A drug that is commonly used to treat anxiety in humans and which regularly finds its way into surface waters through wastewater effluence has been shown to reduce mortality rates in fish. The results, which have been published today, 8 August, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, may have significant implications for existing standard ecotoxicological tests, which predominantly focus on harmful effects of water contaminants and ignore the potential benefits. By improving the health of an aquatic organism, a certain pharmaceutical drug may alter ...

Astronauts suffer considerable sleep deficiency in the weeks leading up to and during spaceflight, according to the most extensive study of sleep during spaceflight ever conducted, published in The Lancet Neurology journal. Fatigue and sleep deficiency are common complaints among astronauts, but this is the most comprehensive study to include both objective evaluation of sleep (via an actigraph, a device worn on the wrist which records sleep and wake cycles) and subjective evaluations (via a daily diary recording alertness and sleep quality). Researchers from Brigham ...

Carbon reduction efforts in the airline industry will be outweighed by growth in air-traffic, even if the most contentious mitigation measures are implemented, according to new research by the University of Southampton. Even if proposed mitigation measures are agreed upon and put into place, air traffic growth-rates are likely to out-pace emission reductions, unless demand is substantially reduced. "There is little doubt that increasing demand for air travel will continue for the foreseeable future," says co-author and travel expert Professor John Preston. "As a result, ...

BOSTON, MA – In an extensive study of sleep monitoring and sleeping pill use in astronauts, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Harvard Medical School, and the University of Colorado found that astronauts suffer considerable sleep deficiency in the weeks leading up to and during space flight. The research also highlights widespread use of sleeping medication use among astronauts. The study, published in The Lancet Neurology on August 8, 2014, recorded more than 4,000 nights of sleep on Earth, and more than ...

Washington, DC (August 7, 2014) — A new tool that takes multiple factors into account can accurately predict how likely a patient who experienced a painful kidney stone will develop another one in the future. The tool, which is described in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN), could help patients and their doctors determine whether preventive measures are needed. Kidney stones are common and affect approximately 6% to 9% of the population. The greatest concern of patients who have experienced a kidney stone is whether this excruciating ...

Boston, MA (August, 2014) – Nearly a year after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, hospital staff, first responders and medical volunteers who cared for the injured and dying were still struggling to put the experience behind them, according to a Schwartz Center for Compassionate Healthcare report that describes eight confidential sessions held to help caregivers process their emotions and feelings in the aftermath of this horrific event. The 90-minute Schwartz Center Rounds sessions – sponsored by the Schwartz Center in collaboration with the Conference of Boston Teaching ...

Cognitive abilities such as memory and attention are not only important after a stroke but also before; according to research published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Previous studies have shown poor cardiovascular health can increase the risk of cognitive impairment such as problems in memory and learning. However, the opposite idea that cognitive impairment may impact cardiovascular health, specifically stroke, was not established before. "Most clinical studies observe cognitive impairment after a stroke event, said Kumar Rajan, Ph.D., lead author ...

Treatments involving neck manipulation may be associated with stroke, though it cannot be said with certainty that neck manipulation causes strokes, according to a new scientific statement published in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. Cervical artery dissection (CD) is a small tear in the layers of artery walls in the neck. It can result in ischemic stroke if a blood clot forms after a trivial or major trauma in the neck and later causes blockage of a blood vessel in the brain. Cervical artery dissection is an important cause of stroke in young and middle-aged ...

People who suffer from a rare illness, the Mal de Debarquement Syndrome (MdDS), now have a chance for full recovery thanks to treatment developed by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Their findings were published online in the July issue of Frontiers in Neurology. People often feel a sensation of movement, called Mal de Debarquement, after they have finished boating, surfing or a sea voyage. The symptoms usually disappear within hours, but in some people, and more frequently in women, symptoms can continue for months or years, causing fatigue, ...

The fires on the shores of the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories in Canada do not seem in any hurry to be extinguished. In this natural-color satellite image which was collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Aqua satellite on July 29, 2014 dozens of fires and copious amounts of smoke are evident. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. Click on the image above and an image of smoke drifting over the Labrador Sea appears. This smoke has risen off the fires in the Northwest Territories ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — A recent study conducted by Mayo Clinic researchers recommends laparoscopic cholecystectomies (surgical removal of the gallbladder) for pediatric patients suffering from gallstones and other gallbladder diseases. This study was published in Surgical Laparoscopy Endoscopy & Percutaneous Techniques. MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network. A cholecystectomy is a surgical procedure performed to remove the gallbladder, a pear-shaped organ located below the liver on the upper right side of the abdomen. ...

A disposal, plastic listening device that attaches to the abdomen may help doctors definitively determine which post-operative patients should be fed and which should not, an invention that may improve outcomes, decrease healthcare costs and shorten hospital stays, according to a UCLA study. Some patients who undergo surgery develop a condition called post-operative ileus (POI), a malfunction of the intestines. The condition causes patients to become ill if they eat too soon, which can lengthen an affected patient's hospital stay by two to three days. Until now, there ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – With a featured publication in the Aug. 7 issue of Science, Montana State University researchers have made a significant contribution to the understanding of a new field of DNA research, with the acronym CRISPR, that holds enormous promise for fighting infectious diseases and genetic disorders. The MSU-led research provides the first detailed blueprint of a multi-subunit "molecular machinery" that bacteria use to detect and destroy invading viruses. "We generally think of bacteria as making us sick, but rarely do we consider what happens when the ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 7, 2014—In vitro toxicity testing is rapidly being adopted in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and cosmetics industries, for example, as an alternative to animal studies to predict adverse health effects of drugs and personal care products and the health consequences of environmental exposures. An insightful Roundtable Discussion focused on how to apply these novel toxicology models to everyday hazard prediction, risk assessment, and decision making in industry is published in the preview issue of the new journal Applied In Vitro Toxicology, a peer-reviewed ...

