Lecithin is an ingredient that you've probably never heard of, but one that plays a vital role in the production of chocolate and many other foods. It's never been clear how this ingredient works on a molecular level, and confectioners have relied on observational methods - essentially trial and error - to perfect their recipes. Now, scientists have shown how the field of molecular dynamics (simulation on a molecular level) could be a valuable tool in understanding chocolate conching - the part of the chocolate-making process where aromatic sensation, texture and 'mouthfeel' ...

Diseases of the heart and blood vessels are the most common cause of death in Europe, resulting in over four million deaths a year (45% of all deaths) according to the latest available figures published today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. Although deaths from cardiovascular disease (CVD) are declining in most of Europe, there are large inequalities between European countries, with higher death rates seen in Eastern Europe. These high death rates correspond to the lower life expectancy also found in these countries, indicating the impact of CVD on inequalities ...

Doctors in Togo, West Africa have seen a 10% drop in tuberculosis death rates after redesigning diagnosis and treatment services in one of the country's health districts. The full results are published in BMJ Quality Improvement Reports today - an open access forum to help clinicians share improvement ideas. Tuberculosis (TB) is the second leading cause of death among infectious diseases worldwide, killing nearly 2 million people each year, mostly in less developed countries. Even though there have been improvements in tuberculosis control over the past two decades, ...

For the first time, UK physicians have demonstrated that antiviral-based therapies have the potential to protect humans from the deadly Ebola virus. The report, published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, describes a case-series of eight British health-care workers who were evacuated to the Royal Free Hospital in London, UK after possible accidental exposure to Ebola virus in Sierra Leone between January and March 2015. Four of the health-care workers were considered to have been at significant risk of exposure to Ebola from needlestick injuries and were given ...

A new study from The Journal of Neuroscience shows that humans and rhesus monkeys have very similar abilities in recognizing objects "at a glance," validating the use of this animal model in the study of human visual perception. In the study, published August 26, humans and monkeys not only demonstrated similar ease in recognizing objects in varied positions and landscapes, but both species also tended to make the same errors. For the study, researchers from MIT compared the performance of two rhesus macaque monkeys and 638 adult human subjects on a large set of object ...

Baltimore, Md., August 25, 2015 - Malawi has a population of 16 million, yet, only one inpatient rehabilitation center for individuals with stroke, spinal cord injury, and similar conditions. With just 40 beds, the Kachere Rehabilitation Center in Blantyre, Malawi's second largest city, provides services to the entire country. Because there is little funding for rehabilitation in the country, there is essentially no rehabilitation and follow-up services for patients after they return to their families, homes, and communities. Leslie B. Glickman, PT, PhD, an assistant ...

DALLAS, Aug. 25, 2015 -- Smokers who quit after having a heart attack have similar levels of chest pain and mental health as non-smokers, according to research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. Researchers assessed 4,003 adults in two U.S. multi-center heart attack patient registries for smoking, chest pain and health-related quality of life measures, such as physical and mental components at admission, at one, six and 12 months after their heart attacks. At admission, patients were identified as those who never ...

A new study shows that quitting smoking after a heart attack has immediate benefits, including less chest pain, better quality of daily life and improved mental health. Many of these improvements became apparent as little as one month after quitting and are more pronounced after one year, according to the research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Even in people who smoked and had a heart attack, we see fairly rapid improvements in important measures of health and quality of life when they quit smoking after their heart attacks, compared with ...

Genes that express in precisely timed patterns, known as oscillatory genes, play an essential role in development functions like cell division, circadian rhythms and limb formation. But without a time-lapse view of genetic expression, these genes have gone largely undiscovered. An algorithm developed by scientists at the Morgridge Institute for Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison is giving scientists a new way to identify the dynamics of oscillatory genes, and perhaps defining the roles of these early-development forces for the first time. A paper published ...

As the use of e-cigarettes has risen dramatically in the United States in recent years, so have calls to poison centers about them. Yet many parents who use e-cigarettes - or "vape" - aren't aware of the dangers to children, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The devices are used like typical cigarettes but instead of tobacco, they vaporize a liquid mixture of nicotine, glycerin and glycol ethers. The liquid form is flavored, which appeals to children. If ingested, a teaspoon of this "e-liquid" can be lethal to a child, ...

Less than 10 per cent of paediatric patients who suffer a cardiac arrest outside of the hospital survive. There are many factors which can influence survival rates; paramedic care is one of them. Thanks to the advanced training of paramedics, today, they can spend more time on the scene doing CPR or providing medical care including administering intravenous fluids and medications. However until now, it has not been known if the length of time spent on the scene and onsite medical interventions by paramedics are associated with improved survival for paediatric patients. In ...

Fast Facts: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been historically underdiagnosed in African-Americans and is increasing in frequency. Several gene variants for IBD in whites are key risk factors in African-Americans. Also important are unique African ancestral variants that cause protection against IBD. In African-Americans, as in whites and Asians, the dominant region for ulcerative colitis genetic risk in is the human leukocyte antigen region, a major determinant of immune regulation. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, along ...

NEW YORK, NY (August 25, 2015)-- Klinefelter syndrome is the most common disorder of the male sex chromosomes, yet is rarely diagnosed in children. A new assessment tool is being developed by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) to help pediatricians detect the physical traits of the syndrome. The tool could pave the way for early interventions that prevent and treat a range of physical, psychological, social, and cognitive impairments. The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics. According to lead author Sharron Close, PhD, boys with Klinefelter ...

