Women who have just given birth are often motivated to prevent a rapid, repeat pregnancy. For those who prefer a contraceptive implant, getting the procedure in the hospital immediately after giving birth is more cost-effective than delaying insertion to a 6-8 week postpartum visit, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers. Published online ahead of print in the July issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, the study compares costs associated with immediate implant insertion with costs of unintended pregnancy. The implant is placed in the arm and can ...

BOSTON... June 9, 2015 - Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and Harvard University researchers have developed a technique that measures the correlation between air temperature and birth weight. They evaluated the relationship between birth outcomes (focusing on birth weight) and ambient air temperature during pregnancy in Massachusetts between 2000 and 2008. "We found that exposure to high air temperature during pregnancy increases the risk of lower birth weight and can cause preterm birth," according to Dr. Itai Kloog, a senior lecturer in BGU's Department of Geography ...

Since 2011 an unknown leafmining moth was observed in table grape orchards and often in large numbers in the Paarl region of the Western Cape (South Africa). Although the effect of the leafmines on the grape vine itself appears to be limited, collateral damage may be more serious, especially when larvae descend from the vine canopy to form a dense curtain of suspended larvae. A new study published in ZooKeys looks into the morphology and biology of the potential pest. Although the leafminer had been seen before in South Africa, it proved impossible to find its name. Entomologist ...

A team of Tel Aviv University and UCLA astronomers have discovered a remarkable cluster of more than a million young stars are forming in a hot, dusty cloud of molecular gases in a tiny galaxy very near our own. The star cluster is buried within a massive gas cloud dubbed "Cloud D" in the NGC 5253 dwarf galaxy, and, although it's a billion times brighter than our sun, is barely visible, hidden by its own hot gases and dust. The star cluster contains more than 7,000 massive "O" stars: the most brilliant stars extant, each a million times more luminous than our sun. "Cloud ...

Simon Fraser University PhD graduate Maryam Sadeghi will unveil MoleScope™, an innovative hand-held tool that uses a smartphone to monitor skin for signs of cancer, at the World Congress of Dermatology conference in Vancouver June 9-13. Sadeghi has spent three years transitioning from academic research to her start-up venture, MetaOptima Technology Inc. MoleScope™, the company's inaugural product, which enables people to monitor their moles and skin health, share images with family and healthcare providers and eventually, connect skin specialists with people ...

Two young researchers working at the MIPT Laboratory of Nanooptics and Plasmonics, Dmitry Fedyanin and Yury Stebunov, have developed an ultracompact highly sensitive nanomechanical sensor for analyzing the chemical composition of substances and detecting biological objects, such as viral disease markers, which appear when the immune system responds to incurable or hard-to-cure diseases, including HIV, hepatitis, herpes, and many others. The sensor will enable doctors to identify tumor markers, whose presence in the body signals the emergence and growth of cancerous tumors. The ...

Two years ago, the Immunology of Diabetes Research Group at the Germans Trias Research Institute (at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona - Campus of International Excellence Sphere) reported a new experimental immunotherapy that prevented the onset of Type 1 Diabetes in mice predisposed to the disease. This work led to more studies with the support of the Spanish Government, Catalan Government and private patrons with a keen interest in it. Thanks to this, the article published today in PLOS ONE describes a new step towards the creation of a vaccine, which in the medium-term ...

June 9, 2015 - New approaches, based on body mass index (BMI) or other simple measures, are needed to improve assessment of obesity in adolescents with physical disabilities, reports a paper in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Obesity is a major problem in children and adolescents with mobility limitations, but standard assessments tend to underestimate it, according to the new research by Brooks C. Wingo, PhD, of University of Alabama ...

Nagoya, Japan - A team of chemists and biologists at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM), Nagoya University have succeeded in finding new molecules that change the circadian rhythm in mammals by applying synthetic chemistry methods, which makes use of highly selective metal catalysts. Most living organisms have a biological clock with an approximately 24-hour circadian rhythm, which regulates important body functions such as sleep/wake cycles, hormone secretion, and metabolism. Disruption of the circadian rhythm by genetic mutations and environmental ...

LOS ANGELES (JUNE 8, 2015) - The witness on the stand says he saw the accused at the scene of the crime. Is he sure? How sure? The jury's verdict could hinge on that level of certainty. Many decisions we make every day are influenced by our memories and the confidence we have in them. But very little is known about how we decide whether we can trust a memory or not. A new Cedars-Sinai study provides some of the answers. Researchers have identified a unique set of neurons in the medial temporal lobe, an area of the brain where memories and memory-based decisions are ...

The use of camera traps -- remote automatic cameras triggered by heat or motion -- has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation research. But the large number of images generated through the traps creates the problem of categorizing and analyzing all the images. For a recent project conducted in the Serengeti National Park, Alexandra Swanson, turned to another relatively new technology -- a citizen science platform. The Snapshot Serengeti project asked non-scientist volunteers to review 1.2 million sets of images. A description of the project, 'Snapshot Serengeti, ...