Typhoid fever is caused by systemic (body-wide) infection with Salmonella enterica Typhi. In contrast, infection with the closely related bacterium Salmonella enterica Thyphimurium is usually limited to the gut and causes less serious diarrheal disease. Research published on August 7th in PLOS Pathogens comparing the two pathogens reveals how S. Typhi avoids recognition and elimination by patrolling immune cells called neutrophils, allowing it to disseminate throughout the patient's body. Neutrophils track down microbial invaders and gobble them up. To investigate why ...

For the first time, the tiny fruit fly can be used to study how mutations associated with the development of diabetes affect the production and secretion of the vital hormone insulin. The advance is due to a new technique devised by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine that allows scientists to measure insulin levels in the insects with extremely high sensitivity and reproducibility. The experimental model is likely to transform the field of diabetes research by bringing the staggering power of fruit fly genetics, honed over 100 years of research, ...

This release is available in Japanese. Inspired by the traditional Japanese art form of Origami or "folding paper," researchers have developed a way to coax flat sheets of composite materials to self-fold into complex robots that crawl and turn. "We demonstrated this process by building a robot that folds itself and walks away without human assistance," said Sam Felton, a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the lead author of a new report in the 8 August ...

As the complex story of climate change unfolds, many of the endings are grim. But there are exceptions. Predictions that the lowest-oxygen environments in the ocean would get worse may not come to pass. Instead, University of Washington research shows climate change, as it weakens the trade winds, could shrink the size of these extreme low-oxygen waters. "The tropics should actually get better oxygenated as the climate warms up," said Curtis Deutsch, a UW associate professor of oceanography. He is lead author of the study published Aug. 8 in Science. Warmer water contains ...

PULLMAN –An international team of researchers has found extremely small habitats that increase the potential for life on other planets while offering a way to clean up oil spills on our own. Looking at samples from the world's largest natural asphalt lake, they found active microbes in droplets as small as a microliter, which is about 1/50th of a drop of water. "We saw a huge diversity of bacteria and archaea," said Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor in Washington State University's School of the Environment and the only U.S. researcher on the team. "That's why we speak ...

Today the journal Science published results of a preclinical study demonstrating that treatment with orally available RNA splicing modifiers of the SMN2 gene starting early after birth is preventing deficits in a mouse model of Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA). Scientists from Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED), PTC Therapeutics, Inc., the SMA Foundation, the University of Southern California and Harvard University collaborated to demonstrate that continuous treatment of SMA mice with these compounds increased life span, normalized body weight and prevented ...

Human tampering with global carbon balances has received massive public attention because of its effects on global warming, but we pay less attention to another set of chemical processes we are similarly disrupting: human input to the nitrogen cycle. Unfortunately, the story of nitrogen transformations in the biosphere is also less understood. In modern times, humans developed the technology to turn nitrogen gas in the atmosphere into a biologically available form to be used as fertilizer. Before this, bio-available or "fixed" nitrogen was only created sparingly by natural ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Embracing the pleats, creases and tucks of the Japanese art of decorative paper folding, Cornell University researchers are uncovering how origami principles could lead to exotic materials, soft robots and even tiny transformers. Publishing online in the journal Science Aug. 8, an interdisciplinary team led by Cornell's Itai Cohen, associate professor of physics, and graduate student Jesse Silverberg have discovered how to use a well-known origami folding pattern called the Miura-ori to control fundamental physical properties of any thin sheet of material. Video, ...

Researchers are a step closer to understanding the birth of the sun. Published in Science, the team led by Dr Maria Lugaro and Professor Alexander Heger, from Monash University, have investigated the solar system's prehistoric phase and the events that led to the birth of the sun. Dr Lugaro, from the Monash Centre for Astrophysics, said the team used radioactivity to date the last time that heavy elements such as gold, silver, platinum, lead and rare-earth elements were added to the solar system matter by the stars that produced them. "Using heavy radioactive nuclei ...

Researchers have developed a powerful new tool to identify genetic changes in disease-causing bacteria that are responsible for antibiotic resistance. The results from this technique could be used in clinics within the next decade to decide on the most effective treatments for diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis. The team looked at the genome of Streptococcus pneumoniae, a bacterial species that causes 1.6 million deaths worldwide each year. In the most detailed research of its kind, scientists used a genome-wide association study (GWAS) to locate single-letter ...

AMHERST, Mass. -- A challenge increasingly important to physicists and materials scientists in recent years has been how to design controllable new materials that exhibit desired physical properties rather than relying on those properties to emerge naturally, says University of Massachusetts Amherst physicist Christian Santangelo. Now he and physicist Arthur Evans and polymer scientist Ryan Hayward at UMass Amherst, with others at Cornell and Western New England University, are using origami-based folding methods for "tuning" the fundamental physical properties of any ...