Children whose families and pediatricians were most faithful to an obesity intervention program that included computerized clinical decision support for physicians and health coaching for families experienced the greatest improvements in body mass index (BMI), according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States remains at historically high levels. Clinical approaches that are cost-effective and scalable for obesity reduction in children are a public health priority. However, interventions to improve BMI ...

(Boston) - Results of a new study led by Boston Medical Center (BMC) researchers, in collaboration with Harvard Medical School (HMS), indicate that the introduction of abuse-deterrent OxyContin, coupled with the removal of propoxyphene from the US prescription marketplace, may have played a role in decreasing opioid prescribing and overdoses. The findings, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, showed that these two changes led to a 19 percent drop in prescription opioid supply that was mirrored by a 20 percent drop in prescription opioid overdose between August 2010 and ...

Poor quality medicines are a real and urgent threat that could undermine decades of successful efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, according to the editors of a collection of journal articles published today. Scientists report up to 41 percent of specimens failed to meet quality standards in global studies of about 17,000 drug samples. Among the collection is an article describing the discovery of falsified and substandard malaria drugs that caused an estimated 122,350 deaths in African children in 2013. Other studies identified poor quality antibiotics, ...

Researchers from the University of Birmingham have identified an important new way in which our immune systems are regulated, and hope that understanding it will help tackle the debilitating effects of type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and other serious diseases. The team discovered a novel pathway that regulates the movement of pathogenic immune cells from the blood into tissue during an inflammatory response. A healthy, efficient immune system ordinarily works to damp down inflammation and carefully regulate the magnitude of the response to infection and disease. ...

A University of Texas at Austin scientist, working with an international research team, has developed the most precise sequence map yet of U.S. cotton and will soon create an even more detailed map for navigating the complex cotton genome. The finding may help lead to an inexpensive version of American cotton that rivals the quality of luxurious Egyptian cotton and helps develop crops that use less water and fewer pesticides for a cotton that is easier on the skin and easier on the land. Z. Jeffrey Chen and his collaborators, Tianzhen Zhang and Wangzhen Guo at Nanjing ...

Using the latest genome sequencing techniques, a research team led by scientists from UC San Francisco (UCSF), Baylor College of Medicine, and Texas Children's Hospital has identified a new autoimmune syndrome characterized by a combination of severe lung disease and arthritis that currently has no therapy. The hereditary disorder, which appears in early childhood, had never been diagnosed as a single syndrome. The new research revealed that it is caused by mutations in a single gene that disrupt how proteins are shuttled around within cells. Patients with the newly ...

We often make quick strategic decisions to attack an opponent or defend our position, yet how we make them is not well understood. Now, researchers at the RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan have pinpointed specific brain regions related to this process by examining neural activity in people playing shogi, a Japanese form of chess. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study shows that two different regions within the cingulate cortex--one toward the front of the brain and the other toward the back--separately encode the values of defensive and offensive strategies. Like ...

Large amounts of methane - whether as free gas or as solid gas hydrates - can be found in the sea floor along the ocean shores. When the hydrates dissolve or when the gas finds pathways in the sea floor to ascend, the methane can be released into the water and rise to the surface. Once emitted into the atmosphere, it acts as a very potent greenhouse gas twenty times stronger than carbon dioxide. Fortunately, marine bacteria exist that consume part of the methane before it reaches the water surface. Geomicrobiologists and oceanographers from Switzerland, Germany, Great Britain ...

New apps developed for children come online every day and many of them are marketed or labeled as "educational" - but how can we tell which of these thousands of apps will actually help children learn? A comprehensive new report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, integrates research from scientific disciplines like psychological science, linguistics, and neuroscience to provide an evidence-based guide that parents, educators, and app designers alike can use to evaluate the quality of so-called ...

HANOVER, N.H. - Although the media often portray the Arctic as a new "Great Game" ripe for conflict, a group of international Arctic experts co-chaired by Dartmouth College released recommendations today aimed at preserving the polar north as an area for political and military cooperation, sustainable development and scientific research. The report, which addresses the priorities of the Arctic Council, an intergovernmental forum of the eight nations that border the polar region, resulted from meetings at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, ...

Only three wolves seem to remain in Isle Royale National Park. Researchers from Michigan Technological University observed the wolves during their annual Winter Study, and the lone group, at an unprecedented low, is a sharp decline from nine wolves observed last winter. The study's report, released today, marks the project's 57th year of observing wolves and moose in Isle Royale. It is the longest running predator-prey study in the world. This year, along with the three resident wolves, scientists estimated 1,250 moose on the island and observed two visiting wolves, ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have found the probable mechanism underlying a previously described biomarker associated with the risk of developing serious diseases ranging from cancer to cardiovascular disease and the risk of serious complications. In a paper published in the American Journal of Hematology, the research team reports finding that higher levels of a measure routinely taken as part of the complete blood count - the extent of variation in the size of red blood cells - is caused by reduced clearance of aging cells from the bloodstream. Hundreds ...

