In The BMJ this week, two doctors criticize Australia for passing legislation that may be used to silence doctors working with asylum seekers. The Border Force Act 2015 says that from July 2015 contracted workers including doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals face a prison sentence of up to two years for blowing the whistle on substandard medical care given to asylum seekers in detention centres. Dr. David Berger at Broome Hospital in Western Australia, argues that the only reason to suppress doctors in this way, 'is to avoid embarrassing revelations ...

Two Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) physicians who participated in the international response to the major earthquakes that hit Nepal in April and May each describe their experiences in Perspectives articles receiving Online First publication today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Renee Salas, MD, MS, was already in Nepal working at a Himalayan Rescue Association clinic in the remote village of Pheriche when the first 7.8 magnitude quake struck on April 25. As she describes in her article "Humanity, Teamwork and Art in Post-Earthquake Nepal," while the immediate ...

WHAT: Researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have identified a new immune disorder--DOCK2 deficiency--named after the mutated gene responsible for the disease. An international team of collaborators studied five children, four boys and one girl, from different ethnic backgrounds who had experienced debilitating infections early in life. The children were diagnosed with combined immunodeficiency (CID), which refers to a group of inherited disorders distinguished by defects in immune system cells called T cells. CIDs also may affect other cells of ...

WASHINGTON, June 17 --- The value of the tax exemption provided to non-profit private hospitals in return for 'charity care and community benefit' nearly doubled over a nine-year period, climbing from an estimated $12.6 billion in 2002 to $24.6 billion dollars by 2011, according to a study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by researchers at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. This growth in the value of the tax exemption underscores taxpayer interest in how hospitals allocate their community ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. - A genetic disorder called neurofibromatosis (NF) causes benign tumors to grow on the brain, spinal cord, and other parts of the nervous system. There are no effective drugs to prevent or reverse NF. But increasing scientific knowledge has allowed for better clinical management and fewer complications, resulting in a higher quality of life for neurofibromatosis patients, NF specialists report in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. Pediatric neurologist and NF specialist Nikolas Mata-Machado, MD, of Loyola University Medical Center, ...

Like homing pigeons, humans have a nose for navigation because our brains are wired to convert smells into spatial information, new research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows. While humans may lack the scent-tracking sophistication of, say, a search-and-rescue dog, we can sniff our way, blindfolded, toward a location whose scent we've smelled only once before, according to the UC Berkeley study published today (June 17) in the journal PLOS ONE. Similar investigations have been conducted on birds and rodents, but this is the first time smell-based navigation ...

(New York, June 17, 2015) Melanoma patients with high levels of a protein that controls the expression of pro-growth genes are less likely to survive, according to a study led by researchers at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online in the journal Molecular Cell. The research team found that the protein, called H2A.Z.2, promotes the abnormal growth seen in melanoma cells as they develop into difficult-to-treat tumors. H2A.Z.2 is part of the chromosome structure that packages genes, and has the ability to switch them on off. Having high levels of ...

Men with an elevated, genetically inherited risk for prostate cancer could be routinely identified with a simple blood or urine test, scientists at UC San Francisco and Kaiser Permanente Northern California have concluded, potentially paving the way to better or earlier diagnosis. The study, which compared 7,783 men with prostate cancer to 38,595 men without the disease, is available online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Cancer Discovery. The new study is one of the first to come out of the collaboration between UCSF and Kaiser Permanente ...

A typical computer chip includes millions of transistors connected with an extensive network of copper wires. Although chip wires are unimaginably short and thin compared to household wires both have one thing in common: in each case the copper is wrapped within a protective sheath. For years a material called tantalum nitride has formed protective layer in chip wires. Now Stanford-led experiments demonstrate that a different sheathing material, graphene, can help electrons scoot through tiny copper wires in chips more quickly. Graphene is a single layer of carbon ...

Metastatic colorectal cancer patients tend to live longer when they respond to the first line of chemotherapy their doctors recommend. To better predict how patients will respond to chemotherapy drugs before they begin treatment, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine conducted a proof-of-principle study with a small group of metastatic colorectal cancer patients. The results, published June 17 in PLOS ONE, revealed two genes that could help physicians make more informed treatment decisions for patients with this disease. Metastatic colorectal ...

People with lower educational levels and incomes are less likely to know about yoga, acupuncture, natural products and chiropractic medicine, according to a new study from San Francisco State University. Studies on the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) have typically focused on learning more about who use these types of practices and why. Less is known about trends among those who do not partake, which inspired new research by Professor of Health Education Adam Burke, published in PLOS ONE on June 17. "It's very important to know why somebody is not ...

Higher consumption of dietary trans fatty acids (dTFA), commonly used in processed foods to improve taste, texture and durability, has been linked to worsened memory function in men 45 years old and younger, according to a University of California, San Diego School of Medicine study published online on June 17 in PLOS ONE. Researchers evaluated data from 1,018 men and women who were asked to complete a dietary survey and memory test involving word recall. On average, men aged 45 and younger recalled 86 words; however, for each additional gram of trans fats consumed daily, ...

Visitation at U.S. National Parks may potentially increase with increasing temperature in temperate areas, but may decrease with temperatures rising over 80 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a study using future climate and visitation modeling scenarios published June 17 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Nicholas Fisichelli and colleagues from U.S. National Park Service. Climate change may affect not only natural and cultural resources within protected areas, but also park tourism. To assess the relationship between climate and park visitation, the authors of this ...

