(Boston)--Patients with spinal stenosis (SS) experienced good short term benefit, lasting from weeks to months, after receiving epidural steroid injections (ESI). These findings, which appear in a letter in the journal Pain Medicine, contradict a previously published New England Journal Medicine (NEJM) study that found epidural steroid injections were not helpful in spinal stenosis cases. It has been one year since the publication of "A Randomized Trial of Epidural Glucocorticoid Steroid Injections for Spinal Stenosis." This was a large scale clinical trial evaluating ...

An international team of scientists have dated a species of fossil monkey found across the Caribbean to just over 1 million years old. The discovery was made after the researchers recovered a fossil tibia (shin bone) belonging to the species of extinct monkey Antillothrix bernensis from an underwater cave in Altagracia Province, Dominican Republic. The fossil was embedded in a limestone rock that was dated using the Uranium-series technique. In a paper published this week in the well renowned international journal, the Journal of Human Evolution, the team use three-dimensional ...

Tropical Storm Kevin's center was several hundred miles south-southwest of Baja California when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and saw some associated high clouds streaming over the peninsula. The MODIS and the AIRS instruments aboard Aqua captured visible and infrared images of Kevin on September 3 at 20:50 UTC (4:50 p.m. EDT). The visible image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument provided look at Kevin's clouds. MODIS showed a somewhat elongated tropical storm with a fragmented band of thunderstorms wrapping into the low-level ...

Scientists studying how a heat-loving microbe transfers its DNA from one generation to the next say it could further our understanding of an extraordinary superbug. Sulfolobus is part of the Archaea kingdom - a single-cell organism similar to bacteria - which was isolated in hot springs on the island of Hokkaido, Japan. Some Archaea live ordinary lives in mundane environments such as lakes, seas and insect and mammal intestinal tracts, while others live extraordinary lives pushed to extremes in incredibly harsh habitats such as deep sea hydrothermal vents, volcanic ...

"Objects of granular media, such as a sandcastle, consist of millions or billions of grains. The computation time needed to produce photorealistic images amounts to hundreds to thousands of processor hours," Professor Carsten Dachsbacher of the Institute for Visualization and Data Analysis of KIT explains. Materials, such as sand, salt or sugar, consist of randomly oriented grains that are visible at a closer look only. Image synthesis, the so-called rendering, is very difficult, as the paths of millions of light rays through the grains have to be simulated. "In addition, ...

Nowadays, internet auctions play an important role in online trading. No matter whether you want to buy a hedge trimmer or an antique pocket watch - unlike purchases by a click at a fixed price, online auctions provide the atmosphere of a competition for the auction object. Whoever perceives the competition of real contenders, e.g. by avatars or photos on the screen, wishes to stay in the race - and increases his bid. This is a result of a KIT study with more than 450 test persons. Online auctions combine shopping with entertainment, fun, and excitement. This is the ...

Action to prevent tooth decay in children, such as supervised tooth brushing and fluoride varnish schemes, are not just beneficial to children's oral health but could also result in cost savings to the NHS of hundreds of pounds per child, so says a leading dental health researcher. Professor Elizabeth Kay, Foundation Dean of the Peninsula Dental School from Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, has carried out the first economic evaluation of public health measures to reduce tooth decay in children at high risk, in association with the National ...

When a jogger sets out on his evening run, the active movements of his arms and legs are accompanied by involuntary changes in the position of the head relative to the rest of the body. Yet the jogger does not experience feelings of dizziness like those induced in the passive riders of a rollercoaster, who have no control over the abrupt dips and swoops to which they are exposed. The reason for the difference lies in the vestibular organ (VO) located in the inner ear, which controls balance and posture. The VO senses ongoing self-motion and ensures that, while running, ...

Patients with cancer of the esophagus--also known as the gullet--are often given chemo- or radiotherapy, with the aim of shrinking the tumor before it is surgically removed. Increasingly positron emission tomography (PET) is being used to monitor the size of the tumor during the treatment. To date, however, no benefit for patients has ensued, as Milly Schröer-Günther and co-authors show in an original article in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2015; 112: 545-52). PET is an imaging technique that makes a tumor in ...

Despite continued medical advances, infectious diseases kill over 10 million people worldwide each year. The ecological complexity of many emerging disease threats--interactions among multiple hosts, multiple vectors and even multiple parasites--often complicates efforts aimed at controlling disease. Now, a new paper co-authored by a University of Colorado Boulder professor is advancing a multidisciplinary framework that could provide a better mechanistic understanding of emerging outbreaks. In a study published today in the journal Science, researchers demonstrate how ...

In the game of wheat genetics, Jorge Dubcovsky's laboratory at UC Davis has hit a grand slam, unveiling for the fourth time in a dozen years a gene that governs wheat vernalization, the biological process requiring cold temperatures to trigger flower formation. Identification of the newly characterized VRN-D4 gene and its three counterpart genes is crucial for understanding the vernalization process and developing improved varieties of wheat, which provides about one-fifth of the calories and proteins that we humans consume globally. The new study, reported online in ...

Girls with autism display less repetitive and restricted behavior than boys do, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The study also found that brain differences between boys and girls with autism help explain this discrepancy. The study, which will be published online Sept. 3 in Molecular Autism, gives the best evidence to date that boys and girls exhibit the developmental disorder differently. "We wanted to know which specific clinical manifestations of autism show significant gender differences, and whether patterns ...

