(PHILADELPHIA) - Multiple sclerosis (MS) is caused by immune cells that activate a cascade of chemicals in the brain, attacking and degrading the insulation that keeps neuronal signals moving. These chemicals, called cytokines, drive the inflammation in the brain, attracting more immune cells, and causing the debilitating disease marked by loss of neurological function. Researchers have long debated which cytokines drive the disease and which are merely accessory. Now, a study published online April 27th, in the Journal of Immunology, confirms that the cytokine GM-CSF ...

29.04.2015: In these days, it was again tragically demonstrated that the Himalayas are one of the most active geodynamic regions of the world. Landslides belong to the most important geohazards. Besides earthquakes they are triggered mainly by strong rainfall events. A team of scientists from Nepal, Switzerland and Germany was now able to show how erosion processes caused by the monsoon are mirrored in the sediment load of a river crossing the Himalaya. The geoscientists used data from two stations along the Kali Gandaki, a river that traverses the Himalaya from North ...

Most people are naturally adept at reading facial expressions -- from smiling and frowning to brow-furrowing and eye-rolling -- to tell what others are feeling. Now scientists have developed ultra-sensitive, wearable sensors that can do the same thing. Their technology, reported in the journal ACS Nano, could help robot developers make their machines more human. Nae-Eung Lee and colleagues note that one way to make interactions between people and robots more intuitive would be to endow machines with the ability to read their users' emotions and respond with a computer ...

Today the national science academies of the G7 countries handed three statements to their respective heads of government for discussion during the G7 summit at Schloss Elmau in early June 2015. The papers on antibiotic resistance, neglected and poverty-related diseases, and the future of the ocean were drawn up by the seven national academies under the aegis of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. The G7 academies call for a comprehensive strategy to tackle health threats from infectious diseases; progress toward preventing, controlling and eliminating ...

Computer science researchers have turned to unlikely sources - including Enron - for assembling huge collections of spreadsheets that can be used to study how people use this software. The goal is for the data to facilitate research to make spreadsheets more useful. "We study spreadsheets because spreadsheet software is used to track everything from corporate earnings to employee benefits, and even simple errors can cost organizations millions of dollars," says Emerson Murphy-Hill, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of two new papers ...

NEW YORK (April 29, 2015) - A new study found one in five nursing home residents with advanced dementia harbor strains of drug-resistant bacteria and more than 10 percent of the drug-resistant bacteria are resistant to four or more antibiotic classes. The research was published online today in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "Nursing home residents with advanced dementia usually have an increased need for healthcare worker assistance, as well as frequent exposure to antibiotics. This combination ...

An update search enlarged the pool of study data, but did not change the content of the conclusion of the benefit assessment of stem cell transplantation (SCT) for multiple myeloma conducted in 2012. Overall, the evidence base remained insufficient: Until now, data on quality of life have not been recorded in any study at all. And three large studies, some of which were under German management, have not been completely published even more than 10 years after their completion. This is the conclusion of a rapid report published by the Institute for Quality and Efficiency ...

When consumer budgets grow or shrink, how do spending habits change? A common view is that people with a budget will spend their money on the same number of products, even when their previous budget was lower or higher. But in order to keep their favorite items, consumers whose budgets have shrunk to a particular amount will opt for less variety than someone whose budget has increased to that same amount, according to a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research. Investors beware! "We call this the budget contraction effect," write authors Kurt A. Carlson (Georgetown ...

(NEWARK, NJ) - April 29, 2014 - A woman is brutally assaulted, but rather than receiving the sympathy she deserves, she is blamed. If she had dressed differently or acted differently, or made wiser choices, others say, she would have been spared her ordeal. For victims, this "victim blaming" is profoundly hurtful, and can lead to secondary victimization. Psychologists have long realized that blaming victims is a defense mechanism that helps blamers feel better about the world, and see it as fair and just. But ways to prevent victim blaming have been elusive -- until ...

The sun's surface is blisteringly hot at 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit -- but its atmosphere is another 300 times hotter. This has led to an enduring mystery for those who study the sun: What heats the atmosphere to such extreme temperatures? Normally when you move away from a hot source the environment gets cooler, but some mechanism is clearly at work in the solar atmosphere, the corona, to bring the temperatures up so high. Clear evidence now suggests that the heating mechanism depends on regular, but intermittent explosive bursts of heat, rather than on continuous gradual ...

MISSOULA - Improved drilling technologies and energy demand have resulted in the large-scale expansion of oil and gas development, with 50,000 new wells drilled per year recently in central North America. Locations such as the Bakken, Eagle Ford and the Marcellus Shale are now commonplace, and drilling activity frequently makes news. But what are the ecological consequences of this accelerated drilling activity? Researchers at the University of Montana have conducted the first-ever broad-scale scientific assessment of how oil and gas development transforms landscapes ...

Casting a large interdisciplinary research net has helped Simon Fraser University archaeologist Dana Lepofsky and 10 collaborators dig deeper into their findings about ancient clam gardens in the Pacific Northwest to formulate new perspectives. Lepofsky's research team has discovered that Northwest Coast Indigenous people didn't make their living just by gathering the natural ocean's bounty. Rather, from Alaska to Washington, they were farmers who cultivated productive clam gardens to ensure abundant and sustainable clam harvests. In its new paper published by American ...

