Most severely obese people experience much better spirits once they shed weight through a diet, lifestyle changes or medical intervention. This is unfortunately not true for everyone, says Valentina Ivezaj and Carlos Grilo of the Yale University School of Medicine in the US. In an article in Springer's journal Obesity Surgery, the researchers advise that the levels of depression in patients be measured six to 12 months after they have had such bariatric surgery. This will ensure that the necessary help can be provided when needed. Ivezaj and Grilo set out to investigate ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – While the unemployment rate for people out of work for six months or less has returned to prerecession levels, the levels of unemployment for workers who remain jobless for more than six months is among the most persistent, negative effects of the Great Recession, according to a new national study at Rutgers. In fact, one in five workers laid off from a job during the last five years are still unemployed and looking for work, researchers from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found. Among the key findings of "Left Behind: The ...

Big disasters almost always result in big power failures. Not only do they take down the TV and fridge, they also wreak havoc with key infrastructure like cell towers. That can delay search and rescue operations at a time when minutes count. Now, a team led by Nina Mahmoudian of Michigan Technological University has developed a tabletop model of a robot team that can bring power to places that need it the most. "If we can regain power in communication towers, then we can find the people we need to rescue," says Mahmoudian, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering–engineering ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – In a state famous for its turnpike and infamous for traffic, tolls and "Jersey drivers," a new partnership between the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) has launched a series of public health polls with a survey about risky driving habits. New Jerseyans were asked about their perceptions of safety both as a driver and passenger. "Three-quarters of New Jerseyans are behind the wheel nearly every day. They are continually at the center of jokes and have even been ranked as some of the worst drivers in the country," ...

Ancient, acidic and nutrient-depleted dunes in Western Australia are not an obvious place to answer a question that has vexed tropical biologists for decades. But the Jurien Bay dunes proved to be the perfect site to unravel why plant diversity varies from place to place. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientist Benjamin Turner and colleagues from the University of Western Australia published findings in the Sept. 26 edition of Science showing that environmental filtering—but not a host of other theories—determines local plant diversity in one of Earth's biodiversity ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 25, 2014) – Recently published prevalence estimates of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in five Latin American countries — Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela — could suggest a new direction for United States foreign policy in the region, according to a tropical-disease expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Dr. Peter Hotez, the fellow in disease and poverty at the Baker Institute, outlined his insights in a new editorial, "The NTDs and Vaccine Diplomacy in Latin America: Opportunities for United States Foreign Policy," ...

A study published on September 25th in PLOS Pathogens reports a new primate model to test treatments that might cure HIV/AIDS and suggests answers to questions raised by the "Berlin patient", the only human thought to have been cured so far. Being HIV-positive and having developed leukemia, the Berlin patient underwent irradiation followed by a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation that abolishes the function of the CCR5 gene. The gene codes for a protein that facilitates HIV entry into human cells, and the mutation—in homozygous carriers who, like the donor, ...

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (Bonn, Germany), Cornell University (USA), and the University of Cologne (Germany) have for the first time detected a carbon-bearing molecule with a "branched" structure in interstellar space. The molecule, iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN), was discovered in a giant gas cloud called Sagittarius B2, a region of ongoing star formation close to the center of our galaxy that is a hot-spot for molecule-hunting astronomers. The branched structure of the carbon atoms within the iso-propyl cyanide molecule is unlike the ...

The analysis of artifacts from a 325,000-year-old site in Armenia shows that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought. The study, published today in the journal Science, examines thousands of stone artifacts retrieved from Nor Geghi 1, a unique site preserved between two lava flows dated to 200,000–400,000 years ago. Layers of floodplain sediments and an ancient soil found between these lava flows contain the archaeological material. The dating of volcanic ...

Washington, D.C.—Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth's water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere. New work from a team including Carnegie's Conel Alexander found that much of our Solar System's water likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space. Their work is published in Science. Water is found throughout our Solar System. Not just on Earth, but ...

The deadly rabies virus--aptly shaped like a bullet-- can be eliminated among humans by stopping it point-blank among dogs, according to a team of international researchers led by the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University. Ridding the world of rabies is cost-effective and achievable through mass dog vaccination programs, the scientists report in a paper that appears in the Sept. 26 issue of Science magazine. What's more, they write, because infections occur as a result of interactions between animals and people, a "One Health" approach ...

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed. It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary ...

VIDEO: Science published on Sept. 25, 2014 the latest developments in Michael Grätzel's laboratory at EPFL in the field of hydrogen production from water. By combining a pair of perovskite solar... Click here for more information. The race is on to optimize solar energy's performance. More efficient silicon photovoltaic panels, dye-sensitized solar cells, concentrated cells and thermodynamic solar plants all pursue the same goal: to produce a maximum amount of electrons ...