When you take a medication for, say, high cholesterol, do you know that pill is really what the label says it is? Depending upon the type of medicine and where you live, the threat of falsified medications (also referred to as counterfeit, fraudulent, and substandard) can be quite real, yet the full scope and prevalence of the problem is poorly understood, say researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new report published April 20 in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Counterfeit medicines have traditionally been defined ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- While the female baboon's big red bottom may be an eyesore to some, it has an aphrodisiac effect on her mates. Biologists have long thought that baboon males prefer females with bigger backsides as the mark of a good mother, but new research suggests it isn't so simple. A study of wild baboons in southern Kenya reveals that the size of a female's swollen rump doesn't matter as much as previously thought. The study appears online in the journal Animal Behaviour. Baboons breed throughout the year, and mating occurs during times when a female's behind ...

ALEXANDRIA, VA, APRIL 20, 2015 - Higher-than-expected rates of pediatric cancers have been identified in the Miami metro area and an area west of the Everglades in a series of five statistical analyses conducted for Science and Public Policy, an open-access, online public-policy journal published by the American Statistical Association (ASA). In a review of the analyses for Science and Public Policy, Lance A. Waller, a biostatistics professor specializing in spatial epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, urges care in next steps, recommending that state and local ...

WASHINGTON, April 20, 2015 -- Wednesday, April 22 large-scale use of chemical weapons in warfare. Some of the best minds in chemistry at that time, including a Nobel Prize winner, used their knowledge of science to build humanity's new weapons of mass destruction. Reactions presents this sobering look at the chemistry behind the modern world's first chemical weapons. Check out the video here: http://youtu.be/e8W3dOURya0. Check out all of C&EN's great coverage of the 100th anniversary of chemical weapons at http://chemicalweapons.cenmag.org. INFORMATION:Subscribe to ...

PITTSBURGH--As people find ever more inventive uses for smartphones, touchscreens sometimes fall short as control surfaces. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research have developed an inexpensive alternative - a toolbox of physical knobs, sliders and other mechanisms that can be readily added to any device. The researchers drew inspiration from wind instruments in devising these mechanisms, which they call Acoustruments. The idea is to use pluggable plastic tubes and other structures to connect the smartphone's speaker with its microphone. The device ...

ATLANTA -April 20, 2015- Despite strong evidence and guidelines supporting its use, post-surgical radiation therapy for prostate cancer patients at risk of recurrence is declining in the United States. The study, published online in the journal European Urology, finds fewer than 10 percent of patients at risk of recurrence received postoperative radiotherapy within six months of surgery in the U.S. Although radical prostatectomy (RP) is a common curative treatment for localized prostate cancer, about 30% of patients will develop biochemical recurrence after surgery, ...

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute in collaboration with IBM and the University of Edinburgh, has used a new quantum model to reveal the molecular structure of water's liquid surface. The liquid-vapour interface of water is one of the most common of all heterogeneous (or non-uniform) environments. Understanding its molecular structure will provide insight into complex biochemical interactions underpinning many biological processes. But experimental measurements of the molecular structure of water's surface are challenging, ...

The discovery of a gene involved in determining the melting point of cocoa butter -- a critical attribute of the substance widely used in foods and pharmaceuticals -- will likely lead to new and improved products, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. The finding by plant geneticists also should lead to new varieties of the cocoa plant that could extend the climate and soil-nutrient range for growing the crop and increase the value of its yield, they said, providing a boost to farmers' incomes in the cocoa-growing regions of the world. Cacao, ...

Singapore, 20 April 2015 - Since the discovery of graphene about a decade ago, scientists have been studying ways to engineer electronic band gaps in the material to produce semiconductors which can create new electronic devices. A team of researchers from Yale-NUS College, the Center for Advanced 2D Materials and Department of Physics at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the University of Texas at Austin, USA (UT Austin) have established a theoretical framework to understand the elastic and electronic properties of graphene. The findings were published in ...

As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies' supermassive black holes will form a "binary," or two black holes in such close orbit they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries. "We believe we have observed two supermassive black holes in closer proximity than ever before," said Suvi Gezari, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Maryland and ...

Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how our body clock measures the time of day. It's the first time the impact of colour has been tested and demonstrates that colour provides a more reliable way of telling the time than measuring brightness. In research being published on April 17th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, the researchers looked at the change in light around dawn and dusk to analyse whether colour could be used to determine time of day. Besides the well-known changes in ...

Cells of the vascular system of vertebrates can fuse with themselves. This process, which occurs when a blood vessel is no longer necessary and pruned, has now been described on the cellular level by Prof. Markus Affolter from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. The findings of this study have been published in the journal PLOS Biology. The vascular system is the supply network of the human organism and delivers oxygen and nutrients to the last corners of the body. So far, research on the vascular system has focused primarily on the formation of such vascular networks. ...

The horticulturist who came up with the concept of 'evolution by natural selection' 27 years before Charles Darwin did should be more widely acknowledged for his contribution, states a new paper by a King's College London geneticist. The paper, published in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, argues that Patrick Matthew deserves to be considered alongside Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace as one of the three originators of the idea of large-scale evolution by natural selection. Furthermore, Matthew's version of evolution by natural section captures ...