Being bigger and bolder holds various benefits for male soldier beetles. They enjoy higher rates of successful courtship and more often land a larger, more fertile mate. These are some of the findings of a study led by Denson McLain of the Georgia Southern University in the US, published in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. The goldenrod soldier beetle or Pennsylvanian leatherwing (Chauliognathus pennsylvanicus) is native to Northern America. During its peak reproductive season, between September to early October, it only mates once a day. This normally ...

CHICAGO -- Genetic testing of Iñupiat people currently living in Alaska's North Slope is helping Northwestern University scientists fill in the blanks on questions about the migration patterns and ancestral pool of the people who populated the North American Arctic over the last 5,000 years. "This is the first evidence that genetically ties all of the Iñupiat and Inuit populations from Alaska, Canada and Greenland back to the Alaskan North Slope," said Northwestern's M. Geoffrey Hayes, senior author of the new study to be published April 29, 2015, in the American ...

PULLMAN, Wash.--Climate change may be responsible for the abrupt collapse of civilization on the fringes of the Tibetan Plateau around 2000 B.C. WSU archaeologist Jade D'Alpoim Guedes and an international team of researchers found that cooling global temperatures at the end of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, a 4,000 year period of warm weather, would have made it impossible for ancient people on the Tibetan Plateau to cultivate millet, their primary food source. Guedes' team's research recently was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

A vaccine containing a protein necessary for virus replication can boost an HIV-infected patient's immune system, according to clinical research published in the open access journal Retrovirology. This boost can result in increased effectiveness of antiretroviral drugs. When people are first diagnosed with HIV they are put on antiretroviral drugs, also known as highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). These drugs can stop the virus reproducing almost completely. When taking HAART, however, it is known that the virus can still replicate at low levels and accumulate ...

For patients in the early stage of non-small cell lung cancer, surgical resection yields optimal outcomes. Prior investigations have shown that different resection procedures have very different outcomes, with pneumonectomy associated with three-fold higher mortality than other resection types. While it is understandable that pathological and physiological factors influence a surgeon's choice of surgery for a particular patient, the results presented in this study suggest that physician discomfort with the operative complexities of a procedure may lead to selection of a ...

Hospital readmission rates after major thoracic surgery can run as high as 10-17%. Alarmingly, readmission after pulmonary resection for lung cancer has been associated with worse outcomes, including higher mortality. Thus, reducing readmissions after thoracic surgery can both save lives and reduce healthcare costs. Studies in internal medicine and cardiology have shown that programs that improve the transition from hospital to post-discharge care can be effective in decreasing emergency room visits and re-hospitalization. This study from McMaster University describes for ...

People suffering from the common lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), have an increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD), according to new research published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. When compared with people of the same age and sex who do not have the disease, those with COPD have a 34% increased risk of SCD overall, but their risk almost doubles more than five years after first being diagnosed with COPD. In COPD patients who have frequent exacerbations (sudden worsening of their symptoms, such as shortness ...

Marine ecosystems can be changed by night-time artificial lighting according to new research published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. The results indicate that light pollution from coastal communities, shipping and offshore infrastructure could be changing the composition of marine invertebrate communities. Researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Bangor used a raft in the Menai Strait to monitor how artificial light at night affects the settlement of marine invertebrates into new habitats. Light is an important cue which guides the larvae of marine ...

New research by scientists at New Zealand's University of Otago suggests a need for a fundamental rethink of the evolutionary path of enzymes, the proteins vital to all life on Earth. Enzymes catalyse a vast array of biologically relevant chemical reactions even in the simplest living cells. Biochemist Dr Wayne Patrick says that people tend to imagine evolution as a slow and steady march from barely functional life forms in the primordial soup, towards a modern-day pinnacle of near perfection. "When it comes to enzyme evolution, this is also the textbook version ...

MORE than two-thirds (69 per cent) of bowel cancer patients say they weren't advised to exercise regularly after their diagnosis - despite evidence that brisk physical activity is linked to better survival in bowel cancer, according to a Cancer Research UK study published today (Wednesday) in BMJ Open. The research, from the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Research Centre at UCL (University College London), is the largest study of its kind. More than 15,000 bowel cancer patients* were asked about their current level of physical activity and whether they were advised ...

The coalition government derailed a successful programme that reduced salt content added to foods by industry, argue experts in The BMJ this week. A poor diet is the leading cause of death and disability in the UK and worldwide. Large amounts of salt, for example, are added to food by industry and eating too much can raise blood pressure, a major factor associated with strokes, heart failure and heart attacks. The UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA), established in 2000, became a "world leader" in improving nutrition and pioneered a salt reduction programme by working ...

Calorie counts should be mandatory on all alcoholic drinks as a matter of urgency, argues a leading public health doctor in The BMJ this week. Fiona Sim, Chair of the Royal Society for Public Health, says alcoholic drinks contribute to obesity and the law "should require restaurant menus and labels to make energy content explicit in addition to alcohol content." She explains that, since 2011, packaged foods in the European Union have been subject to regulation requiring labelling with their ingredients and nutritional information, including energy content (calories). ...

Cocaine use causes 'profound changes' in the brain that lead to an increased risk of relapse due to stress - according to new research from the University of East Anglia. New research published today in The Journal of Neuroscience identifies a molecular mechanism in the reward centre of the brain that influences how recovering cocaine addicts might relapse after stressful events. Importantly, the study identifies a potential mechanism for protecting against such relapses with treatment. The research team looked at the effects of cocaine in rat brain cells (in vitro) ...