Exposure to high levels of pollution can have a significant impact on fetal growth and development, that is the conclusion of research appearing today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The study found women who were pregnant during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, when pollution levels were reduced by the Chinese government, gave birth to children with higher birth weights compared to those who were pregnant before and after the games. "The results of this study demonstrate a clear association between changes in air pollutant concentrations and birth weight," ...

Washington, D.C.-- Some scientists have suggested that global warming could melt frozen ground in the Arctic, releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, greatly amplifying global warming. It has been proposed that such disastrous climate effects could be offset by technological approaches, broadly called geoengineering. One geoengineering proposal is to artificially whiten the surface of the Arctic Ocean in order to increase the reflection of the Sun's energy into space and restore sea ice in the area. New research from Carnegie's ...

Glenview, Ill., April 28, 2015--A study published on April 23 in the Online First section of the journal CHEST finds an elevated upper body position might improve respiratory safety in women early after childbirth without impairing sleep quality. Pregnancy-related maternal death occurs in 10 to 13 of 100,000 pregnancies and is attributable to anesthesia in 0.8 to 1.7 percent of the cases. A main cause of anesthesia-related maternal death is postpartum airway obstruction. "Women who sleep with their upper bodies propped up 45 degrees in the days following childbirth can ...

Washington, DC, April 28, 2015 - Rates of infection with the deadly superbug Clostridium difficile were highest in the Northeast region of the country and in the spring season over the last 10 years, according to a study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). Researchers from the University of Texas retrospectively analyzed 2.3 million cases of C. difficile infection (CDI) from 2001-2010 and found the highest incidence in the Northeast ...

University of Washington research shows that using a single category of learning disability to qualify students with written language challenges for special education services is not scientifically supported. Some students only have writing disabilities, but some have both reading and writing disabilities. The study, published online in NeuroImage: Clinical, is among the first to identify structural white matter and functional gray matter differences in the brain between children with dyslexia and dysgraphia, and between those children and typical language learners. The ...

ANN ARBOR -- In certain types of cancer, nerves and cancer cells enter an often lethal and intricate waltz where cancer cells and nerves move toward one another and eventually engage in such a way that the cancer cells enter the nerves. The findings, appearing in Nature Communications, challenge conventional wisdom about perineural invasion, which holds that cancer cells are marauders that invade nerves through the path of least resistance, said Nisha D'Silva, principal investigator and professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. D'Silva's lab discovered ...

Scientists at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) have captured the first high-resolution images of the flaring magnetic structures known as solar flux ropes at their point of origin in the Sun's chromosphere. Their research, published today in Nature Communications, provides new insights into the massive eruptions on the Sun's surface responsible for space weather. Flux ropes are bundles of magnetic fields that together rotate and twist around a common axis, driven by motions in the photosphere, a high-density layer of the Sun's atmosphere below the solar corona ...

Species exchange between North and South America created one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth. A new study by Smithsonian scientists and colleagues published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that species migrations across the Isthmus of Panama began about 20 million years ago, some six times earlier than commonly assumed. These biological results corroborate advances in geology, rejecting the long-held assumption that the Isthmus is only about 3 million years old. "Even organisms that need very specific conditions ...

In the midst of an international campaign to slow the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organization recommends male circumcision (the surgical removal of foreskin from the penis) which reduces HIV acquisition by 50-60%. However, scientists report that a new study of HIV-infected men in Uganda has identified a temporary, but potentially troublesome unintended consequence of the procedure: a possible increased risk of infecting female sexual partners while circumcision wounds heal. In a study by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University School ...

The ability to move one's body rapidly through water is a key to existence for many species on this blue planet of ours. The Persian carpet flatworm, the cuttlefish and the black ghost knifefish look nothing like each other - their last common ancestor lived 550 million years ago, before the Cambrian period - but a new study uses a combination of computer simulations, a robotic fish and video footage of real fish to show that all three aquatic creatures have evolved to swim with elongated fins using the same mechanical motion that optimizes their speed, helping to ensure ...

The likelihood of viral shedding from male circumcision wounds intially increases, then decreases as the wounds heal, and is lower in patients with lower plasma viral load, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Aaron Tobian, of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD and the Rakai Health Sciences Program, Entebbe, Uganda, and colleagues, monitored 223 HIV-infected men for wound healing and viral shedding from their surgical wounds for 12 weeks following voluntary medical male circumcision. The researchers found that, compared ...

Data from southeast Asia -- where artemisinin-resistant malaria strains were first detected -- broadly support WHO's 'working definition' for artemisinin resistance, but the currently used definitions require important refinements, according to a study by Lisa White and colleagues, from Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, published this week in PLOS Medicine. The drug artemisinin rapidly clears malaria parasites from the blood of infected patients -- unless the parasites have developed resistance, in which case parasite clearance after artemisinin therapy (ACT) takes ...

A new study from Loyola University Medical Center provides further evidence that female infants tend to do better than males when born prematurely. The study found that female infants independently orally fed one day earlier than males. The ability to suck, swallow and breathe simultaneously are reflexes that many premature infants are unable to do. Learning to master these skills and eat independently without feeding tubes is necessary before an infant can safely go home from the hospital. Researchers set out to determine the mean age when premature infants are able ...

