Chicago - Chronic back and leg pain sufferers in search of better pain relief options may have a new choice. According to a study published in the Online First edition of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®), patients who received a novel high frequency form of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) therapy experienced significantly greater, long-term relief for both chronic back and leg pain, when compared to a traditional low frequency form of SCS therapy. "This is the first long-term study to compare the ...

This news release is available in French. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? New research on the brain's capacity to learn suggests there's more to it than the adage that "practise makes perfect." A music-training study by scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -The Neuro, at McGill University and colleagues in Germany found evidence to distinguish the parts of the brain that account for individual talent from the parts that are activated through training. The research involved brain imaging studies of 15 young adults with little or no musical ...

Philadelphia, PA, July 28, 2015 - Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, and treatment-resistant symptoms of depression have a terrible personal and societal cost. They can devastate lives, careers, and families. Some severely ill patients may be unable to attend to even the basic elements of self-care, while others attempt or complete suicide. Because of the clinical urgency, deep brain stimulation (DBS) treatments for depression have been developed over the past 15 years. These treatments require surgery to make a small hole in the skull through which ...

AUSTIN, Texas -- Hormones play a two-part role in encouraging and reinforcing cheating and other unethical behavior, according to research from Harvard University and The University of Texas at Austin. With cheating scandals a persistent threat on college campuses and financial fraud costing businesses more than $3.7 trillion annually, UT Austin and Harvard researchers looked to hormones for more answers, specifically the reproductive hormone testosterone and the stress hormone cortisol. According to the study, the endocrine system plays a dual role in unethical acts. ...

The ability to engage in mental time travel -- to delve back into past events or imagine future outcomes -- is a unique and central part of the human experience. And yet this very ability can have detrimental consequences for both physical and mental well-being when it becomes repetitive and uncontrolled. A special series of articles in the July 2015 issue of Clinical Psychological Science (CPS) investigates this kind of repetitive thinking, exploring the core psychological processes that underlie maladaptive thought processes like worry and rumination. The series highlights ...

TAMPA, Fla. - Cancer therapy has evolved from a "one-size-fits-all" type of treatment plan to a personalized approach based on a patient's type of cancer, the protein and genetic markers found in their tumors and their response to therapy. Important aspects of the personalized approach are pharmacogenomic studies that analyze associations between genetic variations and patient drug responses. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have published a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute that analyzed the participation rate of patients in pharmacogenomic trials. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.-- Making Caring Common (MCC), a project of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, today released new research that suggests that many teen boys and teen girls--and some of their parents--have biases against teen girls as leaders. These biases could be powerful barriers to leadership for a generation of teen girls with historically high levels of education who are key to closing our nation's gender gap in leadership. The report also suggests that much can be done to prevent and reduce gender biases in children. Titled "Leaning Out: Teen Girls and Gender ...

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have elucidated at the molecular level how an otherwise innocuous inherited mutation that is quite common in European populations interacts with a spontaneous somatic mutation to promote the development of Ewing's sarcoma. Ewing's sarcoma is an aggressive bone cancer that occurs primarily in children, adolescents and young adults. The tumor cells are characterized by a single spontaneous 'driver mutation', which results in formation of the oncogenic fusion gene EWSR1-FLI1. Its protein product EWSR1-FLI1, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The world's deserts may be storing some of the climate-changing carbon dioxide emitted by human activities, a new study suggests. Massive aquifers underneath deserts could hold more carbon than all the plants on land, according to the new research. Humans add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. About 40 percent of this carbon stays in the atmosphere and roughly 30 percent enters the ocean, according to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. Scientists thought the remaining carbon was taken ...

Facial motion capture - the same technology used to develop realistic computer graphics in video games and movies - has been used to identify differences between children with childhood apraxia of speech and those with other types of speech disorders, finds a new study by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. "In our study, we see evidence of a movement deficit in children with apraxia of speech, but more importantly, aspects of their speech movements look different from children with other speech disorders," said study author Maria Grigos, ...

Depressive symptoms and mood in the moment may predict momentary pain among rheumatoid arthritis patients, according to Penn State researchers. "The results of this study link momentary positive and negative mood with momentary pain in daily life," said Jennifer E. Graham-Engeland, associate professor of biobehavioral health. "That is, we found evidence consistent with a common, but largely untested, contention that mood in the moment is associated with fluctuation in pain and pain-related restrictions." The link was examined among individuals with rheumatoid arthritis, ...

Researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Cambridge University and New York University, led by Modesto Orozco, Group Leader at IRB Barcelona, Director of Life Sciences at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC-CNS) and Professor at the University of Barcelona (UB), have determined the mechanics behind of one of the most common epigenetic modifications: histone-tail acetylation. Acetylation is a means by which a cell can control the expression of its genes. The study published in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society ...

July 28, 2015, Shenzhen, China -Researchers from BGI, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, etc., reported the study on the oral and the gut microbiome in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). The results show that the gut and oral microbiome are involved in the pathophysiology and management of RA and provide indication for developing microbiome-assisted personalized treatments. The latest finding was published online today in Nature Medicine. RA is a debilitating autoimmune disorder affecting tens of millions of people worldwide, while the mortality in the patients increases ...

