CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Most of the world's electricity-producing power plants -- whether powered by coal, natural gas, or nuclear fission -- make electricity by generating steam that turns a turbine. That steam then is condensed back to water, and the cycle begins again. But the condensers that collect the steam are quite inefficient, and improving them could make a big difference in overall power plant efficiency. Now, a team of researchers at MIT has developed a way of coating these condenser surfaces with a layer of graphene, just one atom thick, and found that this can ...

Chicago, IL, USA (30 May 2015) -- The benefits of adding liver-directed SIR-Spheres Y-90 resin microspheres to a current systemic chemotherapy for the first-line treatment of unresectable metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) reported in the SIRFLOX study, were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago. The results of the 530-patient SIRFLOX randomized controlled study, which open new possibilities for combining radiation targeted at liver metastases with first-line systemic treatment of mCRC, were presented by Associate Professor ...

Chicago and Madrid, June 1st 2015: PharmaMar today announced data from a Phase 1b study of the transcriptional inhibitor PM1183 in combination with doxorubicin in second line therapy in patients with small cell lung cancer (SCLC) showing that the treatment induced objective responses in 67% of the patients, including 10% of them where all signs of cancer disappeared (complete responses). Every patient with SCLC denominated primary chemotherapy-sensitive (their chemotherapy-free interval (CTFI) is more than 90 days) responded to treatment, including 18% of complete responses. ...

Chicago and Madrid, June 1st 2015: PharmaMar today announced data from a Phase 2 study in patients with sarcomatoid/biphasic malignant pleural mesothelioma showing that 41.2% (95% CI: 18.4-67.1) of patients treated with the anticancer drug trabectedin in second line were alive and free of progression at 12 weeks. The median progression-free survival (PFS) in these 17 evaluated patients was 8.3 weeks. There were 5 patients who continue receiving trabectedin beyond 12 weeks. "Mesothelioma patients usually do not respond to second-line treatments so the preliminary data ...

PORTLAND, Ore., June 01, 2015 -- Women who took vitamin D and calcium supplements had the same number of menopausal symptoms as women who did not take the supplements, according to a study published today in Maturitas, the official journal of the European Menopause and Andropause Society. The study, which involved 34,157 women ages 50-79, is part of the Women's Health Initiative, one of the largest clinical trials ever undertaken to address the most common causes of death, disability and impaired quality of life in menopausal women. "Our study suggests that women ...

Aging is associated with significant decline in cognitive functions. But does this translate into poorer decision making? Psychologists from the University of Basel and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development report that in simple decision situations, older adults perform just as well as younger adults. However, according to their study published in the academic journal Cognition, aging may affect decision performance in more complex decision situations. Important decisions in politics and economics are often made by older people: According to Forbes magazine, ...

The NHS could achieve up to twice as much with the resources that the Government plans to spend introducing a full seven day service in the NHS in England, according to new research from The University of Manchester. Health economists, working with colleagues at the University of York, have used official data to suggest an extra 5,353 deaths each year occur when people are admitted to hospital at the weekend rather than mid-week, but that the £1.43 billion cost of removing this risk would be better spent on other priorities. Despite a seven day health service ...

Researchers have developed a new augmented reality display that allows the audience to explore 3D augmentations of digital musical performances in order to improve their understanding of electronic musicians' engagement. The diversity of digital musical instruments keeps increasing, especially with the emergence of software and hardware that musicians can modify. While this diversity creates novel artistic possibilities, it also makes it more difficult for the audience to appreciate what the musicians are doing during performances. Contrary to acoustic instruments, digital ...

London, UK (1st June, 2015) - Factors influencing food intake have, and continue to be, a hotly contested subject. A new paper published today in the SAGE journal, Journal of Health Psychology (JHP), suggests that disrupted sleep could be one factor contributing to excessive food intake and thus leading to long term chronic health damage in both adults and children. In a special issue on Food, Diets, and Dieting, the paper explores how a bad night's sleep - something that affects millions of people worldwide - can affect eating habits and behaviors. Though it is well-known ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Can a routine hospital stay upset the balance of microbes in our bodies so much that it sets some older people up for a life-threatening health crisis called sepsis? A new University of Michigan and VA study suggests this may be the case. It shows that older adults are three times more likely to develop sepsis -- a body-wide catastrophic response to infection -- in the first three months after leaving a hospital than at any other time. What's more, the risk of sepsis in that short post-hospital time is 30 percent higher for people whose original hospital ...

There are some bad memories -- whether of a crime or a painful life event -- that we'd rather not recall. New research shows that people can successfully inhibit some incriminating memories, reducing the memories' impact on automatic behaviors and resulting in brain activity similar to that seen in "innocent" participants. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "In real life, many individuals who take memory detection tests want to distort their results. Using a lab-based crime simulation, we examined ...

This news release is available in French. The Drosophila, the so-called fruit fly, attends all day long to its activities. It flutters, has naps, lays its eggs or emerges from the pupa, the stage of metamorphosis preceding maturity. At the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, the team of the researcher in biology Emi Nagoshi is closely interested in this insect, used as a model organism for the study of circadian rhythms in the animal kingdom. The researcher's group discovered that the main clock of the Drosophila, formed by neurons clustered in various regions ...

