Inundation of nitrogen into the atmosphere and terrestrial environments, through fossil fuel combustion and extensive fertilization, has risen tenfold since preindustrial times according to research published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Excess nitrogen can infiltrate water tables and can trigger extensive algal blooms that deplete aquatic environments of oxygen, among other damaging effects. Although scientists have extensively studied the effects of excess nitrogen in terrestrial habitats, the effect on the open ocean remains unknown. Altieri et al. point out that ...

Through research in mice, scientists have found that proteins at the blood-brain barrier pump out riluzole, the only FDA-approved drug for ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease, limiting the drug's effectiveness. However, when the investigators blocked these proteins, the effectiveness of riluzole increased and the animals experienced improved muscle function, slower disease progression, and prolonged survival. The findings suggest that blocking these transporter proteins at the blood-brain barrier might improve delivery, and ultimately, efficacy, of drugs used to treat ALS and ...

The first long-term clinical trial on the use of Lung Volume Reduction (LVR-) Coil treatment in patients with severe emphysema has found that the minimally-invasive therapy, which enables the lung to function more effectively, is safe over a 3-year period. The results are published in Respirology. The trial revealed that half of the patients continued to improve their lung function capacity, feelings of breathlessness, and overall quality of life after 3 years, with no unexpected safety issues. "This trial reports only the first ever treated patients in the world with ...

December 1, 2014 -- A study just released by Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health compared the use of prescription opioids and stimulants among high school graduates, non-graduates, and their college-attending peers, and found that young adults who do not attend college are at particularly high risk for nonmedical prescription opioid use and disorder. In contrast, the nonmedical use of prescription stimulants is higher among college-educated young adults. Results of the study are published online in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. Non-medical ...

Diagnosing HIV and other infectious diseases presents unique challenges in remote locations that lack electric power, refrigeration, and appropriately trained health care staff. To address these issues, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have developed a low-cost, electricity-free device capable of detecting the DNA of infectious pathogens, including HIV-1. The device uses a small scale chemical reaction, rather than electric power, to provide the heat needed to amplify and detect the DNA or RNA of pathogens present in blood samples obtained ...

Researchers have found a possible underlying genetic susceptibility to being dependent on UV tanning. After interviewing young people about their indoor and outdoor tanning history and using questionnaires to classify people as being dependent on UV tanning or not, the investigators conducted a large scale scan of approximately 319,000 rare and common genetic variants in the participants' genomes. "We observed that inherited variation in one gene - known as patched domain containing 2 (PTCHD2) - was significantly associated with whether or not young people, all of ...

Various guidelines for caring for patients infected with Ebola virus are being issued from different national and state public health authorities, professional societies, and individual hospitals. Experts are questioning aspects of some of the guidelines that go beyond current CDC recommendations, especially those that call for suspending certain routine lab tests. The authors of a Transfusion commentary note that most individuals with suspected Ebola virus disease will have a fever due to another cause, and forgoing such testing may compromise patients' health more ...

Among survivors of the 2011 Utøya Island terrorist attack in Norway, most perceived contact with media as a positive experience. Among those who allowed themselves to be interviewed by the media, 13% found the experience distressing and 11% regretted participating. Taking part in media interviews was not associated with post-traumatic stress reactions among survivors, but negative evaluations and regrets about participation were. "Media representatives need to understand that they may add to the burden of survivors if they are not sufficiently careful, and clinicians ...

When private prices for health care services decrease, Medicare spending increases, according to a new study. The finding raises the possibility that physicians and hospitals may be shifting some services to Medicare when they stand to make more money by doing so -- though further research will be needed to clearly identify the cause, according to the study's authors. The study, conducted by the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics, is the first in a series of attempts to mine reams of health care spending data gathered by the Institute of Medicine ...

VIDEO: Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey professor of Electrical and Systems Engineering in Penn's School of Engineering and Applied Science, explains the basic premise behind metamaterials, and how they achieve... Click here for more information. Metamaterials, precisely designed composite materials that have properties not found in natural ones, could be used to make light-bending invisibility cloaks, flat lenses and other otherwise impossible devices. Figuring out the ...

An egg much smaller than a common grain of sand and found in a tiny piece of fossilized dung has helped scientists identify a pinworm that lived 240 million years ago. It is believed to be the most ancient pinworm yet found in the fossil record. The discovery confirms that herbivorous cynodonts -- the ancestors of mammals -- were infected with the parasitic nematodes. It also makes it even more likely that herbivorous dinosaurs carried pinworms. Scott Gardner, a parasitologist and director of the Harold W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology ...

This news release is available in German. Microbial partners are important for the nutrition of many insects. They help detoxify and digest food, but also provide essential nutrients that insects need in order to survive. The European firebug Pyrrhocoris apterus and the African cotton stainer Dysdercus fasciatus feed mainly on plant seeds that are poor sources of essential B vitamins. Scientists of the Max Planck Research Group Insect Symbiosis at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, together with colleagues at the Friedrich Schiller University, ...

This news release is available in German. The neocortex is the part of the brain that enables us to speak, dream, or think. The underlying mechanism that led to the expansion of this brain region during evolution, however, is not yet understood. A research team headed by Wieland Huttner, director at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, now reports an important finding that paves the way for further research on brain evolution: The researchers analyzed the gyrencephaly index, indicating the degree of cortical folding, of 100 mammalian brains ...

