Human breast milk is considered the most ideal source of nutrition for infants and it should have played a critical role in the evolution and civilizations of human beings. Unlike our intuitive perception, human milk contains a large number of bacterial species, including some opportunistic pathogens of humans. This phenomenon comes as no surprise to scientists and physicians. Indeed, the existence of milk microbiome is considered to be the result of co-evolutionary and co-adaptive interactions between the microbiome and human host. Furthermore, the dynamic balance in ...

Researchers who analyzed media coverage of the suicide of a national actress in South Korea and its impact on subsequent suicides found that the number of suicide-related articles surged around 80 times in the week after a suicide compared with the week prior. Many articles (37.1%) violated several critical items on the World Health Organization suicide reporting guidelines, like containing a detailed suicide method. The investigators estimated that there were approximately 430 excess suicides during the 4 weeks after her death due to media coverage. "This figure is ...

Air pollution regulations over the last decade in Taiyuan, China, have substantially improved the health of people living there, accounting for a greater than 50% reduction in costs associated with loss of life and disability between 2001 and 2010, according to researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health, the Shanxi Medical University, the Center of Diseases Control and Prevention of Taiyuan Municipality, and Shanghai Fudan University School of Public Health. The study is the first to document the ...

Most nurses in their work care for patients who are dying. A study of more than 200 students has shown that many nurses in training feel unprepared and anxious when faced with the prospect of meeting patients during end-of-life care. Scientists from the Sahlgrenska Academy have interviewed 222 nursing students at the University of Gothenburg, the University of Skövde and the Ersta Sköndal University College. The interviews dealt with their thoughts about caring for dying patients, their ideas about how to support and meet the patient in dialogue, and their own feelings ...

Washington D.C., September 2, 2014 – A study published in the September 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that children and adolescents diagnosed with a psychiatric diagnosis had an increased risk of developing diabetes if they were exposed to antipsychotics. Using data from the nationwide Danish registers, a group of researchers led by Dr. René Ernst Nielsen, Psychiatry, Aalborg University Hospital, Denmark, studied 48,299children and adolescents with psychiatric disorders to document the frequency and possible ...

WASHINGTON, September 2, 2014 — Best-selling author Sam Kean stops by Reactions this week to debunk the myth of the Megalodon, the 50-foot super shark that, despite what "Shark Week" may lead you to believe, is long extinct. Learn all about it at http://youtu.be/KhFygIoW_MA. Kean's book, "The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements," is getting the Reactions treatment in a 10-episode video series produced for the newly launched American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT). In this ...

We like to document the exciting and momentous occasions in our lives, but new research suggests there is value in capturing our more mundane, everyday experiences, which can bring us unexpected joy in the future. "We generally do not think about today's ordinary moments as experiences that are worthy of being rediscovered in the future. However, our studies show that we are often wrong: What is ordinary now actually becomes more extraordinary in the future — and more extraordinary than we might expect," explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Ting Zhang ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — How well patients recover from cancer surgery may be influenced by more than their medical conditions and the operations themselves. Family conflicts and other non-medical problems may raise their risk of surgical complications, a Mayo Clinic study has found. Addressing such quality-of-life issues before an operation may reduce patients' stress, speed their recoveries and save health care dollars, the research suggests. The study specifically looked at colon cancer patients, and found that patients with a poor quality of life were nearly three times likelier ...

This news release is available in Spanish. The solar panels we see tend to be rigid and black. Organic photovoltaic technology, by contrast, enables more translucent and more flexible solar panels in a range of colours to be manufactured. But this technology needs to meet certain requirements if it is to be accepted on the market: greater efficiency, longer duration and low production cost. So this research has set out "to analyse the capacity new materials have to absorb solar energy as well as to seek appropriate strategies to move from the lab to actual operations," ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Researchers at the University of Granada have found, through an experiment conducted on rats, that hyperproteic diets could be beneficial for bones, which would be of great use for groups with bone disease problems, such as the elderly or post-menopausic females. Their research has also revealed that vegetal protein—in the case of the present study, soy protein—is preferable to animal protein (such as whey protein), since the former increased the level of calcium in bones by as much as seven per cent. In an article published ...

New research involving mice suggests that the key to more youthful immune function might already be in your medicine cabinet. In a report published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology scientists show that macrophages from the lungs of old mice had different responses to Mycobacterium tuberculosis than macrophages from young mice, but these changes were reversed by ibuprofen. "Inflammation in old age can have significant consequences on immune function," said Joanne Turner, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity ...

Barcelona, Spain – Tuesday 2 September 2014: Coffee increases the risk of prediabetes in young adults with hypertension who are slow caffeine metabolisers, according to results from the HARVEST study presented at ESC Congress today by Dr Lucio Mos from Italy. People who drank more than three cups of coffee per day doubled their risk of prediabetes. Dr Mos said: "Lifestyle factors are very important for the prognosis of young people with hypertension. In a previous analysis of HARVEST (Hypertension and Ambulatory Recording VEnetia STudy) we found that coffee was a risk ...

The Lancet is pleased to announce that the following papers will be published to coincide with presentation at the ESC Congress 2014, taking place in Barcelona, Spain, 30 August – 3 September 2014: Ultrathin strut biodegradable polymer sirolimus-eluting stent versus durable polymer everolimus-eluting stent for percutaneous coronary revascularisation (BIOSCIENCE): a randomised, single-blind, non-inferiority trial, Windecker et al Refinements in stent design affecting strut thickness, surface polymer, and drug release have improved clinical outcomes of drug-eluting stents. ...