A variety of factors including questions about risk and reluctance to offend patients limits clinician willingness to prescribe a potentially life-saving medication that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose, according to a Kaiser Permanente Colorado study published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The number of fatal overdoses from opioid medications has quadrupled in the U.S. since 1999. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each day 44 people die of prescription painkiller overdoses. In the event of an overdose, ...

American physicians with waivers allowing them to provide office-based medication-assisted buprenorphine treatment to patients addicted to opioids were able to increase potential access to effective medication-assisted treatment by 74 percent from 2002 to 2011, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Published in the June issue of the journal Health Affairs, the study shows that the increased number and geographic distribution of physicians obtaining waivers to prescribe buprenorphine has widened potential access to effective treatment for those with addiction to heroin ...

Getting through the pollen season can now become easier for some of the approximately 500 million people worldwide who suffer from sneezing and a runny nose, watery eyes and drowsiness during the allergy season (seasonal allergic rhinitis). This is indicated by a controlled trial carried out by researchers from Aarhus University. The trial, which took place over two days, included 65 people with grass pollen allergies who were not receiving any medical treatment at that time. They were either equipped with a nasal filter or a placebo device. The conclusion was that the ...

Chicago, June 9, 2015 - A more aggressive approach to treating degenerative mitral valve disease, using earlier surgical intervention and less invasive techniques, is more beneficial to the patient than "watchful waiting," according to an article in the June 2015 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Earlier surgical intervention using less invasive surgical techniques is better than watchful waiting for patients with degenerative mitral valve disease. Over the 25 years observed, mortality rates remained low, hospital length of stay was shorter, ...

Athens, Ga. - Researchers in the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center are visually capturing the first process of chromosome alignment and separation at the beginning of mouse development. The findings could lead to answers to questions concerning the mechanisms leading to birth defects and chromosome instability in cancer cells. "We've generated a model that is unique in the world," said Rabindranath De La Fuente, an associate professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine. "Because we removed ATRX protein expression only in the oocyte, the female ...

The handling of agricultural crop residues appears to have a large impact on soil's ability to retain carbon, making land management practices increasingly important, especially under a scenario where cellulosic materials become more heavily used as a feedstock for ethanol production, according to a recently published study led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. "Plants and soil are carbon sinks," said Argonne climate scientist Beth Drewniak, who led the study. "Soils lock carbon away for long periods of time. But when plant ...

Computers and water typically don't mix, but in Manu Prakash's lab, the two are one and the same. Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets. The computer is nearly a decade in the making, incubated from an idea that struck Prakash when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science - an operating clock. "In this work, we finally demonstrate ...

One potential way to combat ongoing climate change, eliminate air pollution mortality, create jobs and stabilize energy prices involves converting the world's entire energy infrastructure to run on clean, renewable energy. This is a daunting challenge. But now, in a new study, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and colleagues, including U.C. Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, are the first to outline how each of the 50 states can achieve such a transition by 2050. The 50 individual state plans call for aggressive changes ...

For the past several years, Anthony Wagner has been developing a computer program that can read a person's brain scan data and surmise, with a high degree of certainty, whether that person is experiencing a memory. The technology has great promise to influence a number of fields, including marketing, medicine and evaluation of eyewitness testimony. Now, Wagner, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford, and his colleagues have shown that with just a little bit of coaching and concentration, subjects are easily able to obscure real memories, or even create ...

BARCELONA, Spain, June 9, 2015 -- Aimmune Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company developing desensitization treatments for food allergies, announced today that a Phase 2 study (ARC001) evaluating the company's lead investigational product, AR101 for the treatment of peanut allergy, met its primary endpoint and additional endpoint of desensitizing patients to cumulative amounts of peanut protein of 443 mg and 1,043 mg, respectively. Of the 23 active-arm patients who completed the study, 100 percent tolerated exposure to 443 mg cumulative amounts ...

Los Angeles, CA (June 9, 2015) Children diagnosed with AD/HD can improve their behavior and social interactions in the classroom by playing a computer game that exercises their concentration, finds new research out today. The study marks the 1000th article published in SAGE Open, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal launched in 2011 which covers the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. The software studied in the research syncs with a wireless headband that monitors brainwaves during game-play, and works by adjusting the level of difficulty ...

In Kenya, where rape and violence against women are rampant, a short educational program produced lasting improvements in teenage boys' and young men's attitudes toward women, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found. The boys and men in the study also were more likely to try to halt violence against women after participating in the program. The study will be published online June 9 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. The program was developed by No Means No Worldwide, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that works in the slums ...

New York, N.Y. (June 9, 2015) - The largest-ever multinational study of parental age and autism risk, funded by Autism Speaks, found increased autism rates among the children of teen moms and among children whose parents have relatively large gaps between their ages. The study also confirmed that older parents are at higher risk of having children with autism. The analysis included more than 5.7 million children in five countries. The study was published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. "Though we've seen research on autism and parental age before, this study ...

A single dose of intravenous glutamine (GLN) administered immediately after a non-lethal lower limb ischemia reduces the reperfusion inflammatory reaction locally and systemically according to a new study. The study, published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), used a mice model to compare the effects of GLN on hind limb ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury. The study subjected three groups of mice to 90 minutes of ischemia ...