ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- What's the best way to treat rectal cancer? Consult any of five top clinical guidelines for rectal cancer and you will get a different answer, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. They looked at clinical practice guidelines for rectal cancer from five highly regarded organizations in the United States, Europe and Canada. The guidelines, which were all published within the last six years, were assessed for overall quality based on how they were developed. The tool used gives a percentage ...

With temperatures dipping, homeowners are firing up their heaters. But systems that require heating oil release fine particles outside that could have harmful health effects. Regulations to curb these emissions in New York City, however, could save hundreds of lives, a new study has found. The report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology may have ramifications for the entire northeast, the country's largest consumer of heating oil. Iyad Kheirbek and colleagues note that when some people breathe in fine particulate matter from the air, they suffer from ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Fathers' involvement with their newborns depends on mothers' preparation for parenthood, even for fathers who show the most parenting skills, a new study suggests. Researchers found that fathers who showed high levels of intuitive parenting were more involved than other fathers with their infants at 3 months of age - but only if the mothers showed lower levels of intuitive parenting. Intuitive parenting involves subtle, nonconscious behaviors -- like cooing and making eye contact with the baby - that have been shown to stimulate and engage infants. It ...

About 19 percent of North Americans suffer from constipation, with the digestive condition being more common among women, non-whites, people older than 60, those who are not physically active and the poor. The costs are significant. Hospital costs to treat the condition were estimated at $4.25 billion in 2010 alone. Constipation can also lead to depression, lower quality of life and a drop in work productivity. Treatments include use of laxatives, increased intake of dietary fiber and fluid, and exercise. But new research from the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine ...

A new study by researchers from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that training medical students to use a handheld ultrasound device can enhance the accuracy of their physical diagnosis. The study was presented November 18 at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. The study by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai included a 90-minute, personalized lesson for 64 second-year medical students in how to use handheld echocardiography technology, with a review of a 3D cardiac anatomy model, video images of normal echocardiograms, and the opportunity ...

Children who receive a heart transplant as soon as a suitable donor is available are predicted to have better quality-adjusted survival -- even if they have antibodies that may attack the new heart -- than children who wait for a donor to which they do not have antibodies according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. When the costs of care while waiting for an urgent transplant are considered, transplantation with the first suitable heart is also cheaper than waiting for a better-matched organ, researchers said. In the ...

An experimental 3-dimensional printed model of the heart may help surgeons treat patients born with complicated heart disorders, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. Most heart surgeons use 2D images taken by X-ray, ultrasound and MRI for surgical planning. However, these images may not reveal complex structural complications in the heart's chambers that occur when heart disease is present at birth (congenital heart defects), as opposed to developing later in life within a structurally normal heart. But with standard ...

CHICAGO - Women who take a common type of medication to control their blood pressure are not at increased risk of developing breast cancer due to the drug, according to new study by researchers at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Murray, Utah. Researchers analyzed the records of more than 3,700 women who had no history of breast cancer, and who had long-term use of calcium channel blocker medications to control their blood pressure. Researchers found only a minimal increase in risk in one study and a 50 percent reduced risk in a second, leading them ...

Chicago, Ill. - November 19, 2014 - A powerful new app is directly connecting single ventricle heart defect patients to their doctors, dramatically improving their monitoring while they recover from heart surgery at home. Girish Shirali, MBBS, FACC, FASE, Co-Director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children's Mercy Kansas City, will report today on how the technology is changing patient care at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions 2014. The tablet-based app, called CHAMP (Cardiac High-Acuity Monitoring Program), is a more automated, accurate and simplified ...

A study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that a support group addressing the psychological and educational needs of people recently diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has a strong positive impact on their lives. Ninety percent of participants indicated that as a result of the free group, they could make informed choices about their RA. The study findings were presented in the "Innovations in Rheumatologic Care" session at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting on November 19 in Boston. "The Early RA Support and Education program, a part ...

Retrieving memory content under stress does not work very well. However, stress can be helpful when it comes to saving new information -- especially those that are emotionally relevant in stressful situations. At the Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, a team of cognitive psychologists headed by Prof Dr Oliver T. Wolf study these correlations. The RUB's science magazine RUBIN reports on the results. Faked Job Interview Triggers Stress The team tested how well people remember items from a faked job interview that was conducted either in a friendly or a stress-triggering atmosphere ...

Electronic cigarettes offer smokers a realistic way to kick their tobacco smoking addiction. In a new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, scientists at KU Leuven report that e-cigarettes successfully reduced cravings for tobacco cigarettes, with only minimal side effects. Electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) were developed as a less harmful alternative to tobacco cigarettes. They contain 100 to 1,000 times less toxic substances and emulate the experience of smoking a tobacco cigarette. In an 8-month study, the KU Leuven ...

