This news release is available in German. On 11 March 2011, a massive release of stress between two overlapping tectonic plates occurred beneath the ocean floor off the coast of Japan, triggering a giant tsunami. The Tohoku quake resulted in the death of more than 15,000 people, the partial or total destruction of nearly 400,000 buildings, and major damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant. This "superquake" may have been the largest in a series of earthquakes, thus marking the end of what's known as a supercycle: a sequence of several large earthquakes. A research ...

The study, published today in the journal Critical Care Medicine and carried out at Royal Brompton Hospital, followed children undergoing surgery for congenital heart disease, and found that by analysing metabolites in the blood -- molecules created as a result of metabolism -- it was possible to predict a child's clinical outcome. Congenital heart disease is relatively common, affecting between 4 and 14 babies in every 1,000 live births. Around one third of affected children require surgery during early childhood. However, surgery itself can cause complications, affecting ...

University of Adelaide researchers have discovered a target for the development of completely new antibiotics against disease-causing bacteria. Published online ahead of print in the leading microbiology journal Molecular Microbiology, the researchers have identified a building block common to many types of bacterial 'virulence factors' (the bacterial proteins which act as weapons to cause disease, such as toxins or degrading enzymes). The building block, called the Passenger-associated Transport Repeat (PATR), has been found in virulence factors of many major harmful ...

Recognizing that patients' experiences of childhood and adult trauma are common and have a direct impact on their health, UCSF clinical researchers and Positive Women's Network-USA have developed and are reporting a new primary care model. "In our clinic where we treat women with HIV, we are able to deliver lifesaving anti-HIV medications, but we still lose patients far too often. Looking back over the last ten years, only 16 percent of our patient deaths were due to HIV/AIDS. Most deaths were due to events such as depression, suicide, murder, drug overdoses and lung ...

Scientists at the University of Copenhagen have identified one mechanism that explains how some stem cells choose to become a given cell type: the cells combine specific sets of proteins at precise positions along the DNA. When these particular groups of proteins are combined, the gates are opened so that certain groups of genes can now be used, giving the cells a new identity. Scientists have now identified one of these combinations, which drive the cells along the path that allow them to become organs such as liver and pancreas. This latest research could lead scientists ...

About one-quarter of adults aged 65 years and older used mobility devices--such as canes, walkers, and wheelchairs--in 2011, and about a third of these reported using multiple devices. The use of such devices was not linked with an increased risk of falling, but people who used canes were more likely to report limiting their activities because they worried about falling. The findings indicate that the percentage of older adults using mobility devices has increased in recent years, and the use of multiple devices is common. "Staying active is a key component to staying ...

It sounds like something out of a horror movie: a penis-shaped worm which was able to turn its mouth inside out and drag itself around by its tooth-lined throat, which resembled a cheese grater. But a new study of the rather unfortunately-named penis worm has found that their bizarre dental structure may help in the identification of previously unrecognised fossil specimens from the time on Earth when animals were first coming into their own. Reconstructing the teeth of penis worms, or priapulids, in fine detail has enabled researchers from the University of Cambridge ...

CHICAGO -- When managers create a culture where employees know the boss puts employees' needs over his or her own, measureable improvements in customer satisfaction, higher job performance by employees, and lower turnover are the result, according to research by Robert Liden, Sandy Wayne, Chenwei Liao, and Jeremy Meuser, that has just been published in the Academy of Management Journal. Employees feel the most valued, and in return give back to the company and its customers when their bosses create a culture of trust, caring, cooperation, fairness and empathy. According ...

1986 was the least diverse year in the charts The musical revolution said to have been driven by The Beatles and The Rolling Stones was already underway before they arrived in the US. The rise of hip-hop caused the single most radical change in the US charts The researchers studied trends in style, the diversity of the charts, and the timing of musical revolutions. They find that, contrary to popular belief, the so-called "British Invasion" of US pop music by groups such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, did not start a rock revolution, but only followed existing ...

A new study has found high levels of infection with hepatitis C (HCV) across Africa, particularly in people infected with HIV. In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers from Imperial College London and Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) collated data on over 1.1 million individuals from 213 studies to provide policymakers with robust estimates of the burden of HCV infection. The report, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, found that around three per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa have been infected with HCV ...

Private practice directly affects the quality of care that NHS patients receive and doctors should not be allowed to work "on both sides of the divide", writes a senior doctor in The BMJ this week. John Dean, a consultant cardiologist at Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust Hospital, describes how he quit private practice after realising "it has direct adverse effects on the NHS." To begin with, he says he felt that he needed the money "to renovate the house, educate the children, and so on." And he was sure that he could keep the private work separate from the ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Ethanol fuel refineries could be releasing much larger amounts of some ozone-forming compounds into the atmosphere than current assessments suggest, according to a new study that found emissions of these chemicals at a major ethanol fuel refinery are many times higher than government estimates. New airborne measurements downwind from an ethanol fuel refinery in Decatur, Illinois, show that ethanol emissions are 30 times higher than government estimates. The measurements also show emissions of all volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which include ethanol, ...

