Fresh discoveries about how bacteria co-operate with each other when causing infection could help scientists identify animal diseases that might transmit to people. Bugs that can co-operate best with each other are most likely to be able to jump to new species, including humans, a new study shows. Bacteria interact by releasing molecules to help them adapt to their environment – for example, when killing competing infections in their victim. They co-ordinate these actions by releasing tiny amounts of chemicals as signals. Bacteria that can co-operate to create an ...

A hybrid form of perovskite - the same type of material which has recently been found to make highly efficient solar cells that could one day replace silicon - has been used to make low-cost, easily manufactured LEDs, potentially opening up a wide range of commercial applications in future, such as flexible colour displays. This particular class of semiconducting perovskites have generated excitement in the solar cell field over the past several years, after Professor Henry Snaith's group at Oxford University found them to be remarkably efficient at converting light to ...

The body's assailants are cleverer than previously thought. New research from Lund University in Sweden shows for the first time how bacteria in the airways can help each other replenish vital iron. The bacteria thereby increase their chances of survival, which can happen at the expense of the person's health. The bacteria Haemophilus influenzae is a type of bacteria in the respiratory tract that can cause ear infections and worsen the prognosis for COPD patients. In rare cases, it can also lead to meningitis and septicaemia. "By accepting help from a specific protein, ...

PITTSBURGH—Editors of photos routinely resize objects, or move them up, down or sideways, but Carnegie Mellon University researchers are adding an extra dimension to photo editing by enabling editors to turn or flip objects any way they want, even exposing surfaces not visible in the original photograph. A chair in a photograph of a living room, for instance, can be turned around or even upside down in the photo, displaying sides of the chair that would have been hidden from the camera, yet appearing to be realistic. This three-dimensional manipulation of objects in ...

Storing it in the bathroom and making it part of a daily routine may be helpful advice that doctors can give their older asthmatic patients who struggle to remember to take their daily prescribed medication. This advice comes from Alex Federman, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine in New York City, senior author of a study which discusses how elderly asthmatics cope with taking their inhaled corticosteroid medication as prescribed. The findings appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer. The regular use of such ...

University of Liverpool scientists have examined the mechanisms that cause ageing in the tendons of horses, opening up the possibility of better treatment for humans. It has been understood for many years that tendons are highly prone to injury and that this likelihood increases as they age. Why this happens, is currently poorly understood Now, using samples taken from young and old horses, which have similar tendon properties to those of humans, the team of researchers, which also included scientists from Queen Mary University of London, performed a range of tests ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Between 1880 and 1920, the Central Interior Highlands (CIH), consisting of Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas, saw the height of deforestation that also decreased the habitat for black bears and other forest species. To combat the decline of black bears and repopulate the mountainous region, more than 250 bears from Minnesota and Manitoba were relocated to Arkansas in the 1950s and 1960s. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have analyzed genetic diversity in black bears in the CIH and have determined that coordinated conservation management is still ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – University of Michigan Health System researchers revealed an obesity paradox among older Americans suffering from sepsis. In a study of 1,404 Medicare beneficiaries, heavier patients were more likely to survive sepsis, a life-threatening infection that can lead to a stay in a hospital's intensive care unit. The findings, published in the August issue of Critical Care Medicine, raise interesting questions about how obesity impacts the body's response to infection. Obesity is most often connected with worse, not better, health outcomes. "Physicians ...

Scientists at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have identified differences in the proteins present in young and old tendons, in new research that could guide the development of treatments to stop tissue breakdown from occurring. Tendon structure in horses is similar to humans, and both face common injuries. The researchers used a horse model to undertake a thorough analysis of all the proteins and protein fragments present in healthy and injured tendons. Working with scientists at the University of Liverpool, the team collected data, which shows that healthy, ...

A group of scientists from South Korea have converted used-cigarette butts into a high-performing material that could be integrated into computers, handheld devices, electrical vehicles and wind turbines to store energy. Presenting their findings today, 5 August 2014, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology, the researchers have demonstrated the material's superior performance compared to commercially available carbon, graphene and carbon nanotubes. It is hoped the material can be used to coat the electrodes of supercapacitors—electrochemical components that can ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Mammography-detected breast cancer is associated with a shift to earlier stage diagnosis in older women, subsequently reducing the rate of more advanced, difficult-to-treat cases, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Researchers said the findings lend support to regular mammography screening in women ages 75 and older. The value of mammography screening in older women has been subject to much debate in recent years. The American Cancer Society recommends annual mammograms for women age 75 and older as long as they are ...

A Japanese research group led by Prof Norihiro Sadato, a professor of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences (NIPS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS), has found that people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have decreased activity in an area in the brain critical for understanding if his/her movement was imitated by others. These results will be published in Neuroscience Research (available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168010214001254). The research group of Norihiro Sadato, a professor of NIPS, Hirotaka Kosaka, ...