A new discovery of thousands of Stone Age tools has provided a major insight into human innovation 325,000 years ago and how early technological developments spread across the world, according to research published in the journal Science. Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with an international team from across the United States and Europe, have found evidence which challenges the belief that a type of technology known as Levallois – where the flakes and blades of stones were used to make useful products such as hunting weapons – was invented ...

PITTSBURGH—Electricity and magnetism rule our digital world. Semiconductors process electrical information, while magnetic materials enable long-term data storage. A University of Pittsburgh research team has discovered a way to fuse these two distinct properties in a single material, paving the way for new ultrahigh density storage and computing architectures. While phones and laptops rely on electricity to process and temporarily store information, long-term data storage is still largely achieved via magnetism. Discs coated with magnetic material are locally oriented ...

Two years after its release, the HIV-1 drug Ritonavir was pulled from the market. Scientists discovered that the drug had crystallized into a slightly different form—called a polymorph—that was less soluble and made it ineffective as a treatment. The various patterns that atoms of a solid material can adopt, called crystal structures, can have a huge impact on its properties. Being able to accurately predict the most stable crystal structure for a material has been a longstanding challenge for scientists. "The holy grail of this particular problem is to say, I've written ...

A triple-punch of antibodies both prevented hepatitis C infection and wiped out the disease after it had established itself in laboratory mice, according to a study led by Princeton University researchers. Instead of delivering the three antibodies directly, the researchers administered a genetic "instruction set" that, once in a cell, developed into antibodies that target the portions of the virus that do not mutate. Mice treated with the antibody genetic code resisted becoming infected with hepatitis C when they were exposed to the virus, the researchers reported in ...

The excessive atmospheric carbon dioxide that is driving global climate change could be harnessed into a renewable energy technology that would be a win for both the environment and the economy. That is the lure of artificial photosynthesis in which the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide is used to produce clean, green and sustainable fuels. However, finding a catalyst for reducing carbon dioxide that is highly selective and efficient has proven to be a huge scientific challenge. Meeting this challenge in the future should be easier thanks to new research results ...

DETROIT – A new study from researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit finds widespread vitamin D deficiency among patients who undergo a thyroidectomy, potentially putting them at greater risk for developing dangerously low blood calcium levels after surgery. Among the patients in the Henry Ford study, 40 percent had low vitamin D levels prior to surgery. Those more likely to be vitamin D deficient are individuals older than age 50, African Americans, Hispanics and patients undergoing surgery for hyperthyroidism. "The issue of vitamin D deficiency in patients who ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Concrete is the world's most-used construction material, and a leading contributor to global warming, producing as much as one-tenth of industry-generated greenhouse-gas emissions. Now a new study suggests a way in which those emissions could be reduced by more than half — and the result would be a stronger, more durable material. The findings come from the most detailed molecular analysis yet of the complex structure of concrete, which is a mixture of sand, gravel, water, and cement. Cement is made by cooking calcium-rich material, usually limestone, ...

(Boston) – When it comes to treating infants with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS), researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) believe the care for these infants should be consistent and objective, with standardized assessment tools and evidence to back up pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic treatment choices. The review paper, which is published online in Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, highlights the need for more research in this field to optimize care for both infants and their mothers. NAS is a collection of signs and symptoms infants ...

(Vienna, October 26, 2014) The transplantation of faecal microbiota from a healthy donor has been shown in recent clinical studies to be a safe and highly effective treatment for recurrent Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infection and is now recommended in European treatment guidelines.1,2 Faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) has emerged as a revolutionary, potentially life-saving treatment for this common, difficult-to-treat infection, and is showing promise in the management of other microbiota-related conditions.3,4 Presenting at the 22nd United European Gastroenterology ...

AUDIO: Editor Karen Carniol interviews Dr. Alla Karpova on her latest Cell paper. Click here for more information. Past experience is usually a reliable guide for making decisions, but in unpredictable and challenging situations, it might make more sense to take risks. A study published by Cell Press September 25th in the journal Cell shows that, in competitive situations, rats abandon their normal tactic of using past experience to make decisions and instead make random choices ...

Tourette syndrome is a developmental disorder characterized by involuntary, repetitive, and stereotyped movements or utterances. Now researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on September 25 have new evidence to explain how those with Tourette syndrome in childhood often manage to gain control over those tics. In individuals with the condition, a portion of the brain involved in planning and executing movements shows an unusual increase compared to the average brain in the production of a primary inhibitory neurotransmitter known as GABA. The paradoxical ...

VIDEO: Salk scientists find that a vitamin D-derivative makes tumors vulnerable to chemotherapy. Click here for more information. LA JOLLA—A synthetic derivative of vitamin D was found by Salk Institute researchers to collapse the barrier of cells shielding pancreatic tumors, making this seemingly impenetrable cancer much more susceptible to therapeutic drugs. The discovery has led to human trials for pancreatic cancer, even in advance of its publication today in the journal ...