ATLANTA--Promoting healthy gut microbiota, the bacteria that live in the intestine, can help treat or prevent metabolic syndrome, a combination of risk factors that increases a person's risk for heart disease, diabetes and stroke, according to researchers at Georgia State University and Cornell University. Their findings are published in the journal Gastroenterology. The study, a follow-up to the research team's previous paper in Science, uses an improved technical approach, making the results more significant. The research team includes Dr. Andrew Gewirtz, a professor ...

A gene associated with schizophrenia plays a role in brain development and may help to explain the biological process of the disease, according to new Rutgers research. In the study, published in Biological Psychiatry, Bonnie Firestein, professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, says too much protein expressed by the NOS1AP gene, which has been associated with schizophrenia, causes abnormalities in brain structure and faulty connections between nerve cells that prevent them from communicating properly. Firestein's research indicates that an overabundance ...

Being in a position of power can fundamentally change the way you speak, altering basic acoustic properties of the voice, and other people are able to pick up on these vocal cues to know who is really in charge, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. We tend to focus on our words when we want to come across as powerful to others, but these findings suggest that basic acoustic cues also play an important role: "Our findings suggest that whether it's parents attempting to assert authority over ...

Babies start breathing in the womb, inhaling and exhaling irregularly at first, and then gradually more and more, until the day when they're born and have to do it all the time. But premature babies sometimes have trouble. They stop breathing periodically, sometimes for 20 or 30 seconds at a time. Sometimes they're fine, and sometimes they're not, and doctors struggle to help them. That may soon change, however, thanks to a two-month-old patient at UConn Health with a rare connexin mutation, and his doctor's willingness to call for help. The resulting collaboration between ...

Repeat suicide attempts and deaths by suicide were roughly 25 percent lower among a group of Danish people who underwent voluntary short-term psychosocial counseling after a suicide attempt, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health-led research suggests. The findings are believed to be the first to show that talk therapy-focused suicide prevention actually works, averting future suicide attempts in this very high-risk population. Although just six-to-ten talk therapy sessions were provided, researchers found long-term benefits: Five years after the counseling ...

Over a million US military veterans lacked healthcare coverage in 2012, according to new estimates published in The Lancet. While many people believe that all veterans are covered by the Veterans Affairs health care system, less than half (8.9 million) of the 22 million veterans in the US are covered by VA health benefits, and most veterans are covered by private health insurance. Uninsured veterans are more likely to be young, single, African American, and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the authors of this viewpoint estimate that universal health coverage ...

Changes to the structure of the protein histone H3.3 may play a key role in silencing genes that regulate cancer cell growth, according to a study led by researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published online this month in the journal Nature Communications. According to the authors, this is the first study to identify this protein as a key regulator in cellular senescence, a process in which cells stop multiplying. Cellular senescence has garnered significant scientific interest of late because it may be one key to prevent the initiation ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Doubling or even nearly tripling saturated fat in the diet does not drive up total levels of saturated fat in the blood, according to a controlled diet study. However, increasing levels of carbohydrates in the diet during the study promoted a steady increase in the blood of a fatty acid linked to an elevated risk for diabetes and heart disease. The finding "challenges the conventional wisdom that has demonized saturated fat and extends our knowledge of why dietary saturated fat doesn't correlate with disease," said senior author Jeff Volek, a professor ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Women with symptoms of serious mental illness are significantly less likely to receive three routine cancer screenings - Pap tests, mammograms and clinical breast exams - than women in the general population, despite being at elevated risk for medical comorbidities and early death, a new study indicates. Women who reported symptoms of serious psychological distress - such as feelings of hopelessness and depression - during the past 30 days were 41 percent less likely to have received Pap tests during the preceding two-year period, University of Illinois ...

Research published today found that the investigational drug patiromer decreased high potassium levels and maintained normal potassium levels in patients with chronic kidney disease. The results of a multicenter trial appear in the New England Journal of Medicine. Elevated potassium, a condition called hyperkalemia, increases the risk of death in high-risk patients and limits the use of several types of drugs, called RAAS (renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system) inhibitors, commonly used to control hypertension and cardiovascular disease and prevent kidney disorders. "Patients ...

The exclusive club of explorers who have discovered a rare new species of life isn't restricted to globetrotters traveling to remote locations like the Amazon rainforests, Madagascar or the woodlands of the Congo River basin. Just ask professor John Nelson and alumnus Douglas Rayner -- they're having their membership cards stamped with a long-hidden plant found nowhere but South Carolina. The new species, dubbed Stachys caroliniana, makes its debut on the international botanical stage next week with a peer-reviewed publication describing its unique characteristics. It ...

A study by a Wayne State University and Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit Medical Center research team is shedding new light on the troubling question of whether the drugs often given to HIV-positive pregnant women can cause significant long-term heart problems for the non-HIV-infected babies they carry. The study recently published in the journal AIDS shows that while the HIV medications have been successful in helping to prevent the transmission of the virus from mother to infant, they are associated with persistently impaired development of heart muscle and ...

