Cancer Mortality Reductions Were Greatest Among Countries Where Cancer Care Spending Rose The Most, 1995-2007. Warren Stevens of Precision Health Economics, Dana P. Goldman of the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics at the University of Southern California, and coauthors compared cancer care across sixteen countries over time, examining changes in cancer spending and two measures of cancer mortality (amenable and excess mortality). They found that, compared to low-spending health systems, high-spending systems had consistently lower cancer mortality in the ...

Fast Facts: More than 30,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Johns Hopkins researchers have transformed skin cells donated by ALS patients into brain cells affected by the progressive, fatal disease. The resulting cell library is being used by researchers worldwide in the quest for better ALS treatments. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have transformed skin cells from patients with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), into brain cells affected by the progressive, ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) have announced a new statement on the public disclosure of clinical trial results which updates and expands a previous statement that noted the "the registration of all interventional trials is a scientific, ethical, and moral responsibility." The new statement includes timelines by which researchers are expected to report clinical trials results. In an Essay published in this week's PLOS Medicine Vasee Moorthy and colleagues from the WHO outline the rationale behind the new statement. A new element in the WHO statement is the definition ...

Extreme hazards - rare, high-impact events - pose a serious and underestimated threat to humanity. The extremes of the broad ensemble of natural and anthropogenic hazards can lead to global disasters and catastrophes. Because they are rare and modern society lacks experience with them, they tend to be ignored in disaster risk management. While the probabilities of most natural hazards do not change much over time, the sensitivity of the built environment and the vulnerability of the embedded socio-economic fabric have increased rapidly. Exposure to geohazards has increased ...

April 14, 2015 A new material developed at the University of Colorado Boulder could radically reduce the energy needed to produce a wide variety of plastic products, from grocery bags and cling wrap to replacement hips and bulletproof vests. Approximately 80 million metric tons of polyethylene is produced globally each year, making it the most common plastic in the world. An essential building block for manufacturing polyethylene is ethylene, which must be separated from a nearly identical chemical, ethane, before it can be captured and used. The similarities between ...

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have uncovered the first evidence of an unusual quantum phenomenon--the integer quantum Hall effect--in a new type of film, called a 3D topological insulator. In doing this, they demonstrated that "surface Dirac states"--a particular form of massless electrons--are quantized in these materials, meaning that they only take on certain discrete values. These discoveries could help move science forward toward the goal of dissipationless electronics--electronic devices that can operate without producing the ...

SAN DIEGO (April 14, 2015) -- A team of biologists from San Diego State University has developed a platform for identifying drugs that could prove to be effective against a variety of viral diseases. In a pair of recent articles in the Journal of Biomolecular Screening and the Journal of Visualized Experiments, the researchers describe how the methodology works, using dengue virus as an example, and they identify a novel drug which may someday be used to combat the disease. Over the past several years, the researchers, led by SDSU biologist Roland Wolkowicz, have been ...

Research from The University of Manchester using cutting edge computer analysis reveals that despite mutating, Ebola hasn't evolved to become deadlier since the first outbreak 40 years ago. The surprising results demonstrate that whilst a high number of genetic changes have been recorded in the virus, it hasn't changed at a functional level to become more or less virulent. The findings, published in the journal Virology, demonstrate that the much higher death toll during the current outbreak, with the figure at nearly 10,500, isn't due to mutations/evolution making ...

Physicists from ITMO University, Ioffe Institute and Australian National University managed to make homogenous cylindrical objects completely invisible in the microwave range. Contrary to the now prevailing notion of invisibility that relies on metamaterial coatings, the scientists achieved the result using a homogenous object without any additional coating layers. The method is based on a new understanding of electromagnetic wave scattering. The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports. The scientists studied light scattering from a glass cylinder filled ...

The number of children being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes is increasing 3-4% every year and more so in school-aged children. Treating the condition is complex and poor management can often lead to medical emergencies that result in hospitalisation, placing ever greater demands on health services. To improve the efficiency of these services and reduce potentially unnecessary admissions, researchers wanted find out how often children with type 1 diabetes are admitted to hospital compared with children of the same age, gender and socioeconomic class, living in the same ...

The amount of government money pumped into dementia and stroke research in the UK has risen significantly in recent years, but it is still way too low when compared with the economic and personal impact these conditions have, finds a study published in the online journal BMJ Open. The researchers assessed central government and charity research expenditure in 2012 into the UK's leading causes of death and disability: cancer, coronary heart disease, dementia and stroke. In 2012, all four conditions accounted for over half (55%) of all UK deaths and for 5.5 million disability ...

Children with type 1diabetes run almost five times the risk of being admitted to hospital for any reason as their peers, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. Pre-schoolers and those from disadvantaged backgrounds are most at risk, the findings indicate. The number of new cases of childhood type 1 diabetes has been rising steadily by around 3-4% a year, the evidence shows, and the risk of death among those with the condition under the age of 30 is nine times that of the general public. The researchers analysed the causes of hospital admission after ...

