Virginia Tech researchers have identified a biomarker in pre-diabetic individuals that could help prevent them from developing Type II diabetes. Publishing in Clinical Epigenetics, the researchers discovered that pre-diabetic people who were considered to be insulin resistant -- unable to respond to the hormone insulin effectively -- also had altered mitochondrial DNA. Researchers made the connection by analyzing blood samples taken from 40 participants enrolled in the diaBEAT-it program, a long-term study run by multiple researchers in the Fralin Translational Obesity ...

(BOSTON) - Last year, a Wyss Institute team of scientists described the development of a new device to treat sepsis that works by mimicking our spleen. It cleanses pathogens and toxins from blood circulating through a dialysis-like circuit. Now, the Wyss Institute team has developed an improved device that synergizes with conventional antibiotic therapies and that has been streamlined to better position it for near-term translation to the clinic. The improved design is described in the October volume 67 of Biomaterials. Sepsis is a common and frequently fatal medical ...

Having a baby at home can save thousands of dollars over a hospital birth and is just as safe for low-risk births, according to a new UBC study. Researchers with UBC's School of Population and Public Health and the Child and Family Research Institute looked at all planned home births attended by registered midwives in B.C. between 2001 and 2004. They compared them to planned hospital births attended by registered midwives or physicians in which the mothers met the criteria for home birth. For the first 28 days postpartum, they found planned home births saved an average ...

Amsterdam, August 20, 2015 - A new study published in Journal of Transport & Health reveals that middle-aged drivers are at higher risk of crashes because they use their cellphone regularly while driving. The research reveals that most drivers admit to using their cellphones regularly while driving, even with children in the car; drivers also feel pressured to answer work calls while driving. The authors of the study, from the University of California San Diego, are now working with companies to teach employees about the risks associated with distracted driving, and show ...

TORONTO, Aug. 20, 2015--A new study has found a "significant association" between adults who have suffered a traumatic brain injury at some point in their lives and who also have attention deficit hyperactive disorder. The study, published today in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, supports research that found a similar association in children, said Dr. Gabriela Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St. Michael's Hospital. The data used in the adult study was collected by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health's Monitor, a continuous, cross-sectional ...

Oxford, August 20, 2015 - Researchers in China have developed tiny nanocrystals that could be used in the next generation of medical imaging technologies to light up cancer cells. In a study published in the inaugural issue of the journal Applied Materials Today, a new rapid, online only publication, the team of researchers describe how they make these films which are based on the heavy metals lanthanum and europium. Dr. Yaping Du of Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, and colleagues have developed a way to make high-quality nanocrystals of lanthanide oxybromides, where ...

NEW YORK, NY - Patients with scoliosis who undergo surgery may be less likely to develop an infection or other complications after the procedure when a novel wound closure technique pioneered at NYU Langone Medical Center is utilized, according to new research. The study was published online this past July in the Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics. In this new technique, surgeons use a multilayered flap closure that enables doctors to close several layers of muscle and fascia while maintaining blood supply from the donor site to the recipient site. The researchers believe ...

Post-discharge disease management provided in their own homes could be a cost-effective alternative for recently-hospitalised elderly patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). Just published in the International Journal of Cardiology, this is the finding of a recent economic evaluation conducted by Griffith University using data from a randomised controlled trial (The WHICH Study). In collaboration with the Australian Catholic University, 280 patients with CHF recruited from three public hospitals, received multidisciplinary disease management. With the aim of reducing ...

The solid waste left over from wine-making could make a competitive biofuel, University of Adelaide researchers have found. Published in the journal Bioresource Technology, the researchers showed that up to 400 litres of bioethanol could be produced by fermentation of a tonne of grape marc (the leftover skins, stalks and seeds from wine-making). Global wine production leaves an estimated 13 million tonnes of grape marc waste each year. Nationally it is estimated that several hundred thousand tonnes are generated annually and it is generally disposed of at a cost to ...

The problem has been that the vast majority of these atomically thin 2D crystals are unstable in air, so react and decompose before their properties can be determined and their potential applications investigated. Writing in Nano Letters, the University of Manchester team demonstrate how tailored fabrication methods can make these previously inaccessible materials useful. By protecting the new reactive crystals with more stable 2D materials, such as graphene, via computer control in a specially designed inert gas chamber environments, these materials can be successfully ...

In the Arctic, warming increases like a spiral. Global warming means that the periods of growth are becoming longer and vegetation growth is increasing. At the same time, heat transfer to the Arctic from lower latitudes is rising, reducing sea ice there, and this in turn is contributing towards a faster local rise in temperature. A new research study published in the highly respected research journal PNAS shows that the situation is the reverse on the Tibetan Plateau. Vegetation on the Tibetan Plateau has also increased as a result of global warming. However, in contrast ...

A team at the University of Warsaw, Faculty of Physics has created a laser capable of generating ultrashort pulses of light even under extremely difficult external conditions. This unique combination of precision and resilience is due to the fact that the whole process of generating femtosecond laser pulses takes place within a specially-selected optical fiber. Its appearance seems quite inconspicuous: just a flat, rectangular box, tens of centimeters across and about the same height, with a thin, shiny-tipped "thread" leading out of it, so long that it is rolled up ...

University of Pennsylvania researchers have made strides toward a new method of gene sequencing a strand of DNA's bases are read as they are threaded through a nanoscopic hole. In a new study, they have shown that this technique can also be applied to proteins as way to learn more about their structure. Existing methods for this kind of analysis are labor intensive, typically entailing the collection of large quantities of the protein. They also often require modifying the protein, limiting these methods' usefulness for understanding the protein's behavior in its natural ...