In the biochemical game of genetics, it was thought that the proteins controlling gene regulation in animals were either spectators or players. But in research appearing in the current issue of eLife, Michigan State University researchers found that spectator proteins are actually practicing up for the big game. They discovered that the proteins are biochemically interacting with thousands of regions of the genome to change the structure of chromosomal material, although only few of them actually are able to change gene expression. "The previous thinking was that these ...

Cities are well known hot spots - literally. The urban heat island effect has long been observed to raise the temperature of big cities by 1 to 3°C (1.8 to 5.4°F), a rise that is due to the presence of asphalt, concrete, buildings, and other so-called impervious surfaces disrupting the natural cooling effect provided by vegetation. According to a new NASA study that makes the first assessment of urbanization impacts for the entire continental United States, the presence of vegetation is an essential factor in limiting urban heating. Impervious surfaces' biggest ...

The greater a country's gender equality when it comes to employment, the higher the overall homicide rate, according to a Baylor University study of 146 countries. "The finding does not mean that gender equality in employment increases homicide rates, but there is a correspondence," said sociologist Katie Corcoran, Ph.D. "What remains uncertain is the 'why' behind this relationship, although prior research suggests it may be due to threatening male status. "The research findings are significant because they show that gender inequality does not only affect women," she ...

Genetic findings support observational evidence that lower vitamin D levels are associated with increased risk of multiple sclerosis, according to a new research article by Brent Richards, from McGill University, Canada, and colleagues published this week in PLOS Medicine. Multiple sclerosis is a debilitating autoimmune disease that affects the nerves in the brain and spinal cord. There is no known cure for multiple sclerosis and it usually presents between the ages of 20 and 40 years. While some observational evidence suggests there may be a link between lower vitamin ...

A new modeling study appearing this week in PLOS Medicine supports consideration of vaccination campaigns using a single dose of cholera vaccine versus campaigns using the recommended two doses given two weeks apart.. Justin Lessler and colleagues, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, Baltimore, Epicentre, Paris and Médecins Sans Frontières, Geneva focus their modelling analyses on comparing the number of lives that could be saved by adopting a single vaccine dose, which could be more rapidly administered to more people than the internationally licensed ...

An oral cholera vaccine that is in short supply could treat more people and save more lives in crisis situations, if one dose were dispensed instead of the recommended two, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. More than 1.5 billion people around the world are at risk for cholera, a severe diarrheal illness caused by bacteria linked to poor water and sanitation. It is a major killer worldwide, causing an estimated two to three million cases and 100,000 deaths each year, primarily in developing nations. A relatively new vaccine -- internationally ...

Evolutionary theory says mutations are blind and occur randomly. But in the phenomenon of adaptive mutation, cells can peek under the blindfold, increasing their mutation rate in response to stress. Scientists at Winship Cancer Institute, Emory University have observed that an apparent "back channel" for genetic information called retromutagenesis can encourage adaptive mutation to take place in bacteria. The results are scheduled for publication in PLOS Genetics on Tuesday, August 25. "This mechanism may explain how bacteria develop resistance to some types of antibiotics ...

Tropical Cyclone Atsani appeared to look more like a frontal system in infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite.Early on August 26, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center issued their final bulletin on the system as it was transitioning into an extra-tropical cyclone, The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that also flies aboard Aqua captured infrared data on the storm on August 25 at 14:47 UTC (10:47 a.m. EDT). Cloud top temperatures in thunderstorms northeast of the center were colder than -63F/-52C, indicating high, strong thunderstorms with the potential ...

Bats are natural reservoirs of several important emerging viruses, and because cross-species transmission appears to be quite common among bats, it's important to study bats in a community context rather than concentrating on individual species. Researchers have now used such an approach to identify characteristics of cross-species virus transmission in bats and rodents, another important viral host. The investigators uncovered evidence to suggest that viruses pass more easily between bat species than between rodent species, and they found that characteristics unique ...

In a new review of all relevant medical research on breastfeeding practices, infants 0 to 5 months of age who were predominantly, partially, or not breastfed had 1.5-, 4.8-, and 14.4-times higher risks of dying, respectively, compared with exclusively breastfed infants. Also, children aged 6 to 23 months who were not breastfed had about a 2-times higher risk of dying than children who were continued on breastfeeding. "The findings underscore the importance of optimal breastfeeding practices during infancy and early childhood," said Dr. M. Jeeva Sankar, lead author of ...

(Boston)--Twenty-five percent of men currently taking Finasteride or Dutasteride, popularly known as Proscar and Avodart, for the treatment of benign prostate enlargement (BPH), appear not to benefit from taking these medications. Those prescribed Propecia or Avodart for male pattern hair loss (known as alopecia) are also at risk for adverse events elicited by these drugs. These findings are part of an international, collaborative review currently online in the journal Endocrine Reviews and Metabolic Disorders. Led by Abdulmaged Traish, PhD, professor of biochemistry ...

In early August, biologist Peter Ward returned from the South Pacific with news that he encountered an old friend, one he hadn't seen in over three decades. The University of Washington professor had seen what he considers one of the world's rarest animals, a remote encounter that may become even more infrequent if illegal fishing practices continue. The creature in question is Allonautilus scrobiculatus, a species of nautilus that Ward and a colleague had previously discovered off of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea. Nautiluses are small, distant cousins of squid and ...