Hamilton, ON (May 13, 2015) - The firmness of your hand grip is better than your blood pressure at assessing your health, Hamilton researchers have found, and reduced muscular strength, measured by your grip, is consistently linked with early death, disability and illness. The research by the Population Health Research Institute of McMaster University and Hamilton Health Sciences was published in the journal The Lancet today. "Grip strength could be an easy and inexpensive test to assess an individual's risk of death and cardiovascular disease," said principal investigator ...

PHILADELPHIA - Four different financial incentive programs, each worth roughly $800 over six months, all help more smokers kick the habit than providing free access to behavioral counseling and nicotine replacement therapy. Further, the way in which equally-sized payouts are structured influences their effectiveness. The findings are the result of a year-long randomized trial among CVS Caremark (now CVS Health) employees that was conducted by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and is published online first in the New England ...

PITTSBURGH, May 13, 2015 - Some cases of male infertility are due to mutations in the maternal X chromosome that prevent development of viable sperm, according to a study led by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the Magee-Womens Research Institute (MWRI). The study was published online today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Nearly half of cases of male infertility not due to a physical obstruction are estimated to have genetic roots, and about 20 percent of infertile men have azoospermia, meaning they don't make sperm, explained ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 13, 2015 - Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today announced it will present data from 19 clinical studies at the 2015 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting to be held May 29 to June 2, 2015 in Chicago, Ill. Key podium presentations will highlight new prospective research programs with advanced companion diagnostic and molecular diagnostic tests aimed at revolutionizing how we treat and prevent cancers. Abstracts of the Company's presentations are available at: abstracts.asco.org. "Advances in personalized medicine will include ...

A new study finds the economic burden of cancer extends beyond diagnosis and treatment, and concludes that cancer survivors face thousands of dollars of excess medical expenses every year as well as excess employment disability and loss of production at work. The study abstract is being presented at the upcoming ASCO Annual Meeting and was released online today. Researchers led by Zhiyuan "Jason" Zheng examined the economic burden among survivors of the three most prevalent cancers (colorectal, female breast, and prostate) in nonelderly and elderly populations in the ...

MINNEAPOLIS - A new study suggests that medical marijuana pills may not help treat behavioral symptoms of dementia, such as aggression, pacing and wandering. The research is published in the May 13, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. However, researchers did find that the drug dosage used in the clinical trial was safe and well-tolerated. "Our study results are valuable since any firm evidence of the effectiveness and safety of medical marijuana in this disease area is scarce," said study author Geke A.H. van ...

DALLAS, May 13, 2015 -- Persistent depression may double the risk of stroke in adults over 50 -- and stroke risk remains higher even after symptoms of depression go away, according to research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "Our findings suggest that depression may increase stroke risk over the long term," said Paola Gilsanz, Sc.D., study lead author and ?Yerby Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. Researchers used data from 16,178 participants (ages 50 and older) who had been interviewed ...

Boston, MA -- Adults over 50 who have persistent symptoms of depression may have twice the risk of stroke as those who do not, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Researchers found that stroke risk remains higher even after symptoms of depression go away, particularly for women. The study will be published online May 13, 2015 in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "This is the first study evaluating how changes in depressive symptoms predict changes in stroke risk," said lead author Paola Gilsanz, Yerby ...

Time is critical when it comes to stroke, and early treatment is associated with better outcomes. According to the Screening with MRI for Accurate and Rapid stroke Treatment (SMART) study, small changes in quality improvement procedures enabled clinicians to use MRI scans to diagnose stroke patients before giving acute treatment, within 60 minutes of hospital arrival. MRI scans provide detailed images but take longer to complete than CT scans, which are commonly used in most centers. The findings, published in Neurology, were supported in part by the National Institutes ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. -- May 13, 2015 -- A study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) has for the first time matched dozens of infantile diseases and syndromes involving muscle weakness and stiff joints to their likely genetic origins. The study, in association with the University of British Columbia and BC Children's Hospital Vancouver, was published this month (May) in the American Journal of Medical Genetics. The study's goal is to better enable physicians and geneticists to advance new treatments that might help these children. "It's amazing to us ...

Washington, D.C., May 13, 2015 -- Using efficiency principles borrowed from "lean" manufacturing processes, two Washington-area hospitals have gotten a life-saving drug to stroke patients significantly quicker, while also obtaining better diagnostic information using MRI. That's according to a new study published online ahead of print in the May 13 issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. National benchmarks call for getting stroke patients from the door of the emergency room to injection with the clot-busting drug known as ...

MISSOULA -- The amount of time and effort songbirds spend warming their eggs directly correlates to their own survival probability and that of their eggs, according to a study by University of Montana researchers that will appear in an upcoming issue of The American Naturalist. The amount of care parents provide their young varies greatly across the animal kingdom, particularly among songbird species, who spend anywhere from 20 percent to nearly 100 percent of daylight hours warming eggs in their nests. A team of researchers led by Thomas Martin, senior scientist and ...

Cats may hold vital clues about the health benefits of vitamin D, a study suggests. Researchers found that higher levels of vitamin D are linked to better survival chances for hospitalised pet cats. Cats could prove useful for investigating the complex link between vitamin D and a range of health problems that also affect people, the researchers say. The findings may also help vets to give owners better advice about their pets' prognosis, according to researchers at the University of Edinburgh's Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Researchers examined blood ...

