(BOSTON) - Antibiotics are the mainstay in the treatment of bacterial infections, and together with vaccines, have enabled the near eradication of infectious diseases like tuberculosis, at least in developed countries. However, the overuse of antibiotics has also led to an alarming rise in resistant bacteria that can outsmart antibiotics using different mechanisms. Some pathogenic bacteria are thus becoming almost untreatable, not only in underdeveloped countries but also in modern hospital settings. While some researchers seek to develop antibiotics with new mechanisms ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study performed by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center shows that when it comes to overuse injuries in high school sports, girls are at a much higher risk than boys. Overuse injuries include stress fractures, tendonitis and joint pain, and occur when athletes are required to perform the same motion repeatedly. The study published in April in the Journal of Pediatrics. Dr. Thomas Best analyzed 3,000 male and female injury cases over a seven year period across 20 high school sports such as soccer, volleyball, gymnastics ...

PITTSBURGH, June 24 -- Moving closer to the possibility of "materials that compute" and wearing your computer on your sleeve, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering have designed a responsive hybrid material that is fueled by an oscillatory chemical reaction and can perform computations based on changes in the environment or movement, and potentially even respond to human vital signs. The material system is sufficiently small and flexible that it could ultimately be integrated into a fabric or introduced as an inset into a shoe. Anna ...

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have, for the first time, uncovered the complex interdependence and orchestration of metabolic reactions, gene regulation, and environmental cues of clostridial metabolism, providing new insights for advanced biofuel development. "This work advances our fundamental understanding of the complex, system-level process of clostridial acetone-butanol-ethanol (ABE) fermentation," explained Ting Lu, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Illinois. "Simultaneously, it provides a powerful tool for guiding strain ...

Alexandria, VA - Humans depend on copper for everything from electrical wiring to water pipes. To meet demand, the metal has been largely mined from Porphyry Copper Deposits (PCDs). For decades, scientists generally agreed upon the geological processes behind PCD formation; now EARTH Magazine examines two new studies that suggest alternatives to these long-held understandings. From enriched pulses of magmatic fluids creating copper concentrations, to remelted crust allowing deeper PCDs to rise up to shallower depths, these conclusions may better inform geologists about ...

Amsterdam, NL, June 24, 2015 - Despite an urgent need for new medications, clinical trials in Parkinson's disease (PD) have a relatively low rate of success. The reasons for this are complex, prompting a group of investigators from PD advocacy groups to conduct a survey of the principle stakeholders, PD scientists, patients, and caregivers, to determine some of the underlying barriers. Their results are published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease. "With development of a new drug estimated to cost between $1 and $3 billion and taking as long as 15 years, the successful ...

Cultural "lore" outweighs criminal law when Indigenous drivers in regional and remote communities get behind the wheel drunk, a new study by Queensland University of Technology has found. Michelle Fitts, from QUT's Centre for Accident Research & Road Safety-Queensland (CARRS-Q), said the decision to drink drive was not necessarily made in disregard for criminal law but rather to meet cultural obligations. As part of her Ph.D., Fitts explored the motivations that influence Indigenous people to drink drive in regional and remote communities through one-on-one interviews ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for "scheduling" energy in electric grids that moves away from centralized management by tapping into the distributed computing power of energy devices. The approach advances the smart grid concept by coordinating the energy being produced and stored by both conventional and renewable sources. Currently, power infrastructure uses a centralized scheduling approach to forecast and coordinate the energy produced at the thousands of large power plants around the country. But as renewable energy ...

Research has shown that New Zealand blackcurrants are good for keeping us mentally young and agile, a finding that could have potential in managing the mental decline associated with aging populations, or helping people with brain disorders such as Parkinson's disease or depression. The research, conducted by scientists at Plant & Food Research (New Zealand) in collaboration with Northumbria University (UK), showed that compounds found in New Zealand blackcurrants increased mental performance indicators, such as accuracy, attention and mood. The study also showed that ...

Although minority children are frequently reported to be overrepresented in special education classrooms, a team of researchers suggests that minority children are less likely than otherwise similar white children to receive help for disabilities. The previously reported overrepresentation is most likely due to a greater exposure to environmental and economic risk factors, said Paul Morgan, associate professor of education, Penn State. "The general limitation of the available studies is that they haven't been able to correct for minority children's unfortunate, but ...

Scientists at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet have managed to build a fully functional neuron by using organic bioelectronics. This artificial neuron contain no "living" parts, but is capable of mimicking the function of a human nerve cell and communicate in the same way as our own neurons do. Neurons are isolated from each other and communicate with the help of chemical signals, commonly called neurotransmitters or signal substances. Inside a neuron, these chemical signals are converted to an electrical action potential, which travels along the axon of the neuron until ...

New research published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, reports that younger patients, those who are married, and those with Child-Pugh C disease--the most severe measure of liver disease--are more likely immigrants, divorced patients and those at the lowest income levels were less likely to have a potential live donor volunteer for liver donation. With a limited supply of deceased donor organs, livers from living donors provide a much needed, life-saving ...

