While media attention has been focused recently on coronavirus cases in the Arabian peninsula and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, experts note that another threat lies in the spread of Chikungunya fever, an illness that is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause fever, joint and muscle pain, headaches, and rashes. While it does not often cause death, the symptoms can be severe and disabling, with no treatment available. The potential for worldwide spread of Chikungunya virus is much higher than the risk of dissemination of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Practicing hatha yoga three times a week for eight weeks improved sedentary older adults' performance on cognitive tasks that are relevant to everyday life, researchers report. The findings involved 108 adults between the ages of 55 and 79 years of age, 61 of whom attended hatha yoga classes. The others met for the same number and length of sessions and engaged in stretching and toning exercises instead of yoga. At the end of the eight weeks, the yoga group was speedier and more accurate on tests of information recall, mental flexibility and task-switching ...

Researchers from Aarhus University, Denmark, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, have developed a new approach to measure the combined exposure of species to both climate and land use change. This new metric was used to assess the risk to species in the face of combined rates of climate and land use for the US from 2001 to 2051. Their results, which have just been published in Nature Climate Change, highlight areas expected to be most vulnerable to losses in biodiversity and ecosystem function due to the individual or combined effects of climate and land use ...

Scientists from the Biogerontology Research Foundation (BGRF), a UK-based charity founded to support ageing research and address the challenges of a rapidly ageing population, propose a new concept for signalome-wide analysis of changes in intracellular pathways, called OncoFinder, which allows for accurate and robust cross-platform analysis of gene expression data. This new technique will allow scientists to derive useful information from and compare the hundreds of thousands of data sets obtained using legacy equipment as well as data sets obtained from biological samples ...

New simple and effective methods are needed to better evaluate the outcomes of repair using nerve conduits in vivo. Ultrasound is a common noninvasive clinical detection modality that has been used in many fields. However, ultrasound has only rarely been used to observe implanted nerve conduits in vivo. Hongkui Wang and co-workers from Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University report the first use of ultrasound to noninvasively observe the changes in chitosan nerve conduits implanted in rats over time. The ultrasound imaging clearly showed whether there are unsatisfactory ...

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) containing various growth factors can promote nerve regeneration. An inside-out vein graft can substitute nerve autograft to repair short nerve defects. It is hypothesized that an inside-out vein graft filled with platelet-rich plasma shows better effects in the repair of short sciatic nerve defects. In a study reported on the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 9, No. 14, 2014), an inside-out vein autograft filled with platelet-rich plasma was used to bridge a 10 mm-long sciatic nerve defect in rats. At 6 and 8 weeks, the sciatic nerve function ...

A specialized subset of lung cells can shake flu infection, yet they remain stamped with an inflammatory gene signature that wreaks havoc in the lung, according to a study published in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Seasonal flu is caused by influenza virus, which can infect a variety of cell types in the lung. Infected cells are typically destroyed by the virus itself or by immune cells that attack infected cells. The resulting inflammation can linger on long after the virus has been eliminated leading to persistent symptoms and, in some cases, severe tissue damage. Club ...

Barcelona, 18 August 2014. Research led by the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) evidence the most conclusive preclinical results to-date validating Myc inhibition as a therapeutic strategy in glioma – a highly agressive tumor type that notoriously outsmarts current anti-cancer therapies. The study led by Laura Soucek, Principal Investigator of VHIO´s Mouse Models of Cancer Therapies Group, published today in Nature Communications, not only represents an important step forward in ultimately providing brain glioma patients with new therapeutic avenues, but also ...

For the first time, a research team has been able to reconstruct the solar activity at the end of the last ice age, around 20,000-10,000 years ago, by analysing trace elements in ice cores in Greenland and cave formations from China. During the last glacial maximum, Sweden was covered in a thick ice sheet that stretched all the way down to northern Germany and sea levels were more than 100 metres lower than they are today, because the water was frozen in the extensive ice caps. The new study shows that the sun's variation influences the climate in a similar way regardless ...

New University of British Columbia research found that receiving antibiotic treatments early in life can increase susceptibility to specific diseases later on. Most bacteria living in the gut play a positive role in promoting a healthy immune system, but antibiotic treatments often do not discriminate between good and bad bacteria. The study published today in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology helps scientists understand how different antibiotics affect good bacteria. "This is the first step to understanding which bacteria are absolutely necessary to develop ...

UPTON, NY—Electronic devices with unprecedented efficiency and data storage may someday run on ferroelectrics—remarkable materials that use built-in electric polarizations to read and write digital information, outperforming the magnets inside most popular data-driven technology. But ferroelectrics must first overcome a few key stumbling blocks, including a curious habit of "forgetting" stored data. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered nanoscale asymmetries and charge preferences hidden within ferroelectrics ...

Embracing "novel" ecosystems is dangerous, according to a new study by an international team. Novel ecosystems arise when human activities transform biological communities through species invasions and environmental change. They are seemingly ubiquitous, and thus many policymakers and ecologists argue for them to be accepted as the "new normal"—an idea the researchers say is a bad one. In the study, published in the September edition of the academic journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution, the international team argues that adopting novel ecosystems is based on faulty, ...

Have you ever seen a crowd of people looking off into the distance, perhaps toward a passing biker or up to the top of a building? There's a good chance you looked there, too, instantly, even without paying attention to the individuals in the group. How can we tell where a crowd is looking with so little effort? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Denver have discovered that we rely on a specialized visual process known as "ensemble coding" to perceive where a crowd is looking. Their new study shows that we are able to tell where ...

