ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (March 3, 2015) - Getting sick when you're pregnant is especially difficult, but women whose children are at risk for developing asthma should avoid antibiotics, according to a new study. The study, published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), followed 298 mother-child pairs through the child's third year of life. The study found that 22 percent of the 103 children born to mothers who took antibiotics during pregnancy were diagnosed with ...

This news release is available in French. Research has shown that the health of immigrants is generally better than that of citizens of their host country, at least on their arrival and for some time afterwards. But a team of researchers in Montreal has found that this is not true of all groups of immigrants; children and older people, for example, may be exceptions. "Our analysis suggests that immigrant health policies should not be 'one size fits all' in type, and that they need to take account of immigrants' ages and the indicators of the health problems they are ...

Physician practices are engaging in new health care payment models intended to improve quality and reduce costs, but are finding that they need help with successfully managing increasing amounts of data and figuring out how to respond to the diversity of programs and quality metrics from different payers, according to a new joint study by the RAND Corporation and the American Medical Association. Both the federal government and private payers are changing the way they pay physicians and other health professionals, moving to innovative models intended to improve quality ...

Electric vehicles are cool, research shows. Literally. A study in this week's Scientific Reports by researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) and in China add more fuel to the already hot debate about whether electric vehicles are more environmentally friendly than conventional vehicles by uncovering two hidden benefits. They show that the cool factor is real - in that electric vehicles emit significantly less heat. That difference could mitigate the urban heat island effect, the phenomenon that helps turn big cities like Beijing into pressure cookers in warm ...

Researchers funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, have found that two common antibiotic treatments work equally well against bacterial skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) acquired outside of hospital settings. Known as community-associated MRSA, or CA-MRSA, these skin infections have been reported in athletes, daycare-age children, students, military personnel and prison inmates, among others, and can lead to hospitalization, surgical procedures, bacteria ...

Nanoparticles of various types can be quickly and permanently bonded to a solid substrate, if one of the most effective methods of synthesis, click chemistry, is used for this purpose. The novel method has been presented by a team of researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. A small movement of the hand, the characteristic 'click!' - and the snap fastener quickly and securely fastens our clothes. One of the newest methods of synthesis in modern chemistry, click chemistry, works on a similar basis. Here, molecules ...

Clear and realistic expectations are key to successfully hiring heads of departments, say Professor Pierre-Alain Clavien, University of Zurich, and Joseph Deiss, former President of the Swiss Confederation, in a commentary in Nature magazine. Selecting a chair for a position in clinical academic medicine is often problematic, with the diverse demands placed on the position proving a constant source of debate. Today's heads of departments are not only expected to be outstanding physicians, researchers, and teachers, but also adroit and cost-conscious managers. Finding ...

A pioneering class of drugs that target cancers with mutations in the BRCA breast cancer genes could also work against tumours with another type of genetic fault, a new study suggests. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found that errors in a gene called CLBC leave cancer cells vulnerable to PARP inhibitor drugs. Around 2 per cent of all tumours have defects in CLBC. The study, which was carried out in collaboration with colleagues in Denmark and the Czech Republic, was funded in the UK by the European Union, and was published today (Thursday) in ...

Are humans born with the ability to solve problems or is it something we learn along the way? A research group at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Aarhus University, is working to find answers to this question. The research group has developed a computer game called Quantum Moves, which has been played 400,000 times by ordinary people. This has provided unique and deep insight into the human brain's ability to solve problems. The game involves moving atoms around on the screen and scoring points by finding the best way to do so. In this way, ordinary people ...

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have successfully created 'mini-lungs' using stem cells derived from skin cells of patients with cystic fibrosis, and have shown that these can be used to test potential new drugs for this debilitating lung disease. The research is one of a number of studies that have used stem cells - the body's master cells - to grow 'organoids', 3D clusters of cells that mimic the behaviour and function of specific organs within the body. Other recent examples have been 'mini-brains' to study Alzheimer's disease and 'mini-livers' to model ...

Women who received a text message reminding them about their breast cancer screening appointment were 20 per cent more likely to attend than those who were not texted, according to a study published in the British Journal of Cancer today (Thursday)*. Researchers, funded by the Imperial College Healthcare Charity, trialled text message reminders for women aged 47-53 years old who were invited for their first appointment for breast cancer screening. The team compared around 450 women who were sent a text with 435 women who were not texted**. It found that 72 per cent ...

PISCATAWAY, N.J. (March 18, 2015) - New research published by Rutgers University chemists has documented significant progress confronting one of the main challenges inhibiting widespread utilization of sustainable power: Creating a cost-effective process to store energy so it can be used later. "We have developed a compound, Ni5P4 (nickel-5 phosphide-4), that has the potential to replace platinum in two types of electrochemical cells: electrolyzers that make hydrogen by splitting water through hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) powered by electrical energy, and fuel cells ...

The number of people living with cystic fibrosis into adulthood in the UK is expected to increase dramatically - by as much as 80 per cent - by 2025, according to a Europe-wide survey, the UK end of which was led by Queen's University Belfast. People living with cystic fibrosis have previously had low life expectancy, but improvements in treatments in the last three decades have led to an increase in survival with almost all children now living to around 40 years. In countries where reliable data exists, the average rise in the number of adults with CF is expected to be ...

