Bethesda, MD (April 22, 2015) -- The May issues of AGA's journals -- Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology and Gastroenterology -- highlight important research updates on the most deadly forms of liver disease. Here's what you need to know: Researchers confirm that NAFLD worsens heart disease. One specific cardiovascular disease risk factor -- psychological distress -- is linked to death from liver disease in a large, general population sample. Improvements in cirrhosis care have contributed to a 41 percent decrease in inpatient mortality. For access to any of ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered that electron spin brings a previously unknown degree of order to the high entropy alloy nickel iron chromium cobalt (NiFeCrCo) - and may play a role in giving the alloy its desirable properties. "High entropy alloys have garnered a lot of attention over the past 10 years because they have remarkable properties," says Doug Irving, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at NC State and corresponding author of a paper describing the work. High entropy alloys are materials that consist ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--An international research team is bringing a new weapon to bear against invasive earthworms. The ongoing research project at The Ohio State University, the University of Alberta and Simon Fraser University uses statistical analysis to forecast one worm species' spread, in hopes of finding ways to curtail it. Most recently, they've focused on the boreal forest of northern Alberta. No native worms live in the forest whatsoever; the region had been worm-free since the last ice age 11,000 years ago, until invasive European species began working their way ...

Alternative variations from popular artists' videos may reach an audience of millions, shows the new study from Finland's Aalto University. Music is the most popular YouTube content by several measures, including video views and search activity. The world's first academic study on YouTube music consumption by Aalto University in Finland shows that one reason for its popularity lies in users' own video. People re-use original music by popular artists to create their own alternative video variations, which may reach an audience of millions and can be found alongside any ...

TORONTO, April 22, 2015--In a study to ascertain whether breast arterial calcification (BAC) detected with digital mammography correlates to chest CT findings of coronary artery calcification (CAC), researchers have discovered a striking relationship between the two factors. In 76% of the study cohort, women who had a BAC score of 0 also had a CAC score of 0. As the BAC score increases, there is a concomitant increase in the CAC score. The findings indicate that the presence of BAC could play a significant role in identifying women who may benefit from coronary artery ...

The exoplanet 51 Pegasi b [1] lies some 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus. It was discovered in 1995 and will forever be remembered as the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like the Sun [2]. It is also regarded as the archetypal hot Jupiter -- a class of planets now known to be relatively commonplace, which are similar in size and mass to Jupiter, but orbit much closer to their parent stars. Since that landmark discovery, more than 1900 exoplanets in 1200 planetary systems have been confirmed, but, in the year of the ...

People waiting for organ transplants may soon have higher hopes of getting the help that they need in time. Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology have developed a new technique that extends the time that donor organs last and can also resuscitate organs obtained after cardiac arrest. The work published in Scientific Reports details a procedure that cools organs down to 22 °C (71.6 °F) and slows down organ function while still supplying oxygen, resulting in more successful transplants than the current standard methods. Team leader Takashi Tsuji ...

Real or counterfeit? Northwestern University scientists have invented sophisticated fluorescent inks that one day could be used as multicolored barcodes for consumers to authenticate products that are often counterfeited. Snap a photo with your smartphone, and it will tell you if the item is real and worth your money. Counterfeiting is very big business worldwide, with $650 billion per year lost globally, according to the International Chamber of Commerce. The new fluorescent inks give manufacturers and consumers an authentication tool that would be very difficult for ...

Overall, an estimated 211,514 people attended Emergency Departments (EDs), Minor Injury Units (MIUs) and Walk-in Centres in England and Wales for treatment following violence in 2014 - 22,995 fewer than in 2013. Serious violence affecting all age groups decreased in 2014 compared to 2013. Most notably, recorded acts of violence against children (0-10 year olds) and adolescents (11-17 year olds) were marked by an 18% decline. The data was gathered from a scientific sample of 117 EDs, MIUs and Walk-in Centres in England and Wales. All are certified members of the National ...

Research suggests health and social care professionals put a different emphasis on the meaning of dignity than their patients do. Although the UK has well-established local and national policies that champion the need to provide dignified care, breaches in dignity are still a problem with the NHS - and the study by Brunel University London has uncovered a potential gap between what patients expect and the focus of care professionals. When asked what dignified care meant to them, health care professionals referred to 'what dignity is', often as a conceptual idea, ...

SALT LAKE CITY, April 22, 2015 - Using statistics that describe how an infectious disease spreads, a University of Utah anthropologist analyzed different theories of how people first settled islands of the vast Pacific between 3,500 and 900 years ago. Adrian Bell found the two most likely strategies were to travel mostly against prevailing winds and seek easily seen islands, not necessarily the nearest islands. The study - published in this month's issue of the journal American Antiquity - suggests early Pacific seafarers "weren't just drifting around," says Bell, the ...

Actor Stephen McGann, who plays GP Dr Patrick Turner in the hit BBC period drama Call the Midwife, has described the steps taken by the writers, production team and actors to ensure the series has sufficient medical accuracy and authenticity. In an essay published today by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, McGann writes of the unique insight that the role of Dr Turner has given him into questions regarding the way popular culture portrays medics and medicine. While working on Call the Midwife, McGann's interest in the relationship between medical science and ...