Move over, Katniss Everdeen. For archerfish, the odds are ever in their favor, according to new research from Wake Forest University. The sharp-shooting fish's ability to spit water to hit food targets has been well documented, but a new study published online in the journal Zoology showed for the first time that there is little difference in the amount of force of their water jets based on target distance. And, when given the choice, the fish preferred closer targets. The study was co-authored by Wake Forest researchers Morgan Burnette, a biology graduate student, ...

A new study says that global warming has measurably worsened the ongoing California drought. While scientists largely agree that natural weather variations have caused a lack of rain, an emerging consensus says that rising temperatures may be making things worse by driving moisture from plants and soil into the air. The new study is the first to estimate how much worse: as much as a quarter. The findings suggest that within a few decades, continually increasing temperatures and resulting moisture losses will push California into even more persistent aridity. The study appears ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Formula One racing teams may have a lesson to teach business leaders: Innovation can be overrated. That's the conclusion from academic researchers who pored over data from 49 teams over the course of 30 years of Formula One racing. They found that the teams that innovated the most - especially those that made the most radical changes in their cars - weren't usually the most successful on the race course. Moreover, radical innovations were the least successful at exactly the times when many business leaders would be most likely to try them: when there ...

A research team at York has adapted the astonishing capacity of animals such as newts to regenerate lost tissues and organs caused when they have a limb severed. The research, which is funded by a £190,158 award from the medical research charity Arthritis Research UK, is published in Nature Scientific Reports. The scientists, led by Dr Paul Genever in the Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre in the University's Department of Biology, have developed a technique to rejuvenate cells from older people with osteoarthritis to repair worn or damaged cartilage ...

Physicists suggest a new way to look for dark matter: They beleive that dark matter particles annihilate into so-called dark radiation when they collide. If true, then we should be able to detect the signals from this radiation. ­The majority of the mass in the Universe remains unknown. Despite knowing very little about this dark matter, its overall abundance is precisely measured. In other words: Physicists know it is out there, but they have not yet detected it. It is definitely worth looking for, argues Ian Shoemaker, former postdoctoral researcher at Centre ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Aug. 19, 2015) - A team of researchers in South Korea has successfully transplanted mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) derived from human amniotic membranes of the placenta (AMSCs) into laboratory mice modeled with oxygen-induced retinopathy (a murine model used to mimic eye disease). The treatment aimed at suppressing abnormal angiogenesis (blood vessel growth) which is recognized as the cause of many eye diseases, such as diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration. The researchers reported that the AMSCs successfully migrated to the retinas ...

National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists and colleagues report that an experimental vaccine given six weeks before exposure to Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) fully protects rhesus macaques from disease. The vaccine also generated potentially protective MERS-CoV antibodies in blood drawn from vaccinated camels. A study detailing the synthetic DNA vaccine appears in the Aug. 19 Science Translational Medicine. MERS-CoV, which causes pneumonia deep in the lungs, emerged in 2012 and has sickened more than 1,400 people and killed 500, mostly in ...

Summary: In 2011, the American Clinical Neurophysiology Society issued a guideline recommending that neonates undergoing cardiac surgery for repair of congenital heart disease be placed on continuous encephalographic (EEG) monitoring after surgery to detect seizures. These recommendations followed reports that seizures are common in this population, may not be detected clinically, and are associated with adverse neurocognitive outcomes. Yet, in a discussion at the 2014 Annual Meeting of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery, 80% to 90% of the audience was not following ...

KINGSTON - Queen's University researcher Martin Duncan has co-authored a study that solves the mystery of how gas giants such as Jupiter and Saturn formed in the early solar system. In a paper published this week in the journal Nature, Dr. Duncan, along with co-authors Harold Levison and Katherine Kretke (Southwest Research Institute), explain how the cores of gas giants formed through the accumulation of small, centimetre- to metre-sized, "pebbles. "As far as we know, this is the first model to reproduce the structure of the outer solar system - two gas giants, two ...

There are fewer smokers in the current generation of adolescents. Current figures show about 25 per cent of teens smoke, down dramatically from 40 per cent in 1987. But are those who pick up the habit doing so because they have a negative self-image? Does the typical teenaged smoker try to balance out this unhealthy habit with more exercise? And if so, then why would an adolescent smoke, yet still participate in recommended levels of physical activity? A recent study, conducted in part at Concordia University and published in Preventive Medicine Reports, sought to answer ...

Female fish in the Bahamas have developed ways of showing males that "No means no." In an example of a co-evolutionary arms race between male and female fish, North Carolina State University researchers show that female mosquitofish have developed differently sized and shaped genital openings in response to the presence of predators and - in a somewhat surprising finding - to block mating attempts by males from different populations. "Genital openings are much smaller in females that live with the threat of predators and are larger and more oval shaped in females ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Few can forget the photos and videos of apocalyptic destruction a tsunami caused in 2011 in Sendai, Japan. Could Ventura and Oxnard in California be vulnerable to the effects of a local earthquake-generated tsunami? Yes, albeit on a much smaller scale than the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, according to computer models used by a team of researchers, led by seismologists at the University of California, Riverside. According to their numerical 3D models of an earthquake and resultant tsunami on the Pitas Point and Red Mountain faults - faults located ...