Tropical Cyclone Nathan has made its cyclonic loop in the Coral Sea near Queensland, Australia's Cape York Peninsula, and is headed away from land. However, satellite imagery reveals that Nathan's movement away from Queensland is a slow crawl. On March 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tropical Cyclone Nathan's maximum sustained winds were near 55 knots (63 mph/102 kph). It was centered near 13.1 south latitude and 145.5 east longitude, about 229 nautical miles (263 miles/424 kph) north of Cairns, Australia. Nathan has slowed down and was moving to the east-northeast at 2 ...

Tiny populations of invasive species such as Asian carp start their domination of new ecosystems by hanging out at local landmarks, according to a new study published in the journal Theoretical Ecology this week. Understanding how species use these local hotspots can play a key role in how officials approach population control for conserving endangered species and controlling invasive ones. "We recently found that only ten Asian carp are needed to establish a population in the Great Lakes," said Kim Cuddington, an ecology professor from the University of Waterloo. "But ...

(Seattle, WA - March 12, 2015) Scientists at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) have made an unexpected discovery that overturns a longstanding belief in the biological sciences. Research, led by Chris Amemiya, PhD, a member at BRI, and primarily conducted by Joyce Tang, was published online in today's issue of Current Biology. The research demonstrates that chitin, a molecule that was previously thought to be absent in vertebrates and that has been shown to trigger an allergy/immune reaction in mammals, is endogenously produced in fishes and amphibians. ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Bavi as it continued on a west-northwesterly track through the Northwestern Pacific Ocean. Bavi has already generated a typhoon watch for Guam, Rota, Tinian and Saipan. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Bavi on March 13. The image showed the eastern two-thirds of the storm and revealed strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation and a thick band of thunderstorms north of the center. On March 13 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tropical Storm Bavi ...

ST. LOUIS -- A flu vaccine given just under the surface of the skin that includes four strains of inactivated influenza could be more protective than a similar flu vaccine containing only three strains, Saint Louis University research found. These findings, which appear in Vaccine, confirmed the expected results, said Geoffrey Gorse, M.D., professor of internal medicine in the division of infectious diseases at Saint Louis University and the study's lead author. Findings from this study of flu vaccines delivered by a small needle intradermally parallel earlier results ...

PASADENA, Calif., March 13, 2015 -- Expanding blood pressure screenings to non-primary care settings can help identify more patients with high blood pressure, commonly called hypertension, and could contribute to better hypertension control and management, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in The Journal of Clinical Hypertension. Researchers examined the electronic health records of 1,076,000 Kaiser Permanente Southern California patients seen over a two-year period in primary care settings and non-primary care settings, including optometry, orthopedics, ...

Preventable deaths caused by acute kidney injury (AKI) could be nearly eliminated in just 10 years, according to leading medical experts. This often forgotten condition - which affects around 13 million people every year and contributes to 1.7 million deaths annually - is preventable and can be treated for as little as $US150 per patient. A major new Commission from The Lancet and the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) reports on an ISN initiative, launched in 2013, which calls for preventable deaths from AKI to be eliminated by 2025 (0by25). According to Professor ...

New estimates published in The Lancet indicate that at best only half of people worldwide needing kidney dialysis or transplantation to treat kidney failure in 2010 received it. This suggests that at least 2.3 million people may have died prematurely from kidney failure because they could not access this life-saving treatment. The research shows that most of these preventable deaths occurred in China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nigeria, where less than a quarter of eligible patients receive treatment for kidney failure. "The high cost of current dialysis techniques ...

SAN DIEGO -- Healthy young adults who don't consume caffeine regularly experienced greater rise in resting blood pressure after consumption of a commercially available energy drink -- compared to a placebo drink -- thus raising the concern that energy drinks may increase the risk of cardiac events, Mayo Clinic researchers found. Results of the study will be presented Saturday, March 14, at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. In this study, researchers alternately gave a can of a commercially available energy drink or a placebo ...

SAN DIEGO -- People exposed to prolonged periods of shortened sleep have significant increases in blood pressure during nighttime hours, Mayo Clinic researchers report in a small study of eight participants. Results of the study will be presented Sunday, March 15, at the American College of Cardiology's 64th Annual Scientific Session in San Diego. In this study, eight healthy, normal weight participants, ages 19 to 36, participated in a 16-day inpatient protocol, consisting of a four-day acclimation period followed by nine days of either sleep restriction (four hours ...

A study led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators suggests that bariatric surgery can significantly reduce the risk of asthma attacks - also called exacerbations - in obese patients with asthma. Their report, published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, is the first to find that significant weight reduction can reduce serious asthma-associated events. "We found that, in obese patients with asthma, the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalizations for asthma exacerbations decreased by half in the two years after bariatric ...

Media and popular culture might portray religion and science as being at odds, but new research from Rice University suggests just the opposite. Findings from the recently completed study "Religious Understandings of Science (RUS)" reveal that despite many misconceptions regarding the intersection of science and religion, nearly 70 percent of evangelical Christians do not view the two as being in conflict with each other. The research was presented by Rice sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund today in Washington, D.C., during the American Association for the Advancement ...

Case Western Reserve researchers are part of an international team that has discovered that a common herpes drug reduces HIV-1 levels -- even when patients do not have herpes. Published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the finding rebuts earlier scientific assumptions that Valacyclovir (brand name, Valtrex) required the presence of the other infection to benefit patients with HIV-1. The result not only means that Valacyclovir can be used effectively with a broader range of HIV-1 patients, but also suggests promising new avenues for the development of HIV-fighting ...

