SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - July 27, 2015 - Use of mechanical thrombectomy on qualifying stroke patients could result in major savings to the healthcare economy in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and other western countries with a similar healthcare structure, according to a new study presented at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 12th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The study, Developing an Interventional Stroke Service: Improving Clinical Outcomes and Reducing Cost and Delivering Great Cost Savings Benefits to Health Economy, conducted at the University Hospital of ...

Postpartum depression is a debilitating disorder that affects nearly 20 percent of new mothers, putting their infants at increased risk for poor behavioral, cognitive and social development. Researchers know that the hormone oxytocin, which plays a positive role in healthy birth, maternal bonding, relationships, lower stress levels, mood and emotional regulation, also is associated with postpartum depression when a mother has lower levels of the hormone. A University of Virginia researcher and a team from several institutions in the United States and England have now ...

For children with a common middle-ear problem, a simple procedure with a nasal balloon can reduce the impact of hearing loss and avoid unnecessary and ineffective use of antibiotics, according to a randomized controlled trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). It is very common for young children to develop otitis media with effusion, also known as "glue ear," in which the middle ear fills with thick fluid that can affect hearing development. There are frequently no symptoms, and parents often seek medical help only when hearing difficulties occur. "Unfortunately, ...

BOSTON - Delirium is an acute state of confusion that often affects older adults following surgery or serious illness. Now a study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) confirms that inflammation - an immune response that develops when the body attempts to protect itself from harmful stimuli -- plays a role in the onset of delirium. Published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, the new study found that older patients with delirium had significantly elevated levels of the inflammatory marker ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The rapid spread of a common and deadly brain tumor has been slowed down significantly in a mouse model by cutting off the way some cancer cells communicate, according to a team of researchers that includes UF Health faculty. The technique improved the survival time for patients with glioblastoma by 50 percent when tested in a mouse model, said Loic P. Deleyrolle, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of neurosurgery in the UF College of Medicine. Researchers focused on disrupting the cell-to-cell communication that allows cancer stem cells to spread. ...

AUSTIN, Texas - Psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin found that children flexibly choose when to imitate and when to innovate the behavior of others, demonstrating that children are precocious social learners. "There's nothing children are more interested in than other people," said UT Austin psychologist Cristine Legare. "Acquiring the skills and practices of their social groups is the fundamental task of childhood." In order to function within their social groups, children have to learn both technical skills with instrumental goals, such as using a fork ...

A new tool called DeepBind uses deep learning to analyze how proteins bind to DNA and RNA, allowing it to detect mutations that could disrupt cellular processes and cause disease. CIFAR Senior Fellow Brendan Frey (University of Toronto), supervising lead authors Babak Alipanahi and Andrew Delong, developed the method using deep learning -- a machine learning technique pioneered by CIFAR fellows in the Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception program and now used by companies such as Google and Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of proteins in human cells attach themselves ...

About 10 percent of serious and unexpected adverse events are not reported by drug manufacturers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the 15-day timeframe set out in federal regulations, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Health care professionals and consumers can voluntarily report adverse drug events directly to the FDA or the drug manufacturer. Adverse events that are serious (including death, life-threatening, hospitalization, disability and birth defects) and unexpected (any adverse experience not listed in the current ...

An imaging study suggests insulin resistance, a prevalent and increasingly common condition, was associated with lower brain glucose metabolism in a group of late middle-age adults at risk for Alzheimer disease, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology. Insulin resistance is broadly defined as reduced tissue responsiveness to the action of insulin. According to the American Diabetes Association, 29.1 million individuals in the United States have diabetes and more than half of adults older than 64 have prediabetes. Type 2 diabetes is associated with an ...

Admission rates are increasing for newborns of all weights at neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in the United States, raising questions about possible overuse of this highly specialized and expensive care in some newborns, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The neonatal mortality rate has fallen more than four-fold (from 18.73 per 1,000 live births to 4.04 per 1,000 live births in 2012) since the first NICU opened in the United States 55 years ago to provide highly specialized care to premature and sick infants. Few studies have looked ...

No earlier than last year, did the first, and up until recently only, endemic to Upper Guinea family of torrent tooth-frog come to light. Now, Dr. Michael F. Barej from the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, and his colleagues verify the existence of as many as four new highly endangered species. In their study the researchers provide crucial insights for the conservation of the biodiversity hotspot. Their research on the suggested existence of a complex of cryptic (structurally identical) species is published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. Suffice ...

Quantum technology based on light (photons) has great potential for radically new information technology based on photonic circuits. Up to now, the photons in quantum photonic circuits have behaved in the same way whether they moved forward or backward in a photonic channel. This has limited the ability to control the photons and thus build complex circuits for photonic quantum computers. Now researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have discovered a new type of photonic channels, where back and forth are not equal distances! Such a system has been a missing component ...