BOSTON (September 2, 2014) — In the battle between our immune systems and cholera bacteria, humans may have an unknown ally in bacteria-killing viruses known as phages. In a new study, researchers from Tufts University, Massachusetts General Hospital, Partners In Health, Haiti's National Public Health Laboratory, and elsewhere, report that phages can force cholera bacteria to give up their virulence in order to survive. Importantly, the study — published in eLife — found that cholera's mutational escape from phage predation occurs during human infection. First author ...

Passerine birds, also known as perching birds, that migrate by night tend to fly faster in spring than they do in autumn to reach their destinations. This seasonal difference in flight speed is especially noticeable among birds that only make short migratory flights, says researcher Cecilia Nilsson of Lund University in Sweden, in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Nilsson, in a group led by professor Thomas Alerstam, used a tracking radar to measure over three years the speed by which birds flew over Falsterbo Peninsula, a bird migratory hot spot ...

Vertical nanowires could be used for detailed studies of what happens on the surface of cells. The findings are important for pharmaceuticals research, among other applications. A group of researchers from Lund University in Sweden have managed to make artificial cell membranes form across a large number of vertical nanowires, known as a 'nano-forest'. All communication between the interior of a cell and its surroundings takes place through the cell membrane. The membrane is a surface layer that holds the cell together and that largely comprises lipids, built of fatty ...

What's the price of your integrity? Tell the truth; everyone has a tipping point. We all want to be honest, but at some point, we'll lie if the benefit is great enough. Now, scientists have confirmed the area of the brain in which we make that decision. The result was published online this week in Nature Neuroscience. "We prefer to be honest, even if lying is beneficial," said Lusha Zhu, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral associate at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, where she works with Brooks King-Casas and Pearl Chiu, who are assistant professors ...

With their long, spiky legs and their propensity for eating anything, including each other, camel crickets are the stuff of nightmares. And now research from North Carolina State University finds that non-native camel cricket species have spread into homes across the eastern United States. "The good news is that camel crickets don't bite or pose any kind of threat to humans," says Dr. Mary Jane Epps, a postdoctoral researcher at NC State and lead author of a paper about the research. The research stems from a chance encounter, when a cricket taxonomist found an invasive ...

In Bavaria, the Tithonian Konservat-Lagerstätte of lithographic limestone is well known as a result of numerous discoveries of emblematic fossils from that area (for example, Archaeopteryx). Now, for the first time, researchers have found fossil insects in the French equivalent of these outcrops - discoveries which include a new species representing the oldest known water treader. Despite the abundance of fossils in the equivalent Bavarian outcrops, fewer fossils have been obtained from the Late Kimmeridgian equivalents of these rocks in the departments of Ain and Rhône ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- When you accidentally touch a hot oven, you rapidly pull your hand away. Although scientists know the basic neural circuits involved in sensing and responding to such painful stimuli, they are still sorting out the molecular players. Duke researchers have made a surprising discovery about the role of a key molecule involved in pain in worms, and have built a structural model of the molecule. These discoveries, described Sept. 2 in Nature Communications, may help direct new strategies to treat pain in people. In humans and other mammals, a family of ...

In the quantum world, making the simple atom behave is one thing, but making the more complex molecule behave is another story. Now Northwestern University scientists have figured out an elegant way to stop a molecule from tumbling so that its potential for new applications can be harnessed: shine a single laser on a trapped molecule and it instantly cools to the temperature of outer space, stopping the rotation of the molecule. "It's counterintuitive that the molecule gets colder, not hotter when we shine intense laser light on it," said Brian Odom, who led the research. ...

Growing public support for marijuana legalization in the U.S. has led to public debate about whether marijuana is "safer" than other substances, such as alcohol. In January, President Obama also publically stated he is not convinced that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol. Despite the recent shift in views toward marijuana, the harms of use as compared to alcohol use are not well understood. Now a new study "Adverse Psychosocial Outcomes Associated with Drug Use among US High School Seniors: A Comparison of Alcohol and Marijuana," by researchers affiliated with ...

Some people take stress in stride; others are done in by it. New research at Rockefeller University has identified the molecular mechanisms of this so-called stress gap in mice with very similar genetic backgrounds — a finding that could lead researchers to better understand the development of psychiatric disorders such as anxiety and depression. "Like people, each animal has unique experiences as it goes through its life. And we suspect that these life experiences can alter the expression of genes, and as a result, affect an animal's susceptibility to stress," says senior ...

Barcelona, Spain – Tuesday 2 September 2014: A simple awareness campaign in general practice identifies new cases of atrial fibrillation (AF), according to research presented at ESC Congress today by Professor Jean-Marc Davy from France. Professor Davy said: "Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. It multiplies the risk of heart failure risk by three-fold and the risk of stroke risk by five-fold. Similarly, AF is responsible for ischaemic stroke in 1 of 4 cases. However, AF is often overlooked and diagnosed too late. In 20% of cases, AF is diagnosed ...

Barcelona, Spain – Tuesday 2 September 2014: Digoxin may increase the risk of death in patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) by approximately 20%, according to results from the ROCKET AF trial presented at ESC Congress today by Dr Manesh Patel, director of interventional cardiology and catheterisation labs at Duke University Health System in Durham, North Carolina, US. The findings suggest that caution may be needed when using digoxin in complex AF patients but further studies are needed to confirm the observations. Dr Patel said: "In this subanalysis of the ROCKET AF ...