When it comes to logging, it may be possible to have our timber and our tropical forests, too. The key, according to a report in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 1, is careful planning and the use of reduced-impact logging (RIL) practices that avoid unnecessary damage to the surrounding forest. "Four million square kilometres of tropical forest are designated for logging globally," says Jake Bicknell of the University of Kent in the United Kingdom, noting that this represents an area larger than the size of India. "Even if we could improve timber harvesting ...

Researchers have identified the cause for a disorder common in Inuit people that prevents the absorption of sucrose, causing gastrointestinal distress and failure to thrive in infants. The study, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), identified a genetic mutation responsible for the disorder, called congenital sucrose-isomaltase deficiency (CSID). CSID is a rare disorder in people of European descent, but is more common in Inuit people living in northern Canada, Greenland and Alaska, with rates estimated between 5% and 10%. The disorder prevents the ...

In recent years, cilia, microscopic, tentacle-like extensions from biological cells, have risen from relative obscurity and are now considered important to the understanding of many human afflictions. In a December BioScience article, George B. Witman, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Jason M. Brown, of Salem State University, describe recent discoveries involving cilia-related diseases (called "ciliopathies") and highlight "model" species that could be useful for systematic study of ciliopathies. Cilia perform a broad range of functions, including ...

Tropical Storm Sinlaku made landfall in east-central Vietnam bringing some moderate to heavy rainfall with it. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's TRMM and GPM satellites analyzed the rainfall rates occurring in Sinlaku before it made landfall while NASA's Terra satellite spotted the storm as it came ashore in Vietnam. Tropical Storm Sinlaku formed on November 26, 2014 over the southeastern Philippines. As a tropical depression Sinlaku caused flooding in areas of the Visayas and Mindanao. The storm then moved west and crossed the South China Sea where it ...

Scientists at the Institute of Food Research on the Norwich Research Park have teamed up with Oxford Instruments to develop a fast, cheap alternative to DNA testing as a means of distinguishing horse meat from beef. Because horses and cattle have different digestive systems, the fat components of the two meats have different fatty acid compositions, as the team report in the journal 'Food Chemistry'. The new method looks at differences in the chemical composition of the fat in the meats, using similar technology to a hospital MRI scanner. In just ten minutes, a technician ...

December 1, 2014 - The health departments of the nation's largest cities play a central role in developing innovative population health strategies for improving public health across the United States, according to a special January issue of the Journal of Public Health Management and Practice. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Indeed, cities are at the forefront in extending public health and social policy to realize changes in our environment abetting population health," according to a commentary by Lloyd F. ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.--Prompt and appropriate treatment of a dislocated shoulder--when the head of the upper arm bone (humerus) is completely knocked out of the shoulder socket (glenoid)--can minimize risk for future dislocations as well as the effects of related bone, muscle and nerve injuries, according to a literature review appearing in the December issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS). The shoulder has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the human body and is the most common site for a full or partial dislocation. Shoulder ...

This news release is available in German. Ideally, diamonds consist of pure carbon. But natural diamonds always contain defects. The most researched defects are nitrogen-vacancy centers comprising a nitrogen atom and a vacancy. These might serve as highly sensitive sensors or as register components for quantum computers. However, until now it has not been possible to extract the optically stored information electronically. A team headed by Professor Alexander Holleitner, physicist at the TU München and Frank Koppens, physics professor at the Institut de Ciencies ...

Conflicting evidence about the extent to which men's semen quality declines with age--likely lowering their fertility--is being cleared up by new University of Otago, New Zealand, research that has collated and reviewed data from 90 previous studies from around the world. After conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of the studies' data, researchers from the University's Departments of Zoology and Anatomy found consistent age-related declines in semen volume and sperm performance and increases in malformed and DNA-damaged sperm. Semen quality is regarded as ...

Singapore--Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), in collaboration with local clinicians and colleagues in the USA, have identified a biomarker which is strongly associated with triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a highly aggressive carcinoma that often has early relapse and metastasis following chemotherapy. The newly identified biomarker, a gene called RASAL2, provides a target for developing new therapeutics designed to treat this often deadly disease. TNBC is deadly because, unlike other types of breast cancers such as estrogen receptor (ER) ...

Personalized medicine uses methods of molecular analysis, especially genetic sequencing and transcription, in order to simultaneously identify genetic mutations to evaluate each individual's risk of contracting a given disease. It seems that there is more than a single mechanism at hand, as proven by the work of a team of geneticists at the University of Geneva's (UNIGE) Faculty of Medicine, and the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics (SIB). They have sequenced the RNA of 400 pairs of twins; with this information, they can quantify the roles of both genetic and environmental ...

HOUSTON -- (Dec. 1, 2014) - Most genes are inherited as two working copies, one from the mother and one from the father. However, in a few instances, a gene is imprinted, which means that one copy is silenced. This is called genomic imprinting. If the active copy is mutated, then disease results, even though the silenced gene copy may be normal. Angelman syndrome, which causes learning difficulties, speech problems, seizures, jerky movements and an unusually happy disposition, results when a gene inherited from the mother in a particular area of chromosome 15 is mutated ...