A new peer-reviewed study found that people are contaminated with several toxic flame retardants rarely studied in the US, including one that has never before been detected in Americans called TCEP. Scientists tested urine samples of California residents for biomarkers of six chemicals, all of which were present. The scientists discovered a way to test for this class of toxic flame retardants (phosphates), which could open up a new wave of research into a group of pervasive flame retardants that were previously not studied nearly as much as some other flame retardants. ...

Depression causes an average of 10 lost working days per episode Managers report need for better legislation, training and counseling to tackle the problem Right Direction Initiative developed to increase awareness of depression, reduce stigma associated with the disease in the workplace, and encourage employees to increase help-seeking behaviors Canton, Ohio- November 12, 2014 - Nearly a quarter (23 percent) of U.S. respondents indicated they have been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime and two in five (nearly 40 percent) of those patients reported taking ...

Cities have more species diversity than you'd expect. A study of ants in Manhattan found not only a wide range of species, but also significant differences in the levels of biodiversity in different urban areas. "People don't think of cities as having ecology, and urban environments haven't been well studied," says Dr. Amy Savage, a postdoctoral biological sciences researcher at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper on the work. "But protected areas, such as national parks, have been well studied. So we wanted to see if the theories developed to predict ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- There's a cast of characters deep inside your ears -- many kinds of tiny cells working together to allow you to hear. The lead actors, called hair cells, play the crucial role in carrying sound signals to the brain. But new research shows that when it comes to restoring lost hearing ability, the spotlight may fall on some of the ear's supporting actors - and their understudies. In a new paper published online first by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School, St. Jude Children's ...

New insights into how plants regulate their absorption of an essential nutrient could help avoid pollution caused by excess use of fertiliser. The findings could lead to the development of crop varieties that need less of the primary nutrient - nitrogen - than conventional crops. It could also inform how much nitrogen should be added to plant feed. This would allow optimum plant growth without producing excess nitrogen in run-off from fields, which is a major source of water pollution. Agricultural fertilisers typically contain high levels of nitrogen that boost ...

JUPITER, FL, November 12, 2014 - In a pair of related studies, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a number of new therapeutic targets for memory disorders and have developed a new screening test to uncover compounds that may one day work against those disorders. The two studies, one published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the other in the journal ASSAY and Drug Development Technologies, could lead new approaches to some of the most problematic diseases facing a rapidly aging ...

Medicine is drifting towards a major problem. An increasing number of bacteria is no longer sensitive to known antibiotics. Doctors urgently need to find new ways of fighting these multi-resistant pathogens. To address the problem, pharmaceutical research is turning back to the source of most of our drugs: nature. Although hundreds of thousands of known active agents are found in nature, exactly how most of them work is unclear. A team of researchers from ETH Zurich has now developed a computer-based method to predict the mechanism of action of these natural substances. ...

Speaking more than one language is good for the brain, according to new research that indicates bilingual speakers process information more efficiently and more easily than those who know a single language. The benefits occur because the bilingual brain is constantly activating both languages and choosing which language to use and which to ignore, said Northwestern University's Viorica Marian, the lead author of the research and a professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders in the School of Communication. When the brain is constantly exercised ...

Four UK hospitals have achieved a huge reduction in the number of patients dying following emergency abdominal surgery, after adopting a 'care bundle' devised by patient safety specialists. The care bundle was developed at the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford and implemented in the Royal United Hospital Bath, Torbay Hospital and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. The results were analysed by academics at the University of Bradford Over the study period, the overall death rate for patients undergoing emergency abdominal surgery fell from 16 per cent to 10 ...

A new study published today in The British Journal of Developmental Psychology has found that conversations mothers have with their daughters tend to contain more emotional words and content, than the conversations they have with their sons. The researchers from the University of Surrey also found that as mothers use more emotional words than fathers, they are also unconsciously reinforcing gender stereotypes to their children. They suggest that these findings could explain why women are generally more emotionally intelligent than men. 65 Spanish mothers and fathers ...

BOSTON (Nov. 12, 2014) - Scientists from Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School Department of Ophthalmology have used the power of new genomic technology to discover that microbes that commonly infect the eye have special, previously unknown properties. These properties are predicted to allow the bacterium -- Streptococcus pneumoniae -- to specifically stick to the surface of the eye, grow, and cause damage and inflammation. Researchers are now using this information to develop new ways to treat and prevent this bacterium, which is becoming increasingly resistant ...

Oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infections were more common among men who had female partners with oral and/or genital HPV infection, suggesting that the transmission of HPV occurs via oral-oral and oral-genital routes, according to a McGill University study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the world, and is a risk factor for several cancers, including cervical, vaginal, vulvar, oropharyngeal [throat/tonsil], anal, and penile cancer," ...

