Cigarette smoking is a leading cause of preventable death worldwide and is associated with approximately 440,000 deaths in the United States each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but nearly 20 percent of the U.S. population continues to smoke cigarettes. While more than half of U.S. smokers try to quit every year, less than 10 percent are able to remain smoke-free, and relapse commonly occurs within 48 hours of smoking cessation. Learning about withdrawal and difficulty of quitting can lead to more effective treatments to help smokers ...

Before you revive the debate about which sibling in your family is the favorite, you'll want to know what the latest research shows. Brigham Young University professor Alex Jensen analyzed 282 families with teenage siblings for a study that appears in the Journal of Family Psychology. Favoritism in parenting is a complex topic for sure, but here are some important take-aways. Does it really matter? Yes, at least for some families. Jensen looked at perceived preferential treatment in different types of family dynamics. For families that aren't very close to each other ...

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 10, 2014 — Brain inflammation can rapidly disrupt our ability to retrieve complex memories of similar but distinct experiences, according to UC Irvine neuroscientists Jennifer Czerniawski and John Guzowski. Their study – which appears today in the Journal of Neuroscience – specifically identifies how immune system signaling molecules, called cytokines, impair communication among neurons in the hippocampus, an area of the brain critical for discrimination memory. The findings offer insight into why cognitive deficits occurs in people undergoing chemotherapy ...

Melbourne researchers have discovered that cartilage plays an active role in the destruction and remodelling of joints seen in rheumatoid arthritis, rather than being an 'innocent bystander' as previously thought. Dr Tommy Liu, Professor Ian Wicks, Dr Kate Lawler, Dr Ben Croker and colleagues from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute made the discovery while investigating the role of the protein SOCS3 in controlling inflammation during rheumatoid arthritis. The study was published in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatology. Rheumatoid arthritis affects more than 400,000 ...

Researchers at Utrecht University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute collaborated on a meta-analysis of research on adolescent sexual behavior. The goal was to analyze how this behavior is related to adolescents' perceptions of three types of sexual peer norms, including how sexually active their peers are, how much their peers would approve of being sexually active, or how much they feel pressured by their peers to have sex. Awareness that these are different ways in which peers can affect adolescents' sexual behaviors is important for parents, teachers, and ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A small protein named GILZ appears to protect against the bone loss that often accompanies arthritis and its treatment, researchers report. Arthritis as well as aging prompt the body to make more fat than bone, and the researchers have previously shown GILZ can restore a more youthful, healthy mix. It also tamps down inflammation, a major factor in arthritis. Now they have early evidence that GILZ might one day be a better treatment option for arthritis patients than widely used synthetic glucocorticoids, which actually increase bone loss, said Dr. Xingming ...

Different types of dendritic cells in human skin have assorted functions in the early and more advanced stages of psoriasis report researchers in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. The scientists suggest that new strategies to regulate the composition of dendritic cells in psoriatic skin lesions might represent an approach for the future treatment of the disease. "We urgently need new ways to treat psoriasis, treatments that will deliver improved benefits to patients and reduce the incidence of known side effects for existing drugs," says EMBO Member Maria Sibilia, ...

There is a link between our brain structure and our tolerance of risk, new research suggests. Dr Agnieszka Tymula, an economist at the University of Sydney, is one of the lead authors of a new study that identifies what might be considered the first stable 'biomarker' for financial risk-attitudes. Using a whole-brain analysis, Dr Tymula and international collaborators found that the grey matter volume of a region in the right posterior parietal cortex was significantly predictive of individual risk attitudes. Men and women with higher grey matter volume in this region ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that age (or age at diagnosis) and duration of diabetes disease are linked to the risk of death and marcovascular complications (those in larger blood vessels), whereas only diabetes duration is linked to the risk of microvascular complications (in smaller blood vessels such as those in the eyes). This means younger people with diabetes are more at risk of microvascular complications since they are more likely to have diabetes for longer over their lifetimes ...

Combined treatment with a drug that mimics the action of a gut hormone and basal insulin [1] is more effective at improving blood sugar control than other anti-diabetic treatments, with similar rates of hypoglycaemia (dangerously low blood sugar levels) and greater weight loss, a systematic review and meta-analysis published in The Lancet shows. "Achieving normal blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes is compromised by the adverse side effects plaguing currently available treatments. Some anti-diabetic treatments increase risk of hypoglycaemia and weight gain ...

Washington, DC (September 11, 2014) — Concerns about pursuing kidney transplantation are highly prevalent among kidney failure patients, particularly older adults and women, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). Reducing these concerns may help decrease disparities in access to transplantation. There are thousands of patients with kidney failure who lack access to kidney transplantation, and disparities persist in terms of race, age, sex, and other patient characteristics. To improve ...

Two Northeastern University researchers and their international colleagues have created an advanced model aimed at exploring the role of neutral evolution in the biogeographic distribution of ocean microbes. Their findings were published Thursday in the journal Science. The paper—titled "Biogeographic patterns in ocean microbes emerge in a neutral agent-based model"—was co-authored by Ferdi Hellweger, a microbial ecology expert and an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; his doctoral student Neil Fredrick, PhD'15; and oceanographer Erik van Sebille ...