Ann Arbor, MI, August 18, 2014 – In a new supplement to the September issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, experts address the state of the science on suicide prevention and provide useful recommendations for research to inform effective suicide prevention. Suicide has been a challenging and perplexing public health issue to study as it has many dimensions and underlying factors. Although much is known about the patterns and potential risk factors of suicide, the national suicide rate does not appear to have dropped over the last 50 years. This groundbreaking ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- How do parents decide whether to vaccinate their child? In a study designed to formally look at the content of parent-targeted communications about the benefits of vaccination for measles, mumps and rubella, Indiana University School of Medicine investigators report that the framing of these messages influences parents' intentions to immunize their children. The investigators report that parents who viewed informational material highlighting direct benefits to their own child were the most likely to subsequently indicate that they would have their baby ...

WASHINGTON — Heterosexual white women are twice as likely as racial or sexual minority women to obtain medical help to get pregnant, according to a recent study published by the American Psychological Association. While income and lack of insurance only partially explained the lower number of racial minority women receiving fertility assistance, lack of insurance appeared to play a crucial role in whether lesbian and bisexual women received medical fertility help, especially in more recent years, according to the nationally representative study published in the APA journal ...

MONTREAL, August 15, 2014 — More than 500 delegates to the EcoHealth 2014 conference have issued a call to action to urgently and collaboratively address the impacts of climate change on the health of humans, animals and the global environment in light of the lack of a truly collective response to date. Working through the International Association for Ecology and Health (IAEH), the 500 delegates from 62 countries, and the larger ecohealth community they reflect, have developed a vision and commitment to action that will bring together what is already being done to address ...

Changes to British Columbia's laws against driving while impaired have reduced fatal crashes as well as ambulance calls and hospital admissions resulting from motor vehicle crashes, a new University of British Columbia study finds. Researchers concluded that harsher penalties for impaired driving and speeding instituted by the B.C. government in September 2010 reduced crashes related to drinking and driving. Automobile crashes declined 21 per cent, crash-related hospital admissions dropped 8 per cent and crash-related ambulance calls fell by 7.2 per cent. Based on ...

Optic nerve transection increased the expression of heat shock protein 72 (HSP72) in the lateral geniculate body, indicating that this protein is involved in the prevention of neuronal injury. Zinc sulfate and quercetin induced and inhibited the expression of HSP72, respectively. In a study reported by Dr. Ning Li and co-workers from the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, China, intraperitoneal injections of zinc sulfate, SP600125 (c-Jun N-terminal kinase inhibitor), or quercetin were performed on retinal ganglion cells in a Wistar rat model of chronic ...

Oxidative stress may cause retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cell apoptosis. Nitric oxide and superoxide react to produce peroxynitrite, which, along with its derivatives, are strong oxidants. Cholecystokinin octapeptide-8 (CCK-8) can protect cholinergic neurons against basal forebrain lesion caused by brain injury. Research team at Hebei Province People's Hospital, China led by Dr. Yuan Liu treated human RPE cells with the oxidative stress inducer peroxynitrite, and evaluated the neuroprotective effects of CCK-8. Peroxynitrite triggered apoptosis in these cells, and increased ...

According to new research humble, microscopic organisms can create dripstones in caves. This illustrates how biological life can influence the formation of Earth's geology - and the same may be happening right now on other planets in space. According to traditional textbooks dripstones are created by geological or geochemical processes with no influence from living organisms. But now scientists report that formation of dripstones can be a lot more complex than that: Sometimes microbes are responsible for the formation of these geological features. The researchers from ...

A new study provides an exciting insight into the Late Cretaceous and the diversity and distribution of the toothless 'dragon' pterosaurs from the Azhdarchidae family. The research was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The Azhdarchidan pterosaurs derive their name from the Persian word for dragon - Aždarha. Interestingly, this derived and rather successful group of pterosaurs included some of the largest known flying animals of all times, with a wingspan reaching between 10 and 12 m. 'Dragon' pterosaurs had a worldwide distribution once and were the last ...

DENVER (August 18, 2014) – Municipal zoning regulations may push marijuana dispensaries into low income, minority areas, according to a study just released by the University of Colorado Denver. Published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, the leading professional and academic planning resource, the study shows that government regulations will likely cause an inequitable distribution of marijuana business throughout the city. Though the impact of dispensaries to the neighborhoods in which they are located has yet to be understood, the research is clear ...

The hard corals primarily responsible for the construction of coral reefs around the world have attracted the attention of taxonomists for hundreds of years. Despite the important role such corals play in building what are arguably the world's most diverse ecosystems, coral reefs in some parts of the world still hold surprises for modern scientists. An international team of scientists has recently described a new hard coral species, Pachyseris inattesa, from the Saudi Arabian Red Sea. The study, led by the University of Milano-Biccocain collaboration with the King Abdullah ...

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, but mimicking the intricate networks and dynamic interactions that are inherent to living cells is difficult to achieve outside the cell. Now, as published in Science, Weizmann Institute scientists have created an artificial, network-like cell system that is capable of reproducing the dynamic behavior of protein synthesis. This achievement is not only likely to help gain a deeper understanding of basic biological processes, but it may, in the future, pave the way toward controlling the synthesis of both naturally-occurring ...