A new type of technology that senses minute changes in the levels of particular compounds in exhaled breath, accurately identifies high risk changes which herald the development of stomach cancer, reveals research published online in the journal Gut. The findings prompt the researchers to suggest that the technology--known as nanoarray analysis--could be used not only to test for the presence of stomach cancer, but also to monitor those at high risk of subsequently developing the disease. Gastric cancer develops in a series of well-defined steps, but there's currently ...

1. Task Force weighs evidence on diabetes screening Researchers for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) have completed a systematic evidence review to inform an upcoming update of Task Force recommendations on screening asymptomatic, nonpregnant adults for type 2 diabetes. The review is published in Annals of Internal Medicine . Approximately 21 million persons in the U.S. received a diabetes diagnosis in 2010 and an estimated 8 million cases went undiagnosed. Screening asymptomatic persons for diabetes may lead to earlier identification and earlier ...

While a debate was raging between scientists and government regulators on how best to explain to patients the risks of participating in clinical research studies that compare standardized treatments, a team of bioethicists boldly went where no experts had gone before -- to the public. What the respondents said surprised them: Keep it simple, but always ask permission, even when the research only involves gathering data from anonymized medical records. "We didn't anticipate that people would want to grant permission for medical record searches, a research method that ...

ANN ARBOR--Research led by the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute has identified a gene critical to controlling the body's ability to create blood cells and immune cells from blood-forming stem cells--known as hematopoietic stem cells. The findings, scheduled for online publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation April 13, provide new insights into the underlying mechanics of how the body creates and maintains a healthy blood supply and immune system, both in normal conditions and in situations of stress--like the body experiences following a bone ...

DALLAS, April 13, 2015--The American Heart Association (AHA) released new recommendations today to address gaps in common standards around comprehensive workplace wellness programs (CWWPs). The recommendations improve the design, measurement and recognition of CWWPs, and, if adopted by employers, could significantly impact efforts to improve the cardiovascular health of the American workforce. An advisory panel of experts in population and workplace health, cardiology and preventive medicine conducted the review, which includes an extensive evaluation of workplace ...

WASHINGTON, DC - A medicinal liquid form of marijuana may show promise as a treatment for children with severe epilepsy that is not responding to other treatments, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015. The study involved 213 people, ranging from toddlers to adults, with a median age of 11 who had severe epilepsy that did not respond to other treatments. Participants had Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, epilepsy types that can lead to intellectual ...

Tropical Cyclone Solo was dissipating over the Southwestern Pacific Ocean when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on April 13, 2015. On April 11 Tropical Cyclone Solo spawned warnings in New Caledonia as it passed by. By April 12, the warnings were dropped and wind shear had taken its toll on the storm weakening it. On April 12 at 0300 UTC (April 11 at 11 p.m. EDT), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued their final bulletin on Solo. At that time it was 116 nautical miles north of Noumea, New Caledonia near 20.2 south latitude and 165.7 east longitude. Solo ...

Skin is remarkably resistant to tearing and a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory now have shown why. Using powerful X-ray beams and electron microscopy, researchers made the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms that allow skin to resist tearing. They identified four specific mechanisms in collagen, the main structural protein in skin tissue, that act together to diminish the effects of stress: rotation, straightening, stretching, and sliding. Researchers say they hope to replicate ...

TAMPA, Fla. - Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have developed a new method to identify a previously unknown structure in a protein called MDMX. MDMX is a crucial regulatory protein that controls p53 - one of the most commonly mutated genes in cancer. Known as the tumor suppressor gene, p53 protects the body from cancer development by ensuring that DNA remains intact and does not have mutations. If p53 senses DNA damage, it can either stimulate the cells to repair its DNA, or cause cells to stop growing and undergo cell death. Because of its functions, p53 is often ...

ATLANTA--Chimpanzees are capable of some degree of planning for the future, in a manner similar to human children, while some species of monkeys struggle with this task, according to researchers at Georgia State University, Wofford College and Agnes Scott College. Their findings were published on March 23 in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. The study assessed the planning abilities of chimpanzees, two monkey species (rhesus macaques and capuchin monkeys) and human children (ages 28 to 66 months old) using a computerized game-like program that presented 100 unique ...

A workplace intervention designed to reduce work-family conflict gave employed parents more time with their children without reducing their work time. "These findings may encourage changes in the structure of jobs and culture of work organizations to support families," said Kelly Davis, research assistant professor of human development and family studies. The research is part of the Work, Family and Health Network's evaluation of the effects of a workplace intervention designed to reduce work-family conflict by increasing both employees' control over their schedule ...

(Boston) - Emergency departments (ED) provide a promising venue to address opioid deaths with education on both overdose prevention and appropriate actions in a witnessed overdose. In addition, ED's have the potential to equip patients with nasal naloxone rescue kits as part of this effort. These findings are from a study published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, and is the first study to demonstrate the feasibility of ED-based opioid overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution to trained laypersons, patients and their social network. In ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island have demonstrated a promising new way to increase the effectiveness of radiation in killing cancer cells. The approach involves gold nanoparticles tethered to acid-seeking compounds called pHLIPs. The pHLIPs (pH low-insertion peptides) home in on high acidity of malignant cells, delivering their nanoparticle passengers straight to the cells' doorsteps. The nanoparticles then act as tiny antennas, focusing the energy of radiation in the area directly around the cancer ...