PASADENA, Calif., July 23, 2014 — More than 80 percent of hospitalized patients who tested positive for Clostridium difficile were tested outside the hospital or within the first 72 hours of hospitalization, suggesting that settings outside of the hospital may play key roles in the identification, onset and possible transmission of the disease, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published today in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. The study provides new insight into the contagious and potentially deadly infection also known as C. diff, a bacterium most often ...

Security forces worldwide rely on sophisticated equipment, trained personnel, and detection dogs to safeguard airports and other public areas against terrorist attacks. A revolutionary new electronic chip with nano-sized chemical sensors is about to make their job much easier. The groundbreaking nanotechnology-inspired sensor, devised by Prof. Fernando Patolsky of Tel Aviv University 's School of Chemistry and Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, and developed by the Herzliya company Tracense, picks up the scent of explosives molecules better than a detection dog's ...

Bethesda, MD (July 23, 2014) — Statins, a class of drugs commonly used to lower cholesterol levels, significantly reduce a patient's risk of developing Barrett's esophagus, according to a new study in Gastroenterology1, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Obese patients experienced the greatest level of risk reduction with statin use. "Patients who received statins had a 43 percent reduction in the odds of having Barrett's esophagus compared to non-users," said study author Hashem B. El-Serag, MD, MPH, from the Houston VA Medical Center ...

The popular culinary herbs oregano and rosemary are packed with healthful compounds, and now lab tests show they could work in much the same way as prescription anti-diabetic medication, scientists report. In their new study published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they found that how the herbs are grown makes a difference, and they also identified which compounds contribute the most to this promising trait. Elvira Gonzalez de Mejia and colleagues point out that in 2012, type-2 diabetes affected more than 8 percent of Americans and cost the country ...

As local and national governments struggle to deal with ever-growing piles of electronic waste (or "e-waste"), scientists are now refining the picture of just how much there is and where it really ends up. Published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, their study found that nearly a quarter of e-waste that developed countries discard floods into just seven developing countries — with major potential health risks for the people who live there. Knut Breivik and colleagues note that the export from developed to developing regions of e-waste — everything ...

By using brightly hued dyes, George Mason University researchers discovered an innovative way to reveal where proteins touch each other, possibly leading to new treatments for cancer, arthritis, heart disease and even lung disease. George Mason researchers unraveled the mystery of deciphering the contact points where proteins touch each other. "One protein interlocks with another protein like adjacent pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, and this sends a signal down the line to the next protein," says Lance Liotta, co-director of the Mason-based Center for Applied Proteomics and ...

Humanity is on the threshold of being able to detect signs of alien life on other worlds. By studying exoplanet atmospheres, we can look for gases like oxygen and methane that only coexist if replenished by life. But those gases come from simple life forms like microbes. What about advanced civilizations? Would they leave any detectable signs? They might, if they spew industrial pollution into the atmosphere. New research by theorists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) shows that we could spot the fingerprints of certain pollutants under ideal conditions. ...

A 2°C increase in temperature around the world by 2050, according to one of the scenarios predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), may be advantageous to the physiology and the biochemical and biophysical processes involved in the growth of forage plants such as Stylosanthes capitata Vogel, a legume utilized for livestock grazing in tropical countries such as Brazil. The conclusion is from a study carried out by researchers in the Department of Biology at the Ribeirão Preto Faculty of Philosophy, Sciences and Languages and Literature at the University ...

New Rochelle, NY -- The potential for clinical use of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology for transplant-based therapeutic strategies has previously been hindered by the risk of dysregulated cell growth, specifically the development of tumors. The ability to use etoposide treatment to halt teratoma formation in iPSCs for the treatment of heart disease, specifically acute myocardial infarction, is demonstrated in an article in Stem Cells and Development, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Stem Cells ...

A sulfur-oxidizing bacterial group called SUP05 will play an increasingly important role in carbon and nutrient cycling in the world's oceans as oxygen minimum zones expand, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. University of British Columbia researchers plumbed the depth of a seasonally anoxic fjord, Canada's Saanich Inlet, to chart how microbial community metabolism changes as oxygen minimum zones form. "Our study paints a very detailed picture of how SUP05 — a bacterial group related to gill symbionts of ...

WOODS HOLE, MA -- What do mollusks, starfish, and corals have in common? Aside from their shared marine habitat, they are all calcifiers—organisms that use calcium from their environment to create hard carbonate skeletons and shells for stability and protection. The July issue of The Biological Bulletin, published by the Marine Biological Laboratory, addresses the challenges faced by these species as ocean composition changes worldwide. As atmospheric carbon dioxide rises, the world's oceans are becoming warmer and more acidic. This impact of global climate change threatens ...

The hippocampal region of the brain is important for encoding environment inputs and memory formation. However, the underlying mechanisms are unclear. Dr. Zhouyan Feng and co-workers from Zhejiang University, China monitored the activity of hippocampal neurons in rats using microelectrode arrays, and explored the mechanisms underlying the neuronal responses. Somatosensory stimulation, in the form of tail clamping, changed local field potentials into theta rhythm-dominated waveforms, decreased the spike firing of pyramidal cells, and increased interneuron firing. In addition, ...

