SAN DIEGO, Calif. (August 19, 2014) — Daylight was breaking over the central Pacific and coffee brewing aboard the MY Hanse Explorer. Between sips, about a dozen scientists strategized for the day ahead. Some would don wetsuits and slip below the surface to collect water samples around the southern Line Islands' numerous coral reefs. Others would tinker with the whirring gizmos and delicate machinery strewn throughout the 158-foot research vessel. All shared a single goal: Be the first research group to bring a DNA sequencer out into the field to do remote sequencing in ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of 9- and 10-year-olds finds that those who are more aerobically fit have more fibrous and compact white-matter tracts in the brain than their peers who are less fit. "White matter" describes the bundles of axons that carry nerve signals from one brain region to another. More compact white matter is associated with faster and more efficient nerve activity. The team reports its findings in the open-access journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. "Previous studies suggest that children with higher levels of aerobic fitness show greater ...

Male stickleback fish that protect their young have bigger brains than counterparts that don't care for offspring, finds a new University of British Columbia study. Stickleback fish are well known in the animal kingdom for the fact that the male of the species, rather than the female, cares for offspring. Male sticklebacks typically have bigger brains than females and researchers wanted to find out if the difference in size might relate to their role as caregivers. In the study, published recently in Ecology and Evolution, researchers compared regular male sticklebacks ...

Researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have shown that a select team of immune-system cells from patients with leukemia can be multiplied in the lab, creating an army of natural killer cells that can be used to destroy the cancer cells. Results of their in vitro study, published August 19 in the journal Leukemia, could one day provide a less toxic and more effective way to battle this cancer in children. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer of childhood. This disease hinders the development of healthy blood cells while cancer cells proliferate. ...

New York, NY, August 19, 2014 – Postsurgical cognitive side effects can have major implications for the level of care, length of hospital stay, and the patient's perceived quality of care, especially in elderly and fragile patients. A nationwide survey of Swedish anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists has found there is low awareness of the risks of cognitive side effects following surgery. Furthermore, only around half of the respondents used depth-of-anesthesia monitors. Results are published in Annals of Medicine and Surgery. Patients generally expect to make a rapid ...

The specific composition of bacterial species in a person's gut may protect against or increase susceptibility to Campylobacter, the most common cause of human bacterial intestinal inflammation, according research published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The study also found that Campylobacter infection can yield lasting changes to one's gut bacteria composition. "It has been known for a long time that the microbiota, or microorganisms in the gut, can protect a person from colonization by organisms that cause ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Parents are better off having daughters if they want to be cared for in their old age suggests a new study, which finds that women appear to provide as much elderly parent care as they can, while men contribute as little as possible. "Whereas the amount of elderly parent care daughters provide is associated with constraints they face, such as employment or childcare, sons' caregiving is associated only with the presence or absence of other helpers, such as sisters or a parent's spouse," said study author Angelina Grigoryeva, a doctoral candidate in sociology ...

SAN FRANCISCO — People's educational attainment influences their level of physical activity both during the week and on weekends, according to a study whose authors include two University of Kansas researchers. The study finds that, on average, those with a college degree are more active on Saturdays and Sundays than on a typical weekday — whereas for people without a high school degree, the opposite is true. "Educational attainment predicts physical activity differently on weekends and weekdays," said Jarron M. Saint Onge, a KU assistant professor of sociology and ...

SAN FRANCISCO — The Great Recession of 2007-2009 had little direct effect on the health of workers who survived the waves of job cuts that took place during that period, according to a new University of Akron study. That's the good news. The bad news may be the reason: Increased workloads and less satisfying job duties, the highly stressful byproducts of corporate restructurings during previous economic downturns, had by 2007 become the new normal in the workplace. Because of this long-term trend, workers who remained on the job during the Great Recession were already ...

SAN FRANCISCO — Nurses who are motivated primarily by the desire to help others, rather than by enjoyment of the work itself or the lifestyle it makes possible, are more likely to burn out on the job, University of Akron researchers say. Nursing is still a female-dominated occupation, and being female is associated with being caring, nurturing, and altrustic. Therefore, the desire to help others is often assumed to be the "right" motivation for entering the field, the researchers say. However, they found that nurses who pursue their career for reasons other than or ...

In recent years, a shift from inpatient to outpatient surgery in the U.S. for commonly performed urologic procedures has coincided with increasing deaths following complications that were potentially recognizable or preventable. The finding, which comes from a recent study published in BJU International, indicates the importance of monitoring urologic surgery patients for potential complications. Over the last two decades, measures to improve healthcare safety and quality have expanded significantly. In the context of surgical procedures, this has lead in a decrease in ...

VIDEO: Jesse D. Sammon, D.O., a researcher at Henry Ford's Vattikuti Urology Institute and lead author of the study discusses deaths rise with shift from in-hospital to outpatient procedures for common... Click here for more information. DETROIT – As hospitals have shifted an array of common urological surgeries from inpatient procedures to outpatient, potentially preventable deaths have increased following complications. Those were the primary findings of a new study led ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – The common thought in the medical community is that the randomized, controlled trial is the gold standard in medical research. Findings from these studies are thought to be most reliable and are often endorsed by guideline-making organizations and brought into medical practice. But, Penn Medicine researchers caution that the rapid adoption of one or two studies as the basis for clinical practice, even if they are randomized controlled trials, can lead to misinformation and potential harm. Using the case of Beta-blockers, they show how clinical practice ...

