The most common type of hospital-associated infection may be preventable with a vaccine, new research in mice suggests. The experimental vaccine, developed by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, prevented urinary tract infections associated with catheters, the tubes used in hospitals and other care facilities to drain urine from a patient's bladder. Each day a catheter is present in the urethra and the bladder, the risk of urinary tract infection increases. Nearly every patient who has a catheter for more than 30 days acquires a urinary ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study suggests that people who experience migraine in middle age may be more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, or other movement disorders later in life. Those who have migraine with aura may be at double the risk of developing Parkinson's, according to the study published in the September 17, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Migraine is the most common brain disorder in both men and women," said study author Ann I. Scher, PhD, with Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, MD, and ...

(September 17, 2014, San Francisco) – Patients with early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who are otherwise healthy fare better over time if they undergo conventional surgery versus less-invasive radiosurgery to remove their cancer, according to a Yale study. The findings are scheduled to be presented at the 56th annual conference of the American Society for Radiation Oncology in San Francisco. (Abstract # 302; Comparative Effectiveness of Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy versus Surgery for Stage I Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer.) The study used Medicare billing records ...

NEW YORK, NY, September 17, 2014 - In a novel brain-imaging study among trauma victims, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have linked an opioid receptor in the brain -- associated with emotions -- to a narrow cluster of trauma symptoms, including sadness, emotional detachment and listlessness. The study, published online today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, holds important implications for targeted, personalized treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a psychiatric condition affecting more than 8 million Americans that can cause a wide range of debilitating ...

Bottom Line: Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were associated with increased food addiction, especially when individuals had more symptoms or the symptoms occurred earlier in life. Authors: Susan M. Mason, Ph.D., of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and colleagues. Background: PTSD is a potentially severe psychiatric condition. A growing body of evidence suggests that PTSD is a risk factor for obesity and obesity-related diseases. Food addiction is not established as a psychiatric diagnosis but may indicate use of food to cope with psychological ...

VIDEO: Henry Lim, M.D., chair of Dermatology, Henry Ford Hospital, highlights the study. Click here for more information. DETROIT – A treatment regimen is safe and effective for restoring skin pigmentation in vitiligo patients, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. "Our findings offer patients with vitiligo worldwide a renewed hope for a bright future in the treatment of this disfiguring disease," says Henry Lim, M.D., chair of Dermatology at Henry Ford and the study's ...

Bottom Line: Patients with the skin depigmentation disease known as vitiligo had faster and better repigmentation after a combination therapy of the implantable drug afamelanotide and narrowband UV-B (NB-UV-B) phototherapy as part of a clinical trial. Author: Henry W. Lim, M.D., of Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, Mich., and colleagues. Background: Vitiligo is characterized by white patches of skin and affects 1 percent to 2 percent of the population. The authors report the results of a multicenter randomized clinical trial comparing the safety and effectiveness of the ...

Buffers that guard against damage to the ends of chromosomes could hold the key to a better understanding of malignant melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – according to new research from the University of Leeds. The study has uncovered an important new genetic risk factor for melanoma. It is well known that pigmentation and mole count are the strongest indicators of those most at risk of developing melanoma. For example, paler people should take more care in the sun, as they burn more easily. It now appears that another risk factor is the length of telomeres, ...

Tropical storm warnings now issued for a portion of the Southwestern coast of Mexico as Polo continues to strengthen. Infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite showed powerful thunderstorms around the center of the storm. A Tropical Storm Warning is in force for the southwest coast of Mexico from Punta San Telmo to Playa Perula. A Tropical Storm Watch is in force from Punta San Telmo to Zihuatanejo and from Playa Perula to Cabo Corrientes. Rainfall totals of 5 to 10, locally up to 15 inches, can be expected over coastal areas of Michoacan, Colima and Jalisco states ...

Although NASA's Aqua satellite showed that Hurricane Edouard is far from U.S. soil, it is powerful enough that it is creating dangerous swells along the U.S. East Coast. On Sept. 17, the National Hurricane Center noted "Swells from Edouard will affect portions of the east coast of the United States north of Florida beginning today. These swells will likely cause life-threatening rip current conditions along most of the United States east coast for the next couple of days." When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Hurricane Edouard on Sept. 16 the MODIS instrument captured ...

A UT Arlington engineering professor and his doctoral student have designed a device based on a shorebird's beak that can accumulate water collected from fog and dew. The device could provide water in drought-stricken areas of the world or deserts around the globe. Cheng Luo, professor in the Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Department, and Xin Heng, PhD candidate in the same College of Engineering department, published "Bioinspired Plate-Based Fog Collectors" in the Aug. 25 edition of ACS' (American Chemical Society) Applied Materials & Interfaces journal. ACS also ...

LA JOLLA, CA—September 17, 2014—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a new antibiotic based on vancomycin that is powerfully effective against vancomycin-resistant strains of MRSA and other disease-causing bacteria. The new vancomycin analog appears to have not one but two distinct mechanisms of anti-microbial action, against which bacteria probably cannot evolve resistance quickly. "This is the prototype of analogues that once introduced will still be in clinical use a generation or maybe even two generations from now," said Dale L. Boger, ...

