Certain patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) may have specific genetic risk factors that put them at higher risk for developing Alzheimer's disease (AD), according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published recently in Molecular Aspects of Medicine. Under the leadership of Giulio Maria Pasinetti, MD, PhD, Saunders Family Chair and Professor of Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of Biomedical Training in the Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Centers at J.J. Peters Bronx VA Medical Center, ...

New Haven, Conn. -- Researchers at the Aortic Institute at Yale have tested the genomes of more than 100 patients with thoracic aortic aneurysms, a potentially lethal condition, and provided genetically personalized care. Their work will also lead to the development of a "dictionary" of genes specific to the disease, according to researchers. The study published early online in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Experts have known for more than a decade that thoracic aortic aneurysms -- abnormal enlargements of the aorta in the chest area --run in families and are caused ...

A newly discovered family of chemical structures, published in Nature today, could increase the value of biogas and natural gas that contains carbon dioxide. The new chemical structures, known as zeolites, have been created by an international team of researchers including Professor Xiaodong Zou and co-workers from the Department of Materials and Environmental Chemistry at Stockholm University. The zeolites -- crystalline aluminosilicates with frameworks that contain windows and cavities the size of small molecules -- can separate out carbon dioxide more effectively ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Part of a 1929 prediction by physicist Hermann Weyl -- of a kind of massless particle that features a singular point in its energy spectrum called the "Weyl point," -- has finally been confirmed by direct observation for the first time, says an international team of physicists led by researchers at MIT. The finding could lead to new kinds of high-power single-mode lasers and other optical devices, the team says. For decades, physicists thought that the subatomic particles called neutrinos were, in fact, the massless particles that Weyl had predicted -- ...

EDMONTON (July 16, 2015)--Humans depend on high levels of ecosystem biodiversity, but due to climate change and changes in land use, biodiversity loss is now greater than at any time in human history. Five University of Alberta researchers, including students, participated in a leading global initiative to determine whether there are widespread and consistent patterns in plant biodiversity. Sixty-two scientists from 19 countries spanning six continents studied the relationships between plant biomass production and species diversity, culminating in a paper appearing in ...

PITTSBURGH--When it comes to developing efficient, robust networks, the brain may often know best. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have, for the first time, determined the rate at which the developing brain eliminates unneeded connections between neurons during early childhood. Though engineers use a dramatically different approach to build distributed networks of computers and sensors, the research team of computer scientists discovered that their newfound insights could be used to improve the robustness and ...

The Ebola epidemic and resulting international public health emergency is referred to as a "Black Swan" event in medical circles because of its unpredictable and impactful nature. However, a paper in the June 30 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, a leading journal in the field of infectious diseases, suggests that the response of the Chicago Ebola Response Network (CERN) in 2014-2015 has laid a foundation and a roadmap for how a regional public health network can anticipate, manage and prevent the next Black Swan public health event. By sharing the expertise, risk ...

New Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research finds new evidence that an extremely high number of people in southern India are exposed to two mosquito-borne viruses -- dengue and chikungunya. These findings, the researchers say, reinforce the need for officials to be on the lookout for these diseases and to find ways to control its spread not only in India but also around the world. The researchers, reporting July 16 in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, tested blood samples from 1,010 people across 50 locations in Chennai, a city with over 6 million people ...

When Should Genome Researchers Disclose Misattributed Parentage? Amulya Mandava, Joseph Millum, and Benjamin E. Berkman As genome sequencing improves, researchers will increasingly use it on parents and their children when the children have rare or undiagnosed diseases that might be genetic. However, researchers are sure to discover that, in a growing number of cases, the assumed biological relationships between the individuals do not exist. Consequently, the researchers will have to decide whether to disclose incidental findings of misattributed parentage on a much ...

Researchers have sniffed out an unspoken rule among women when it comes to fragrances: Women don't buy perfume for other women, and they certainly don't share them. Like boyfriends, current fragrance choices are hands off, forbidden--neither touch, nor smell. You can look, but that's all, says BYU industrial design professor and study coauthor Bryan Howell. "Women treasure fragrances as a vital pillar of their personal identity," said Howell, who caught wind of the finding while researching fragrance-packaging preferences. "They may use the same fragrance for many years, ...

Typhoon Nangka was knocking on Japan's door when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead early on July 16. Satellite imagery showed that Nangka's northern quadrant began spreading over southeastern Japan. The GPM core satellite spotted towering thunderstorms in Nangka's western side. NASA/JAXA's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core observatory satellite passed above Typhoon Nangka on July 15, 2015 at 1621 UTC (12:21 p.m. EDT) as the weakening typhoon approached the Japanese island of Shikoku. GPM's Dual-Frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR) instrument revealed that ...

A physical education program that brings commercial-grade fitness equipment to under-resourced schools, along with a curriculum based on boosting confidence and making participation more enjoyable, dramatically increases students' performance on California's standardized physical fitness test, a UCLA study has found. Publishing in the July issue of the Journal of Education and Training Studies, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a professor of urban planning and associate dean in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, reported that the UCLA Health Sound Body Sound Mind curriculum ...

