In an analysis of about 2,600 hospitalizations for severe sepsis, readmissions within 90 days were common, and approximately 40 percent occurred for diagnoses that could potentially be prevented or treated early to avoid hospitalization, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA. Patients are frequently rehospitalized within 90 days after having severe sepsis. Little is known, however, about the reasons for readmission and whether they can be reduced. Hallie C. Prescott, M.D., M.Sc., of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues examined the most ...

The prevalence of type 2 diabetes among 25,000 patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (a genetic disorder characterized by high low-density lipoprotein [LDL] cholesterol levels) was significantly lower than among unaffected relatives, with the prevalence varying by the type of gene mutation, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA. Statins have been associated with increased risk for diabetes, but the cause for this is not clear. One theory is that statins increase expression of LDL receptors and increase cholesterol uptake into cells including the pancreas, ...

In an analysis of outcomes of about 12,000 patients who underwent transcatheter aortic valve replacement, death rate after one year was nearly one in four; of those alive at 12 months, almost half had not been rehospitalized and approximately 25 percent had only one hospitalization, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA. Following U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval in 2011, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has been used with increasing frequency for the treatment of severe aortic stenosis in patients who have high risks with conventional ...

Among patients with a displaced fracture in the upper arm near the shoulder (proximal humeral), there was no significant difference between surgical treatment and nonsurgical treatment in patient-reported outcomes over two years following the fracture, results that do not support the trend of increased surgery for patients with this type of fracture, according to a study in the March 10 issue of JAMA. Proximal humeral fractures account for 5 percent to 6 percent of all adult fractures; an estimated 706,000 occurred worldwide in 2000. The majority occur in people older ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Study results of one-year data for more than 12,000 patients who had transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the United States show an overall one-year death rate of 23.7 percent and a stroke rate of 4.1 percent, according to a study published in the March 10 issue of JAMA. "Transcatheter aortic valve replacement has become transformational for patients who need a new valve and are at high-risk for surgery or inoperable. But we have been lacking long-term data for this group of patients who are considering this procedure," says study lead ...

MADISON, Wis. -- In a study published March 9 in Nature Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison chemistry Professor Kyoung-Shin Choi presents a new approach to combine solar energy conversion and biomass conversion, two important research areas for renewable energy. For decades, scientists have been working to harness the energy from sunlight to drive chemical reactions to form fuels such as hydrogen, which provide a way to store solar energy for future use. Toward this end, many researchers have been working to develop functional, efficient and economical methods ...

From AGU's blogs: More urban heat; less summer fog, on California coast The summer fog that shrouds coastal southern California - what locals call the June Gloom - is being driven up into the sky by urban sprawl, according to scientists who have studied 67 years of cloud heights and urban growth in the region. Less fog may, at first, seem like a good thing. But less fog is bad news for native plants in the coastal hills and mountains, which depend on the cool fog as their only source of water during the rainless summer months. So less fog means warmer, drier, less healthy ...

Red lead is most familiar to us in orange-red rustproof paint. Artists have treasured the brilliant color of this pigment for their paintings since ancient times. However, various ageing processes cause discoloration of the saturated hue over time. Thanks to a combination of X-ray diffraction mapping and tomography experiments at DESY´s synchrotron light source PETRA III, Belgian scientists have now explained an additional step in the light-induced degradation of lead red. The key to their discovery was the identification of the very rare lead carbonate mineral plumbonacrite ...

A team of scientists led by Johns Hopkins cardiologist and biomedical engineer Hiroshi Ashikaga, M.D., Ph.D., has developed a mathematical model to measure and digitally map the beat-sustaining electrical flow between heart cells. The work, the scientists say, could form a blueprint for vastly more precise imaging tests that capture cell-to-cell communication and pinpoint the tiny clusters of cells at the epicenter of complex, life-threatening arrhythmias. Such imaging approaches, they add, would enable precision-targeted, minimally invasive treatments that eliminate ...

Infectious disease should be a key consideration in wildlife conservation, suggests a study focused on primates in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park, published by PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The study investigated the parasite Cryptosporidium and cross-species transmission risks among humans, wild primates and domesticated animals within the greater Gombe ecosystem. "We found that people are likely exposing the endangered chimpanzees of Gombe to a particular species of Cryptosporidium, which may be contributing to their decline," says Michelle Parsons, a PhD ...

Computers that function like the human brain could soon become a reality thanks to new research using optical fibres made of speciality glass. The research, published in Advanced Optical Materials, has the potential to allow faster and smarter optical computers capable of learning and evolving. Researchers from the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton, UK, and Centre for Disruptive Photonic Technologies (CDPT) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, have demonstrated how neural networks and synapses in the brain ...

Scientists on two continents have independently discovered a set of celestial objects that seem to belong to the rare category of dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies are the smallest known galaxies, and they could hold the key to understanding dark matter, and the process by which larger galaxies form. A team of researchers with the Dark Energy Survey, headquartered at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and an independent group from the University of Cambridge jointly announced their findings ...

People who lose their jobs are less willing to trust others for up to a decade after being laid-off, according to new research from The University of Manchester. Being made redundant or forced into unemployment can scar trust to such an extent that even after finding new work this distrust persists, according to the new findings of social scientist Dr James Laurence. This means that the large-scale job losses of the recent recession could lead to a worrying level of long-term distrust among the British public and risks having a detrimental effect on the fabric of society. Dr ...

