July 21, 2014 (Toronto) – As part of a multinational, collaborative effort, researchers from Canada's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) have helped identify over 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia, in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date. The findings, published online in Nature, point to biological mechanisms and pathways that may underlie schizophrenia, and could lead to new approaches to treating the disorder, which has seen little innovation in drug development ...

BATON ROUGE – LSU's Mark Batzer, Boyd Professor and Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor in Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science, contributed to an article in the scientific journal Nature Genetics, titled "The Common Marmoset Genome Provides Insight into Primate Biology and Evolution," published on July 20. Batzer contributed analysis of "jumping genes," or mobile elements that move by a sort of "copy and paste" mechanism in the genome. The marmoset is important because it is the first "New World" monkey genome to be sequenced. An ...

(Philadelphia, PA) – Patients who have a clot in their legs and are considering whether to be treated with traditional blood-thinning medication or undergo a minimally-invasive catheter-based clot removal procedure should feel comfortable that there is no difference in death rates between the two treatments, although there are more bleeding risks with the catheter procedure, according to a study by Temple University School of Medicine researchers. The study involved a review of more than 90,000 cases nationwide. Riyaz Bashir, MD, a specialist in interventional cardiology ...

It's human nature to hate losing. Unfortunately, it's also human nature to overreact to a loss, potentially abandoning a solid strategy and thus increasing your chances of losing the next time around. That's one conclusion of a Brigham Young University study published this week by the journal Management Science. The finding is based on an analysis of two decades of data on NBA coaching decisions. The researchers focused on whether coaches adjusted their personnel following games where the margin of victory or defeat was small. After narrow wins, coaches changed their ...

Today's food production relies heavily on irrigation, but across sub-Saharan Africa only 4 percent of cultivated land is irrigated, compared with a global average of 18 percent. Small-scale farming is the main livelihood for many people in the region, who depend on rainfall to water their crops. To understand how climate change may affect the availability of water for agriculture, researchers at Princeton University analyzed trends in the water cycle in maize-growing areas of 21 African countries between 1979 and 2010. The team examined both levels of rainfall and the ...

Statistical analysis of average global temperatures between 1998 and 2013 shows that the slowdown in global warming during this period is consistent with natural variations in temperature, according to research by McGill University physics professor Shaun Lovejoy. In a paper published this month in Geophysical Research Letters, Lovejoy concludes that a natural cooling fluctuation during this period largely masked the warming effects of a continued increase in man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The new study applies a statistical methodology ...

Their scruffy beards weren't ironic, but there are reasons mammoths and mastodons could have been the hipsters of the Ice Age. According to research from the University of Cincinnati, the famously fuzzy relatives of elephants liked living in Greater Cincinnati long before it was trendy – at the end of the last ice age. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans enjoyed the area so much they likely were year-round residents and not nomadic migrants as previously thought. They even had their own ...

WHAT: Scientists have generally believed that HIV and its monkey equivalent, SIV, gain a permanent foothold in the body very early after infection, making it difficult to completely eliminate the virus even after antiretroviral therapy has controlled it. Now NIH-supported researchers report that SIV can become entrenched in tissues fewer than 3 days after infection, before the virus is detectable in blood plasma (the liquid part) or blood cells. Led by Dan H. Barouch, M.D., Ph.D., of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Ragon Institute, in collaboration with ...

Chicago, July 20, 2014—The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has released the results of a major survey examining the public's opinions about what it means to be a quality health care provider in the United States. The survey, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, sheds new light on how American adults perceive the quality of their health care and doctors, as well as the information they use and trust when making health care decisions. The survey produces new and actionable data during a crucial period of Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation. ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When it comes to learning languages, adults and children have different strengths. Adults excel at absorbing the vocabulary needed to navigate a grocery store or order food in a restaurant, but children have an uncanny ability to pick up on subtle nuances of language that often elude adults. Within months of living in a foreign country, a young child may speak a second language like a native speaker. Brain structure plays an important role in this "sensitive period" for learning language, which is believed to end around adolescence. The young brain is ...

Environment Canada has issued a high health risk warning for Yellowknife and surrounding area because of heavy smoke in the region due to forest fires. Currently 160 wildfires are burning across the region. There are no plans for evacuation since these fires are endangering people or property. Weather that has been hitting the area recently comes with mixed results. The rains help to dampen the fires, but the lightning tends to start others. This year the Northern Territories have seen 855,000 hectares (over 2,100,000 acres) burned as opposed to the territories 10 ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Want to conserve water and save on your utility bill? A paper co-written by an Indiana University researcher and published in the current issue of the journal Environment can help. "The Water Short List: The Most Effective Actions U.S. Households Can Take to Curb Water Use" describes how households can reduce water use substantially by simple actions such as installing more efficient appliances and changing day-to-day habits involving water consumption. While the suggestions may be familiar, the researchers are the first to put a comprehensive, quantitative ...

Graphene, a material that consists of a lattice of carbon atoms, one atom thick, is widely touted as being the most electrically conductive material ever studied. However, not all graphene is the same. With so few atoms comprising the entirety of the material, the arrangement of each one has an impact on its overall function. Now, for the first time, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have used a cutting-edge microscope to study the relationship between the atomic geometry of a ribbon of graphene and its electrical properties. A deeper understanding of ...

