SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 13, 2014 — As the oil and gas drilling technique called hydraulic fracturing (or "fracking") proliferates, a new study on the contents of the fluids involved in the process raises concerns about several ingredients. The scientists presenting the work today at the 248th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS) say that out of nearly 200 commonly used compounds, there's very little known about the potential health risks of about one-third, and eight are toxic to mammals. The meeting features nearly 12,000 presentations on ...

Toronto, Canada – An extraordinary opportunity to study memory and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in a group of Air Transat passengers who experienced 30 minutes of unimaginable terror over the Atlantic Ocean in 2001 has resulted in the discovery of a potential risk factor that may help predict who is most vulnerable to PTSD. The study, led by researchers at Baycrest Health Sciences, is published online this week in the journal Clinical Psychological Science – ahead of print publication. It is the first to involve detailed interviews and psychological testing in ...

WASHINGTON – More than half of older adults who visit emergency departments are either malnourished or at risk for malnutrition, but not because of lack of access to health care, critical illness or dementia. Despite clear signs of malnutrition or risk of malnutrition, more than three-quarters had never previously been diagnosed with malnutrition, according to the results of a study to be published online tomorrow in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Malnutrition Among Cognitively Intact, Non-Critically Ill Older Adults in the Emergency Department"). "We were surprised ...

An international team of scientists has discovered that a large, commercially important fish from the Amazon Basin has become extinct in some local fishing communities. The team compared mainstream bioeconomic theory — which policymakers have depended on in order to protect fish populations — with the lesser-known "fishing-down" theory, which predicts that large, high-value, easy-to-catch fish can be fished to extinction. "Bioeconomic thinking has predicted that scarcity would drive up fishing costs, which would increase price and help save depleted species," said study ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 13, 2014 – A new study published in The American Journal of Pathology identifies a novel gene that controls nerve conduction velocity. Investigators report that even minor reductions in conduction velocity may aggravate disease in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and in mice bred for the MS-like condition experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). A strong tool for investigating the pathophysiology of a complex disease is the identification of underlying genetic controls. Multiple genes have been implicated as contributing to the risk of ...

Tranexamic acid has been shown to reduce blood loss during or shortly after major joint surgery (the perioperative stage). However, safety concerns remain because large scale effectiveness studies are lacking. In the USA, over 1 million hip and knee replacements are performed each year. In England and Wales the figure is about 180,000. So a team of US researchers, led by Dr Stavros Memtsoudis at Hospital for Special Surgery, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Dr Jashvant Poeran at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, both in New York, set out to determine the effectiveness ...

Close to half (40%) of the adult population of the USA is expected to develop type 2 diabetes at some point during their lifetime, suggests a major study published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. The future looks even worse for some ethnic minority groups, with one in two (> 50%) Hispanic men and women and non-Hispanic black women predicted to develop the disease. A team of US researchers combined data from nationally representative US population interviews and death certificates for about 600 000 adults to estimate trends in the lifetime risk of diabetes and ...

A major international study of more than 303 000 births in 29 low-income and middle-income countries has found that only half (52%) of women who are eligible to receive a simple, effective, low-cost treatment to prevent death and disability in their newborn babies are getting it. The findings, published in The Lancet, highlight striking gaps in the practice of using antenatal (before birth) steroid injections—known to significantly reduce the risk of death, respiratory distress syndrome (a consequence of immature lung development), cerebroventricular haemorrhage (bleeding ...

Dartmouth researchers demonstrate in a new study that a previously understudied part of the brain, the retrosplenial cortex, is essential for forming the basis for contextual memories, which help you to recall events ranging from global disasters to where you parked your car. The findings appear in the journal The Journal of Neuroscience. A PDF of the study is available on request. An important aspect of memory is the ability to recall the physical place, or context, in which an event occurred. For example, in recalling emotionally charged events, such as the Sept. ...

Whether the problem is health, enemies, poverty or difficulty with aging, "Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there," suggested the late gospel musician Charles A. Tindley. But when it comes to easing symptoms of anxiety-related disorders, prayer doesn't have the same effect for everybody, according to a Baylor University researcher. What seems to matter more is the type of attachment a praying individual feels toward God. According to a Baylor study, those who prayed to a loving and supportive God whom they thought would be there to comfort and protect them in ...

Among about 100,000 study participants, screening with flexible sigmoidoscopy resulted in a reduced incidence and rate of death of colorectal cancer, compared to no screening, according to a study in the August 13 issue of JAMA. Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly occurring cancer worldwide. Most colorectal cancer cases develop from adenomas (benign tumors). Removal of adenomas by colonoscopy or flexible sigmoidoscopy (a thin flexible lighted tube used for inspection of the inside of the rectum and lower part of the colon) has been endorsed as a primary prevention ...

In a study that included 1.7 million patients undergoing inpatient surgery, experiencing atrial fibrillation while hospitalized was associated with an increased long-term risk of ischemic stroke, especially following noncardiac surgery, according to a study in the August 13 issue of JAMA. Atrial fibrillation (AF) and flutter affect more than 33 million people worldwide. The presence of chronic AF confers a 3-fold increased risk of stroke. Perioperative (around the time of surgery) atrial fibrillation may be viewed as a transient response to physiological stress, and ...

