Complications from preterm (premature) births and pneumonia are now the leading causes of death in children under five years, together responsible for nearly 2 million deaths in 2013, according to the latest estimates, published today [Tuesday 30 September] in The Lancet. Researchers led by Professor Robert Black, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA, used the latest available data and modelling methods to examine what caused an estimated 6•3 million deaths of newborn babies (neonates) and children under five years in 2013. They found that ...

A large genetic study, published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal, has concluded there is no evidence of a causal link between a person's vitamin D levels [1], and whether they develop type 2 diabetes. The findings of the study, conducted by scientists at the University of Cambridge, challenge evidence from earlier observational studies which suggest that higher concentrations of circulating vitamin D might prevent type 2 diabetes. This evidence led to speculation that the development of type 2 diabetes is associated with vitamin D insufficiency. ...

In the first months of life, when babies begin to distinguish sounds that make up language from all the other sounds in the world, they can be trained to more effectively recognize which sounds "might" be language, accelerating the development of the brain maps which are critical to language acquisition and processing, according to new Rutgers research. The study by April Benasich and colleagues of Rutgers University-Newark is published in the October 1 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. The researchers found that when 4-month-old babies learned to pay attention to ...

The evolution of worms, insects, vertebrates and other "bilateral" animals—those with distinct left and right sides—from less complex creatures like jellyfish and sea anemones with "radial" symmetry may have been facilitated by the emergence of a completely new "operating system" for controlling genetic instructions in the cell. That's the hypothesis of molecular biologists at UC San Diego. They report in the October 1 issue of the journal Genes & Development that this new system of controlling gene networks, analogous to a new computer operating system, paved the way ...

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have completed the first comprehensive numerical simulation of skeletal muscle tissue using a method that uses the pixels in an image as data points for the computer simulation—a method known as mesh-free simulation. The researchers, led by J.S. Chen, the William Prager Professor of structural engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, presented their findings on the development of this method at the CompIMAGE'14 conference in Pittsburgh this month. Chen also gave a keynote speech about the work. ...

Having few friends, family and a general lack of social support is associated with poor health and quality of life and depression in young men and women a year after having a heart attack, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Social support is the perception of having friends or family who serve as confidants and companions, offer advice and information, show emotional concern, or provide financial or material support, said Emily Bucholz, lead researcher and a student in the School of Medicine and the Department of Chronic Disease ...

Among patients older than 50 years with moderate to severe chronic knee pain, neither laser nor needle acupuncture provided greater benefit on pain or function compared to sham laser acupuncture, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA. Chronic knee pain affects many people older than 50 years and is the most common pain concern among older people consulting family physicians. Nonpharmacological approaches are central to managing chronic knee pain, and patients with joint pain frequently use complementary and alternative medicine. Acupuncture is the most ...

In a trial involving patients at high risk of hospital readmission or death, use of a virtual ward model of care (using some elements of hospital care in the community) after hospital discharge did not significantly reduce the rate of readmission or death up to a year following discharge, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA. Hospital readmissions are common and costly, and no single intervention or bundle of interventions has reliably reduced readmissions. The virtual ward model of care is a way of providing care to patients with complex needs who are ...

Among patients ages 50 to 69 years who underwent aortic valve replacement with bioprosthetic (made primarily with tissue) compared with mechanical prosthetic valves, there was no significant difference in 15-year survival or stroke, although patients in the bioprosthetic valve group had a greater likelihood of reoperation but a lower likelihood of major bleeding, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA. Approximately 50,000 patients undergo aortic valve replacement annually in the United States. In older patients, bioprosthetic valves pose a low lifetime ...

An analysis of liability claims related to esophageal cancer screening finds that the risks of claims arising from acts of commission (complications from screening procedure) as well as acts of omission (failure to screen) are similarly low, according to a study in the October 1 issue of JAMA. Endoscopic screening for esophageal cancer has been recommended for patients with chronic symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux disease, but only if they have additional risk factors. Surveys of gastroenterologists indicate that concern about litigation for missing a cancer may drive ...

Millions of tourists visit the Mediterranean each year, but its deep-blue waters host the largest invasion currently underway on Earth. Almost 1,000 alien species, including fish, crustaceans, and algae are now established from other seas through human activities. In the open-access journal Frontiers in Marine Science, a multinational team of researchers analyzed data from a new information system developed by the European Commission to show how the introduction of alien species has changed the native biodiversity within the Mediterranean. A hotspot for marine biodiversity, ...

TORONTO — A virtual ward, a new model of care that provides support to high-risk and complex patients in the community for a few weeks after discharge from hospital, did not prevent hospital readmissions as hoped in a clinical trial in Toronto. Hospital readmissions are common and costly and no intervention has reliably reduced them. Virtual wards, pioneered in Britain 10 years ago, were thought to have the potential to reduce readmissions, but had not been rigorously evaluated by researchers. Dr. Irfan Dhalla, a physician at St. Michael's Hospital, led a randomized trial ...

CINCINNATI—The potential for doctors to measure damaging "brain tsunamis" in injured patients without opening the skull has moved a step closer to reality, thanks to pioneering research at the University of Cincinnati (UC) Neuroscience Institute. The research team, led by Jed Hartings, PhD, research associate professor in the department of neurosurgery at the UC College of Medicine, has shown that spreading depolarizations—electrical disturbances that spread through an injured brain like tsunami waves—can be measured by the placement of electroencephalograph (EEG) electrodes ...