RUSTON, La. – Dr. Mark DeCoster, the James E. Wyche III Endowed Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University, will present as an invited speaker at the International Bioprinting Congress, July 24-25 at the Biopolis Research and Development Center in Singapore. DeCoster, who is also a research faculty member in Louisiana Tech's Institute for Micromanufacturing, will present a lecture titled, "Bioprinting interfaces for 2D and 3D cell and tissue models." The presentation will focus on the development of a novel, matrix-free method for generating 3D ...

Irvine, Calif., July 21, 2014 — Dysfunction in dopamine signaling profoundly changes the activity level of about 2,000 genes in the brain's prefrontal cortex and may be an underlying cause of certain complex neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, according to UC Irvine scientists. This epigenetic alteration of gene activity in brain cells that receive this neurotransmitter showed for the first time that dopamine deficiencies can affect a variety of behavioral and physiological functions regulated in the prefrontal cortex. The study, led by Emiliana Borrelli, ...

Astronomers have discovered a transiting exoplanet with the longest known year. Kepler-421b circles its star once every 704 days. In comparison, Mars orbits our Sun once every 780 days. Most of the 1,800-plus exoplanets discovered to date are much closer to their stars and have much shorter orbital periods. "Finding Kepler-421b was a stroke of luck," says lead author David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "The farther a planet is from its star, the less likely it is to transit the star from Earth's point of view. It has to line up just ...

The female condom is one of just two barrier methods that can protect against sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies, yet many young adults are not aware of the device, a new study by two UT Arlington researchers has found. They say the reason could lie in the way information about the female condom is communicated to young people. Charla Markham Shaw, associate professor of communication, and Karishma Chatterjee, an assistant professor of communication studies in The University of Texas at Arlington College of Liberal Arts, co-authored the paper "Communicating ...

A University of California, San Diego School of Medicine-led study suggests that parents of obese children often do not recognize the potentially serious health consequences of childhood weight gain or the importance of daily physical activity in helping their child reach a healthy weight. The study is published online in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. "Parents have a hard time changing their child's dietary and physical activity behaviors," said lead author Kyung Rhee, MD, and an assistant adjunct professor in the Department of Pediatrics. "Our ...

A NASA satellite captured an image of the western quadrant of Typhoon Matmo brushing over the eastern Philippines on July 20. NASA's Terra satellite passed over Typhoon Matmo on July 20 at 02:15 UTC and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard captured a visible image of the storm. The MODIS image showed a thick band of thunderstorms west of the storm's center were sweeping over the eastern Philippines. The Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) noted that animated multispectral satellite imagery on July 21 showed that convection (rising ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study in mice reveals that mesenchymal (mezz-EN-chem-uhl) stem cells (MSCs) help rejuvenate skeletal muscle after resistance exercise. By injecting MSCs into mouse leg muscles prior to several bouts of eccentric exercise (similar to the lengthening contractions performed during resistance training in humans that result in mild muscle damage), researchers were able to increase the rate of repair and enhance the growth and strength of those muscles in the exercising mice. The findings, described in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and ...

Stanford, CA—Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are responsible for far more greenhouse gas emissions than other types of animals. It is published by Climactic Change. Carbon dioxide is the most-prevalent gas when it comes to climate change. It is released by vehicles, industry, and forest removal and comprises the greatest portion of greenhouse gas totals. But methane and nitrous oxide are also greenhouse gasses and account for approximately ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 21, 2014—In Alzheimer's disease, accumulation of amyloid plaque in the brain is believed to play an important role in many characteristic disease symptoms, including memory loss and other mental state changes. But how these plaque deposits affect brain function is not well understood. Important new study results showing that plaque buildup in one area of the brain can negatively affect metabolism in a more distant brain region have been published in Brain Connectivity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is ...

DENVER – A 10-year population-based study shows that increased availability of better systemic chemo- and targeted-therapies for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) coincides with increased usage of these therapies. This in turn leads to a significant increase in overall survival. Researchers from the British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver, Canada, performed a retrospective chart review of all patients referred to the agency with advanced stage (IIIB or IV) lung cancer and grouped the patients into 4 one-year time frame cohorts; one termed "baseline" ...

DENVER -- ROS1 fusion genes were successfully detected independent of gender or smoking history in young East Asian patients with lung adenocarcinoma, a histological subgroup in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), using multiplex reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) diagnostic tests. In NSCLC treatment algorithms, a personalized therapy approach is now being taken based on the genetic characteristics of the cancer. Patients with specific oncogenic molecular aberrations, for example EGFR mutations and ALK gene fusions, ...

New York, NY -- More than one million prostate biopsies are performed each year in the U.S. alone, including many repeat biopsies for fear of cancer missed. Therefore there is a need to develop diagnostic tests that will help avoid unnecessary repeat biopsies. Two independent trials have now validated the performance of an epigenetic test that could provide physicians with a better tool to help eliminate unnecessary repeat prostate biopsies, report investigators in The Journal of Urology®. In the previously reported independent MATLOC (Methylation Analysis To Locate Occult ...