This news release is available in French. Why are psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants, psychostimulants, anxiolytics, and antipsychotics are increasingly prescribed in North America? Drawing a parallel between the dilemmas facing medicine in the nineteenth century and those that currently exist in the field of mental health, the sociologist and historian Johanne Collin, a professor at the Université de Montréal's Faculty of Pharmacy, believes this increase in prescriptions is partly explained by the therapeutic reasoning of physicians. "There is an ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- A record number of people are surviving heart attacks and stroke but those who do may experience a sharp decline in physical abilities that steadily accelerates over time, according to a new nationally-representative study led by the University of Michigan. Heart attack and stroke were associated with a rapid decline in survivors' ability to take care of themselves over the next 10 years, many requiring long-term assistance for daily activities like dressing, bathing, grocery shopping and managing finances. Stroke survivors also appeared to be at ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, November 11, 2014 -- Regardless of whether a business has been in the family for one year or one thousand, the person in charge typically hopes that handing the reins to a close relative will ensure security for future generations. But that's easier said than done, given that 30 per cent of firms make it to the second generation of family ownership, and only 12 per cent make it to the third. Concordia University management professor Peter Jaskiewicz believes there's hope for business owners who stay current by focusing ...

Researchers at the University of Notre Dame have designed a simple, yet highly accurate traffic prediction model for roadway transportation networks. They have recently published their work in the journal Nature Communications. "Transportation networks and in particular the highway transportation network are like the body's circulatory system for the nation," says Zoltán Toroczkai, professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame, who co-authored the study with physics graduate student Yihui Ren and national and international collaborators. The team's model ...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (November 11, 2014) -- Researchers at the University of Miami (UM) have developed a family-focused, culturally-informed treatment for schizophrenia (CIT-S). The program is one of the first to incorporate elements of the patient's cultural background as part of therapy. The findings are published online ahead of print, in the Journal of Family Psychology. The novel treatment aimed to reduce patients' symptoms and improve patient and caregiver emotional well-being, explains Amy Weisman de Mamani, Associate Professor of Psychology in the College of Arts ...

As baby boomers reach their sunset years, shifting nationwide demographics with them, the financial burden of Alzheimer's disease on the United States will skyrocket from $307 billion annually to $1.5 trillion, USC researchers announced today. Health policy researchers at the USC Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics used models that incorporate trends in health, health care costs, education and demographics to explore the future impact of one of humanity's costliest diseases on the nation's population. Other key findings include: From 2010 to ...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published online this week in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics reports anti-cancer activity in 10 out of 11 patient tumor samples grown in mice and treated with the experimental drug TAK-733, a small molecule inhibitor of MEK1/2. While the drug is conceived as a second-generation inhibitor in patients harboring the BRAF mutation, the study shows drug activity in melanoma models regardless of BRAF mutation status. Treated tumors shrunk up to 100 percent. "The importance of this molecule is that it's a next-generation ...

A University of Texas at Arlington physics team is using their expertise in the field of optics and photonics to advance new methods in areas such as mapping the neural circuitry of the brain and guiding neurons to potentially repair damage in the body. Samarendra Mohanty, an assistant professor of physics, leads the Biophysics and Physiology Lab in the UT Arlington College of Science. He is co-author on two papers published this month. In one published by the online journal PLOS ONE Nov. 10, researchers in Mohanty's lab described using a method called "two-photon optogenetic ...

Making a paper airplane in school used to mean trouble. Today it signals a promising discovery in materials science research that could help next-generation technology -like wearable energy storage devices- get off the ground. Researchers at Drexel University and Dalian University of Technology in China have chemically engineered a new, electrically conductive nanomaterial that is flexible enough to fold, but strong enough to support many times its own weight. They believe it can be used to improve electrical energy storage, water filtration and radiofrequency shielding ...

November 11, 2014 - Several lines of research have opened exciting new frontiers in scientific understanding and clinical management of bipolar disorder. Recent advances in bipolar disease research are described in this month's special issue of Harvard Review of Psychiatry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Bipolar disease is a "prevalent, complex, and hard-to-treat illness [leading] to extreme and erratic shifts of mood, thinking, and behavior, with a very high risk of suicide as well as increased risks of dying ...

In multiple sclerosis, the immune system goes rogue, improperly attacking the body's own central nervous system. Mobility problems and cognitive impairments may arise as the nerve cells become damaged. In a new study, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and co-investigators have identified a key protein that is able to reduce the severity of a disease equivalent to MS in mice. This molecule, Del-1, is the same regulatory protein that has been found to prevent inflammation and bone loss in a mouse model of gum disease. "We see that two completely different ...

DALLAS - November 11, 2014 - UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have determined the specific type of cell that gives rise to large, disfiguring tumors called plexiform neurofibromas, a finding that could lead to new therapies for preventing growth of these tumors. "This advance provides new insight into the steps that lead to tumor development and suggests ways to develop therapies to prevent neurofibroma formation where none exist today," said Dr. Lu Le, Assistant Professor of Dermatology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study, published online and ...

As scientists probe the molecular underpinnings of why some people are prone to obesity and some to leanness, they are discovering that weight maintenance is more complicated than the old "calories in, calories out" adage. A team of researchers led by the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine's Kendra K. Bence have now drawn connections between known regulators of body mass, pointing to possible treatments for obesity and metabolic disorders. Their work also presents intriguing clues that these same molecular pathways may play a role in learning ...