Washington, D.C.-Two new papers from members of the MESSENGER Science Team provide global-scale maps of Mercury's surface chemistry that reveal previously unrecognized geochemical terranes -- large regions that have compositions distinct from their surroundings. The presence of these large terranes has important implications for the history of the planet. The MESSENGER mission was designed to answer several key scientific questions, including the nature of Mercury's geological history. Remote sensing of the surface's chemical composition has a strong bearing on this and ...

Among the facts so widely assumed that they are rarely, if ever studied, is the notion that wider hips make women less efficient when they walk and run. For decades, this assumed relationship has been used to explain why women don't have wider hips, which would make childbirth easier and less dangerous. The argument, known as the "obstetrical dilemma," suggests that for millions of years female humans and their bipedal ancestors have faced an evolutionary trade-off in which selection for wider hips for childbirth has been countered by selection for narrower hips for ...

WASHINGTON - A legal scholar and tobacco control expert says he has developed a research-based roadmap that allows for the immediate regulation of e-cigarettes. Writing in the March issue of Food and Drug Law Journal, Eric N. Lindblom, JD, senior scholar at the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, says his proposal would minimize the threats e-cigarettes pose to public health while still enabling them potentially help reduce smoking. "This approach could help to heal the current split in the public health community over e-cigarettes by addressing ...

New research led by University of York scientists highlights how poor connectivity of protected area (PA) networks in Southeast Asia may prevent lowland species from responding to climate change. Tropical species are shifting to higher elevations in response to rising temperatures, but there has been only limited research into the effectiveness of current protected area networks in facilitating such movements in the face of climate change. However, the new study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, focuses on the connectivity of the protected area network ...

The font type of written text and how easy it is to read can be influential when it comes to engaging people with important health information and recruiting them for potentially beneficial programmes, new research by The University of Manchester and Leeds Beckett University has found. Led by Dr Andrew Manley, a Chartered Sport and Exercise Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Sport and Exercise Psychology at Leeds Beckett, the study - published in the latest issue of Patient Education and Counseling journal - assessed the extent to which the title and font of participant ...

With the socio-economic developments of the last decades, new emerging compounds have been produced, released and discharged through different point and diffuse sources in European rivers, lakes, and marine-coastal and transitional waters. Treated municipal wastewaters contain a multitude of organic chemicals including pharmaceuticals, hormones, and personal care products, which are continuously introduced into aquatic ecosystems. Their possible effects on the environment and human health is often unknown. The exposure of organisms, communities and humans to mixtures of ...

Although listening to music is common in all societies, the biological determinants of listening to music are largely unknown. According to a latest study, listening to classical music enhanced the activity of genes involved in dopamine secretion and transport, synaptic neurotransmission, learning and memory, and down-regulated the genes mediating neurodegeneration. Several of the up-regulated genes were known to be responsible for song learning and singing in songbirds, suggesting a common evolutionary background of sound perception across species. Listening to music ...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a leading tool for imaging, measuring, and manipulating materials with atomic resolution - on the order of fractions of a nanometer. AFM images surface topography of a structure by "touching" and "feeling" its surface by scanning an extremely fine needle (the diameter of the tip is about 5 nanometers, about 1/100 of light wavelength or 1/10,000 of a hair) on the surface. This technique has been applied to image solid materials with nanometer resolution, but it has been difficult to apply AFM for a soft and large sample like eukaryotic ...

Metastatic melanoma is the leading cause of skin cancer deaths in the United States; once melanoma has spread (metastasized), life expectancy for patients can be dramatically shortened. At present, the reference therapy for patients diagnosed with metastatic melanoma is Dacarbazine (DTIC), which is associated with poor patient outcomes. In a study published in Molecular Cancer Research, March 12, 2015, the laboratory of Mary J.C. Hendrix, PhD, in collaboration with other scientists found that standard treatments for metastatic melanoma are not effective against a growth ...

An FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure, guanabenz, prevents myelin loss and alleviates clinical symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS) in animal models, according to a new study. The drug appears to enhance an innate cellular mechanism that protects myelin-producing cells against inflammatory stress. These findings point to promising avenues for the development of new therapeutics against MS, report scientists from the University of Chicago in Nature Communications on Mar. 13. "Guanabenz appears to enhance the cell's own protective machinery to diminish the loss of ...

Almost all patients with a group of blood cancers called B-cell malignancies have two prominent "fingerprints" on the surface of leukemia and lymphoma cancers, called CD22 and CD19, Vallera explained. To develop the drug, Vallera and colleagues chose two antibody fragments that each selectively bind to CD19 and CD22. They used genetic engineering to attach these two antibodies to a potent toxin, the bacterial diphtheria toxin. When the antibody fragments bind to the two targets on the cancer cell, the entire drug enters the cell, and the toxin kills the cell. Vallera; ...

Boston, Mass., USA - Today at the 93rd General Session and Exhibition of the International Association for Dental Research, researcher Bertha A. Chavez Gonzalez, Universidade de Minas Gerias, Lima, San Borja, Peru, will present a study titled "Birth Weight and Pregnancy Complications Associated With the Enamel Defects." The IADR General Session is being held in conjunction with the 44th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research and the 39th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research. This cross-sectional representative study ...