An unusual new fossil discovery of one of the earliest animals on earth may also provide the oldest evidence of muscle tissue – the bundles of cells that make movement in animals possible. The fossil, dating from 560 million years ago, was discovered in Newfoundland, Canada. On the basis of its four-fold symmetry, morphological characteristics, and what appear to be some of the earliest impressions of muscular tissue, researchers from the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the University of Oxford and the Memorial University of Newfoundland, have interpreted ...

Continuous positive airway pressure is effective at treating sleep apnoea in older people, a new study has found. Obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) is a condition where the walls of the throat relax and narrow during sleep, interrupting normal breathing and causing profound sleepiness. For people with moderate or severe OSA, doctors usually recommend using a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device, which consists of a small pump that delivers pressurised air into the nose through a mask, stopping the throat from closing. Previous studies have established the ...

A comprehensive review of all potential factors behind the 2013/2014 UK winter floods is published today in the journal Nature Climate Change. The paper does not definitively answer whether human activity played a role in the magnitude of the winter flood events. It does, though, examine how factors such as the state of the global oceans may have interacted with wind patterns and subsequent high-level atmospheric features. The review was led by scientists at the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, in collaboration with the Met Office and the Universities of Oxford, Exeter ...

People from low socio-economic positions in Britain still eat more salt than those from higher socio-economic positions, irrespective of where they live. A paper published in the BMJ Open journal and led by Warwick Medical School suggests social inequalities in salt intake have hardly changed in the period from 2000-01 to 2011. This is despite a national average salt reduction over this time. This paper is the first to monitor social inequalities following the national salt reduction programme. The research was carried out by the World Health Organization Collaborating ...

VIDEO: As a piece of plastic wrap is stretched, the new algorithms identify the location (in red) where it is weakening, which is where the material eventually breaks. Click here for more information. Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have developed algorithms to identify weak spots in tendons, muscles and bones prone to tearing or breaking. The technology, which needs to be refined before it is used in patients, one day may help pinpoint minor strains and tiny ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 26, 2014) – Binge eating, an eating disorder in which a person frequently consumes unusually large amounts of food in a short period of time, affects about 5 to 10 percent of U.S. adults and is more common in women than men. Researchers at the USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital found that the hormone estrogen can specifically trigger brain serotonin neurons to inhibit binge eating in female mice in a report today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. "Previous data has shown that ...

Fever is a response to inflammation, and is triggered by an onset of the signaling substance prostaglandin. Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden can now see precisely where these substances are produced – a discovery that paves the way for smarter drugs. When you take an aspirin, all production of prostaglandins in the body is suppressed. All symptoms of inflammation are eased simultaneously, including fever, pain and loss of appetite. But it might not always be desirable to get rid of all symptoms – there is a reason why they appear. "Perhaps you want to inhibit ...

Tumor blood vessels supply oxygen and nutrients to cancer cells and provide access to other organs. While tumor vasculature shares many features with normal vessels, their unique characteristics are potential therapeutic targets. A recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation identifies a tumor vessel-specific protein, L1 that can be targeted to reduce tumor growth. Using a mouse pancreatic cancer model, Ugo Cavallaro and colleagues at the European Institute of Oncology found that loss of L1 reduced tumor blood vessel formation, which inhibited growth and metastasis. ...

Binge easting disorder affects approximately 5% of adults in the US. Left unchecked, this disorder leads to health complications, including obesity, hypertension, and diabetes. The cause of this disease is poorly understood and treatment options are limited. A new study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests that estrogen replacement may limit binge-eating behaviors. Using a mouse binge-eating model, Yong Xu and colleagues at Baylor School of Medicine found that estradiol suppressed binge eating behaviors. This effect required the presence of estrogen receptors ...

A new study examines antecedent predictors of childhood initiation of sipping or tasting alcohol. Findings indicate that initiation of sipping/tasting was less related to psychosocial proneness for problem behavior and more related to perceived parental approval for child sipping. Previous research had determined that whether or not a child sips or tastes alcohol is associated with the child's attitude toward sipping and with a family environment supportive of alcohol use. This study extends this former research to examine antecedent predictors of childhood initiation ...

Growth deficiency is a defining feature of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). A new study has found that rates of excess weight/obesity are elevated in adolescents with partial fetal alcohol syndrome (pFAS). Females with FASD may be at a greater risk for excess weight/obesity than males during adolescence. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) refer to a range of disabilities, and include individuals with neurocognitive impairments as well as growth irregularities ranging from deficient to normal. However, very little is known about the prevalence of excessive ...

Chronic drinking is associated with an increased incidence and severity of respiratory infections. A reduced CD8 T cell response was previously implicated in increased disease severity due to influenza virus infections. New rodent findings indicate that only some CD8 T cell functions are damaged while others remain intact. It is well known that chronic drinking is associated with an increased incidence and severity of respiratory infections. Previous research had demonstrated that an increase in disease severity to influenza virus (IAV) infections was due, in part, ...

Among patients with hypertension at high risk of cardiovascular disease, a program that consisted of patients measuring their blood pressure and adjusting their antihypertensive medication accordingly resulted in lower systolic blood pressure at 12 months compared to patients who received usual care, according to a study in the August 27 issue of JAMA. Data from national and international surveys suggest that despite improvements over the last decade, significant proportions of patients have poor control of their elevated blood pressure. Self-monitoring of blood pressure ...