WASHINGTON, DC - July 28, 2015 - Microbes contributing to cystic fibrosis (CF) are able to survive in saliva and mucus that is chemically heterogeneous, including significant portions that are largely devoid of oxygen, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The study, which evaluated sputum samples from 22 pediatric CF patients, found that the microbiologic environment can differ between patients, and even within the same patient at different points in time. Researchers also noted ...

Baby rats whose mothers were fed a high-fat diet had larger than normal hearts with fewer taste receptors for bitter flavours, according to new UNSW research. The study, led by the UNSW Head of Pharmacology Professor Margaret Morris and published in Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases, examined the effect of a fatty maternal diet on receptors in the hearts of newborn rats, including those which detect certain flavours. Taste receptors have only recently been shown to exist outside the mouth, at sites including the heart, where both bitter and umami - or ...

Since mice share 90 percent of our genes they play an important role in understanding human genetics. The European Mouse Disease Clinic (EUMODIC) brought together scientists from across Europe to investigate the functions of 320 genes in mice. Over half of these genes had no previously known role, and the remaining genes were poorly understood. In order to study gene function, the EUMODIC consortium produced mouse lines which each had a single gene removed. These mouse lines were then analyzed in mouse clinics, where each line was assessed by a series of tests and investigations, ...

Mitochondria are essential to all higher forms of life. Every animal and plant depends on these small intracellular structures. Mitochondria have multiple tasks: Since they generate most of the cell's biochemical energy, they are referred to as the powerhouses of the cell. In addition, they are responsible for producing and breaking down amino acids and fats. They also regulate cellular death, called apoptosis. As a result, the spectrum of diseases that are linked to mitochondrial defects is wide, ranging from severe muscular and nervous disorders to neurodegenerative ...

Physicists like to study unusual kinds of waves, like freak waves found in the sea. Such wave movements can be studied using models designed to describe the dynamics of disturbances. Theoretical physicists, based in France have focused on finding ways of best explaining how wave disturbance occurs under very specific initial conditions that are key to the genesis of these disturbances. They looked for solutions to this puzzle by resolving a type of equation, called the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is solved by applying a method designed for studying instabilities ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have established the safety and dosing of a new drug for treating blood cancers. The findings are published online July 27 in The Lancet Haematology. The drug is a small molecule inhibitor that suppresses the activity of a signaling pathway believed to contribute to a variety of blood cancers' eventual resistance to standard chemotherapy treatments. More specifically, preclinical research, funded in part by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), has shown that the drug coaxes ...

Researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles and The Saban Research Institute of CHLA have created a dynamic functional mouse model for lung injury repair, a tool that will help scientists explain the origins of lung disease and provide a system by which new therapies can be identified and tested. Their findings have been published online by the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology. The novel model used targeted Type 2 Alveolar Epithelial cells (AEC2), which line the small sac-like cavities of the lung and are thought to be responsible for injury ...

WASHINGTON, DC (July 28, 2015)-- As part of a unique survey of nearly 2,000 women of childbearing age who receive health care at the nation's community health centers, 90 percent reported that they were not actively seeking to become pregnant in the next 12 months. Yet more than 3 out of 10 were not using contraceptives at the time of the survey.The survey's findings signal a clear unmet need for more comprehensive family planning services at health centers, according to a report issued today by the Geiger Gibson /RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative ...

The Tyrannosaurus rex and its fellow theropod dinosaurs that rampage across the screen in movies like Jurassic World were successful predators partly due to a unique, deeply serrated tooth structure that allowed them to easily tear through the flesh and bone of other dinosaurs, says new research from the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). The research, published in the journal Scientific Reports, was conducted by Kirstin Brink, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at UTM; Professor Robert Reisz of the Department of Biology and the UTM vice-principal ...

Diseases like Alzheimer's are caused when proteins aggregate and clump together. In a world first, EPFL scientists have successfully distinguished between the disease-causing aggregation forms of proteins. The finding can help change pharmaceutical treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Because of our increasing lifespan, diseases like Parkinson's, Huntington's and Alzheimer's are on the rise. They are caused when certain proteins misfold and aggregate together, forming clumps that damage neurons in the brain and spinal cord. This aggregation evolves progressively through ...

PITTSBURGH, July 28, 2015 - By studying the yeast used in beer- and bread-making, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have uncovered the mechanism by which ancient proteins repair DNA damage and how their dysfunction could lead to the development of tumors. The findings, published online today in Nature Communications, could lead to new ways to tailor cancer therapies. In humans, protein mutations called RAD51 paralogues have been associated with breast and ovarian tumors, said senior investigator Kara Bernstein, Ph.D., assistant professor of ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The light-sensing molecules that tell plants whether to germinate, when to flower and which direction to grow were inherited millions of years ago from ancient algae, finds a new study from Duke University. The findings are some of the strongest evidence yet refuting the prevailing idea that the ancestors of early plants got the red light sensors that helped them move from water to land by engulfing light-sensing bacteria, the researchers say. The results appear online in Nature Communications. "Much like we see the world through our eyes, plants 'see' ...