A delay of 12 hours or longer to correct an abnormal cardiac rhythm from atrial fibrillation was associated with a greater risk of thromboembolic complications such as stroke, according to a study in the August 13 issue of JAMA. In 1995, practice guidelines recommended a limit of 48 hours after the onset of atrial fibrillation (AF) for cardioversion (the conversion of a cardiac rhythm from abnormal to normal) without anticoagulation. Whether the risk of thromboembolic complications is increased when cardioversion without anticoagulation is performed in less than 48 hours ...

Depending on the analysis strategy used, estimating treatment outcomes in meta­analyses may differ and may result in major alterations in the conclusions derived from the analysis, according to a study in the August 13 issue of JAMA. Meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are generally considered to provide among the best evidence of efficacy of medical interventions. They should be conducted as part of a systematic review, a scientifically rigorous approach that identifies, selects, and appraises all relevant studies. Which trials to combine in a meta­analysis ...

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite passed over Tropical Storm Iselle and gathered data on clouds and rainfall as it affected Hawaii. Iselle was once a rather powerful category 4 hurricane in the East Pacific with sustained winds estimated at 120 knots (~138 mph) by the National Hurricane Center. Fortunately, a combination of southwesterly wind shear, drier air and cooler waters weakened Iselle considerably as it approached the Hawaiian Islands. Although much weaker, Iselle still struck the southeast Kau coast of the Big Island of Hawaii as a rather ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, August 12, 2014 — Does a baby know that a dog can jump a fence while a school bus can't? Can a toddler grasp that a cat can avoid colliding with a wall, while a table being pushed into a wall can't? A new study from Concordia shows that infants as young as 10-months old can tell the difference between the kinds of paths naturally taken by a walking animal, compared to a moving car or piece of furniture. That's important information because the ability to categorize things as animate beings or inanimate objects is ...

This Week From AGU: Supperrotation on Venus and Titan, exploratory modeling From AGU's journals: Atmospheric forces drive development of superrotation Planetary scientists are still puzzling over how superrotation—when a planet's atmosphere rotates faster than its surface—develops on a small or slowly rotating planet like Venus or Titan. Previous researchers have suggested that a certain kind of atmospheric eddy activity is required to retain the momentum surplus over the equator of a planet, where superrotation develops, but have not yet identified this underlying ...

Bacteria inside your mouth drastically change how they act when you're diseased, according to research using supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC). Scientists say these surprising findings might lead to better ways to prevent or even reverse the gum disease periodontitis, diabetes, and Crohn's disease. Marvin Whiteley, professor of molecular biosciences and director of the Center for Infectious Disease at The University of Texas at Austin, led the study published in April 2014 in the journal mBio. "What we were trying to figure out," said Whiteley, ...

West Orange, NJ. August 12, 2014. Kessler Foundation scientists have identified predictors of prospective memory impairment after traumatic brain injury (TBI). Findings were epublished on July 28 by the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. The article, "Rule monitoring ability predicts event-based prospective memory performance in individuals with TBI," is authored by Jessica Paxton, PhD, and Nancy Chiaravalloti, PhD, of Kessler Foundation. This is the first study to examine the role of rule monitoring, an executive function, post-TBI. Prospective ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. – Needle-guided tumor destruction procedures offer near equivalent lengths of local cancer control compared to surgery for patients with small kidney cancer tumors, according to the results of a large study published in the journal European Urology. "If validated, these data suggest that an update to clinical guidelines would be warranted," says the study's lead author, R. Houston Thompson, M.D., a Mayo Clinic urologist. Dr. Thompson says radical nephrectomy – surgical removal of the entire kidney – has historically been the standard of care for management ...

JUPITER, FL, August 12, 2014 – It has been more than 20 years since scientists discovered that mutations in the gene huntingtin cause the devastating progressive neurological condition Huntington's disease, which involves involuntary movements, emotional disturbance and cognitive impairment. Surprisingly little, however, has been known about the gene's role in normal brain activity. Now, a study from The Scripps Research Institute's (TSRI's) Florida campus and Columbia University shows it plays a critical role in long-term memory. "We found that huntingtin expression ...

Researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston have identified predictors of early rehospitalization among patients hospitalized for complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. This study was recently published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. In a nationwide analysis of more than 8,000 commercially insured adult patients with COPD, UTMB researchers concluded that several modifiable factors, such as appropriate prescriptions upon discharge and early follow up after discharge from the hospital, were associated with lower likelihood ...

Installing alcohol-based hand sanitizer dispensers in the classrooms does not lead to reductions in the rate of school absences in children, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine led by Patricia Priest and colleagues from the University of Otago, New Zealand. The researchers conducted a cluster randomized trial that that randomly assigned 68 city primary schools in New Zealand to the intervention or control group and measured the rate of school absence in children (aged 5󈝷 years) attending the participating schools. All children received ...

Heart failure is a major public health burden in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with substantial variation in the presentation, causes, management, and outcomes of heart failure across different LMICs, according to a study published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, led by Kazem Rahimi and colleagues from the George Institute for Global Health, also finds that a large proportion of patients are not receiving pharmacological treatments for heart failure. The researchers conducted a systematic review and identified 49 published studies and 4 unpublished ...

All life on Earth came from one common ancestor – a single-celled organism – but what it looked like, how it lived and how it evolved into today's modern cells is a four billion year old mystery being solved by researchers at UCL using mathematical modelling. Findings published today in PLOS Biology suggest for the first time that life's Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) had a 'leaky' membrane, which helps scientists answer two of biology's biggest questions: 1. Why all cells use the same bizarre, complex mechanism to harvest energy 2. Why two types of single-celled ...