If it were up to Internet-savvy Americans, more of them would be emailing or sending Facebook messages to their doctors to chat about their health. That's the result of a national survey led by Joy Lee of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US. The findings¹ appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Surveys were sent to more than 4,500 customers of a retail pharmacy. The replies of the 2,252 respondents were included in the analysis. Respondents tended to be well educated, in good health, and frequent users ...

(Boston)--Medical students showed a greater acceptance of using approaches in genomic medicine, a key element in the practice of precision medicine, to treat patients as compared to physicians currently in practice according to a Brief Communication in the journal Medical Science Educator. The promise of genomic medicine, where personalized prevention and treatment becomes the health care norm, is poised to become a widespread reality. "The ability to take advantage of this approach to patient care will rest heavily on having appropriately trained physicians," explained ...

This news release is available in German. Supermassive black holes pull in gas with great force from their surroundings. As the gas rotates around the black hole, it becomes progressively hotter through friction and begins to radiate. This is how the brightest objects in the universe, active galactic nuclei (AGN), are formed. They often shine brighter than the hundreds of billions of stars in their galaxy. In the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way there is also such a black hole that, according to some studies, shone as an AGN a few millions of years ago. ETH ...

June 24 -- More Americans are using soft contact lenses -- especially daily disposable lenses -- and taking advantage of new designs targeting vision problems that were difficult to correct with previous contact lenses, reports the July issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Recent prescribing trends reflect ongoing advances in contact lens materials and capabilities, according to the survey study by Nathan Efron, Ph.D., DSc, of Queensland University of Technology, Australia, ...

Researchers have found that smoking may increase the risk of dying early in premenopausal women with breast cancer. In a prospective study of 848 women with breast cancer who were followed for a median of 6.7 years, premenopausal women who smoked for more than 21.5 years had a 3.1-times higher risk of dying from any cause as well as a 3.4-times higher risk of dying from breast cancer. These links were not apparent among post-menopausal women. There was also some suggestion that the increased risks seen in premenopausal women were especially relevant to women whose cancers ...

New York, NY, June 24, 2015 - The results of a study assessing safety and efficacy of sTMS therapy with the NEST® device in adult patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) have been published in the Elsevier journal Brain Stimulation and are now available online on Science Direct. In the study, over 200 subjects were analyzed across 17 leading academic and private psychiatric institutions in the United States; enrollment included both treatment naïve and treatment-resistant patients as prior exposure to antidepressant medication was not a requirement for ...

Milan, Italy - 24 June 2015: The first ESC recommendations for patients with cardiac arrhythmias and chronic kidney disease (CKD) are presented today1 at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 and published in EP Europace.2 The paper was produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is endorsed by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) in the US and the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS). Professor Giuseppe Boriani, chair of the writing group, said: "CKD occurs in more than 10% of adults and has ...

Milan, Italy - 24 June 2015: A unique consensus paper on patient preferences for arrhythmias management is presented today1 at EHRA EUROPACE - CARDIOSTIM 2015 and published in EP Europace.2 "Patients live with the consequences of treatments so it's reasonable that they should have some say." The document was produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is endorsed by the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) in the US, the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS) and Sociedad Latinoamericana de Estimulación ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 24, 2015 - One American dies from suicide every 12.8 minutes, making suicide the tenth leading cause of death in the United States according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. There is consensus that if we could better predict who was at risk for suicide, then we could more effectively intervene to reduce this terrible burden on individuals, families and public health. A new analysis of existing studies strongly supports the idea that there are increased levels of chemicals, called cytokines, in the body and brain that promote inflammation ...

A University of Colorado Boulder scientist unexpectedly discovered two lichen species new to science in the same week while conducting research in Boulder Colorado, near the city's eastern limits. After a day of fieldwork inventorying lichens at White Rocks Open Space, Erin Tripp was walking back to her car when an unfamiliar lichen caught her eye. Later that week, Tripp spotted a second species of lichen that she suspected might also be a new species. Tripp, curator of botany for the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History and assistant professor of ecology ...

A study of how people can quickly spot animals by sight is helping uncover the workings of the human brain. Scientists examined why volunteers who were shown hundreds of pictures - some with animals and some without - were able to detect animals in as little as one-tenth of a second. They found that one of the first parts of the brain to process visual information - the primary visual cortex - can control this fast response, rather than more complex parts of the brain being required, as previously thought. The findings suggest that when people look at a scene for ...

South African and Argentinian palaeontologists have discovered a new 200 million year old dinosaur from South Africa, and named it Sefapanosaurus, from the Sesotho word "sefapano". The researchers from South Africa's University of Cape Town (UCT) and the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), and from the Argentinian Museo de La Plata and Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio made the announcement in the scientific journal, Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society. The paper, titled: A new basal sauropodiform from South Africa and the phylogenetic relationships ...

Boulder, Colo. -- The 26 December 2004 Mw ~9.2 Indian Ocean earthquake (also known as the Sumatra-Andaman or Aceh-Andaman earthquake), which generated massive, destructive tsunamis, especially along the Aceh coast of northern Sumatra, Indonesia, clearly demonstrated the need for a better understanding of how frequently subduction zone earthquakes and tsunamis occur. Toward that end, Harvey M. Kelsey of Humboldt State University and colleagues present a study of earthquake history in the area. Using subsidence stratigraphy, the team traced the different modes of coastal ...