Baltimore, Md. -- Amyloid build-up is commonly talked about in relation to Alzheimer's disease, but amyloidosis can be found throughout the body. An excessive accumulation of these insoluble proteins could cause a heart attack or even death. A new molecular imaging scan of amyloid in the heart could help diagnose the problem, say researchers at the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). The condition is called transthyretin-type (TTR) amyloidosis after the TTR gene thought to cause the over-abundance of plaque build-up. ...

Baltimore, Md. -- New research presented during the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) demonstrates that amyloid positron emission tomography (amyloid PET) scans of the brain provide clearer diagnosis and earlier, more effective treatment for Alzheimer's patients, when results of a more conventional PET scan remain ambiguous. Researchers reviewed the clinical outcomes of two kinds of PET scans: a preliminary scan with a common radiotracer called fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), which acts like glucose in the brain to capture ...

Baltimore, Md. -- Fatal cardiac events are often preceded by abnormal blood clots, also called thrombosis. Scientists have now developed a molecular imaging technique that could save lives by revealing troublesome thrombi, according to a study presented at the 2015 annual meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). 'Thrombosis is the underlying cause of deadly diseases such as stroke, pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis and heart attack, which affect millions of people worldwide,' said Francesco Blasi, Ph.D., lead author of the study ...

Baltimore, Md. (Embargoed until 12:30 p.m., June 8, 2015) - Neuroinflammation caused by a reactive immune system could be tripping off the neurodegeneration seen in certain dementias, multiple sclerosis, and other deadly diseases of the nervous system. A novel molecular imaging technique could be the key to understanding how best to treat these and other devastating diseases, according to a recent study presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI). At the heart of this maladaptive immune response are microglia, ...

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and its Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Cancer Center are reporting a potentially important discovery in the battle against one of the most devastating forms of leukemia that accounts for as many as one in five children with a particularly aggressive form of the disease relapsing within a decade. In a cover story set to appear in the journal Cancer Cell online June 8, researchers at NYU Langone and elsewhere report that they have successfully halted and reversed the growth of certain cancerous white blood cells at the center of T-cell ...

A research group at Disney Research Pittsburgh has developed a computer vision system that, much like humans, can continuously improve its ability to recognize objects by picking up hints while watching videos. Like most other object recognition systems, the Disney system builds a conceptual model of an object, be it an airplane or a soap dispenser, by using a learning algorithm to analyze a number of example images of the object. What's different about the Disney system is that it then uses that model to identify objects, when it can, in videos. As it does, it sometimes ...

An algorithm developed through collaboration of Disney Research Pittsburgh and Boston University can improve the automated recognition of actions in a video, a capability that could aid in video search and retrieval, video analysis and human-computer interaction research. The core idea behind the new method is to express each action, whether it be a pedestrian strolling down the street or a gymnast performing a somersault, as a series of space-time patterns. These begin with elementary body movements, such as a leg moving up or an arm flexing. But these movements also ...

URBANA, Ill. - Contrary to popular belief, foreclosed properties do not always lead to unkempt lawns. University of Illinois researchers used remote sensing technology to observe rapid change in U.S. urban settings, specifically homes in Maricopa County, Arizona, that foreclosed over about a 10-year period. "We learned that when a property is foreclosed, it's more nuanced than nature just coming in and taking over," said U of I professional geographer Bethany Cutts. "Foreclosure doesn't always mean management stops." Cutts said the team of researchers chose to test ...

Tropical Cyclone 01A has been moving in a northerly direction through the Northern Indian Ocean, and is now curving to the west, moving into the Gulf of Oman. NASA's Aqua satellite and RapidScat instruments gathered imagery and data on the storm. Three days of RapidScat imagery showed how sustained winds increased around the entire storm. The first tropical cyclone of the Northern Indian Ocean Season was born on Sunday, June 7. Tropical Cyclone 1A developed near 16.3 North latitude and 68.5 East longitude, about 536 nautical miles (616.8 miles/992.7 km) south of Karachi, ...

Raising healthy chicks is always a challenge, but in a cold, fish-free Arctic lake, it's an enormous undertaking. Red-throated Loon (Gavia stellata) parents must constantly fly back and forth between their nesting lakes and the nearby ocean, bringing back fish to feed their growing young, and a new study suggests that the chicks grow fast and fledge while they're still small so that they can reach the food-rich ocean themselves and give their parents a break. Growing chicks must take in enough energy to move around, grow, and maintain their body temperature. The bigger ...

That weathering has to do with the weather is obvious in itself. All the more astonishing, therefore, are the research results of a group of scientists from the GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam and Stanford University, USA, which show that variations in the weathering of rocks over the past 2 million years have been relatively uniform despite the distinct glacial and interglacial periods and the associated fluctuations in the Earth's climate. The researchers have observed a most stable behavior in marine sediments, fed year after year through the ...

Over geologic time, the work of rain and other processes that chemically dissolve rocks into constituent molecules that wash out to sea can diminish mountains and reshape continents. Scientists are interested in the rates of these chemical weathering processes because they have big implications for the planet's carbon cycle, which shuttles carbon dioxide between land, sea, and air and influences global temperatures. A new study, published online on June 8 in the journal Nature Geoscience, by a team of scientists from Stanford and Germany's GFZ Research Center for Geosciences ...

