The New Zealand Meteorological Service issued a Storm Warning for the Chatham Islands today as NASA's RapidScat instrument found that winds in one quadrant of Ex-Tropical Cyclone Pam is still generating tropical-storm-force winds east of its center. The International Space Station's RapidScat instrument captured data on Ex-Tropical Cyclone Pam's winds on March 16 from 08:30 to 11:36 UTC. RapidScat revealed sustained winds over 30 meters per second (108 kph/67 mph) were still occurring southeast of the center. The forecast calls for southwesterly winds to 50 knots (57 ...

INDIANAPOLIS - An Indiana University cancer researcher and her colleagues have identified genetic markers that may help determine who benefits from regular use of aspirin and other nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for lowering one's risk of developing colorectal cancer. Previous studies have shown that regular use of aspirin and NSAIDs lower one's risk of colorectal cancer, but their use is not recommended as a way to prevent the disease because of uncertainty about the risks and benefits. Thus, the researchers set out to examine the interrelationship between genetic ...

New research published with the support of the FP7 large-scale bioinformatics project Building the European Biodiversity Observation Network (EU BON) and the Alien Challenge COST action reveals the importance of open data in the study and control of invasive alien species. The study was published online in open access in the journal Management of Biological Invasions. Invasive alien species cause a wide variety of problems, including issues related to conservation; to human and animal health; to agriculture and to fisheries management. But how can science be useful to ...

Cramping abdominal pains, diarrhea, bloody stools--these are common symptoms of chronic inflammatory bowel disease. Every year, up to 1470 children and adolescents in Germany develop the disease. But chronic inflammatory bowel disease is mostly diagnosed too late in these patients, as Stephan Buderus, Dietmar Scholz, and colleagues show in an original article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 121-7). The average delay between initial symptoms and diagnosis is four to six months. In most cases, the inflammation ...

DETROIT - New animal studies at Henry Ford Hospital found that sildenafil, a drug commonly used to treat erectile dysfunction, may be effective in relieving painful and potentially life-threatening nerve damage in men with long-term diabetes. The research targeted diabetic peripheral neuropathy, the most common complication of diabetes, affecting as many as 70 percent of patients. The study was recently published online in PLOS ONE. Lei Wang, M.D., the Henry Ford neuroscientist who led the research, said that although numerous drugs have been shown to be effective in ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 17, 2015)--Hormones may not protect women from heart disease or stroke after menopause, but when combined with cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, they may help protect women from these killers, shows a population study from Sweden to be published in the April issue of Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS). During the study, women who took both hormones and statins had a significantly lower risk of dying of any cause and a moderately lower risk of dying of cardiovascular disease. Using health information from national ...

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Placing less reliance on monitoring software and modifying new media training to align with student-athletes' habits and input will promote more positive and responsible usage of social networks. This is the key finding by researchers from Clemson University, Baylor University and the University of Florida and published in the International Journal of Sport Communication. The study explored college athletes' social media use and their experiences with and attitudes about a rising trend in college athletics: social media education. Given the media ...

This news release is available in French. Researchers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital -The Neuro, at McGill University and the MUHC, are working to develop a much needed tool for helping diagnose concussions or mild traumatic brain injuries suffered by thousands of young Canadians ---hockey and football players among them. Post-concussion symptoms can include physical ailments, emotional disturbances and sleep disruption. Objective methods for predicting how severely mild brain trauma can affect a young person's brain are sorely needed. The potential ...

For Arctic marine mammals, the future is especially uncertain. Loss of sea ice and warming temperatures are shifting already fragile Northern ecosystems. The precarious state of those mammals is underscored in a multinational study led by a University of Washington scientist, published this week in Conservation Biology, assessing the status of all circumpolar species and subpopulations of Arctic marine mammals, including seals, whales and polar bears. The authors outline the current state of knowledge and their recommendations for the conservation of these animals over ...

The prices of leading cancer drugs have risen at rates far outstripping inflation over the last two decades, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT economist -- but the exact reasons for the cost increases are unclear. Since 1995, a group of 58 leading cancer drugs has increased in price by 10 percent annually, even when adjusted for inflation and incremental health benefits, the study finds. More specifically, in 1995, cancer drugs in this group cost about $54,100 for each year of life they were estimated to add; by 2013, such drugs cost about $207,000 per each ...

WASHINGTON, March 17, 2015 -- Apart from their style, sunglasses have changed very little in the last few decades. Photochromic lenses that change from clear to tinted in sunlight were a big breakthrough. Now new research from ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces could give that technology a big boost. Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a polymer coating that changes colors with the push of a button. John Reynolds, Ph.D. and his team explain these "sunglasses on demand" in the latest episode of ACS Headline Science available here: https://youtu.be/RlfOcSUpyAA. Subscribe ...

Queen's University professor Allyson Harrison has uncovered anomalies and issues with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Fourth Edition (WAIS-IV), one of the most widely used intelligence tests in the world. IQ scores are used to predict educational success, to help identify intellectual disabilities or intellectual giftedness and to establish whether a person has a specific learning disability. For her research, Dr. Harrison and her colleagues examined the differences between Canadian and American WAIS-IV scores from 861 postsecondary students from across Ontario. ...