New Haven, Conn. -- A multidisciplinary team at Yale, led by Yale Cancer Center members, has defined a subgroup of genetic mutations that are present in a significant number of melanoma skin cancer cases. Their findings shed light on an important mutation in this deadly disease, and may lead to more targeted anti-cancer therapies. The study was published July 27 in Nature Genetics. The role of mutations in numerous genes and genomic changes in the development of melanoma -- a skin cancer with over 70,000 new cases reported in the United States each year -- is well established ...

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) frequently develops between the age of two and three. This leukemia has various forms, which differ through certain changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells. A team of scientists involved in a joint international project headed by Jean-Pierre Bourquin, a pediatric oncologist from the University Children's Hospital Zurich, and Martin Stanulla, a professor at Hannover Medical School, has now succeeded in decoding the genome and transcriptome of an as yet incurable sub-type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These results were ...

In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a device which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the "photophone". Bell's idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre-optic cables as light pulses. For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and ...

Bethesda, MD (July 27, 2015) -- Weight loss through both lifestyle modification and bariatric surgery can significantly reduce features of nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a disease characterized by fat in the liver, according to two new studies published in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "While the underlying cause of NASH is unclear, we most commonly see this condition in patients who are middle-aged and overweight or obese," said Giulio Marchesini, MD, from University of Bologna, Italy, and lead author of ...

As the International Olympic Committee prepares to choose between Beijing (China) and Almaty (Kazakhstan) as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, a new report shows that the cost of last year's Games in Sochi, Russia, has been underestimated by billions of dollars. Ahead of the decision on 31 July, a study by Dr Martin Müller of the University of Birmingham finds that: The Sochi Games cost $16bn in sports-related expenditure alone - more than twice the official figure of $7bn Total costs, including capital costs, amount to $55bn Sochi is the most expensive ...

Putting in a lot of effort to earn a reward can make unappealing prizes more attractive to kindergartners, but not to preschoolers, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The findings revealed that when 6-year-olds worked hard to earn stickers that they ultimately didn't like, they were loath to give them up, whereas 4-year-olds were comparatively eager to give the unappealing stickers away. "When effort leads to an unsatisfying reward, adults experience a cognitive dissonance, arguably resolved ...

Psychologists at the University of York have revealed new evidence showing how specific language used by parents to talk to their babies can help their child to understand the thoughts of others when they get older. Studying the effects of maternal mind-mindedness (the ability to 'tune in' to their young child's thoughts and feelings), lead author Dr Elizabeth Kirk observed 40 mothers and their babies when they were 10, 12, 16, and 20 months old. Keeping a record of parental language while a mother and her child played for 10 minutes, psychologists logged every time ...

MIAMI - A new collaborative study led by scientists at the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science & Abess Center for Ecosystem Science & Policy examined predator-prey interactions between tiger sharks and sea turtles off the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. The research team used long-term satellite tagging data from large tiger sharks and adult female loggerhead sea turtles, common prey of tiger sharks, to examine their movement patterns and evaluate if turtles modify their behaviors to reduce their chances of a shark attack when turtle ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 27, 2015 - In the last decade, Intra-Arterial (IA) stroke therapy (a technique in which thrombolytic agents and devices are passed through the arteries directly to the clot site) has gained notable momentum as an effective and safe treatment option for patients. Two new studies released today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 12th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, further reinforce the value and progress of IA treatment with conclusions that the innovative new devices that facilitate this approach are reducing treatment times, improving ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - July 27, 2015 - Despite efforts to close the time gap between symptom onset and stroke treatment - including improvements in public education, 911 dispatch operations, pre-hospital detection and triage, hospital stroke system development, and stroke unit management - a new study presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery (SNIS) 12th Annual Meeting suggests that delays in emergency transport are still prevalent and that improvements are needed to ensure patients can be treated within the optimal time window. Perhaps more than any ...

Whether restaurant customers have the option to add sausage or broccoli to their pizzas or make healthier substitutions to their salads or sandwiches ultimately can make or break a food retailer. A paper forthcoming in the September 2015 issue of the Journal of Retailing seeks to explain the way people decide to customize their food orders and the implications for retailers and customers alike. In "To Choose or to Reject: The Effect of Decision Frame on Food Customization Decisions," by Senior Lecturers Anish Nagpal and Jing Lei, of the University of Melbourne, ...

The Viking hit-and-run raids on monastic communities such as Lindisfarne and Iona were the most infamous result of burgeoning Scandinavian maritime prowess in the closing years of the Eighth Century. These skirmishes led to more expansive military campaigns, settlement, and ultimately conquest of large swathes of the British Isles. But Dr Steve Ashby, of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, wanted to explore the social justifications for this spike in aggressive activity. Previous research has considered environmental, demographic, technological ...

Home births lead to higher infant mortality than hospital births, at least for mothers living in poorer areas. This is the conclusion of a new study conducted by N. Meltem Daysal (University of Southern Denmark and IZA), Mircea Trandafir (University of Southern Denmark and IZA) and Reyn van Ewijk (VU University Amsterdam and University of Mainz) that examines 356,412 low-risk Dutch women who delivered between 2000 and 2008 and who were allowed to choose between a home and a hospital birth. The safety of home births for low-risk women is a hotly debated topic in the Western ...