The global movement patterns of all four seasonal influenza viruses are illustrated in research published today in the journal Nature, providing a detailed account of country-to-country virus spread over the last decade and revealing unexpected differences in circulation patterns between viruses. In the study, an international team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and including all five World Health Organization (WHO) Influenza Collaborating Centres, report surprising differences between the various types ...

Sydney, Australia: Patterns of peak rainfall during storms will intensify as the climate changes and temperatures warm, leading to increased flash flood risks in Australia's urban catchments, new UNSW Australia research suggests. Civil engineers from the UNSW Water Research Centre have analysed close to 40,000 storms across Australia spanning 30 years and have found warming temperatures are dramatically disrupting rainfall patterns, even within storm events. Essentially, the most intense downpours are getting more extreme at warmer temperatures, dumping larger volumes ...

New York, NY, June 8, 2015 - Professional physician associations consider certain routine tests before elective surgery to be of low value and high cost, and have sought to discourage their utilization. Nonetheless, a new national study by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center finds that despite these peer-reviewed recommendations, no significant changes have occurred over a 14-year period in the rates of several kinds of these pre-operative tests. The results are to publish online on June 8, 2015 in JAMA Internal Medicine. "Our findings suggest that professional ...

Both statin and nonstatin cholesterol-lowering drugs were associated with memory loss in the first 30 days after patients started taking the medications when compared with nonusers, but researchers suggest the association may have resulted because patients using the medications may have more contact with their physicians and therefore be more likely to detect any memory loss, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Acute memory loss associated with the use of statins has been described in case reports and case studies, as well as in some studies, ...

Researchers at University of Helsinki, Finland, and Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, discovered previously uncharacterized mutational patterns in the human regulatory genome, especially in gastrointestinal tract cancers. The study was published in Nature Genetics. The research led by Academy Professor Lauri Aaltonen and Professor Jussi Taipale, was based on study of more than two hundred whole genomes of colorectal cancer samples. The scientists detected a distinct accumulation of mutations specifically at sites where the proteins CTCF and cohesin bind the DNA. Both ...

It's a notion that might be pulled from the pages of science-fiction novel - electronic devices that can be injected directly into the brain, or other body parts, and treat everything from neurodegenerative disorders to paralysis. It sounds unlikely, until you visit Charles Lieber's lab. A team of international researchers, led by Lieber, the Mark Hyman, Jr. Professor of Chemistry, an international team of researchers developed a method for fabricating nano-scale electronic scaffolds that can be injected via syringe. Once connected to electronic devices, the scaffolds ...

Genes linked to creativity could increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to new research carried out by researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King's College London. Previous studies have identified a link between creativity and psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder, but it has remained unclear whether this association is due to common genes. Published today in Nature Neuroscience, this new study lends support to the direct influence on creativity of genes found in people with schizophrenia ...

ITHACA, N.Y. - If you want people to choose healthier foods, emphasize the positive, says a new Cornell University study. Published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the Cornell Food and Brand Lab study showed that when it comes to nutrition education, dos work a lot better than don'ts. This is especially important when determining policies that encourage healthy eating. Media note: A short video explaining the research, as well as an informational graphic and additional details about this research can be found at, http://foodpsychology.cornell.edu/OP/Hidden_Costs ...

This news release is available in French. A new joint study by researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship, both at McGill University, has cast some light on the brain mechanisms that support people's voting decisions. Evidence in the study shows that a part of the brain called the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (LOFC) must function properly if voters are to make choices that combine different sources of information about the candidates. The study found that damage to the LOFC leads people to base their vote ...

A new study gives insight into the mental health of children and teens with Down syndrome and the behavioral medications that medical caregivers sometimes prescribe for them. The Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study shows that teens and young adults between the ages of 12 and 21 were significantly more likely to be on psychotropic medications than children 5 to 11 years old. Among children less than 12, the odds of being on a psychotropic medication increased with age for all classes of medications studied. For 12 to 18 year olds, the odds of being on ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 8, 2015) - Columbia University scientists have developed a computational method to investigate the relationship between birth month and disease risk. The researchers used this algorithm to examine New York City medical databases and found 55 diseases that correlated with the season of birth. Overall, the study indicated people born in May had the lowest disease risk, and those born in October the highest. The study was published in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. "This data could help scientists uncover new disease risk factors," ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University are developing a new algorithm to help robots better plan their actions in complex environments. It's designed to help robots be more useful in the real world, but it's being developed with the help of a virtual world -- that of the video game Minecraft. Basic action planning, while easy for humans, is a frontier of robotics. Part of the problem is that robots don't intuitively ignore objects and actions that are irrelevant to the task at hand. For example, if someone asked you to empty the trashcan ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have uncovered physical mechanisms allowing the manipulation of magnetic information with heat. These new phenomena rely on the transport of thermal energy, in contrast to the conventional application of magnetic fields, providing a new, and highly desirable way to manipulate magnetization at the nanoscale. "In our study, we make use of the fact that a heat current passing through a magnetic material creates a separation of electron spins. This process creates a current of magnetic dipoles that we use to manipulate ...