Queen's University scientists are helping to spearhead a new £6 million initiative to find better ways to prevent cancer. The new initiative, led by Cancer Research UK with matching investment from the BUPA Foundation, aims to support cutting-edge research to find better ways to prevent cancer. It is estimated that more than four in ten cancer cases could be prevented by lifestyle changes, such as not smoking, keeping a healthy body weight, cutting back on alcohol, eating a healthy diet, keeping active and staying safe in the sun. Professor Frank Kee, who directs the ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) suggests that training with alternating levels of walking intensity (interval training) could be better than walking at a constant speed to help manage blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes. The research is by Dr Thomas Solomon, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues. The effects of exercise on blood sugar (glycaemic) control in individuals with type 2 diabetes are well documented but the optimal exercise intensity and type remains to be defined. ...

Effective new drugs and screening would make hepatitis C a rare disease by 2036, according to a computer simulation conducted by The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The results of the simulation are reported in the August 5 edition of the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. "Hepatitis C (HCV) is the leading cause of liver cancer and accounts for more than 15,000 deaths in the U.S. each year," said Jagpreet Chhatwal, Ph.D., assistant professor of Health Services Research at MD Anderson, and ...

Racial differences in life expectancy have declined nationally but still vary substantially across U.S. states, according to a new study by McGill University researchers. The findings, published in the journal Health Affairs, suggest that state policies could play a key role in further reducing racial differences in mortality. The researchers calculated annual state-specific life expectancies for blacks and whites from 1990 to 2009 and found that progress was uneven across states during the past two decades. "Prior studies in the United States have shown that, for the ...

The use of medical consultations for surgical patients varied widely across hospitals, especially among patients without complications, in a study of Medicare beneficiaries undergoing colectomy (to remove all or part of their colon) or total hip replacement (THR). Internists and medical subspecialists are frequently called on to assess surgical patients and to help manage their care. As payers move toward bundled payments, hospitals need to better understand variations in practice and resources used during patient care. The authors examined hospital medical consultations ...

Bottom Line: Children and adolescents with an abnormal kidney ultrasonography finding or with a combination of a fever of at least 102 degrees and infection with an organism other than E.coli appear to be at high risk for renal scarring with their first urinary tract infection (UTI). Author: Nader Shaikh, M.D., of the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, and colleagues. Background: UTIs are a common and potentially serious bacterial infection in young children. UTIs can lead to permanent renal scarring in up to 15 percent of cases in this population. Significant scarring ...

Bottom Line: Hypertension in middle age (48 to 67 years) was associated with a greater, although still a modest, decline in cognition over a 20-year period compared with individuals who had normal blood pressure. Author: Rebecca F. Gottesman, M.D., Ph.D., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and colleagues. Background: Evidence suggests hypertension is a risk factor for cognitive change and dementia and midlife hypertension may be the stronger risk factor. How the Study Was Conducted: Authors used the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities ...

In the first analysis of its kind, UC San Francisco research shows that emergency department closures can have a ripple effect on patient outcomes at nearby hospitals. In a study of more than 16 million emergency admissions to California hospitals between 1999 and 2010, researchers found that patients who were admitted to facilities located in the vicinity of an emergency department (ED) that had recently closed experienced 5 percent higher odds of dying than patients admitted to hospitals that were not near a recently closed ED. The odds of dying were even higher for ...

It's no secret that poverty is bad for your health. Now a new UCLA study demonstrates that California diabetics who live in low-income neighborhoods are up to 10 times more likely to lose a toe, foot or leg than patients residing in more affluent areas of the state. Earlier diagnosis and proper treatment could prevent many of these amputations, the researchers say. The study authors hope their findings, published in the August issue of Health Affairs, will motivate public agencies and medical providers to reach out to patients at risk of late intervention and inspire ...

A pilot program intended to implement and test a cost-saving strategy for orthopedic procedures at hospitals in California failed to meet its goals, succumbing to recruitment challenges, regulatory uncertainty, administrative burden and concerns about financial risk, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The outcome represents a disappointing effort to widely adopt bundled payments, a much-touted strategy that pays doctors and hospitals one fee for performing a procedure or caring for an illness. The strategy is seen as one of the most-promising ways to curb health ...

VIDEO: To visualize cells' responses to the signals that ultimately lead them to choose a fate, the researchers engineered a protein involved in this response, Smad4, to glow. In response to... Click here for more information. When embryonic cells get the signal to specialize the call can come quickly. Or it can arrive slowly. Now, new research from Rockefeller University suggests the speed at which a cell in an embryo receives that signal has an unexpected influence on that ...

Scientists have uncovered key attributes of so-called "brown carbon" from wildfires, airborne atmospheric particles that may have influenced current climate models that failed to take the material's warming effects into account. The work was described by a collaborative team of researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Montana in the journal Nature Geosciences this week. "Biomass burning and wildfires emit fine particulates that are toxic to humans and can warm or cool climate. While their toxicity is certain, their ...

Fires and the resultant smoke that comes from them are both just as widespread and heavy as they were in the month of July. Hundreds of fires dot the landscape and the Northwest Territories Live Fire map shows the extent of the wildfires and hot spots that have been reported. Fire danger around this area of the Northwest Territories remains in either the high or extreme range. On the live fire map, notated detections of new fires number in the dozens. These fires are ones having been detected within the last 24 hours. Residents of Yellowknife were witness to red lightning ...