Viewed from above, our solar system's planetary orbits around the sun resemble rings around a bulls-eye. Each planet, including Earth, keeps to a roughly circular path, always maintaining the same distance from the sun. For decades, astronomers have wondered whether the solar system's circular orbits might be a rarity in our universe. Now a new analysis suggests that such orbital regularity is instead the norm, at least for systems with planets as small as Earth. In a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal, researchers from MIT and Aarhus University in Denmark ...

Beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains best wired for reading, according to new Stanford research investigating how the brain responds to different types of reading instruction. In other words, to develop reading skills, teaching students to sound out "C-A-T" sparks more optimal brain circuitry than instructing them to memorize the word "cat." And, the study found, these teaching-induced differences show up even on future encounters with the word. The ...

(PHILADELPHIA) -- Despite advances in managing and curing some forms of breast cancer, women whose disease becomes metastatic have fewer effective options. A new phase 3 study in some of the most difficult-to-treat patients, women with endocrine-resistant disease, showed that the newly approved drug, palbociclib, more than doubled the time to cancer recurrence for women with hormone-receptor (HR+) positive metastatic breast cancer. The results will be presented at the 2015 annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO, abstract LBA-502) and published in the New England ...

Anastrozole provides a significant benefit compared with tamoxifen in preventing recurrence after a lumpectomy and radiation therapy in postmenopausal women ages 60 years or younger who had DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ), a common diagnosis of non-invasive breast cancer. In women over age 60, it works as well as tamoxifen. These findings were presented today at the 2015 ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago. The benefit reported in this trial appeared later in follow up of the women in the study. "This study provides a new option for postmenopausal women undergoing treatment ...

DURHAM, N.C. - A modified poliovirus therapy that is showing promising results for patients with glioblastoma brain tumors works best at a low dosage, according to the research team at Duke's Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center where the investigational therapy is being pioneered. The dosage findings for the first 20 patients in the phase 1 trial will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago at the end of the month (abstract #2068). "The purpose of a phase 1 trial is to identify the optimal dose to minimize toxicity," said ...

Queensland scientists have discovered two more species of suicidally-sexed marsupials and one is already destined for the threatened list. Queensland University of Technology's (QUT) Dr Andrew Baker and his team have named two new species of Dusky Antechinus. One new species was discovered in remote, south-eastern Tasmania and another mainland form was raised to species status. The team has now discovered five new species of antechinus in the past three years, a 50 per cent increase in diversity within this long-known genus of mammals. However, the researchers believe ...

(New York - May 26, 2015) Mount Sinai Health System faculty will be presenting research updates on a lymphoma vaccine clinical trial, the best dosing for a drug against metastatic cancer, and new treatment strategies in relapsed multiple myeloma at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, May 29 - June 2, 2015, in Chicago. ASCO is the world's largest oncology meeting, with more than 25,000 researchers presenting their latest study results. Key abstract presentations include: * In situ vaccine for low-grade lymphoma: Combination of intratumoral ...

This news release is available in German. A team led by DESY scientists has designed, fabricated and successfully tested a novel X-ray lens that produces sharper and brighter images of the nano world. The lens employs an innovative concept to redirect X-rays over a wide range of angles, making a high convergence power. The larger the convergence the smaller the details a microscope can resolve, but as is well known it is difficult to bend X-rays by large enough angles. By fabricating a nano-structure that acts like an artificial crystal it was possible to mimic ...

A study analysing the Finnish homicide and prescription drug databases discovered that the use of certain drugs that affect the central nervous system are associated with an increased risk of committing a homicide. The greatest risk was associated with the use of painkillers and tranquillizing benzodiazepines, while anti-depressants were linked only to a slightly elevated risk. The study is the first one of its kind in the world. Professor Jari Tiihonen's research group analysed the use of prescription drugs of 959 persons convicted of a homicide. In the recent years, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, May 27, 2015 -- Both men and women are more likely to cheat on their spouses the more economically dependent they are on them, according to a new study. "You would think that people would not want to 'bite the hand that feeds them' so to speak, but that is not what my research shows," said study author Christin L. Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. "Instead, the findings indicate people like feeling relatively equal in their relationships. People don't like to feel dependent on another person." According to ...

Boston, MA -- After a prostate cancer diagnosis, eating a diet higher in red and processed meat, high-fat dairy foods, and refined grains--known as a Western diet--may lead to a significantly higher risk of both prostate cancer-related mortality and overall mortality compared with eating a diet rich in vegetables, fruits, fish, whole grains, and healthy oils, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study, which appears online June 1, 2015 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, offers insight on how diet may help improve survivorship ...

More than 90 per cent of educational materials written for kidney disease patients is higher than an average patient's literacy, according to a new study published in the June issue of the National Kidney Foundation's American Journal of Kidney Diseases. "Our study suggests most patient information materials are not fit for their intended purpose, and that organisations are producing materials that may be too difficult for their intended audience to understand," said Angela Webster, lead researcher and an Associate Professor Clinical Epidemiology at the University of ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., June 1, 2015 - An increase in the number of weight loss surgeries in the U.S. is beginning to have a ripple effect in plastic surgery, according to new data released today by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Procedures specifically associated with massive weight loss, including tummy tucks, thigh lifts, breast lifts and upper arm lifts, grew at their fastest rate in four years in 2014, according to the report. That follows a similar increase in the growth of weight loss surgeries. "We think there is a correlation between the two ...