Light becomes trapped as it orbits within tiny granules of a crystalline material that has increasingly intrigued physicists, a team led by University of California, San Diego, physics professor Michael Fogler has found. Hexagonal boron nitride, stacked layers of boron and nitrogen atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, has recently been found to bend electromagnetic energy in unusual and potentially useful ways. Last year Fogler and colleagues demonstrated that light could be stored within nanoscale granules of hexagonal boron nitride. Now Fogler's research group ...

Washington, DC, July 16, 2015 - Fewer than one in six (4/30) healthcare workers (HCW) followed all CDC recommendations for the removal of personal protective equipment (PPE) after patient care, according to a brief report published in the July issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). In this study undertaken by researchers from the University of Wisconsin, a trained observer watched healthcare personnel entering and exiting patient rooms specified as ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Potentially fatal blood clots account for thousands of emergency room visits each year and often those patients are admitted to the hospital, treated with an injectable anticoagulant and monitored for a few days. In companion studies published July 15 in Academic Emergency Medicine, an alternative approach was found to be more effective, less costly and allowed patients to go home the same day. Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine treated 106 low-risk patients diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism at two metropolitan ...

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A new report from the World Health Organisation urges the global community to accelerate action against rabies and other neglected zoonotic diseases. The WHO report - 'The Control of Neglected Zoonotic Diseases: from advocacy to action' - says rabies can be eliminated through existing knowledge and tools. It urges accelerated action by the global community. The study says that achieving a world free from dog-mediated human rabies in just 15 years is possible because of existing management tools - but only if there is increased investment. The Global Alliance for ...

Shooting a firearm requires coordinating many actions that depend upon core cognitive abilities, including the critical ability to stop just before pulling the trigger. People who have difficulty inhibiting responses are more likely to shoot unarmed civilians in simulated scenarios, but response inhibition training can help to reduce these shooting errors, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Our findings indicate that shooting abilities can be predicted, in part, by cognitive abilities, ...

A new pilot study in Parkinson's disease suggests a new era of clinical research which removes the barrier of distance for both scientists and volunteers. The research, which appears in the journal Digital Health, could also enable researchers to leverage the rapid growth in personal genetic testing to better diagnose, and potentially treat, a wide range of diseases. "These findings demonstrate that remote recruitment and conduct of research visits is feasible and well-received by participants," said Ray Dorsey, M.D., M.B.A., a neurologist at the University of Rochester ...

July 16, 2015 - Did you belong to community, sports, or other clubs in your teens? If so, you might be more likely to survive into your late seventies, suggests a study in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. People who were club members at age 18 are at lower risk of death by age 78, according to the report by Ian Deary, PhD, and colleagues of University of Edinburgh. The study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that social participation ...

Cannabis -- marijuana, hashish -- was used as a go-to medical remedy by societies around the world for centuries. But the therapeutic use of marijuana was banned in most countries in the 1930s and '40s due to a growing awareness of the dangers of addiction. The significant medical benefits of marijuana in alleviating symptoms of such diseases as Parkinson's, cancer, and multiple sclerosis have only recently been reinvestigated. A new study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research by Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University researchers explores another promising ...

Previously identified associations between TV viewing and a less healthful diet may stem from exposure to advertisements of high calorie foods and 'distracted eating' rather than the activity of sitting itself, although sitting time remains an independent risk factor requiring public health focus. These findings are according to a new study by American Cancer Society investigators conducted in collaboration with the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition and the University of Texas School of Public Health. For their study, published in Preventive Medicine, researchers examined ...

The following press release and accompanying images can be found at: http://news.agu.org/press-release/suns-activity-controls-greenland-temperatures/ Sun's activity controls Greenland temperatures AGU Contact: Leigh Cooper +1 (202) 777-7324 lcooper@agu.org WASHINGTON, D.C. - The sun's activity could be affecting a key ocean circulation mechanism that plays an important role in regulating Greenland's climate, according to a new study. The phenomenon could be partially responsible for cool temperatures the island experienced in the late 20th century and potentially ...

WASHINGTON -- A new multispectral microscope, one capable of processing nearly 17 billion pixels representing 13 individual color channels in a single image, has been successfully demonstrated by a team of researchers from the United States and Australia. This is the largest such microscopic image ever created. This level of multicolor detail is essential for studying the impact of experimental drugs on biological samples and is an important advancement over traditional microscope designs, which have fallen short when it comes to imaging large, spectrally diverse samples. ...

(Boston)--Having high blood pressure in your 50's may impact your ability to keep track or plan ahead in your 80's. This study reports a connection between high blood pressure at a younger age can affect cognition many years later. It currently appears in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease. Life expectancy is on the rise and people the age of 80 are the fastest growing demographic in the world. Several studies have demonstrated that high cardiovascular risk at midlife, particularly hypertension, is linked to subsequent increased risk of dementia. However, there is ...