Uplift associated with the Great Rift Valley of East Africa and the environmental changes it produced have puzzled scientists for decades because the timing and starting elevation have been poorly constrained. Now paleontologists have tapped a fossil from the most precisely dated beaked whale in the world -- and the only stranded whale ever found so far inland on the African continent -- to pinpoint for the first time a date when East Africa's mysterious elevation began. The 17 million-year-old fossil is from the beaked Ziphiidae whale family. It was discovered 740 ...

SAN DIEGO (March 16, 2015) -- A technique used to clear blood clots from arteries to the heart in about 20 percent of patients undergoing angioplasty appears to increase the risk of stroke without providing the intended benefit, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session. The new study, which included more than 10,000 patients undergoing angioplasty in response to a severe heart attack, randomly assigned half of the patients to receive angioplasty alone and half to receive angioplasty with manual thrombectomy, ...

SAN DIEGO (March 16, 2015) -- Patients over age 80 with acute coronary syndromes would likely benefit from more invasive tests and therapies that may otherwise be denied them due to their age, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. The study focused on treatment approaches for older patients with non ST-elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI, a type of heart attack that is milder in the acute phase but has a poor prognosis after six months or more) or the closely-related condition unstable ...

Patients with acute coronary syndrome undergoing angioplasty who received the anticoagulant drug bivalirudin did not show significant improvements in either of two co-primary endpoints--a composite of rate of death, heart attack or stroke at 30 days, or a composite of those events plus major bleeding--as compared to patients receiving standard anticoagulation therapy, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session. However, bivalirudin was associated with significantly lower rates of bleeding complications and death, ...

SAN DIEGO (March 16, 2015) -- Patients with acute coronary syndrome undergoing coronary angiogram, a procedure used to assess blockages in the heart's arteries, had a significantly lower risk of major bleeding and death if their interventional cardiologist accessed the heart through an artery in the arm rather than the groin, according to research presented at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session. Study authors said the results should prompt a re-evaluation of clinical guidelines and that the arm, currently used in a minority of cases in the ...

A 3D printing technology developed by Silicon Valley startup, Carbon3D Inc., enables objects to rise from a liquid media continuously rather than being built layer by layer as they have been for the past 25 years, representing a fundamentally new approach to 3D printing. The technology, to appear as the cover article in the March 20 print issue of Science, allows ready-to-use products to be made 25 to 100 times faster than other methods and creates previously unachievable geometries that open opportunities for innovation not only in health care and medicine, but also in ...

Anesthetics have been used in surgical procedures for more than 150 years, but the mechanisms by which inhaled anesthesia actually work are poorly understood. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have discovered that anesthetics bind to and interfere with certain proteins in excitatory neurons, which are necessary for these neurons to transmit signals involved in anesthesia and the perception of pain. "Our discovery may be an important component of the mechanism of anesthesia and -- because this particular protein is also involved in neuronal development -- could ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA - March 17, 2015- Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University and the National Institutes of Health are building on their research which seeks to understand why joint infections persist despite standards of care designed to stop them. More Americans than ever will receive joint replacements, and with an infection rate of approximately 1 percent, the potential exists for tens of thousands to experience post-operative infection and complications each year. "In this study, we decided to find out if pre-operative, prophylactic antibiotic concentrations in ...

When viruses such as influenza and Ebola jump from one species to another, their ability to cause harm can change dramatically, but research from the University of Cambridge shows that it may be possible to predict the virus's virulence by looking at how deadly it is in closely-related species. A number of emerging infectious diseases - including some of the most deadly outbreaks such as Ebola, SARS and HIV - are the result of humans becoming infected with a pathogen that normally infects another species. The amount of harm caused by a pathogen when it jumps into a new ...

NEW YORK, NY - March 13, 2015 - Data from a meta-analysis published today in The Lancet found that extended duration dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) after drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation was associated with significantly higher rates of mortality compared to shorter DAPT. The optimal duration of DAPT has been a matter of debate since the introduction of DES. A meta-analysis using multiple analytical approaches to investigate mortality and other clinical outcomes with different DAPT strategies was conducted. Researchers examined 31,666 patients from 10 randomized ...

NEW YORK, NY - March 16, 2015 - Data from the BRIGHT trial published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated that bivalirudin was superior to both heparin monotherapy and heparin plus tirofiban for patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). Findings were first reported at last year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT), the annual scientific symposium of the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF). There has been recent controversy surrounding the optimal anticoagulant ...

Sawflies belong to the same insect group as wasps, bees and ants. Unlike many of the latter, sawflies seldom make themselves conspicuous to humans, although the young stages (larvae) of some species, nearly all of which feed on plants, sometimes attract attention by damaging these. In a reversal of the pattern found in most insect groups, a larger number of sawfly species occur in regions with a cooler climate, rather than in the tropics. On the other hand, many of the sawflies found in Africa south of the Sahara (the Afrotropical faunal region) belong to genera that ...

Chicago, March 17, 2015 - Patients with severe mitral regurgitation (MR) often suffer from psycho-emotional symptoms, such as depression and anxiety, but after undergoing mitral valve repair surgery patients experience a marked improvement in emotional and physical wellbeing, according to an article in the March 2015 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Patients with severe mitral regurgitation, who had suffered from anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms prior to mitral valve surgery, experienced a marked improvement in emotional and physical ...