WASHINGTON, Oct. 27, 2014 — It's a spooky question, but it doesn't have to be: What happens when you die? Even after you depart, there's a lot of chemistry that still goes on inside you. Reactions teamed up with mortician Caitlin Doughty, author of the new book "Smoke Gets in your Eyes, and Other Lessons from the Crematory" to demystify death and talk about exactly what happens to the body postmortem. Check out the new episode here: http://youtu.be/BpuTLnSr_20. Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to ...

When Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast in late October 2012, the "superstorm" disrupted traffic in New York City for more than five days, but the evacuation proceeded relatively efficiently with only minor delays, according to transportation researchers at the University of Illinois. The largest Atlantic hurricane on record, Hurricane Sandy offered a chance for researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to try out a new computational method they developed that promises to help municipalities quantify the resilience of their transportation systems ...

WASHINGTON, DC—The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), American College of Physicians (ACP) and American Osteopathic Association (AOA) convene today in Washington, DC to urge Congress to extend current-law payment parity for primary care and immunization services under Medicaid for at least two years. Absent congressional action, federal support for this policy runs out at the end of the year. Collectively representing nearly 423,000 physicians, the four groups are meeting with dozens of congressional offices on Capitol ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 27, 2014—More than half of women with children less than a year old are working, and work travel can make breastfeeding a challenge. A study of 100 U.S. airports found that few provided a suitably equipped, private lactation room, even though most described themselves as being breastfeeding friendly, as reported in Breastfeeding Medicine, the official journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Breastfeeding Medicine website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/bfm.2014.0112 ...

This news release is available in French. A key to aortic valve disease prevention: Lowering cholesterol early Montreal, Sunday 26, 2014 – An international research team led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and Lund University has provided new evidence that aortic valve disease may be preventable. Their findings show that so-called "bad" cholesterol or low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C) is a cause of aortic valve disease – a serious heart condition that affects around five million people in North America ...

New York | Heidelberg, 27 October 2014 Thermodiffusion, also called the Soret effect, is a mechanism by which an imposed temperature difference establishes a concentration difference within a mixture. Two studies1,2 by Belgian scientists from the Free University of Brussels, recently published in EPJE, provide a better understanding of such effects. They build on recent experimental results from the IVIDIL (Influence Vibration on Diffusion in Liquids) research project performed on the International Space Station under microgravity to avoid motion in the liquids. In the ...

Case Western Reserve University mental health researcher Joseph Galanek spent a cumulative nine months in an Oregon maximum-security prison to learn first-hand how the prison manages inmates with mental illness. What he found, through 430 hours of prison observations and interviews, is that inmates were treated humanely and security was better managed when cell block officers were trained to identify symptoms of mental illness and how to respond to them. In the 150-year-old prison, he discovered officers used their authority with flexibility and discretion within ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- The job market for new college graduates may be heating up fast, but starting salaries will see only modest growth, a Michigan State University economist says in a new study. About six in 10 employers say they will keep starting pay the same as last year for newly minted degree-holders. The remainder will offer salary increases, on average, of a modest 3 percent to 5 percent, said Phil Gardner, author of Recruiting Trends, the nation's largest survey of employers' hiring intentions for college graduates. "Pressure on employers to increase starting ...

Since 2007, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), an EU agency, has gathered information on patients' experiences with adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in the European ADR database, EudraVigilance. Both authorities and pharmaceutical companies have a duty to report information about ADRs to the database, which provides new knowledge about unknown and serious ADRs: "We have studied all EU adverse drug reaction reports on asthma medications approved for – and used by – children over a five-year period (2007 to 2011). In the light of the total use of asthma medications, ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A new study by researchers at The Kinsey Institute and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that the timeless, multicultural tradition of grandmothering might have an unexpected benefit: helping some women temper their hot flashes and night sweats during menopause. The researchers, two clinicians and a bioanthropologist, examined how close relationships can help women in midlife with this inevitable change -- with the clinicians looking for therapeutic benefits that might help patients deal with this unpredictable, poorly understood ...

In a paper published today in Nature Nanotechnology, an international group of scientists announced the most significant breakthrough in a decade toward developing DNA-based electrical circuits. The central technological revolution of the 20th century was the development of computers, leading to the communication and Internet era. The main measure of this evolution is miniaturization: making our machines smaller. A computer with the memory of the average laptop today was the size of a tennis court in the 1970s. Yet while scientists made great strides in reducing of the ...

A self-driven reaction can assemble phospholipid membranes like those that enclose cells, a team of chemists at the University of California, San Diego, reports in Angewandte Chemie. All living cells use membranes to define physical boundaries and control the movement of biomolecules, and movement of molecules through membranes is a primary means of sending signals to and from cells. Neal Devaraj, a chemistry and biochemistry professor at UC San Diego, leads a research team that develops and explores new reactions that can trigger the formation of membranes, particularly ...

Astronomers at the University of Sydney are part of a team that has taken images of the thermonuclear fireball from a 'nova star' for the first time tracking the explosion as it expands. The research is published in the journal Nature today. The eruption occurred last year in the constellation of Delphinus (the Dolphin). Professor Peter Tuthill, from the University's Sydney Institute for Astronomy and co-author on the paper says astronomers are excited about the achievement: "Although novae often play second fiddle in the popular imagination to their more famous ...

