A new measurement of dark matter in the Milky Way has revealed there is half as much of the mysterious substance as previously thought. Australian astronomers used a method developed almost 100 years ago to discover that the weight of dark matter in our own galaxy is 800 000 000 000 (or 8 x 1011) times the mass of the Sun. They probed the edge of the Milky Way, looking closely, for the first time, at the fringes of the galaxy about 5 million billion kilometres from Earth. Astrophysicist Dr Prajwal Kafle, from The University of Western Australia node of the International ...

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9, 2014 – National guidelines for the cleaning of certain gastrointestinal (GI) scopes are likely to be updated due to findings from UPMC's infection prevention team. The research and updated disinfection technique will be shared Saturday in Philadelphia at ID Week 2014, an annual meeting of health professionals in infectious disease fields. "Patient safety is our top priority," said senior author Carlene Muto, M.D., M.S., director of infection prevention at UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. "We are confident that the change from disinfection to sterilization ...

PITTSBURGH, Oct. 9, 2014 – UPMC Presbyterian Hospital's infection prevention teams have improved hand washing and sanitizing compliance at the hospital to nearly 100 percent among clinical staff through accountability and educational measures. In a separate effort at UPMC Mercy Hospital, rates of a deadly infection were reduced by educating patients about hand hygiene. The successful techniques will be reported Saturday in presentations in Philadelphia at ID Week 2014, an annual meeting of health professionals in infectious disease fields. "Hand hygiene compliance ...

No matter what type of chemotherapy you attack a tumor with, many cancer cells resort to the same survival tactic: They start eating themselves. Scientists at Brigham Young University discovered the two proteins that pair up and switch on this process – known as autophagy. "This gives us a therapeutic avenue to target autophagy in tumors," said Josh Andersen, a BYU chemistry professor. "The idea would be to make tumors more chemo-sensitive. You could target these proteins and the mechanism of this switch to block autophagy, which would allow for lower doses of ...

The evolution of new traits with novel functions has always posed a challenge to evolutionary biology. Studying the color markings of cichlid fish, Swiss scientists were now able to show what triggered these evolutionary innovations, namely: a mobile genetic element in the regulatory region of a color gene. Their results have been published in the latest issue of the renowned scientific journal Nature Communications. Biological evolution is in general based on the progressive adaption of traits through natural or sexual selection. However, ever so often, complex traits ...

Ebola, as with many emerging infections, is likely to have arisen due to man's interaction with wild animals – most likely the practice of hunting and eating wild meat known as 'bushmeat'. A team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has surveyed almost six hundred people across southern Ghana to find out what drives consumption of bat bushmeat – and how people perceive the risks associated with the practice. The Straw-Coloured Fruit Bat, Eidolon helvum, is widely hunted and eaten in Ghana, but carries ...

Carbon capture is a process by which waste carbon dioxide (CO2) released by factories and power plants is collected and stored away, in order to reduce global carbon emissions. There are two major ways of carbon capture today, one using powder-like solid materials which "stick" to CO2, and one using liquids that absorb it. Despite their potential environmental and energy benefits, current carbon capture strategies are prohibitive because of engineering demands, cost and overall energy-efficiency. Collaborating scientists from EPFL, UC Berkley and Beijing have combined carbon-capturing ...

Jülich, Germany, 9 October 2014 – When a basically sturdy material becomes soft and spongy, one usually suspects that it has been damaged in some way. But this is not always the case, especially when it comes to complex fluids and biological cells. By looking at the microscopic building blocks – known as "filaments" – of biopolymer networks, researchers from Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany and the FOM Institute AMOLF in the Netherlands, revealed that such materials soften by undergoing a transition from an entangled spaghetti of filaments to ...

Some 340 European scientists, policy-makers and other experts representing 143 organizations from 31 countries spoke with one voice today, publishing a common vision of today's most pressing marine-related health and economic threats and opportunities. In a declaration concluding a three day meeting in Rome, EurOcean 2014 participants also released an agreed, five-year roadmap to achieve expanded, more integrated and effective policy-oriented ocean scrutiny. EurOcean 2014 was convened by the Italian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, the European Marine ...

Nyon, Switzerland (October 9, 2014) – Alarming new data published today by the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF), shows that one-third of all hip fractures worldwide occur in men, with mortality rates as high as 37% in the first year following fracture. This makes men twice as likely as women to die after a hip fracture. Osteoporosis experts warn that as men often remain undiagnosed and untreated, millions are left vulnerable to early death and disability, irrespective of fracture type. The report entitled 'Osteoporosis in men: why change needs to happen' ...

(PHILADELPHIA) -- The genetic fingerprint of a metastatic cancer is constantly changing, which means that the therapy that may have stopped a patient's cancer growth today, won't necessarily work tomorrow. Although doctors can continue to biopsy the cancer during the course of the treatment and send samples for genomic analysis, not all patients can receive repeat biopsies. Taking biopsies from metastatic cancer patients is an invasive procedure that it is frequently impossible due to the lack of accessible lesions. Research published October 10th in the journal Breast ...