Scientists at Queen's University Belfast have made a breakthrough in the fight against the most resistant hospital superbugs. The team from the School of Pharmacy at Queen's have developed the first innovative antibacterial gel that acts to kill Pseudomonas aeruginosa, staphylococci and E. coli using natural proteins. The gels have the ability to break down the thick jelly-like coating, known as biofilms, which cover bacteria making them highly resistant to current therapies, while leaving healthy cells unaffected. Dr Garry Laverty, from the School of Pharmacy at Queen's ...

How 4-year old children draw pictures of a child is an indicator of intelligence at age 14, according to a study by King's College London, published today in Psychological Science. The researchers studied 7,752 pairs of identical and non-identical twins (a total of 15,504 children) from the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), and found that the link between drawing and later intelligence was influenced by genes. At the age of 4, children were asked by their parents to complete a 'Draw-a-Child' test, i.e. draw a picture of a child. ...

Investigators at the University of Southampton have discovered that two new vaccines can prevent the transmission of meningitis bacteria from person to person. The vaccines do this by reducing 'carriage' of the responsible bacteria in the nose and throats of the population. Meningitis is a devastating condition and the Southampton team believe this discovery will change the way new vaccines are made in the future. Robert Read, Professor of Infectious Diseases at the University of Southampton, who led the study, says: "The standard practice is to vaccinate with the ...

Parents who physically neglect their boys may increase the risk that they will raise violent adolescents, according to Penn State sociologists. In a study of currently incarcerated male adolescents, physical neglect during childhood arose as the strongest predictor of violent behavior, said William McGuigan, associate professor of human development and family studies at Penn State Shenango. Researchers are just beginning to acknowledge the powerful role of neglect in influencing adolescent violence, he added. "One of the problems with studying neglect is that it is ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that the blood-fat lowering drug fenofibrate is as effective in women with type 2 diabetes as in men with type 2 diabetes. The research is by the Fenofibrate Intervention and Event Lowering in Diabetes (FIELD) study investigators in Australia, New Zealand and Finland, led by Professor Anthony Keech from the Clinical Trials Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia, and Associate Professor Michael d'Emden, Endocrine Research Unit, Royal Brisbane Hospital, ...

Single use, disposable acupuncture needles were introduced in the late 1970s, prompted by concerns about the risk of infection of reusable needles. Since that time, they have gradually been adopted worldwide. In clinical practice it is often difficult for the acupuncturist to insert a long needle into tissue, because long fine needles are prone to buckling. Acupuncturists have therefore either resorted to larger needles, which can be more painful for the patient, or to holding the needle shaft during insertion, which poses an infection risk, and contravenes World Health ...

Current evidence suggests that the characteristics of an area in which a person lives can negatively affect their cardiovascular health. This includes, for example, the density of fast food outlets; levels of violence, noise, and pollution; drug use; and building disrepair. But few studies have looked at the potential health enhancing effects of positive local neighbourhood characteristics, such as perceived neighbourhood social cohesion, say the authors. They therefore tracked the cardiovascular health of over 5000 US adults with no known heart problems over a period ...

Two Ebola virus commentaries being published online first: Opinion: Ebola-stricken American volunteers deserve special treatment American missionary workers stricken with the deadly Ebola virus while aiding infected patients in West Africa deserve special treatment, according to a commentary being published early online in Annals of Internal Medicine. As the number of Ebola virus cases surpasses 1,600 in four African countries, public attention has focused on the two infected Americans who were airlifted out of Liberia to receive a highly experimental treatment in ...

Induced earthquakes generate significantly lower shaking than tectonic earthquakes with comparable magnitudes, except within 10 km of the epicenter, according to a study to be published online August 19 in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (BSSA). Within 10 km of the epicenter, the reduced intensity of shaking is likely offset by the increased intensity of shaking due to the shallow source depths of injection-induced earthquakes. Using data from the USGS "Did You Feel It?" system, Seismologist Susan Hough explored the shaking intensities of 11 earthquakes ...

Tampa, FL (Aug. 18, 2014) -- A new therapy developed by researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) Morsani College of Medicine and Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) may help reduce the life-threatening complications of interventional cardiovascular disease treatment. The researchers demonstrated in a rat model that the novel molecular therapy could selectively inhibit blood vessel re-narrowing and simultaneously promote vessel healing following a medical procedure using a balloon catheter to open narrowed or blocked arteries. Their preclinical study ...

Doctors in hospitals and emergency rooms around the world should be prepared to recognize Ebola virus infection and isolate patients if necessary, infectious disease specialists recommend. However, concerns that Ebola will spread beyond West Africa to Europe and North America are unfounded because of the way Ebola is transmitted and because of highly developed hospital infection control practices, they say. A description of the virus, the current outbreak and recommendations for management of infected patients appear today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The lead ...

U.S. hospitalizations and deaths from heart disease and stroke dropped significantly in the last decade, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. "Interestingly, these improvements happened in a period when there were no real 'miracle' clinical advancements," said Harlan Krumholz, M.D., S.M., lead author of the "most comprehensive report card to-date" on America's progress in heart disease and stroke prevention and treatment. "Rather, we saw consistent improvements in the use of evidence-based treatments and medications and an increase ...