Recently, a team of astronomers reported discovering a pulsating star that appears to shine with the energy of 10 million suns. The find, which was announced in Nature, is the brightest pulsar – a type of rotating neutron star that emits a bright beam of energy that regularly sweeps past Earth like a lighthouse beam – ever seen. But what are the odds finding another one? According to one of the paper's authors, chances are good now that they know what to look for. Professor Deepto Chakrabarty of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at ...

VIDEO: A collection of artificial lipid bubbles cycle through changes in their membranes as the surrounding environment changes. As the osmotic potential changes, different lipids in the membranes form patchy domains... Click here for more information. Tiny, soapy bubbles can reorganize their membranes to let material flow in and out in response to the surrounding environment, according to new work carried out in an international collaboration by biomedical engineers at the ...

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have developed a novel method to test for vitamin B12 deficiency that is sensitive enough to work on anyone, including newborn babies and large swaths of the general population. Vitamin B12 deficiency can be tested with a single drop of blood collected from a finger prick, then blotted and dried overnight on a card consisting of filter paper. The UBC study made dried blood spot card analysis sensitive enough to measure the amount of methylmalonic acid (MMA), an indicator of a person's B12 level. "This minimally invasive ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. –The International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) today announced that it has updated the criteria for diagnosing multiple myeloma. A paper outlining the new criteria was published in the journal Lancet Oncology. Multiple myeloma is a blood cancer that forms in a type of white blood cell called a plasma cell. "Our group, which includes more than 180 myeloma researchers worldwide, has updated the definition of multiple myeloma for diagnostic purposes to include validated biomarkers in addition to the current clinical symptoms used for diagnosis which ...

LOS ANGELES — A new model of delivering primary care studied by Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) researchers has the potential to improve the health of patients with type 2 diabetes. The model encourages doctors to be more of a "medical home" for their patients by being accessible to patients in person and by phone, developing good ongoing relationships with their patients, and being more proactive in helping coordinate care for patients with difficult health problems. Gregory Stevens, Ph.D., associate professor of family medicine ...

Washington, DC, October 27, 2014—New results from a safety and immunogenicity study, which included a challenge phase to test efficacy, indicate that a live attenuated enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) vaccine candidate, given in combination with a novel adjuvant, provided significant protection against disease. This represents the first efficacy data for this vaccine/adjuvant combination, which was 58.5 percent efficacious in protecting against diarrhea of any severity using a highly rigorous ETEC human challenge model. The vaccine/adjuvant combination was ...

VIDEO: In this video, lab-grown human leukemia cells move toward a pipette tip holding an attractive chemical. Click here for more information. Amoebas aren't the only cells that crawl: Movement is crucial to development, wound healing and immune response in animals, not to mention cancer metastasis. In two new studies from Johns Hopkins, researchers answer long-standing questions about how complex cells sense the chemical trails that show them where to go — and the ...

Berlin, 27 October 2014. Not everyone who contracts the Ebola virus dies, the survival rate is around 30% suggesting that some kind of immunity to the disease is possible. Experimental treatments and vaccines against Ebola exist but have not yet been tested in large groups for safety and efficacy (phase 2 trials). The International Union of Immunology Societies (IUIS) published a statement today in its official journal, Frontiers in Immunology calling for urgent and adequate funding of vaccine candidates in clinical trials and speedy implementation of immunisation in ...

A new study has found that patients who received chest radiation for Wilms tumor, a rare childhood cancer, face an increased risk of developing breast cancer later in life due to their radiation exposure. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that cancer screening guidelines might be re-evaluated to facilitate the early diagnosis and prompt treatment of breast cancer among Wilms tumor survivors. Wilms tumor is a rare childhood kidney cancer that can spread to the lungs. When this spread occurs, patients ...

Today, the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) has published an educational slide deck highlighting 60 original scientific abstracts presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR) in September 2014. The succinct slide kit can be downloaded free of charge by all individual IOF members (free sign up on the IOF website). CEO Judy Stenmark stated, "IOF is pleased to provide this informative resource for healthcare professionals interested in the latest advances in bone and mineral research. While 10% of the featured ...

Toronto, Canada – Making mistakes while learning can benefit memory and lead to the correct answer, but only if the guesses are close-but-no-cigar, according to new research findings from Baycrest Health Sciences. "Making random guesses does not appear to benefit later memory for the right answer , but near-miss guesses act as stepping stones for retrieval of the correct information – and this benefit is seen in younger and older adults," says lead investigator Andrée-Ann Cyr, a graduate student with Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute and the Department ...

VANCOUVER ─ Different ethnic groups have widely varying differences in both the prevalence and awareness of cardiovascular risk factors, a finding that highlights the need for specially designed education and intervention programs, according to a study presented today at the 2014 Canadian Cardiovascular Congress. The conclusion comes from a study of more than 3,000 patients at an urgent-care clinic serving an ethnically diverse area of Toronto. Participants were asked to self-identify their ethnicity and, from a list of 20 activities or conditions, asked to identify ...