Washington, DC (September 17, 2014) – Receiving an email that claims you are the recipient of a large sum of money from an unknown deceased relative immediately raises a red flag. These email scams are often trashed or filtered through spam folders. But what about on social networks where there is no filter? Where people can learn about your personal life with a few clicks? A recent study published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication by a researcher at the University at Buffalo – State University of New York found that people who habitually use Facebook were ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — As Congress adjourns this month for the November elections, one of the killed bills senators will step over on their way out the chamber door will be the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014. In a new commentary in the journal JAMA Surgery, Dr. Eli Adashi recounts what he and other advocates saw as the merits of the originally bipartisan bill. The perennial trouble with how Medicare pays doctors will return for the next Congress, Adashi said, and broader trends in health care practice ...

A team of researchers, including an astronomer from Michigan State University, has discovered a huge black hole at the center of an ultra-compact galaxy – the smallest galaxy known to contain one. The galaxy, known as M60-UCD1, was discovered last year by a team led by Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy. Strader was a member of the team that found the black hole. The findings are detailed in the recent edition of the journal Nature. The finding suggests that other ultra-compact galaxies also may contain massive black holes. And that those ...

Bioluminescence, nanoparticles, gene manipulation – these sound like the ideas of a science fiction writer, but, in fact, they are components of an exciting new approach to imaging local and metastatic tumors. In preclinical animal models of metastatic prostate cancer, scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center, VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine and Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions have provided proof-of-principle of a new molecular imaging approach that could revolutionize doctors' ability to see tumors that have metastasized to other sites ...

Astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground observation have found an unlikely object in an improbable place -- a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies ever known. The black hole is five times the mass of the one at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. It is inside one of the densest galaxies known to date -- the M60-UCD1 dwarf galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, which is only 1/500th of our galaxy's diameter. If you lived inside this dwarf galaxy, the night sky would dazzle ...

Historically, spaceflight has been reserved for the very healthy. Astronauts are selected for their ability to meet the highest physical and psychological standards to prepare them for any unknown challenges. However, with the advent of commercial spaceflight, average people can now fly for enjoyment. The aerospace medicine community has had very little information about what medical conditions or diseases should be considered particularly risky in the spaceflight environment, as most medical conditions have never been studied for risk in space — until now. The aerospace ...

On Sept. 10, 2014, NASA's newest solar observatory, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, mission joined other telescopes to witness an X-class flare – an example of one of the strongest solar flares -- on the sun. Combing observations from more than one telescope helps create a much more complete picture of such events on our closest star. Watch the movie to see how the flare appears different through the eyes of IRIS than it does through NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. The movie shows IRIS imagery focused in on material at around 60,000 Kelvin (107,500 ...

NEW YORK—With the National Football League in full damage-control mode, there are many questions about how the NFL's leader handled the Ray Rice case. Was Goodell ignoring the pleas of stakeholders—former NFL players, the media and domestic violence groups—when deciding on a two game penalty? The answer may lie in a study out today by Columbia Business School. The research, just published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, finds that leaders who fail to take into account their audiences' perspective have a far greater propensity to bungle the issue and conversation. ...

At the Intelligent Transportation Systems World Congress last week, MIT researchers received one of the best-paper awards for a new system, dubbed RoadRunner, that uses GPS-style turn-by-turn directions to route drivers around congested roadways. In simulations using data supplied by Singapore's Land Transit Authority, the researchers compared their system to one currently in use in Singapore, which charges drivers with dashboard-mounted transponders a toll for entering congested areas. The Singapore system gauges drivers' locations with radio transmitters mounted on ...

Tropical Storm Odile continues to spread moisture and generate strong thunderstorms with heavy rainfall over northern Mexico's mainland and the Baja California as well as the southwestern U.S. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite measured rainfall rates from space as it passed over Odile. Odile had weakened to a tropical storm with winds of about 55 knots (63.3 mph) when the TRMM satellite flew over on September 16, 2014 at 0917 UTC (2:19 a.m. PDT). Odile was still well organized and TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR) measured rain falling at a rate ...

Furnishing a research lab can be pretty expensive. Now a team led by an engineer at Michigan Technological University has published an open-source library of designs that will let scientists slash the cost of one commonly used piece of equipment: the syringe pump. Syringe pumps are used to dispatch precise amounts of liquid, as for drug delivery or mixing chemicals in a reaction. They can also cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Joshua Pearce and his team of Michigan Tech students published the library of free syringe-pump designs, which anyone can make on a ...

Climate change may expand suitable cropland, particularly in the Northern high latitudes, but tropical regions may becoming decreasingly suitable, according to a study published September 17, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Florian Zabel from Ludwig Maximilians University, Germany and colleagues. Most of the Earth's accessible agricultural land are already under cultivation. Ecological factors such as climate, soil quality, water supply and topography determine the suitability of land for agriculture. Climate change may impact global agriculture, but some ...

New research has found clownfish larvae can swim up to 400 kilometres in search of a home, which makes them better able to cope with environmental change. Clownfish spend their entire adult lives under the protection of their host anemone but as babies they must wander the open ocean, says study co-author, Dr Hugo Harrison from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at James Cook University. "In the past we haven't known where they go, but now we've been given a rare glimpse into how far they can swim, crossing large tracts of ocean to find ...