New research in the Open Access journal GigaScience presents a virtual package of data for biogas production, made reusable in a containerized form to allow scientists to better understand the production of biofuels. One of the promising areas in biofuels development is biogas, which has huge potential as a renewable and clean source of energy. Biogas is the production of methane gas through the anaerobic digestion (fermentation) of organic matter such as agricultural or food waste. Detailed knowledge on the functioning of the fermentation process is key for optimizing ...

A new blood test could help emergency room doctors quickly diagnose traumatic brain injury and determine its severity. The findings, published July 10 in the Journal of Neurotrauma, could help identify patients who might benefit from extra therapy or experimental treatments. "Compared to other proteins that have been measured in traumatic brain injury, BDNF does a much better job of predicting outcomes," says Frederick Korley, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and first author of the new paper. After ...

Philadelphia, July 30, 2015 - In a new national survey of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, Health Union reveals a surprising lack of awareness of risk factors and knowledge of diagnosis stage among patients. Results demonstrate a severe impact on quality of life, employment, and ability to afford treatment. COPD, the third most common cause of death in the United States, describes a group of lung conditions that severely impact the breathing of nearly 15 million people in the U.S. (or six percent of the population) and more than 65 million worldwide. ...

WASHINGTON, DC, July 28, 2015 -- Recent research has shown that racial segregation in the U.S. is declining between neighborhoods, but a new study indicates that segregation is manifesting itself in other ways -- not disappearing. "We just can't get too excited by recent declines in neighborhood segregation," said lead author Daniel Lichter, the Ferris Family Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management and a professor in the Department of Sociology at Cornell University. "The truth is neighborhood segregation still remains high in America, and our study ...

This news release is available in French. By blocking the expression of a certain gene in patients, University of Montreal researchers have contributed to the demonstration of great decreases in the concentration of triglycerides in their blood, even in various severe forms of hypertriglyceridemia and regardless of the base values or the treatment the patient usually receives. The gene in question codes for the apoC-III protein. "Our study suggests that the proteine apoC-III plays a key role in the management of triglycerides. Triglycerides, like cholesterol, are lipids. ...

URBANA, Ill. - With many types of cancers, early detection offers the best hope for survival. However, research into new early-detection screenings, as well as possible interventional radiology and surgical treatments, has been hindered by the lack of a large animal model that would accurately reflect the types of cancers seen in human cells. For the last several years, researchers at the University of Illinois interested in improving screening programs for cancer have studied gene expression in mice, humans, and pigs in an effort to create a large-animal model that ...

Support for eliminating existing exemptions, except for medical reasons, from immunization laws was among the policy recommendations adopted last weekend at the summer meeting of the Board of Regents of the American College of Physicians (ACP). "Allowing exemptions based on non-medical reasons poses a risk both to the unvaccinated person and to public health," said Wayne J. Riley, MD, MPH, MBA, MACP, president of ACP, "Intentionally unvaccinated individuals can pose a danger to the public, especially to individuals who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons." The ...

A targeted therapy already used to treat advanced skin cancer is also effective against the most common subtype of the brain tumor medulloblastoma in adults and should be considered for treatment of newly diagnosed patients, according to research led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The drug, called vismodegib, is designed to block a key protein in the sonic hedgehog (SHH) signaling pathway. The pathway is normally active during fetal development and is inappropriately switched on in about 30 percent of medulloblastoma tumors, including about 60 percent of tumors ...

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University have engineered a tethered ribosome that works nearly as well as the authentic cellular component, or organelle, that produces all the proteins and enzymes within the cell. The engineered ribosome may enable the production of new drugs and next-generation biomaterials and lead to a better understanding of how ribosomes function. The artificial ribosome, called Ribo-T, was created in the laboratories of Alexander Mankin, director of the UIC College of Pharmacy's Center for Biomolecular Sciences, ...

It's one thing to grow bacteria in a test tube, perform a screen in the lab, and find a mutation in the pathogen's genes. It's a whole other thing, and much rarer, to find the exact same mutation in nature--in this case, in E. coli in urine samples from some 500 patients suffering from relapsing urinary tract infections. The confluent discovery, by University Distinguished Professor Kim Lewis and his colleagues, was published on Wednesday in the journal Nature. It could put people with relapsing UTIs on the fast track for a new therapeutic regimen that Lewis described ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Using a climate model that can tag sources of soot from different global regions and can track where it lands on the Tibetan Plateau, researchers have determined which areas around the plateau contribute the most soot -- and where. The model can also suggest the most effective way to reduce soot on the plateau, easing the amount of warming the region undergoes. The work, which appeared in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics in June, shows that soot pollution on and above the Himalayan-Tibetan Plateau area warms the region enough to contribute to earlier ...

Following several years of research and collaboration, physicians and engineers at Johns Hopkins and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center say they have developed a computer platform that provides rapid, real-time feedback before and during facial transplant surgery, which may someday improve face-jaw-teeth alignment between donor and recipient. Surgeons performed the first successful transplant of facial features, including the jaw and teeth, in 2008, mainly relying on visual judgment. Since then, approximately 30 facial transplants have been done worldwide, ...