Each extra hour per day spent watching TV, using the internet or playing computer games during Year 10 is associated with poorer grades at GCSE at age 16, according to research from the University of Cambridge. In a study published today in the open access International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, researchers also found that pupils doing an extra hour of daily homework and reading performed significantly better than their peers. However, the level of physical activity had no effect on academic performance. The link between physical activity ...

Metabolic or bariatric surgery may be more effective than standard medical treatments for the long-term control of type 2 diabetes in obese patients, according to a new study by King's College London and the Universita Cattolica in Rome, Italy. The study, published in the Lancet, is the first to provide data on five-year outcomes of surgery from a randomized clinical trial specifically designed to compare this new approach against standard medical therapy for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. A number of studies have shown that bariatric or weight-loss surgery can result ...

Astronomers from the University of Cambridge have developed a new, highly accurate method of measuring the distances between stars, which could be used to measure the size of the galaxy, enabling greater understanding of how it evolved. Using a technique which searches out stellar 'twins', the researchers have been able to measure distances between stars with far greater precision than is possible using typical model-dependent methods. The technique could be a valuable complement to the Gaia satellite - which is creating a three-dimensional map of the sky over five years ...

Many doctors working in India's private hospitals are under pressure to carry out unnecessary tests and procedures to meet revenue targets, according to The BMJ this week. In a special report published today, Meera Kay, a journalist in Bangalore, asks what can be done about financial targets for doctors working in profit driven hospitals that lead to expensive but unnecessary tests and surgery that also come with risk of harm? According to Dr Gautam Mistry, a cardiologist in Kolkata, such unethical practices are widely known about in medical circles but public discourse ...

Among 51 military service members who experienced severe acute kidney injury during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 88% of the injuries were due to blasts or projectiles. Twenty-two percent of the patients died within 60 days. Although still high, this mortality rate is significantly less than might be expected historically. The majority of survivors completely recovered their kidney function. Washington, DC (September 3, 2015) -- Acute kidney injury (AKI) leading to an abrupt or rapid decline in kidney function is a serious and increasingly prevalent condition. While ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Using a new technique to analyze 52 years of international conflict, researchers suggest that there may be no such thing as a "democratic peace." In addition, a model developed with this new technique was found to predict international conflict five and even ten years in the future better than any existing model. Democratic peace is the widely held theory that democracies are less likely to go to war against each other than countries with other types of government. In the new study, researchers found that economic trade relationships and participation ...

Researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have documented the accuracy of three new tests for more rapidly diagnosing drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (TB), which are much harder and more expensive to treat and which, experts say, represent a major threat to global public health. The study is published online in the current issue of PLOS ONE. "Our study shows that TB testing that once took two to three months can now be done in as little as a day," said co-author Richard Garfein, PhD, professor in the Division of Global Public Health ...

Earth's species are disappearing at an astonishing--and troubling--rate. As human activity continues to put pressure on ecosystems around the world, the rate of loss continues to climb. How we slow this devastating loss and protect the enormous number of species on Earth is of considerable importance, and debate. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to simply protect everything. Limited funds require conservation planners and policy makers to prioritize the preservation of specific regions and ecosystems. An often-used strategy is to identify areas of high species richness ...

September 3, 2015 - Men and women exposed in early gestation to the man-made Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33 in regions with extreme food shortages were 1.5 times more likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in adulthood. In regions with severe famine there was a 1.3 fold rise in the odds of Type 2 diabetes, and there was no diabetes increase among individuals born in regions with no famine. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the Komisarenko Institute of Endocrinology and Metabolism in Kiev, Ukraine, and the Cheboratev Institute of Gerontology ...

MADISON, Wis. -- "Gaydar" -- the purported ability to infer whether people are gay or straight based on their appearance -- seemed to get a scientific boost from a 2008 study that concluded people could accurately guess someone's sexual orientation based on photographs of their faces. In a new paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison challenge what they call "the gaydar myth." William Cox, an assistant scientist in the Department of Psychology and the lead author, says gaydar isn't accurate and is actually a harmful ...

The gut is an important reservoir for drug-resistant bacteria responsible for life-threatening hospital-acquired infections. A study in mice published on September 3rd in PLOS Pathogens reports that two of the most common antibiotic-resistant bacterial species circulating in hospitals occupy and effectively share the same location in the gut, and that they can be eliminated by fecal transplantation of a healthy gut microbiome. Eric Pamer, from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA, and colleagues, investigated the interactions between vancomycin-resistant ...

Much like birds fly in flocks to conserve energy, dolphins swim in pods to mate and find food, and colonies of ants create complex nests to protect their queens, immune cells engage in coordinated behavior to wipe out viruses like the flu. That's according to a new study published today in the journal Science by researchers at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. The findings reveal, for the first time, how immune cells work together to get to their final destination - the site of an injury or infection. The body is expansive and a virus or bacteria ...

WASHINGTON, DC (September 3, 2015)-- The District of Columbia's needle exchange program prevented 120 new cases of HIV infection and saved an estimated $44 million over just a two-year period, according to a first-of-a-kind study published today by researchers at the Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University. "Our study adds to the evidence that needle exchange programs not only work but are cost-effective investments in the battle against HIV," says Monica S. Ruiz, PhD, MPH, an assistant research professor in ...