Among adolescents with depression seen in primary care, a collaborative care intervention that included patient and parent engagement and education resulted in greater improvement in depressive symptoms at 12 months than usual care, according to a study in the August 27 issue of JAMA. Depressed youth are at greater risk of suicide, substance abuse, early pregnancy, low educational attainment, recurrent depression and poor long-term health. Fourteen percent of adolescents between the ages of 13-18 years have major depression yet few receive evidence-based treatments for ...

High-dose erythropoietin (EPO; a hormone) administered within 42 hours of birth to preterm infants was associated with a reduced risk of brain injury, as indicated by magnetic resonance imaging, according to a study in the August 27 issue of JAMA. Survival of premature infants has improved over the past decades, but at the expense of an increase in the number of infants affected by long-term developmental disabilities. Premature infants are at risk of developing encephalopathy of prematurity, which includes structural changes of brain white and gray matter and is associated ...

An analysis of a cardiovascular registry finds that of clinical trials that included heart attack patients, participation among eligible patients was infrequent and has been declining, and trial participants had a lower risk profile and a more favorable prognosis compared with the broader population of patients who have had a heart attack, according to a study in the August 27 issue of JAMA. Jacob A. Udell, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Toronto, and colleagues evaluated whether participants in cardiovascular trials are representative of contemporary patients with ...

Premature babies are far more at risk than infants born at term of developing brain damage resulting in neurodevelopmental delay that may persist throughout their lives. A team of specialists in infant brain imaging from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University Hospital of Geneva (HUG) has demonstrated the following: administering three doses of erythropoietin – a hormone that stimulates the formation of red blood cells – immediately after birth significantly reduces brain damage in babies. The results are available in more detail in ...

SEATTLE—How best to care for the many adolescents who have depression? In a collaborative care intervention, a care manager continually reached out to teens—delivering and following up on treatment in a primary-care setting (the office of a pediatrician or family doctor, not a psychiatrist or psychologist) at Group Health Cooperative. Depression outcomes after a year were significantly better with this approach than with usual care, according to a randomized controlled trial published in JAMA. Depression is common in adolescents: Up to one in five have major depression ...

PHILADELPHIA — Treating the rare disease MPS I is a challenge. MPS I, caused by the deficiency of a key enzyme called IDUA, eventually leads to the abnormal accumulation of certain molecules and cell death. The two main treatments for MPS I are bone marrow transplantation and intravenous enzyme replacement therapy, but these are only marginally effective or clinically impractical, especially when the disease strikes the central nervous system (CNS). Using an animal model, a team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has proven the efficacy ...

Argonne, Ill.– Scientists succeeded in obtaining an unprecedented view of a type of brain-cell receptor that is implicated in a range of neurological illnesses, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, depression, schizophrenia, autism, and ischemic injuries associated with stroke. The team of biologists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory used the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory to get an atomic-level picture of the intact NMDA (N-methyl, D-aspartate) receptor should serve as template and guide for the design ...

In recent years, increasing pressure from policymakers, consumers, and suppliers has prompted manufacturers to set environmental targets that go beyond reducing the pollutants they emit from their smokestacks or discharge into rivers and lakes. Today companies must also assess environmental performance at every step in their process, from the mining of primary materials to the use and recycling of their products. This perspective has given rise to the discipline known as life cycle engineering, which connects the engineers who grapple with the efficiencies of production ...

Research published recently in Science suggested that the makeup of the Earth's lower mantle, which makes up the largest part of the Earth by volume, is significantly different than previously thought. Understanding the composition of the mantle is essential to seismology, the study of earthquakes and movement below the Earth's surface, and should shed light on unexplained seismic phenomena observed there. Though humans haven't yet managed to drill further than seven and a half miles into the Earth, we've built a comprehensive picture of what's beneath our feet through ...

The way in which the Italian city of Venice dealt with the outbreak of the plague in the fourteenth century holds lessons on how to even mitigate the consequences of today's emerging threats, like climate change, terrorism, and highly infectious or drug-resistant diseases. So says Dr. Igor Linkov of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, and a visiting professor of the Ca Foscari University in Italy. Linkov led an article on resilience management appearing in Springer's journal Environment Systems and Decisions. Venice was the hub of many trade routes into ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers from MIT, Pennsylvania State University, and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a new way to separate cells by exposing them to sound waves as they flow through a tiny channel. Their device, about the size of a dime, could be used to detect the extremely rare tumor cells that circulate in cancer patients' blood, helping doctors predict whether a tumor is going to spread. Separating cells with sound offers a gentler alternative to existing cell-sorting technologies, which require tagging the cells with chemicals or exposing them to stronger ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Kit Lam and colleagues from UC Davis and other institutions have created dynamic nanoparticles (NPs) that could provide an arsenal of applications to diagnose and treat cancer. Built on an easy-to-make polymer, these particles can be used as contrast agents to light up tumors for MRI and PET scans or deliver chemo and other therapies to destroy tumors. In addition, the particles are biocompatible and have shown no toxicity. The study was published online today in Nature Communications. "These are amazingly useful particles," noted co-first author ...