Brown dwarfs are relatively cool, dim objects that are difficult to detect and hard to classify. They are too massive to be planets, yet possess some planetlike characteristics; they are too small to sustain hydrogen fusion reactions at their cores, a defining characteristic of stars, yet they have starlike attributes. By observing a brown dwarf 20 light-years away using both radio and optical telescopes, a team led by Gregg Hallinan, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech, has found another feature that makes these so-called failed stars more like supersized planets--they ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC - The stem cells in our gut divide so fast that they create a completely new population of epithelial cells every week. But this quick division is also why radiation and chemotherapy wreak havoc on the gastrointestinal systems of cancer patients - such therapies target rapidly dividing cells. Scientists at the UNC School of Medicine and the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center found that a rare type of stem cell is immune to radiation damage thanks to high levels of a gene called Sox9. The discovery, which was made in mice and published in the journal ...

Washington, DC--The Endocrine Society today issued a Clinical Practice Guideline (CPG) on strategies for treating Cushing's syndrome, a condition caused by overexposure to the hormone cortisol. The CPG, entitled "Treatment of Cushing's Syndrome: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline," was published online and will appear in the August 2015 print issue of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of the Endocrine Society. Cushing's syndrome occurs when a person has excess cortisol in the blood for an extended period, according ...

Enrolling in an insurance plan under the Affordable Care Act is only the first step for consumers to be actively engaged in their health care, according to a new analysis from RAND Corporation researchers. To understand the issues facing consumers as well as the payers, providers and support organizations who work directly with them, RAND researchers conducted phone-based interviews with insurance companies, physician groups and community support nonprofit organizations. The analysis of the interviews shows more work is necessary to support consumers past the point of ...

Kindergarteners' social-emotional skills are a significant predictor of their future education, employment and criminal activity, among other outcomes, according to Penn State researchers. In a study spanning nearly 20 years, kindergarten teachers were surveyed on their students' social competence. Once the kindergarteners reached their 20s, researchers followed up to see how the students were faring, socially and occupationally. Students demonstrating better prosocial behavior were more likely to have graduated college, to be gainfully employed and to not have been arrested ...

TORONTO, ON - People who have inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), such as Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, have twice the odds of having a generalized anxiety disorder at some point in their lives when compared to peers without IBD, according to a new study published by University of Toronto researchers. "Patients with IBD face substantial chronic physical problems associated with the disease," said lead-author Professor Esme Fuller-Thomson, Sandra Rotman Endowed Chair at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. "The additional burden of ...

Today the nonprofit Alliance for Aging Research released a white paper, Our Best Shot: Expanding Prevention through Vaccination in Older Adults, that provides a comprehensive overview of the factors that drive vaccination underutilization in seniors and offers recommendations on how industry, government, and health care experts can improve patient compliance. Although influenza, pneumococcal, tetanus, and shingles vaccines are routinely recommended for older adults, are cost-effective, are covered to varying degrees by health insurance, and prevent conditions that have ...

The coalescence of two black holes -- a very violent and exotic event -- is one of the most sought-after observations of modern astronomy. But, as these mergers emit no light of any kind, finding such elusive events has been impossible so far. Colliding black holes do, however, release a phenomenal amount of energy as gravitational waves. The first observatories capable of directly detecting these 'gravity signals' -- ripples in the fabric of spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago -- will begin observing the universe later this year. When the gravitational ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say their review of 128 medical case histories suggests that financial penalties imposed on Maryland hospitals based solely on the total number of patients who suffer blood clots in the lung or leg fail to account for clots that occur despite the consistent and proper use of the best preventive therapies. "We have a big problem with current pay-for-performance systems based on 'numbers-only' total counts of clots, because even when hospitals do everything they can to prevent venous thromboembolism events, they are still being dinged for patients ...

Women who were socially well integrated had a lower risk for suicide in a new analysis of data from the Nurses' Health Study, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Suicide is among the top 10 leading causes of death among middle-age women in the United States. Most of the work in the field emphasizes the psychiatric, psychological or biological determinants of suicide. Alexander C. Tsai, M.D., Ph.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and coauthors estimated the association between social integration and suicide using data from 72,607 ...

The boxfish's unique armor draws its strength from hexagon-shaped scales and the connections between them, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. They describe their findings and the carapace of the boxfish (Lactoria cornuta) in the July 27 issue of the journal Acta Materialia. Engineers also describe how the structure of the boxfish could serve as inspiration for body armor, robots and even flexible electronics. "The boxfish is small and yet it survives in the ocean where it is surrounded by bigger, aggressive fish, at a depth of 50 to ...

Orlando, Fla. (July 29, 2015) - Visits to emergency departments by children with sports-related head injuries have skyrocketed in the past decade, and new research finds that many patients undergo unnecessary computed tomography or CT scans that expose them to radiation and increase the cost of treatment. Fifty-three percent of patients studied received a CT scan, but only four percent of those actually had traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) on their CT scans. The new study was published online in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. "Research highlighting the risk ...

Five years ago, the cost of rare-earth materials that are critical for today's electronics went through the roof. An export quota set by China, which mines most of the world's rare earths, caused the price run-up. Though short-lived, the occurrence spurred calls for developing mines outside China, but whether others can challenge the country's dominance remains to be seen, reports Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Melody Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that in the U.S., there is currently only one ...