COLUMBIA, MD and WASHINGTON, DC (November 19, 2014) - Today, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) and Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University released Healthcare Financing of Healthy Homes Services: Findings from a 2014 Survey of State Reimbursement Policies, a report documenting current Medicaid reimbursement practices for environmental health services in the homes of lead-exposed children and people with asthma and highlighting opportunities for increasing access to these benefits. "ASTHO applauds NCHH and Milken Institute ...

In his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein predicted that there are such things as gravitational waves. In fact, the very existence of these waves is the linchpin of the entire theory. Despite the great lengths that physicists have gone to in recent decades, however, they still have not managed to detect them directly with a measurement. This could largely be due to the fact that this requires a level of precision that it is practically impossible to achieve with today's measuring devices. Ultimately, it is all about measuring the tiniest of compressions and extensions ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19, 2014--When the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded this October to three Japanese-born scientists for the invention of blue light emitting diodes (LEDs), the prize committee declared LED lamps would light the 21st century. Now researchers from the Netherlands have found a novel way to ensure the lights of the future not only are energy efficient but also emit a cozy warmth. "We demonstrated a seemingly simple - but in fact sophisticated - way to create LED lights that change in a natural way to a cozy, warm white color when dimmed," said Hugo ...

Blueberries are super stars among health food advocates, who tout the fruit for not only promoting heart health, better memory and digestion, but also for improving night vision. Scientists have taken a closer look at this latter claim and have found reason to doubt that the popular berry helps most healthy people see better in the dark. Their report appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry. Wilhelmina Kalt and colleagues note that studies published decades ago provided the first hints that blueberries might improve people's night vision. Later lab experiments ...

A new report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools gives a first look at patterns of college enrollment, persistence, and completion for New York City high school students. "It is rare to be able to track students' trajectories through high school and post-secondary education," said James J. Kemple, executive director of the Research Alliance. "This is the first such study focused on New York City, and it has revealed some encouraging signs, as well as areas in need of greater attention. The findings provide a strong foundation for learning more about the ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. --U.S. children's hospitals delivering the highest-quality care for children undergoing heart surgery, also appear to provide care most efficiently at a low cost, according to research led by the University of Michigan and presented Tuesday at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago. Congenital heart defects are the most common birth defects, and each year more than 30,000 congenital heart operations are performed across U.S. children's hospitals. Congenital heart defects are also one of the most expensive pediatric conditions to ...

A Georgia Tech professor is offering an alternative to the celebrated "Turing Test" to determine whether a machine or computer program exhibits human-level intelligence. The Turing Test - originally called the Imitation Game - was proposed by computing pioneer Alan Turing in 1950. In practice, some applications of the test require a machine to engage in dialogue and convince a human judge that it is an actual person. Creating certain types of art also requires intelligence observed Mark Riedl, an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, ...

Empagliflozin (trade name Jardiance) has been approved since May 2014 for adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus in whom diet and exercise alone do not provide adequate glycaemic control. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether the drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapies in these patient groups. According to the findings, such an added benefit is not proven: For four of five research questions, the manufacturer presented no relevant data in its dossier. For the fifth ...

Following a 5,000 km long ocean survey, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences presents a new way to measure how the acidification of water is affecting marine ecosystems over an entire oceanic basin. As a result of man-made emissions, the content of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans has increased dramatically during recent decades. In the ocean, the accumulating CO2 is gradually acidifying the surface waters, making it harder for shelled organisms like corals (Figure 1) and certain open sea plankton to build their calcium carbonate ...

Flexible electronic sensors based on paper -- an inexpensive material -- have the potential to some day cut the price of a wide range of medical tools, from helpful robots to diagnostic tests. Scientists have now developed a fast, low-cost way of making these sensors by directly printing conductive ink on paper. They published their advance in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Anming Hu and colleagues point out that because paper is available worldwide at low cost, it makes an excellent surface for lightweight, foldable electronics that could be made and ...

Now that car makers have demonstrated through hybrid vehicle success that consumers want less-polluting tailpipes, they are shifting even greener. In 2015, Toyota will roll out the first hydrogen fuel-cell car for personal use that emits only water. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, explains how hydrogen could supplant hybrid and electric car technology -- and someday, even spur the demise of the gasoline engine. Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that the first fuel-cell vehicles ...

Exposure to peanut proteins in household dust may be a trigger of peanut allergy, according to a study published today in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. The study was conducted in 359 children aged 3-15 months taking part in the NIH-sponsored Consortium for Food Allergy Research (CoFAR) study. These children were at high risk of developing a peanut allergy based on having likely milk or egg allergy or eczema. The study found that the risk of having strong positive allergy tests to peanut increased with increasingly higher amounts of peanut found in ...

UCLA biochemists have created the largest-ever protein that self-assembles into a molecular "cage." The research could lead to synthetic vaccines that protect people from the flu, HIV and other diseases. At a size hundreds of times smaller than a human cell, it also could lead to new methods of delivering pharmaceuticals inside of cells, or to the creation of new nanoscale materials. The protein assembly, which is shaped like a cube, was constructed from 24 copies of a protein designed in the laboratory of Todd Yeates, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry. ...