This news release is available in German. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden report how they managed to capture detailed three-dimensional images of cardiac dynamics in zebrafish. The novel approach: They combine high-speed Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM) and clever image processing to reconstruct multi-view movie stacks of the beating heart. Furthermore, they have developed a method of generating high-resolution static reconstructions of the zebrafish's heart: the Dresden research team used optogenetics ...

A new home-grown instrument based on bundles of optical fibres is giving Australian astronomers the first 'Google street view' of the cosmos — incredibly detailed views of huge numbers of galaxies. Developed by researchers at the University of Sydney and the Australian Astronomical Observatory, the optical-fibre bundles can sample the light from up to 60 parts of a galaxy, for a dozen galaxies at a time. By analysing the light's spectrum astronomers can learn how gas and stars move within each galaxy, where the young stars are forming and where the old stars live. This ...

Ensemble forecasting is a key part of weather forecasting today. Computers typically run multiple simulations, called ensembles, using slightly different initial conditions or assumptions, and then analyze them together to try to improve forecasts. Now, using Japan's flagship 10-petaFLOPS K computer, researchers from the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science (AICS) have succeeded in running 10,240 parallel simulations of global weather, the largest number ever performed, using data assimilation to reduce the range of uncertainties. The assimilation of the ...

Job satisfaction is an important predictor of registered nurses' (RNs) job turnover, patient satisfaction, and nurse-sensitive patient outcomes (including pressure ulcers and falls), which can result in higher health care costs and penalties for hospitals that receive Medicare and Medicaid payments. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess nurses' job satisfaction, asking about nurse-physician relationships, opportunities for promotion, autonomy, and similar issues, but very few have addressed the impact of the physical work environment on RNs' job satisfaction. Now, ...

One of the most exciting parts of the Tour de France for spectators is the tactical vying for spots in the breakaway group at the front of the pack. In trying to better understand the aerodynamic interactions between cyclists, researchers from Monash University and the Australian Institute of Sport studied how riders' drag was affected by the relative position of multiple cyclists (in a formation). Nathan Barry, a PhD student from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, said the research, undertaken by the Monash Wind Tunnel Sports Group, was designed ...

A researcher from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Prof. Vladimir Krasnopolsky, who heads the Laboratory of High Resolution Infrared Spectroscopy of Planetary Atmospheres, has published the results of the comparison of his model of Titan's atmosphere with the latest data. The article in the journal Icarus compares the chemical composition of Titan's atmosphere with parameters predicted by a mathematical model. The atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon was described by a model that took into account the presence of 83 neutral molecules and33 ions and420 different ...

A new study in East Asian women has identified three genetic changes linked to an increased risk of breast cancer. The research, led by Vanderbilt University investigators, was published online July 20 in Nature Genetics. While breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies among women worldwide, most studies of the genetic risk factors for the disease have focused on women of European ancestry. Given the differences in genetic heritage and environmental exposures between East Asian women and those of European ancestry, the investigators decided to conduct a study ...

Physicists Sergei Filippov (MIPT and Russian Quantum Center at Skolkovo) and Mario Ziman (Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Institute of Physics in Bratislava, Slovakia) have found a way to preserve quantum entanglement of particles passing through an amplifier and, conversely, when transmitting a signal over long distances. Details are provided in an article published in the journal Physical Review A (see preprint). Quantum entangled particles are considered to be the basis of several promising technologies, including quantum computers and communication ...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. -- U.S. workplaces may need to consider innovative methods to prevent fatigue from developing in employees who are obese. Based on results from a new study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (JOEH), workers who are obese may have significantly shorter endurance times when performing workplace tasks, compared with their non-obese counterparts. The study, conducted at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., examined the endurance of 32 individuals in four categories (non-obese young, obese young, non-obese older, and obese older) ...

DNA has the nasty habit of getting tangled and forming knots. Scientists study these knots to understand their function and learn how to disentangle them (e.g. useful for gene sequencing techniques). Cristian Micheletti, professor at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste and his team have been carrying out research in which they simulate these knots and their dynamics. In their latest paper, just published in the journal Soft Matter, Micheletti together with Marco Di Stefano, first author and PhD student at SISSA, and colleagues from Ljubljana ...

Streptococcus mutans, one of the principal bacteria that cause dental caries, has increased the change in its genetic material over time, possibly coinciding with dietary change linked to the expansion of humanity. This is highlighted in a study by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad (National Laboratory of Genomics for Biodiversity) in Mexico who, for the first time, have sequenced genetic material from this bacterium in populations from the past. Increase in genetic diversity has ...

The panel discussion is getting heated -- but what exactly is in the new proposed law that the experts on TV are arguing about so vigorously? Up until now, spontaneous questions such as these that arise during a program had to be clarified through a viewer's own research on the Internet. If it's up to researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin, Germany, viewers will no longer have to look up such additional information in the future. In the project "LinkedTV", the institute is working with eleven partners ...

This news release is available in German. Animals can use varying sensory modalities for orientation, some of which might be very different from ours. Some bird species for example take the polarization pattern produced by sunlight in the atmosphere to calibrate their orientation systems. Now researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen, Germany, and Queen's University Belfast have discovered with colleagues from Israel that a night active mammal, the greater mouse-eared bat, has the capability to orient using polarized light. These bats ...