Toddlers and tweens have very different needs, which influence how parents provide for them. The same is true in honey bees, but instead of communicating their needs via language, honey bee larvae emit chemical signals called pheromones that influence the behavior of their caregivers. As larvae age, the diet they're fed changes. So too do the pheromone signals they emit. In a paper published in the advanced online edition of the journal Animal Behaviour, ASU alumna Kirsten Traynor, a research associate with the University of Maryland, Robert E. Page Jr., ASU university ...

Cocaine users complaining of chest pain may have abnormal blood flow in the heart's smallest blood vessels that may not be detected in regular testing, putting these patients at risk for heart complications or death, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Cocaine use is unfortunately very common, and we see many emergency room admissions because patients experience chest pain following cocaine use," said Varun Kumar, M.D., lead study author and an internist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago. "But there can be a ...

Adults whose mothers were overweight or obese before pregnancy have a dramatically elevated risk of dying from heart disease or stroke, according to a new study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Excess weight among young women of childbearing age has important implications not only for their own health, but for that of their children as well," said Michael Mendelson, M.D., S.M., the study's lead author and a research fellow at the Framingham Heart Study, Boston University and the Boston Children's Hospital. Previous studies had ...

Men who have asymptomatic subclinical vascular disease are more likely to develop erectile dysfunction than men who don't have early stage vascular disease, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. "Erectile function can be a window into men's cardiovascular and overall health," said David I. Feldman, B.S., lead author and research assistant at the Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. "Erectile dysfunction and cardiovascular disease commonly coexist." Researchers ...

High trans fat consumption is linked to worse memory among working-age men, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. In a recent study of approximately 1,000 healthy men, those who consumed the most trans fats showed notably worse performance on a word memory test. The strength of the association remained even after taking into consideration things like age, education, ethnicity and depression. "Trans fats were most strongly linked to worse memory, in young and middle-aged men, during their working and career-building ...

Pregnant women with congenital heart disease had very low risks of arrhythmias (irregular heart beat) or other heart-related complications during labor and delivery, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2014. However, such women were more likely to undergo cesarean section and remain in the hospital longer, researchers said. "We are pleased to find the risk of complications are not as high as expected in women with congenital heart disease," said Robert M. Hayward, M.D., lead study author and a cardiac electrophysiology ...

By expanding the protected area network to 17 percent of land one could triple the present protection levels of terrestrial vertebrates. Globally coordinated protected area network expansion could deliver a result 50 percent more efficient compared to countries looking only at biodiversity within their own area. Land conversion is however fast degrading options for conservation. Protected areas are one of the main tools for halting the ongoing global biodiversity crisis. According to the Aichi Target 11 adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the global ...

WASHINGTON - In a society where women often lead very restricted lives and men are the primary household decision makers, new research suggests women are empowered when men are included in family planning programs. A study, from the Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University Medical Center, suggests that addressing the dynamics between husbands and wives can result in women making more financial decisions and having more control over their social interactions, while at the same time meeting their family planning needs. "Our study is one of the first to ...

A research team bringing together José Cohen and Philippe Grimbert (Inserm Unit 955/Université Paris Est Créteil [UPEC] and the Centre for Clinical Investigation - Biotherapies 504 [CIC-BT 504]), and their collaborators at Institut Curie and AP-HP (George Pompidou European Hospital) has succeeded in finding a combination of drugs that reduces the risk of rejection following a skin graft. When tested in mice, this treatment seems effective, since no sign of rejection is observed nearly 30 days after transplantation. These results are published in the American ...

DALLAS - November 18, 2014 - Groundbreaking research from UT Southwestern Medical Center shows that cholesterol efflux capacity (cholesterol efflux), which measures HDL cholesterol function, appears to be a superior indicator of cardiovascular risk and a better target for therapeutic treatments than standard measurements of HDL. Current measurement methods reflect only the circulating levels of HDL and not the functional properties of this lipoprotein. The latest findings appear online today in The New England Journal of Medicine. HDL's key function is the removal of ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (November 17, 2014)--Does soy in the diet help with hot flashes? It does, but only for women whose bodies can produce the soy metabolite equol, reports a study of American women just published online in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society. About 20% to 50% of North American and European women have this ability. The researchers surveyed women from age 45 to 55 in a Seattle, Washington-area healthcare system to find study participants who weren't using hormone therapy and ate soy foods at least three times a week. The participants ...

Hiroshima, Japan--- Associate Professor Akira Shimamoto and Professor Hidetoshi Tahara at the Graduate School of Biomedical & Health Science in Hiroshima University, Professor Koutaro Yokote at the Graduate School of Medicine in Chiba University, Visiting Professor Makoto Goto at the Medical Center East in Tokyo Women's Medical University, and collaborators including the staff at the Cancer Chemotherapy Center in the Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research, Tottori University, and Keio University established induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells from the fibroblasts of Werner ...

Chemists have developed a revolutionary new way to manufacture natural chemicals and used it to assemble a scarce anti-inflammatory drug with potential to treat cancer and malaria. The breakthrough could lead to new and cheaper ways to produce rare drugs in large quantities. "We took small molecules and clipped them together like Lego," said lead researcher Professor Michael Sherburn, from the Research School of Chemistry at The Australian National University (ANU). "The building blocks are carefully designed in such a way that the first reaction generates a product ...