URBANA, Ill. - While consumer demand for edamame or vegetable soybean remains on the rise in the United States, it's not widely grown in this country. Nearly 85 million acres of grain-type soybean were grown in the U.S. in 2014, yet edamame imported from Asia appears to dominate what we eat in this country, said a University of Illinois crop scientist. There have been limitations to growing edamame in the U.S. Midwest, including little research on the cultivars that could be used here and how to grow the crop sustainably, explained Marty Williams, who is also an ecologist ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A majority of American adults say they've tried dieting to lose weight at some point in their lives, and at any given time, about one-third of the adult population say they're currently dieting. Yet 60 percent of American adults are clinically overweight or obese and more than 16 percent of deaths nationwide are related to diet and physical activity. "There is clearly a disconnect if we have a majority of the population that has tried to lose weight and a majority of the population that is overweight," says Marc Kiviniemi, a public health researcher at ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- What's the only thing worse than having a urinary catheter when you're in the hospital? Having one and getting a urinary tract infection (UTI) - or worse - as a result. Now, a new detailed guide gives doctors and nurses information to help decide which hospital patients may benefit from a urinary catheter - and which ones don't. And that should help spare patients the pain, embarrassment, and potentially serious side effects that can come with having a catheter placed -- which may bring more risk than benefit to the patient. Called the Ann ...

Fairfax, Va., May 5, 2015--The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) is issuing a new guideline, "Definitive and adjuvant radiotherapy in locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer: An American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) evidence-based clinical practice guideline." The guideline's executive summary is published in the May-June issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), ASTRO's clinical practice journal. The complete guideline, which cites 35 years of data to help guide current treatment and future research, is available online as an open-access ...

They may not be on Facebook or Twitter, but dolphins do, in fact, form highly complex and dynamic networks of friends, according to a recent study by scientists at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute (HBOI) at Florida Atlantic University. Dolphins are known for being highly social animals, and a team of researchers at HBOI took a closer look at the interactions between bottlenose dolphins in the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) and discovered how they mingle and with whom they spend their time. Through intensive photo-ID surveys conducted along the IRL, which were carried ...

A recent and famous image from deep space marks the first time we've seen a forming planetary system, according to a study by U of T astrophysicists. The team, led by Daniel Tamayo from the Centre for Planetary Science at U of T Scarborough and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, found that circular gaps in a disk of dust and gas swirling around the young star HL Tau are in fact made by forming planets. "HL Tau likely represents the first image taken of the initial locations of planets during their formation," says Tamayo. "This could be an enormous ...

TORONTO, ON - Adults who experienced multiple incidents of childhood maltreatment were more than two times as likely to have trouble sleeping than their counterparts who were not maltreated during childhood, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto, University of Ottawa, and Western University. The study appears online in the journal Sleep Medicine. "We found a significant association between childhood maltreatment and difficulty sleeping later in life," says lead author Philip Baiden, a PhD Student at the University of Toronto's Factor-Inwentash ...

New technology developed at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) may extend the benefits of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to many patients whose access to MRI is currently limited. A redesign of the wire at the core of the leads that carry signals between implanted medical devices and their target structures significantly reduces the generation of heat that occurs when standard wires are exposed to the radiofrequency (RF) energy used in MRI. The novel system is described in a paper published in the online Nature journal Scientific ...

AMHERST, Mass. -- A revolution is coming in flexible electronic technologies as cheaper, more flexible, organic transistors come on the scene to replace expensive, rigid, silicone-based semiconductors, but not enough is known about how bending in these new thin-film electronic devices will affect their performance, say materials scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Writing in the current issue of Nature Communications, polymer scientists Alejandro Briseño and Alfred Crosby at UMass Amherst, with their doctoral student Marcos Reyes-Martinez, now ...

ALEXANDRIA, VA, MAY 5, 2015 -- A statistical analysis of Job Corps data strongly suggests positive average effects on wages for individuals who participated in the federal job-training program. Results of the analysis recently were included in an article in the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ubes20/current), a professional journal published by the American Statistical Association . The study was conducted by Xuan Chen of Renmin University of China and Carlos A. Flores of California Polytechnic State University. Job Corps is ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A 12-week dose of an investigational three-drug hepatitis C combination cleared the virus in 93 percent of patients with liver cirrhosis who hadn't previously been treated, according to a study in the May 5, 2015, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. Bristol-Myers Squibb funded the trial of the combination of three drugs -- daclatasvir, asunaprevir, and beclabuvir. None of the three drugs are FDA-approved, but daclatasvir is currently under review by the FDA. Duke Medicine researchers collaborated on the design and analysis of the ...

In two studies appearing in the May 5 issue of JAMA, patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 infection and with or without cirrhosis achieved high rates of sustained virologic response after 12 weeks of treatment with a combination of the direct-acting-antiviral drugs daclatasvir, asunaprevir, and beclabuvir. Current estimates indicate that 130 million to 150 million people worldwide are chronically infected with HCV, resulting in up to 350,000 deaths per year. Of the 7 HCV genotypes identified, genotype 1 is the most prevalent worldwide, accounting for ...

Among patients with Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) who recovered following standard treatment with the antibiotics metronidazole or vancomycin, oral administration of spores of a strain of C difficile that does not produce toxins colonized the gastrointestinal tract and significantly reduced CDI recurrence, according to a study in the May 5 issue of JAMA. C difficile is the cause of one of the most common and deadly health care-associated infections, linked to 29,000 U.S. deaths each year. Rates of CDI remain at unprecedented high levels in U.S. hospitals. Clinical ...