Highly specialized coronulid barnacles may be able to identify and attach to the fins of quick-swimming dolphins, locating areas suited for finding food and developing larvae, according to a study carried out as a collaboration between the University of Valencia, Spain, and the University of Southern Mississippi, and published June 17, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Juan Carrillo and colleagues. Scientists have reported several types of symbiotic barnacles that settle on living host organisms. The highly specialized coronulid barnacle, Xenobalanus globicipitis, ...

San Diego, June 17 -- A team of researchers led by bioengineers at the University of California, San Diego provide new insights on how hearts 'stay young' and keep functioning over a lifetime despite the fact that most organisms generate few new heart cells. Identifying key gene expression changes that promote heart function as organisms age could lead to new therapy targets that address age-related heart failure. The researchers found that the contractile function of the hearts of fruit flies is greatly improved in flies that overexpress the protein vinculin, which also ...

Sydney, Australia - Fossilised remains of a new bat species, which lived 16 million years ago, walked on four limbs and was three times larger than today's average bat, have been discovered in New Zealand. The fossils were found near Central Otago on South Island, in sediment left over from a vast prehistoric body of water known as Lake Manuherikia, which was part of warmer subtropical rainforest during the early Miocene era, between 16 and 19-million-years-ago. The new species, Mystacina miocenalis, was described today in the journal PLOS ONE, and is related to another ...

In a finding that furthers the understanding of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), researchers from Children's Hospital Los Angeles discovered two locations where a single difference in HIV's genetic code altered the way the virus infected the cell, thereby influencing the progression of the disease. The results of this study will be published in PLOS ONE on June 17. HIV targets specific white blood cells, called CD4+ T-cells, which play an important role in organizing the immune response to bacteria and viruses. By using two different receptors, CCR5 (R5) or CXCR4 ...

A new study led from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden links male infertility to autoimmune prostatic inflammation. The findings are published in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Involuntary childlessness is common, and in half of all cases attributable to infertility in the man. Although male infertility has many possible causes, it often remains unexplained. In the present study, the researchers have discovered a reason for reduced fertility in people with autoimmune polyendocrine syndrome type 1 (APS1), which increases the risk of developing autoimmune ...

BOSTON -- A new drug screening technology developed at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health has identified a new potential anti-diabetes compound--and a powerful way to quickly test whether other molecules can have a positive effect on a critical molecular pathway believed to be central to diseases ranging from diabetes to retinitis pigmentosa, cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, and Alzheimer's. The study appears in the June 17, 2015 issue of Science Translational Medicine. The compound, which the authors have called azoramide*, works by focusing on an ...

Scientists at the Charité - University Medicine Berlin, Department for General, Visceral and Transplantation Surgery, led by Dr. Georg Damm (and Prof. Dr. Daniel Seehofer) have established a protocol for an uncomplicated isolation of primary human hepatocytes (PHH), Kupffer cells (KC), liver endothelial cells (LEC), and human Stellate cells (HSC) from human donor tissue. Liver cells were isolated from the tissue using a two-step EDTA/collagenase perfusion technique, followed by a separation of PHH and different non-parenchymal cell (NPC) fractions through Percoll density ...

This Week From AGU: Gender parity in the geosciences, Tibetan Plateau formation From eos.org: Working Toward Gender Parity in the Geosciences How are women represented in the geosciences? The author of a new AGU book, Women in the Geosciences: Practical, Positive Practices Toward Parity, answers some questions. From AGU's journals: Dynamics of the Earth's Surface in the Eastern Tibetan Plateau The evolution of mountains is written in the histories of the rocks that make up their ranges. Scientists have long used areas where rivers cut deep incisions in rock ...

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important discovery that forms the basis for the development of new applications in biofuels and the sustainable manufacturing of chemicals. Based at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology (MIB), researchers have identified the exact mechanism and structure of two key enzymes isolated from yeast moulds that together provide a new, cleaner route to the production of hydrocarbons. Published in Nature, the research offers the possibility of replacing the need for oil in current industrial processes with a greener ...

The moon is engulfed in a permanent but lopsided dust cloud that increases in density when annual events like the Geminids spew shooting stars, according to a new study led by University of Colorado Boulder. The cloud is made up primarily of tiny dust grains kicked up from the moon's surface by the impact of high-speed, interplanetary dust particles, said CU-Boulder physics Professor Mihaly Horanyi. A single dust particle from a comet striking the moon's surface lofts thousands of smaller dust specks into the airless environment, and the lunar cloud is maintained by ...

In a remarkable demonstration of the curative power of memory, published in Nature, scientists have established that artificial reactivation of memories stored during a positive experience can suppress the effects of stress-induced depression. The research, conducted by scientists at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, a joint collaboration of RIKEN Brain Science Institute in Japan and MIT, shows how positive and negative memories interact in mood disorders, and provides a specific brain circuit for future clinical interventions. The research, conducted ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Sit down with a friend in a quiet restaurant and begin talking, just before the dinner crowd's arrival. Business is slow at first, but picks up quickly, just like the sound level. Music plays, glasses clink, servers discuss specials. Discussions are everywhere, colliding and competing with the other noises. All of these sounds are hitting the eardrum at the same time, yet the initial conversation that began amidst surrounding silence continues easily because of a process that allows humans to isolate, identify and prioritize overlapping sounds. Sometimes ...