Scientists in Australia have used historic media to measure the decline in Queensland's pink snapper fishery, highlighting a drop of almost 90 per cent in catch rates since the 19th Century. Researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE) at the University of Queensland and the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry examined thousands of newspaper articles dating back to1870 to reveal the historic catch rates for the iconic Queensland fishery. "We found that 19th century recreational fishers would regularly catch hundreds of ...

Case Western Reserve researchers have developed a procedure that restores function to muscles involved in the control of breathing - even when they have been paralyzed for more than a year. The breakthrough offers hope that one day patients with severe spinal cord injuries will be able to breathe again without the assistance of a ventilator. Principal investigator Philippa M. Warren, PhD, presented the results Nov. 17 at Neuroscience 2014, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The research represents a critical step forward in efforts to reverse even long-term ...

Ferroptosis is a recently recognized form of regulated necrosis. Up until now, this form of cell death has only been thought to be a possible therapeutic approach to treat tumour cells. Yet, ferroptosis also occurs in non-transformed tissues as demonstrated by this study, thus implicating this cell death pathway in the development of a wide range of pathological conditions. More specifically, the deletion of the ferroptosis-regulating enzyme Gpx4* in a pre-clinical model results in high ferroptosis rates in kidney tubular epithelial cells causing acute renal failure. Specific ...

The increasing complexity and interconnection of socioeconomic and environmental systems leaves them more vulnerable to seemingly small risks that can spiral out of control, according to the new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study examines risks are perceived as extremely unlikely or small, but because of interconnections or changes in systems, can lead to major collapses or crises. These risks, which the researchers term "femtorisks," can include individuals such as terrorists, dissidents, or rogue traders, or factors ...

This news release is available in German. Scientists have been conducting research on micrometre-sized actuators which one day may make it possible to transport drugs or chemical sensor molecules to specific locations throughout the human body. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now taken the development of such micro-devices a crucial step forward: a new production technology and new materials have made it possible to manufacture tiny actuators in any form and optimise them for future applications. The elongated actuators elements, which can move through liquids, possess ...

Melbourne researchers have identified why some people with coeliac disease show an immune response after eating oats. The researchers have identified the key components in oats that trigger an immune response in some people with coeliac disease. The findings may lead to better tests for oat toxicity, and have implications for new treatments being developed for coeliac disease. As many as one in 60 women and one in 80 men in Australia have coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition caused by consuming gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye and barley. The abnormal immune ...

Young people growing up in impoverished neighborhoods who perceive their poor communities in a positive light report better health and well-being than those with worse perceptions of where they live, new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests. As part of the Well-Being of Adolescents in Vulnerable Environments (WAVE) study, researchers surveyed nearly 2,400 adolescents ages 15 to 19 in poor sections of five cities across the world: Baltimore; New Delhi, India; Ibadan, Nigeria; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Shanghai, China. The survey ...

Blocking a key receptor in brain cells that is used by oxygen free radicals could play a major role in neutralizing the biological consequences of Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Temple University. The researchers' findings, "Modulation of AD Neuropathology and Memory Impairments by the Isoprostane F2α Is Mediated by the Thromboxane Receptor," were published Oct. 13 by the journal Neurobiology of Aging. The human body's use of oxygen to produce energy often results in the formation of highly reactive molecules called oxygen free radicals. Oxidative ...

As genome sequencing has gotten faster and cheaper, the pace of whole-genome sequencing has accelerated, dramatically increasing the number of genomes deposited in public archives. Although these genomes are a valuable resource, problems can arise when researchers misapply computational methods to assemble them, or accidentally introduce unnoticed contaminations during sequencing. The first complete bacterial genome, Haemophilus influenzae, appeared in 1995, and today the public GenBank database contains over 27,000 prokaryotic and 1,600 eukaryotic genomes. The vast majority ...

The landmark discovery of a tiny defect in a vital heart protein has for the first time enabled heart specialists to accurately pinpoint a therapeutic target for future efforts in developing a drug-based cure for cardiovascular diseases. Scientists from Cardiff University and the Slovak Academy of Science have identified defects in a colossal heart protein which often leads to stroke and heart failure. "Our research has revealed that a genetic alteration in the largest membrane protein, responsible for triggering each and every heartbeat, produces a small structural ...

Scientists have revealed the mechanisms that enable certain brain cells to persuade others to create 'Mexican waves' linked with cognitive function. Ultimately, the team say their work may help researchers understand more about normal brain function and about neurocognitive disorders such as dementia. Neurons are cells in the brain that communicate chemical and electrical information and they belong to one of two groups- inhibitory or excitatory. While much is known about excitatory neurons, the role of inhibitory neurons is still being debated. Inhibitory neurons ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (NOVEMBER 18, 2014). Neurosurgeons and neurointerventionalists at Kyungpook National University in the Republic of Korea have developed a formal protocol for delivering emergency treatment to patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) from ruptured aneurysms within the first few hours after bleeding occurs. The emergency treatment plan, offered day and night, is shown to reduce the incidence of repeated hemorrhage during the hospital stay and improve clinical outcomes in patients with aneurysmal SAH. This treatment plan is described and discussed in ...