A recent study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that following military parents' return from combat deployment, their children show increased visits for mental healthcare, physical injury, and child maltreatment consults, compared to children whose parents have not been deployed. The same types of healthcare visits were also found to be significantly higher for children of combat-injured parents. Children of deployed parents are known to have increased mental healthcare needs, and be at increased risk for child ...

When cancer strikes, it may be possible for patients to fight back with their own defenses, using a strategy known as immunotherapy. According to a new study published in Nature, researchers have found a way to enhance the effects of this therapeutic approach in glioblastoma, a deadly type of brain cancer, and possibly improve patient outcomes. The research was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) as well as the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which are part of the National Institutes of Health. "The promise of dendritic cell-based ...

Boulder, Colo., USA - Unaweep Canyon is a puzzling landscape -- the only canyon on Earth with two mouths. First formally documented by western explorers mapping the Colorado Territory in the 1800s, Unaweep Canyon has inspired numerous hypotheses for its origin. This new paper for Geosphere by Gerilyn S. Soreghan and colleagues brings together old and new geologic data of this region to further the hypothesis that Unaweep Canyon was formed in multiple stages. The inner gorge originated ~300 million years ago, was buried, was then revealed about five million years ago when ...

Latinos are the largest ethnic minority group in the United States, and it's expected that by 2050 they will comprise almost 30 percent of the U.S. population. Yet they are also the most underserved by health care and health insurance providers. Latinos' low rates of insurance coverage and poor access to health care strongly suggest a need for better outreach by health care providers and an improvement in insurance coverage. Although the implementation of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 seems to have helped (approximately 25 percent of those eligible for coverage under ...

Could our reaction to an image of an overweight or obese person affect how we perceive odor? A trio of researchers, including two from UCLA, says yes. The researchers discovered that visual cues associated with overweight or obese people can influence one's sense of smell, and that the perceiver's body mass index matters, too. Participants with higher BMI tended to be more critical of heavier people, with higher-BMI participants giving scents a lower rating when scent samples were matched with an obese or overweight individual. The findings, published online in the ...

COLLEGE STATION -- Researchers at Texas A&M AgriLife Research have developed a new technology to determine sensitivity or resistance to rabies virus. "We were able to create a novel platform such that we could look at how pathogens, such as bacteria or virus or even drugs or radiation, interact with specific human genes," said lead researcher Dr. Deeann Wallis, AgriLife Research assistant professor of biochemistry and biophysics. "It allows us a new way to profile the genes involved in sensitivity or resistance to certain agents." The rabies work is being reported in ...

SAVANNAH, Ga., March 19, 2015 - Bad news for relentless power-seekers the likes of Frank Underwood on House of Cards: Climbing the ladder of social status through aggressive, competitive striving might shorten your life as a result of increased vulnerability to cardiovascular disease. That's according to new research by psychologist Timothy W. Smith and colleagues at the University of Utah. And good news for successful types who are friendlier: Attaining higher social status as the result of prestige and freely given respect may have protective effects, the researchers ...

PORTLAND, Ore. - March 19, 2015 - A new in vitro (test tube) study, "Dietary functional benefits of Bartlett and Starkrimson pears for potential management of hyperglycemia, hypertension and ulcer bacteria Helicobacter pylori while supporting beneficial probiotic bacterial response," was published in the March issue of Food Research International.1 In a laboratory in vitro setting, Kalidas Shetty, PhD, currently a professor of plant science at North Dakota State University, and the research's lead author, Dr. Dipayan Sarkar, studied the compounds found in two pear varieties, ...

Researchers at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Campus Berlin-Buch, have succeeded in generating cells of the immune system to specifically target and destroy cancer cells. The research findings of Matthias Obenaus, Professor Thomas Blankenstein (MDC and Charité), Dr. Matthias Leisegang (MDC) and Professor Wolfgang Uckert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and MDC) as well as Professor Dolores Schendel (Medigene AG, Planegg/Martinsried) have now been published in Nature Biotechnology ...

Sensing pain is extremely unpleasant and sometimes hard to bear - and pain can even become chronic. The perception of pain varies a lot depending on the context in which it is experienced. 50 years ago, neurobiologist Patrick Wall and psychologist Ronald Melzack formulated the so-called "Gate Control Theory" of pain. The two researchers proposed that inhibitory nerve cells in the spinal cord determine whether a pain impulse coming from the periphery, such as the foot, is relayed to the brain or not. A team headed by Hanns Ulrich Zeilhofer from the Institute of Pharmacology ...

The kidney carries out vital functions by continuously filtering the blood and excreting waste products into the urine. This is achieved by a complex system of tubules which transports the urine and regulates its composition. PhD student Annekatrin Aue, Dr. Christian Hinze and Professor Kai Schmidt-Ott of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) have now discovered how parts of these kidney tubules establish an inner space (lumen) and form a tight barrier against adjacent structures. The epithelial cells which line the tubules coordinate these processes ...

What does hair styling have in common with quantum computing? The braiding pattern has inspired scientists as a potential new approach to quantum calculation. The idea is to rely on a network of intersecting chains, or nanowires, containing two-dimensional quasi-particles. The way these quasi-particles evolve in space time produces a braid-like pattern. These braids could then be used as the logic gate that provides the logical function required for calculations in computers. Due to their tight assembly, such braids are much more difficult to destabilise and less error-prone. ...