On April 23, NASA's Swift satellite detected the strongest, hottest, and longest-lasting sequence of stellar flares ever seen from a nearby red dwarf star. The initial blast from this record-setting series of explosions was as much as 10,000 times more powerful than the largest solar flare ever recorded. "We used to think major flaring episodes from red dwarfs lasted no more than a day, but Swift detected at least seven powerful eruptions over a period of about two weeks," said Stephen Drake, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, ...

NASA and NOAA scientists participating in NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel (HS3) mission used their expert skills, combined with a bit of serendipity on Sept. 17, 2014, to guide the remotely piloted Global Hawk over the eye of Hurricane Edouard and release a sonde that rotated within the eye as it descended and fell into the eyewall of the storm at low levels. NASA's HS3 mission has returned to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia for the third year to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study of obese adults is the first to show that those who have obstructive sleep apnea have a significantly larger tongue with a higher percentage of fat than obese controls. This may provide a mechanistic explanation for the relationship between obesity and sleep apnea. Results show that obese participants with sleep apnea had significantly greater tongue volumes, tongue fat and percentage of tongue fat than obese controls without sleep apnea, after adjusting for potential confounders such as age, body mass index (BMI), gender and race. Further analysis ...

This news release is available in German. The researchers etched a photonic crystal around several quantum dots in a semiconductor layer. Quantum dots are small structures that spontaneously emit light as a consequence of atomic processes. If a short laser pulse is fired at the photonic crystal, its refractive index is modified and the quantum dot experiences a change in the electromagnetic field around it. This change can speed up or slow down the emission of light by the dot. As soon as the refractive index recovers its usual value, the dot emits light again ...

Next to lung cancer, breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in women, according to the American Cancer Society. That's why so many medical professionals encourage women to get mammograms, even though the tests are imperfect at best: only a minority of suspicious mammograms actually leads to a cancer diagnosis. That results in lots of needless worry for women and their families—not to mention the time, discomfort and expense of additional tests, including ultrasounds and biopsies. Recently, a different type of test, ultrasound elastography, has been used ...

Older adults often are readmitted after hospitalization for heart failure, pneumonia, and acute myocardial infarction, a significant issue that has caused Medicare to target hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates for financial penalties. Older adults are also often admitted for reasons other than the original hospitalization. This vulnerability to readmission has been referred to as "post-hospital syndrome." However, whether younger patients also experience a similar pattern of readmission has not been well studied. In a large cohort study, Isuru Ranasinghe and ...

Proton pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy is associated with hospitalization for hypomagnesemia, particularly among patients also receiving diuretics, according to research published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by David Juurlink of the University of Toronto and colleagues, suggests that physicians reconsider long-term PPI therapy for patients with a diagnosis of hypomagnesemia or concurrent use of diuretics. Roughly 145 million prescriptions for PPI are dispensed in the United States annually for acid-related disorders such as dyspepsia and gastroesophageal ...

Scientists have uncovered how pacemaker neurons are synchronized at dusk and dawn in order to maintain the proper functioning of their biological clocks. Their findings, which appear in the journal PLOS Biology, enhance our understanding of how sleep-wake cycles are regulated and offer promise for addressing related afflictions. "We've known for some time that the time-keeping of our biological clocks is a complex enterprise," says New York University's Justin Blau, a professor of biology and neural science and one of the study's co-authors. "But our results offer new ...

Although we now appreciate that birds evolved from a branch of the dinosaur family tree, a crucial adaptation for flight has continued to puzzle evolutionary biologists. During the millions of years that elapsed, wrists went from straight to bent and hyperflexible, allowing birds to fold their wings neatly against their bodies when not flying. How this happened has been the subject of much debate, with substantial disagreement between developmental biologists, who study how the wings of modern birds develop in the growing embryo, and palaeontologists who study the bones ...

Evidence of new behaviour being adopted and transmitted socially from one individual to another within a wild chimpanzee community is publishing on September 30 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. This is the first instance of social learning recorded in the wild. Scientists from University of St Andrews, University of Neuchâtel, Anglia Ruskin University, and Université du Quebec studied the spread of two novel tool-use behaviours among the Sonso chimpanzee community living in Uganda's Budongo Forest. Dr Catherine Hobaiter, Lecturer in Psychology at the University ...

TORONTO, Sept. 30, 2014 – Teenagers who said they had a traumatic brain injury in their lifetime, especially girls, also reported significantly higher rates of harmful behavior, according to new research. The study looked at 13 harmful health behaviours –such as contemplating suicide, smoking marijuana or binge drinking– among 9,288 Ontario students between Grades 7 and 12. "Both boys and girls were more likely to engage in a variety of harmful behaviours if they reported a history of TBI, but girls engaged in all 13 harmful behaviours we looked for, whereas boys were ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Using a bio-mimicking analog of one of nature's most efficient light-harvesting structures, blades of grass, an international research team led by Alejandro Briseno of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has taken a major step in developing long-sought polymer architecture to boost power-conversion efficiency of light to electricity for use in electronic devices. Briseno, with colleagues and graduate students at UMass Amherst and others at Stanford University and Dresden University of Technology, Germany, report in the current issue of Nano Letters ...