Lucy and other members of the early hominid species Australopithecus afarensis probably were similar to humans in the size difference between males and females, according to researchers from Penn State and Kent State University. "Previous convention in the field was that there were high levels of dimorphism in the Australopithecus afarensis population," said Philip Reno, assistant professor of anthropology, Penn State. "Males were thought to be much larger than females." Sexual dimorphism refers to differences between males and females of a species. These can show up, ...

A new University of Colorado Boulder study involving some 40,000 people indicates that social and psychological problems caused by drinking generally trump physically hazardous drinking behaviors when it comes to overall mortality rates. The study showed, for instance, that participants who had experienced an intervention by physicians, family members or friends had a 67 percent greater risk of death over the 18-year study period, said sociology Professor Richard Rogers, lead study author. Those who reported cutting down on social or sports activities because of alcohol ...

When educating medical students or residents to perform highly technical procedures, there is always a challenge to balance the educational mission with maintaining quality results and optimal patient care. This report compared outcomes of cardiac surgery residents to those of attending physicians in performing coronary artery bypass grafting. It found no differences in patient outcomes or graft patency between the residents and attending surgeons. Seattle WA, April 28, 2015 - A conundrum in medical education is how to train residents in complex and technically difficult ...

Over the last 15 years, survival of children with congenital heart disease (CHD) has greatly improved, so that currently there are more adults than children living with CHD. Consequently, people with CHD of all ages are undergoing pulmonary valve replacement (PVR) with bioprosthetic valves. In this retrospective review of all patients with CHD who underwent bioprosthetic PVR over an 18-year period at Boston Children's Hospital, investigators found that young age and small body weight predisposed patients toward re-intervention, as did the type of valve used. Seattle, ...

Boston, Mass (April 27, 2015) -- In a recent issue of Science Translational Medicine, Brian Polizzotti, PhD, Bernhard Kuhn, MD, Sangita Choudhury, PhD, and colleagues affiliated with the Boston Children's Hospital's Translational Research Center report that the optimal window of time to stimulate heart muscle cell regeneration (cardiomyocyte proliferation) in humans is the first six months of life. "Our results suggest that early administration of neuregulin may provide a targeted and multipronged approach to prevent heart failure in infants with CHD. Beginning treatment ...

Humans and cattle share a similar epigenetic fetal overgrowth disorder that occurs more commonly following assisted reproduction procedures. In humans, this disorder is called Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS), and in cattle it is called large offspring syndrome (LOS) and can result in the overgrowth of fetuses and enlarged babies. This naturally occurring, but rare syndrome can cause physical abnormalities in humans and cattle and often results in the deaths of newborn calves and birth-related injuries to their mothers. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri ...

CHESTER, Calif. - A study just published this week shows many bird species, including several of high conservation concern, aren't getting the habitat they need due to a focus on promoting California Spotted Owl habitat in the northern Sierra Nevada. The study, published in the science journal, PLoS ONE, tracked different bird species' use of areas inside and outside Spotted Owl reserves for two years in Plumas and Lassen National Forests. The results show 17 species avoided the reserves, including species of conservation concern like Yellow Warblers and Olive-sided ...

New Haven, Conn. -- Yale researchers conducted the first known randomized trial comparing three treatment strategies for opioid-dependent patients receiving emergency care. They found that patients given the medication buprenorphine were more likely to engage in addiction treatment and reduce their illicit opioid use. Dependence on prescription and illicit opioids is an epidemic that continues to grow in the United States and globally. Drug overdoses account for more deaths each day than car crashes. "This is a huge public health problem," said first author Dr. Gail D'Onofrio, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, April 28, 2015 -- The secret desire of urban daydreamers staring out their office windows at the sad brick walls of the building opposite them may soon be answered thanks to transparent light shutters developed by a group of researchers at Pusan National University in South Korea. A novel liquid crystal technology allows displays to flip between transparent and opaque states -- hypothetically letting you switch your view in less than a millisecond from urban decay to the Chesapeake Bay. Their work appears this week in the journal AIP Advances, from AIP ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28, 2015--For couples struggling to conceive the old-fashioned way, in vitro fertilization (IVF) provides an alternate route to starting a family. When eggs are mixed with sperm in test tubes, the fertilized eggs to grow into embryos that can be implanted inside the uterus of a woman who will carry them to term. IVF often works miracles for infertile couples, a fact for which its inventor won a Nobel Prize a few years ago. However, the procedure can be time-consuming, costly, and emotionally draining, often requiring multiple implantation cycles ...

What happens when lithium-ion batteries overheat and explode has been tracked inside and out for the first time by a UCL-led team using sophisticated 3D imaging. Understanding how Li-ion batteries fail and potentially cause a dangerous chain reaction of events is important for improving their design to make them safer to use and transport, say the scientists behind the study. Hundreds of millions of these rechargeable batteries are manufactured and transported each year as they are integral to modern living, powering mobile phones, laptops, cars and planes. Although ...

HANOVER, N.H. - Using an airborne imaging system for the first time in Antarctica, scientists have discovered a vast network of unfrozen salty groundwater that may support previously unknown microbial life deep under the coldest, driest desert on our planet. The findings shed new light on ancient climate change on Earth and provide strong evidence that a similar briny aquifer could support microscopic life on Mars. The study appears in the journal Nature Communications. It is available through open access. A PDF of the study, photos and video also are available on request. ...