The widely held belief that depression is due to low levels of serotonin in the brain - and that effective treatments raise these levels - is a myth, argues a leading psychiatrist in The BMJ this week. David Healy, Professor of Psychiatry at the Hergest psychiatric unit in North Wales, points to a misconception that lowered serotonin levels in depression are an established fact, which he describes as "the marketing of a myth." The serotonin reuptake inhibiting (SSRI) group of drugs came on stream in the late 1980s, nearly two decades after first being mooted, writes ...

The UK government plan to fund and to increase participation in rugby in schools has not been informed by injury data, warn experts in The BMJ this week. Professor Allyson Pollock and colleagues at Queen Mary University of London say the government "should ensure the safety and effectiveness of (school) sports" and call for injury surveillance and prevention programmes to be established to help reduce injury rates. The high rates of injury in rugby union and rugby league for professional and amateur players, including children, are well established and a cause for medical ...

As the deadline for the millennium development goals approaches, experts writing in The BMJ this week take stock of the successes, failures, and oversights, and look ahead to the next phase - the sustainable development goals. The millennium development goals are eight aspirational targets set by the United Nations (UN) in New York in September 2000, explain Dr Mark Beattie and colleagues. The progress made towards some of the goals has been remarkable, they write. For example, child mortality has effectively halved worldwide, from 90 per 1,000 births in 1990 to 46 ...

WASHINGTON -- Law should be viewed as a major determinant of health and safety and can be utilized as a powerful and innovative tool to address pressing global health concerns, says a newly formed, high-level commission announced today by the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University in partnership with The Lancet. In their "Comment" published online in The Lancet, the Commission's co-chairs Lawrence O. Gostin and John T. Monahan, along with the Commission's project coordinator, Mary C. DeBartolo, and Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief ...

Alcohol and drug misuse are responsible for around a third of all deaths in former male prisoners and half in female ex-prisoners, a new study of almost 48000 ex-prisoners published in The Lancet Psychiatry journal has found. Moreover, the research shows that a substantial proportion of these deaths are from preventable causes, including accidents and suicide (42% in men and 70% in women). Several studies have reported high death rates after release from prison, but few have looked at potential risk factors for these high rates. Led by Seena Fazel, Professor of Forensic ...

The good relationship between humans and dogs was certainly influenced by domestication. For long, it was assumed that humans preferred particularly tolerant animals for breeding. Thus, cooperative and less aggressive dogs could develop. Recently, however, it was suggested that these qualities were not only specific for human-dog interactions, but characterize also dog-dog interactions. Friederike Range and Zsófia Virányi from the Messerli Research Institute investigated in their study if dogs are in fact less aggressive and more tolerant towards their conspecifics ...

A team of French clinicians has diagnosed the first case of rabies in that country since 2003. Only 20 cases of human rabies had been diagnosed in France between 1970 and 2003. Moreover, the patient was unaware of having been bitten. So it is not surprising that that diagnosis was not suggested until day 12 post admission to the intensive care unit. The case report appeared April 8 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. "Rabies is nowadays extremely rare in the developed world," said Christian Brun-Buisson, head ...

DALLAS, April 21, 2014 -- Among black heart failure patients, moderate depression may increase the risk of heart failure patients being hospitalized or dying, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure. Comparing outcomes of 747 blacks to 1,420 whites with heart failure using a patient-reported scale of depressive symptoms, researchers found: Even moderate depressive symptoms may raise the risk of black heart failure patients being hospitalized or dying. Blacks with levels of depressive symptoms even below the levels ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - April 21, 2015) Researchers have identified a protein that offers a new focus for developing targeted therapies to tame the severe inflammation associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), colitis and other autoimmune disorders. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study which appears today in the scientific journal Immunity. Investigators showed that the protein NLRP12 works in T cells to limit production of chemical messengers or cytokines that fuel inflammation. T cells are specialized white blood cells produced to eliminate specific ...

The Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released an updated proposal that will establish an international quality standard for photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturing. The document is intended for immediate use by PV manufacturers when producing modules on an industrial scale so they can increase investor, utility, and consumer confidence in PV system performance. "Our recent research on 50,000 systems found that, during the time period we studied, just 0.1% of all PV systems were affected by damaged or underperforming modules and less than ...

A recent randomized trial that looked at the feasibility of 2013 guidelines issued by the American College of Surgeons Trauma Quality Improvement Project for trauma resuscitation found that delivering universal donor plasma to massively hemorrhaging patients can be accomplished consistently and rapidly and without excessive wastage in high volume trauma centers. The plasma is given in addition to red blood cell transfusions to optimize treatment. The 2013 guidelines recommend that universal donor products be immediately available on arrival of severely injured patients, ...

Researchers have unraveled the elusive process by which small, highly vascular clusters of sensory cells in the carotid arteries "taste the blood," as a 1926 essay put it--the initial step in regulating blood-oxygen levels. In the April 21 issue of the journal Science Signaling, a University of Chicago-based research team describes the precise mechanism that cells in the carotid bodies use to detect oxygen levels in the blood as it flows toward the brain. The cells translate that taste test into signals, sent through the carotid sinus nerve, a branch of the glossopharyngeal ...

MADISON - Scientists today demonstrated the potential for softwoods to process more easily into pulp and paper if engineered to incorporate a key feature of hardwoods. The finding, published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could improve the economics of the pulp, paper and biofuels industries and reduce those industries' environmental impact. "What we've shown is that it's possible to pair some of the most economically desirable traits of each wood type," says John Ralph, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center's (GLBRC) plants leader ...