has demonstrated that men and women have different sensitivity to pain and that more women suffer from chronic pain than men, but the assumption ...

Neighborhood resources to support greater physical activity and, to a lesser extent, healthy diets appear to be associated with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes, although the results vary by the method of measurement used, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is an important cause of death and disability worldwide. Prevention of T2DM has focused largely on behavioral modification. However, the extent to which behavioral modifications will succeed in unsupportive environments remains unknown. Researcher ...

More than a third of children and teens 17 and younger experienced a physical assault in the last year, primarily at the hands of siblings and peers, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Violence against children is a national and international public health and public policy issue. The U.S. Department of Justice and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiated in 2008 the National Survey of Children's Exposure to Violence (NatSCEV) to provide ongoing estimates of a wide range of violence against youth. Assessments have occurred in three-year ...

An 'exhausted' army of immune cells may not be able to fight off infection, but if its soldiers fight too hard they risk damaging the very body they are meant to be protecting, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. Inside our bodies are billions of immune cells known as T cells that protect us from infection, fighting off attacks from invading bacteria and viruses, and also from cancer. One teaspoon full of blood alone is believed to have around 5 million T cells. But these cells can also do harm, mistaking our own cells for invaders and attacking them, ...

Pink salmon that begin life in freshwater with high concentrations of carbon dioxide, which causes acidification, are smaller and may be less likely to survive, according to a new study from UBC. The risks of ocean acidification on marine species have been studied extensively but the impact of freshwater acidification is not well understood. The study is one of the first to examine how rising carbon dioxide levels caused by climate change can impact freshwater fish. "Most of the work on acidification has been in the ocean, yet 40 per cent of all fish are freshwater. ...

June 29, 2015 - For hikers, football players, endurance athletes, and a growing range of elite and recreational exercisers, the best approach to preventing potentially serious reductions in blood sodium level is to drink when thirsty, according to an updated consensus statement on exercise-associated hyponatremia (EAH). The recommendations appear in the June issue of the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, published by Wolters Kluwer. "Using the innate thirst mechanism to guide fluid consumption is a strategy that should limit drinking in excess and developing hyponatremia ...

ANN ARBOR--Employees seeking to boost their productivity at work should take a nap--yes, sleeping on the job can be a good thing. A new University of Michigan study finds that taking a nap may be an effective strategy to counteract impulsive behavior and to boost tolerance for frustration. Napping, the researchers say, can be a cost-efficient and easy strategy to increase workplace safety. In other words, employers may find their employees more productive when the workplace has nap pods in the workplace or extended break times are offered. It's becoming increasingly ...

Maybe it sounds like a cow and bull story, but researchers in Egypt are developing a biometric identification system for cattle that could reduce food fraud and allow ranchers to control their stock more efficiently. The system described in the International Journal of Image Mining uses the unique features of a prominent part of the animal to identify the beasts. No, it's not hoof prints or an udder body part - it's the bovine muzzle, no pair of which are exactly alike, according to computer scientist Hamdi Mahmoud of BeniSuef University, in Cairo. Meat products are currently ...

June 29, 2015 - In recent years, a large majority of US plastic surgeons have adopted fat grafting techniques as part of their approach to facelift surgery, reports a study in the July issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Fat grafting--transferring small amounts of the patient's own fat in strategic areas--"has become a common technique utilized by most surgeons today performing facial rejuvenation," according to the new research by Dr. Sammy Sinno, a plastic surgeon at New York ...

As yet another music streaming service comes online to rival the countless available outlets for so many different genres, a new approach to classifying music to make archiving, sorting and music discovery easier is published in the International Journal of Computational Intelligence Studies. Rare is the musical artist described as genre-defying. Most singers and musicians tend to stick to a particular genre, whether electronic dance music, reggae, classical, folk, jazz, rock or Indian genres such as Bhangra and Ghazal, or any of hundreds of other categories. Listeners ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif., June 29 -- Research conducted at San Diego State University shows that societal acceptance of working mothers is at an all-time high. Researchers analyzed data from nearly 600,000 respondents from two nationally representative surveys --one of U.S. 12th graders and the other of adults -- taken between 1976 and 2013. The goal was to understand how attitudes towards women's work and family roles have changed in the U.S. since the 1970s. They found that millennials are significantly more accepting of working mothers than previous generations were at ...

Los Angeles, CA (June 29, 2015) US adults and adolescents are now significantly more accepting of mothers who work fulltime, but a growing minority from younger generations believe that wives should mind the household and husbands should make decisions for the family, according to new research out today in the Psychology of Women Quarterly (a SAGE journal). "Students are more accepting of mothers working, but a growing minority believes that men should be the rulers of the household or more believe that women should work, but still have less power at home," wrote researchers ...

An editorial by primary care researchers at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, and published today, Monday 29 June 2015 in the British Journal of General Practice, analyses the GP role in the sickness certification process and the new Fit for Work scheme and suggests that GPs are key to supporting individuals to maintain the hope and belief that they can work, "rather than adding to the numbers of individuals off work on long term sickness who may have been able to work." The Fit for Work Scheme will be introduced in most regions in England ...

Researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered what regulates an enzyme that is central to the growth of cancer tumours. This could be of great value to future cancer treatment. Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen have discovered what controls the enzyme that aids the growth of cancer tumours. These findings could be of great value to cancer treatments and has just been published in the renowned journal, Nature Communications. The enzyme is called ADAM17 and it aids growth in cells. "ADAM17 is very important to the growth of cancer ...

The Food Safety and Technology Research Centre under the Department of Applied Biology and Chemical Technology of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has developed a new method for rapid authentication of edible oils and screening of gutter oils. Authentication of edible oils has been a long-term issue in food safety, and becomes particularly important with the emergence and widespread use of gutter oils in recent years. However, the conventional analytical approach for edible oils is not only labor intensive and time consuming, but also fails to provide a versatile ...

It is generally assumed that marriage has a positive influence on health and life expectancy. But does this "marriage bonus" also apply to the health indicator of body weight? Researchers at the University of Basel and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development have investigated this question in cooperation with the market research institute GfK. Specifically, they compared the body mass index of married couples with that of singles in nine European countries. The results of their study have now been published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. Numerous studies ...

Ann Arbor -- While the number of graduates from family or adult nurse practitioner programs continues to rise, student applications to pediatric nurse practitioner and neonatal nurse practitioner programs are falling. Yet there is capacity in PNP and NNP training programs and unmet demand for graduates. Researchers determined that most of the child-focused programs have vacancies in each class, even when some class sizes have already been scaled back due to the downward trend in applications. Their findings are based on telephone surveys of directors at all PNP and ...

Human impact on Earth produces a unique kind of biosphere Changes to life may be the greatest for the past half billion years Earth may be entering a new kind of planetary state Human beings are pushing the planet in an entirely new direction with revolutionary implications for its life, a new study by researchers at the University of Leicester has suggested. The research team led by Professor Mark Williams from the University of Leicester's Department of Geology has published their findings in a new paper entitled 'The Anthropocene Biosphere' in The Anthropocene ...