DARIEN, IL - A new study finds that obstructive sleep apnea is associated with a significantly increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, and this risk is reduced when sleep apnea is treated effectively using continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy. Results show that patients with sleep apnea were nearly 2.5 times more likely to be the driver in a motor vehicle accident, compared with a control group of other drivers in the general population. Further risk analysis found that severe excessive daytime sleepiness, a short sleep duration of 5 hours or less, and ...

Many mammals -- and some birds -- escape the winter by hibernating for three to nine months. This period of dormancy permits species which would otherwise perish from the cold and scarce food to survive to see another spring. The Middle East, with temperate winters, was until recently considered an unlikely host for hibernating mammals. New research published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London by Tel Aviv University researchers is set to not only correct this fallacy but also change the very concept of hibernation. Prof. Noga Kronfeld-Schor, Chair of the Department ...

Natural forces have always caused the climate on Earth to fluctuate. Now researchers have found geological evidence that some of the same forces as today were at play 1.4 billion years ago. Fluctuating climate is a hallmark of Earth, and the present greenhouse effect is by far the only force affecting today's climate. On a larger scale the Earth's climate is also strongly affected by how the Earth orbits around the sun; this is called orbital forcing of climate change. These changes happen over thousands of years and they bring ice ages and warming periods. Now researchers ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - New clinical-trial findings provide further evidence that combining chemotherapy with radiation therapy is the best treatment for people with a low-grade form of brain cancer. The findings come from a phase II study co-led by a researcher at Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James) and researchers at the University of Maryland and at London Regional Cancer Program in Ontario, Canada. The study shows that patients with low-grade gliomas and at high risk ...

Established ways of measuring carbon emissions can sometimes give misleading feedback on how national policies affect global emissions. In some cases, countries are even rewarded for policies that increase global emissions, and punished for policies that contribute to reducing them. "We have developed a new method that provides policy makers with more useful information, in order to set national targets and evaluate their climate policies", says Astrid Kander, Professor in Economic History at Lund University, and lead author of the study, published in the latest issue ...

What inspires people to support conservation? As concerns grow about the sustainability of modern society, this question becomes more important. A new study by a team of researchers from Clemson University and Cornell University offers one simple answer: birdwatching and hunting. Their survey of conservation activity among rural landowners in Upstate New York considered a range of possible predictors, such as gender, age, education, political ideology and beliefs about the environment. All other factors being equal, birdwatchers are about five times as likely, and hunters ...

A study of a recently discovered fossil published by LMU zoologists reveals the specimen to be the oldest known crab larva: The fossil is 150 million years old, but looks astonishingly modern. To catch living crab larvae, all you have to do is trawl a plankton-net in the nearest bay or tidal pool. Finding fossilized crab larvae is rather more difficult - as witnessed by the fact that the specimen described in "Nature Communications" today by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich zoologists Joachim and Carolin Haug, and Joel Martin of the Natural History Museum ...

The increasing strength of winds over the Southern Ocean has extended its ability to absorb carbon dioxide, effectively delaying the impacts of global warming. New research published in the Journal of Physical Research found the intensifying wind over that ocean increased the speed and energy of eddies and jets, which are responsible in large part for the movement of nutrients, heat and salt across the ocean basin. The increased movement and overturning of these eddies and jets has accelerated the carbon cycle and driven more heat into the deep ocean. "Considering ...

ANDOVER, Mass. - March 9, 2015 - DeuteRx, LLC, is a research and development-focused biotechnology company dedicated to improving racemic small molecule marketed drugs and drug candidates intended for patients across multiple therapeutic indications. Today, DeuteRx announced the discovery of a method for the in vivo stabilization and differentiation of the individual enantiomers of selected thalidomide analogs. The method is described in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), entitled: "Differentiation of antiinflammatory and antitumorigenic properties ...

Capping and regulating CEO payments, including performance bonuses, could help make companies more profitable in the long term, new research has found. According to modeling by Dr Peter Cebon at the University of Melbourne in Australia and Dr Benjamin Hermalin from the University of California, Berkeley, reliance on performance bonuses - which are often $7-10 AUD million per year for top Australian CEOs - can lead executives to pursue poor strategies, including being too focused on short term gains. The model also showed that if bonuses are restricted, CEOs and boards ...

The paper summed the progress of the alternating EM field technique for earthquake monitoring and prediction after 1966 when Xingtai earthquake in Hebei province occurred, expounded the theoretical basement on electromagnetic field for this method, outlined new developed CSELF technique and the experimental examples and the study using satellite EM technologies, and introduced the new data processing and data mining techniques used for massive data (big data). The study, entitled "Advances in alternating electromagnetic field data processing for earthquake monitoring ...

The level of vitamin D in our blood should neither be too high nor to low. Scientists from the University of Copenhagen are the first in the world to show that there is a connection between high levels of vitamin D and cardiovascular deaths. In terms of public health, a lack of vitamin D has long been a focal point. Several studies have shown that too low levels can prove detrimental to our health. However, new research from the University of Copenhagen reveals, for the first time, that also too high levels of vitamin D in our blood is connected to an increased risk of ...