Inflammation may be the reason high blood sugar levels damage blood vessels, raising the possibility that anti-inflammatory medications might someday be used to lower the risk of blood vessel disease in people with diabetes, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions 2014. "These findings may explain why good blood sugar control is not sufficient to avoid the development of diabetes-induced cardiovascular diseases," said Carlos F. Sánchez-Ferrer, M.D., Ph.D., study author and professor of pharmacology ...

When it comes to the development of soft robots, researchers have finally managed to cut the cord. Engineers at Harvard's School for Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed the world's first untethered soft robot – a quadruped which can literally stand up and walk away from its designers. Working in the lab of Charles River Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences Robert Wood, a team of researchers that included Michael Tolley, Robert Shepherd, Bobak Mosadegh, Kevin Galloway, Michael Wehner ...

VIDEO: New research shows giant holes in Venus' atmosphere -- which serve as extra clues for understanding this planet so different from our own. Click here for more information. Underscoring the vast differences between Earth and its neighbor Venus, new research shows a glimpse of giant holes in the electrically charged layer of the Venusian atmosphere, called the ionosphere. The observations point to a more complicated magnetic environment than previously thought – which ...

Humans with autism often show a reduced frequency of social interactions and an increased tendency to engage in repetitive solitary behaviors. Autism has also been linked to dysfunction of the amygdala, a brain structure involved in processing emotions. Now Caltech researchers have discovered antagonistic neuron populations in the mouse amygdala that control whether the animal engages in social behaviors or asocial repetitive self-grooming. This discovery may have implications for understanding neural circuit dysfunctions that underlie autism in humans. This discovery, ...

URBANA, Ill. – Chicago residents today might have had a Wisconsin zip code if the originally proposed northern boundary of Illinois had been approved. It was a straight line from the southernmost tip of Lake Michigan to just south of the Rock and Mississippi River confluence. University of Illinois soil scientist Ken Olson said that had the proposed northern border not been changed, the state of Illinois would have a much smaller population and footprint with the northern 51 miles of the Illinois Territory ceded to Wisconsin when it became a state in 1848. Olson says ...

University of British Columbia, in collaboration with BetaLogics Venture, a division of Janssen Research & Development, LLC, has published a study highlighting a protocol to convert stem cells into insulin-producing cells. The new procedure could be an important step in the fight against Type 1 diabetes. The protocol can turn stem cells into reliable, insulin-producing cells in about six weeks, far quicker than the four months it took using previous methods. "We are a step closer to having an unlimited supply of insulin-producing cells to treat patents with Type ...

A simple point-of-care testing device for anemia could provide more rapid diagnosis of the common blood disorder and allow inexpensive at-home self-monitoring of persons with chronic forms of the disease. The disposable self-testing device analyzes a single droplet of blood using a chemical reagent that produces visible color changes corresponding to different levels of anemia. The basic test produces results in about 60 seconds and requires no electrical power. A companion smartphone application can automatically correlate the visual results to specific blood hemoglobin ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Sept. 11, 2014 – Meditation might be a path to migraine relief, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. "Stress is a well-known trigger for headaches and research supports the general benefits of mind/body interventions for migraines, but there hasn't been much research to evaluate specific standardized meditation interventions," said Rebecca Erwin Wells, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study published in the online edition of the journal Headache. The study ...

MADISON, Wis. — One of the greatest casualties of war is its lasting effect on the minds of soldiers. This presents a daunting public health problem: More than 20 percent of veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a 2012 report by RAND Corp. A new study from the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the Waisman Center of the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers hope for those suffering from the disorder. Researchers there have shown that a breathing-based meditation practice called Sudarshan Kriya ...

In recovery from the deadly legacy of DDT, American peregrine falcons (Falco peregrines anatum) faced new uncertainty in 1992, when biologists proposed to stop rearing young birds in captivity and placing them in wild nests. Tim Wootton and Doug Bell published models that year in ESA's journal Ecological Applications, projecting population trends for the falcon in California, with and without direct human intervention in the falcons' reproductive lives. They concluded that the birds would continue to recover without captive rearing, though the population growth rate might ...

Astronomers searching the atmospheres of alien worlds for gases that might be produced by life can't rely on the detection of just one type, such as oxygen, ozone, or methane, because in some cases these gases can be produced non-biologically, according to extensive simulations by researchers in the NASA Astrobiology Institute's Virtual Planetary Laboratory. The researchers carefully simulated the atmospheric chemistry of alien worlds devoid of life thousands of times over a period of more than four years, varying the atmospheric compositions and star types. "When we ...

Amsterdam, NL, 11 September 2014 – Patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) can experience difficulties with food preparation and ingestion, which could contribute to poor nutrition and place them at risk for malnourishment. Published studies have also suggested that PD is associated with low weight, however, few studies included control groups. A report published in the Journal of Parkinson's Disease counters this conclusion in patients with mild-to-moderate PD, finding that the incidence or risk of malnutrition is no different for patients with mild-to-moderate PD compared ...

Dartmouth researchers have found that African American women are 55 percent less likely to receive breast reconstruction after mastectomy regardless of where they received their care. They report on their findings in "The influence of race/ethnicity and place of service on breast reconstruction for Medicare beneficiaries with mastectomy," recently published in SpringerPlus. "We wanted to understand whether the racial disparity observed in breast reconstruction among women with breast cancer was related to where women received care, independent of race," said Tracy Onega, ...