When a woman is in labour, the appropriate time to give an epidural during childbirth is when she asks for it, a new study suggests. Published in The Cochrane Library, the systematic review compared early and late epidurals during labour and found that they had very similar effects. An epidural is a pain relieving local anaesthetic that is given as an injection into the spine. It is commonly offered to women in labour who request pain relief and is effective in reducing pain. However, previous studies have suggested that the timing of an epidural can prolong the duration ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that women who eat fried food regularly before conceiving are at increased risk of developing gestational diabetes during pregnancy. The research is led by Drs Cuilin Zhang and Wei Bao, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD, part of the US National Institutes of Health) Rockville, MD, USA, and colleagues. Gestational diabetes (GDM) is a complication that can arise during pregnancy, and is characterised by abnormally ...

Online learning interventions and small group debriefings can improve medical residents' attitudes and communication skills toward patients with substance use disorders, and may result in improved care for these patients, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University College of Medicine published online in Academic Medicine. The study used a novel internet-based learning module designed to improve the communication skills of primary care physicians during screenings and brief counseling sessions with ...

BOSTON (October 9, 2014) –A new form of gene therapy for boys with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency syndrome (SCID-X1), a life-threatening condition also known as "bubble boy" disease, appears to be both effective and safe, according to a collaborative research team from Dana-Farber/Boston Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center and other institutions conducting an international clinical trial. Early data suggest that the therapy may avoid the late-developing leukemia seen in a quarter of SCID-X1 patients in pioneering gene therapy trials in Europe more ...

NEW YORK, NY – Cardiovascular scientists at NYU Langone Medical Center have identified in mouse models a protein known as Pcp4 as a regulator of the heart's rhythm. Additionally, when the Pcp4 gene is disrupted, it can cause ventricular arrhythmias. Results from this animal study were released online Oct. 8 in the peer-reviewed publication, The Journal of Clinical Investigation. "This study demonstrates that Purkinje cell protein-4 (Pcp4) is not only important in maintaining the heart's normal rhythmic behavior, but that when Pcp4 expression is reduced, it short-circuits ...

BOSTON – The DNA of a woman whose lethal thyroid cancer unexpectedly "melted away" for 18 months has revealed new mechanisms of cancer response and resistance to the drug everolimus, said researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The investigators discovered two previously unknown mutations in the cancer's DNA. One made the woman's cancer extraordinarily sensitive to everolimus, accounting for the remarkably long-lasting response. The second mutation was found in the DNA of her tumor after it had evolved resistance ...

WHAT: Researchers have found that gene therapy using a modified delivery system, or vector, can restore the immune systems of children with X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID-X1), a rare, life-threatening inherited condition that primarily affects boys. Previous efforts to treat SCID-X1 with gene therapy were initially successful, but approximately one-quarter of the children developed leukemia two to five years after treatment. Results from a study partially funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a component of the National ...

(NEW YORK – October 08, 2014) Many children may become allergic to peanuts before they first eat them, and skin exposure may be contribute to early sensitization, according to a study in mice led by Mount Sinai researchers and published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Early in the process of developing an allergy, skin exposure to food allergens contributes to "sensitization", which means the skin is reactive to an antigen, such as peanuts, especially by repeated exposure. The question of how peanut allergies start is an important one, given the ...

Last spring, the Colorado River reached its delta for the first time in 16 years, flowing into Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of California after wetting 70 miles of long-dry channels through the Sonoran Desert. The planned 8-week burst of water from Mexico's Morelos Dam on the Arizona-Mexico border was the culmination of years of diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Mexico and campaigning from scientists and conservation organizations. Now ecologists wait to see how the short drink of water will affect the parched landscape. This year's spring pulse held ...

New York City – October 8, 2014 – In a new study recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center concluded that overuse of cardiac stress testing with imaging has led to rising healthcare costs and unnecessary radiation exposure to patients. In what is believed to be the first comprehensive examination of trends in cardiac stress testing utilizing imaging, researchers also showed that there are no significant racial or ethnic health disparities in its use. They also made national estimates of the cost of ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Women with a healthy diet and lifestyle may be less likely to have a stroke by more than half, according to a study published in the October 8, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at five factors that make up a healthy lifestyle: healthy diet; moderate alcohol consumption; never smoking; physically active; and healthy body mass index (BMI). Compared with women with none of the five healthy factors, women with all five factors had a 54-percent lower risk of stroke. "Because ...

WASHINGTON (Oct. 8, 2014) — A study that used two-dimensional echocardiography to closely examine the hearts of 100 children and teens found physical and functional signs of future heart problems already developing in obese children. In the study, published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers from the University of Leipzig Heart Center in Leipzig, Germany, performed the echocardiograms on 61 obese children and 40 non-obese children ages 9 to 16. The two-dimensional echocardiogram uses ultrasound to provide cross sectional ...

Boston, MA — Low-income adults overwhelmingly support Medicaid expansion and think the government-sponsored program offers health care coverage that is comparable to or even better in quality than private health insurance coverage, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. The study appears online October 8, 2014 in Health Affairs. (The study will be available online after the embargo lifts at http://content.healthaffairs.org/lookup/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0747.) "In the debate over whether or not states should participate ...

Bottom Line: The duration of psychiatric illness and treatment for patients after first-episode schizophrenia spectrum disorders (FES) appears to be associated with being fatter and having other cardiometabolic abnormalities. Authors: Christoph U. Correll, M.D., of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, the Zucker Hillside Hospital, Glen Oaks, N.Y., and colleagues. Background: FES is associated with higher death rates and the vast majority of premature deaths in this group are related to cardiovascular illness and obesity-related cancers. Patients with FES require attention ...