Eighty percent of a population of Burmese long-tailed macaques on an island in southern Thailand use stone and shell tools to crack open seafood, and do so using 17 different action patterns, according to a study published May 13, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Amanda Tan from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and colleagues, under an 8 year field project led by Michael D Gumert, also from NTU. The authors of the study explored variation in how Burmese long-tailed macaques used percussive stone and shell tools to hammer coastal foods on Piak Nam ...

Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a pattern of gene activity that could help scientists create a blood test for quickly and accurately detecting whether patients are experiencing a deadly immune-system panic attack. Sepsis is a whole-body inflammation syndrome set off when the immune system wildly overreacts to the presence of infectious pathogens. It is the leading cause of hospital deaths in the United States, accounting for nearly half of the total number, and is tied to the early deaths of at least 750,000 Americans each year. ...

The potato leafhopper is a tiny insect--barely half the size of a grain of rice--with a bright lime green color that helps it blend in against plant leaves. Despite its unassuming appearance, this little pest causes big headaches for farmers across the eastern half of the United States. By feeding voraciously on many crops, including potatoes, green beans and alfalfa, the migratory potato leafhopper causes untold millions of dollars in damage every year. Now, a study by entomologists at the University of Maryland and Queens College at the City University of New York ...

Alcohol drunk by a mouse in early pregnancy changes the way genes function in the brains of the offspring, shows the recent study conducted at the University of Helsinki. The early exposure was also later apparent in the brain structure of the adult offspring. The timing of the exposure corresponds to the human gestational weeks 3-6 in terms of fetal development. In addition, the exposure to alcohol was found to cause similar changes to gene function in other tissues of the infant mice. These results suggest that alcohol causes permanent changes to gene regulation in ...

Two experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, have combined their results and observed a previously unseen subatomic process. As published in the journal Nature this week, a joint analysis by the CMS and LHCb collaborations has established a new and extremely rare decay of the Bs particle (a heavy composite particle consisting of a bottom antiquark and a strange quark) into two muons. Theorists had predicted that this decay would only occur about four times out of a billion, and that is roughly ...

Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) -- or, simply, prostate enlargement -- is one of the most common diseases of aging among men in the United States. In fact, by the time they hit 80 or above, upwards of 90 percent of all men in the U.S. experience some degree of prostate enlargement. And of those, 40 percent require medical treatment. Despite the fact that the disease impacts so many people and carries with it a huge price tag -- estimated at tens of billions of dollars per year in medical expenses and lost wages, among other costs -- the factors that contribute to BPH ...

For the first time, satellite mapping of Latin America shows that the continent's agricultural expansion has waned in the wake of the global economic downturn, according to UBC research. "Nearly every agricultural region across Latin America slowed down in expansion from 2007 to 2013, compared to the previous six years," says Jordan Graesser, the study's lead author. Graesser is a visiting international student at UBC's Liu Institute for Global Issues and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. The study, recently published in Environmental Research ...

ITHACA, N.Y. -- If you're planning to fly over the holiday, plan to drink some tomato juice. While examining how airplane noise affects the palate, Cornell University food scientists found sweetness suppressed and a tasty, tender tomato surprise: umami. A Japanese scientific term, umami describes the sweet, savory taste of amino acids such as glutamate in foods like tomato juice, and according to the new study, in noisy situations -- like the 85 decibels aboard a jetliner -- umami-rich foods become your taste bud's best buds. "Our study confirmed that in an environment ...

PITTSBURGH -- A research team led by the University of Pittsburgh's Jeremy Levy has discovered electrons that can "swing dance." This unique electronic behavior can potentially lead to new families of quantum devices. Superconductors, materials that permit electrical current to flow without energy loss, form the basis for magnetic resonance imaging devices as well as emerging technologies such as quantum computers. At the heart of all superconductors is the bunching of electrons into pairs. Levy, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Pittsburgh Quantum Institute director, ...

The type of perfectionist who sets impossibly high standards for others has a bit of a dark side. They tend to be narcissistic, antisocial and to have an aggressive sense of humor. They care little about social norms and do not readily fit into the bigger social picture. So says Joachim Stoeber of the University of Kent in the UK, who compared the characteristics of so-called other-orientated perfectionists against those of perfectionists who set the bar extremely high for themselves. The study is published in Springer's Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. Perfectionism ...

Typhoon Dolphin (strengthened overnight on 5/12 from Tropical Storm status) formed south of Pohnpei in the western Pacific Ocean on May 7, 2015. Dolphin's power has oscillated from a weak tropical depression to typhoon intensity over the past five days. Dolphin is now an intensifying typhoon headed westward. The GPM core observatory satellite flew over Dolphin on May 12, 2015 at 2301 UTC. At that time Dolphin's wind speeds were estimated at about 65 kts (75 mph). Rainfall collected by GPM's Microwave Imager (GMI) showed that rain was falling at a rate of over 47 mm (1.9 ...

As murder mysteries go, it's a big one: how do galaxies die and what kills them? A new study, published today in the journal Nature, has found that the primary cause of galactic death is strangulation, which occurs after galaxies are cut off from the raw materials needed to make new stars. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh have found that levels of metals contained in dead galaxies provide key 'fingerprints', making it possible to determine the cause of death. There are two types of galaxies in the Universe: roughly half ...