An intervention that uses music and games to help preschoolers learn self-regulation skills is helping prepare at-risk children for kindergarten, a new study from Oregon State University shows. Self-regulation skills - the skills that help children pay attention, follow directions, stay on task and persist through difficulty - are critical to a child's success in kindergarten and beyond, said OSU's Megan McClelland, a nationally recognized expert in child development and a co-author of the new study. "Most children do just fine in the transition to kindergarten, but ...

We are all familiar with the hassles that accompany air travel. We shuffle through long lines, remove our shoes, and carry liquids in regulation-sized tubes. And even after all the effort, we still wonder if these procedures are making us any safer. Now a new type of security detection that uses terahertz radiation is looking to prove its promise. Able to detect explosives, chemical agents, and dangerous biological substances from safe distances, devices using terahertz waves could make public spaces more secure than ever. But current terahertz sources are large, multi-component ...

You're at a slumber party with your friends. One friend asks "if a guy at school asked you out, but you weren't really attracted to him, would you go?" You laugh and shake your head no: "Why would I, if he's not my type?" Or imagine you're at school, sitting in the cafeteria. A guy who you think is attractive but who has some unsuitable personality traits comes up and asks you out. You say yes, even though what you really meant to say was no. "Why did I do that?" you wonder. According to new research from the University of Toronto and Yale University, rejecting unsuitable ...

As an actress, producer, director and theatre arts lecturer at The University of Texas at Arlington, Julienne Greer knows the techniques that help draw people's deepest emotions to the surface. Now, she's building on her experience and research to help scientists and robotics engineers better understand the human experience so that they can build more responsive robots. Greer, who holds a master's degree in media arts and a doctorate in humanities, recently authored the paper, "Building emotional authenticity between humans and robots." In it, she referenced a robot named ...

OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 21, 2014 -- Digoxin, a drug commonly used to treat heart conditions, was associated with a 71 percent higher risk of death and a 63 percent higher risk of hospitalization among adults with diagnosed atrial fibrillation and no evidence of heart failure, according to a Kaiser Permanente study that appears in the current online issue of Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology. Digoxin is a drug derived from digitalis, which has been used for more than a century for heart-rate control in patients with atrial fibrillation, and it remains commonly ...

Patients who receive more cells get significant benefits. That's a key lesson emerging from a clinical trial that was reported this week at the American Heart Association meeting in Chicago. In this study, doctors treated heart attack patients with their own bone marrow cells, selected for their healing potential and then reinjected into the heart, in an effort to improve the heart's recovery. In the PreSERVE-AMI phase II trial, physicians from 60 sites treated 161 patients, making the study one of the largest to assess cell therapy for heart attacks in the United States. ...

Scientists have identified four new genes associated with the severe food allergy eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). Because the genes appear to have roles in other allergic diseases and in inflammation, the findings may point toward potential new treatments for EoE. "This research adds to the evidence that genetic factors play key roles in EoE, and broadens our knowledge of biological networks that may offer attractive targets for therapy," said study leader Hakon Hakonarson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia ...

Study says leopards stay surprisingly close to homes Leopard home range around humans can be comparable to world's best protected areas Article available from PLOS ONE NEW YORK (November 21, 2014) - In the first-ever GPS-based study of leopards in India, led by WCS and partners has delved into the secret lives of these big cats, and recorded their strategies to thrive in human-dominated areas. The study concludes that leopards in human areas are not always 'stray' or 'conflict' animals but residents, potentially requiring policy makers to rethink India's leopard-management ...

November 21, 2014 -- A study conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health shows that obesity costs the U.S. $8.65 billion per year as a result of absenteeism in the workplace --more than 9% of all absenteeism costs. The consequences of obesity among the working population go beyond healthcare and create a financial challenge not only for the nation but for individual states as well. Findings are published online in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The study is the first to provide state-level estimates of obesity-attributable ...

Lugano/Geneva, Switzerland, 21 November 2014 - New evidence that immune checkpoint inhibitors may work in glioblastoma and brain metastases was presented today by Dr Anna Sophie Berghoff at the ESMO Symposium on Immuno-Oncology 2014 in Geneva, Switzerland. The novel research shows that brain metastases have dense concentrations of tumour infiltrating lymphocytes, providing an immunoactive environment. Moreover, both primary and secondary brain cancers often exhibit high expression of the immunosuppressive factor programmed cell death ligand 1 (PDL1), which can be inhibited ...

One of the most mysterious forms of life may turn out to be a rich and untapped source of antibacterial drugs. The mysterious life form is Archaea, a family of single-celled organisms that thrive in environments like boiling hydrothermal pools and smoking deep sea vents which are too extreme for most other species to survive. "It is the first discovery of a functional antibacterial gene in Archaea," said Seth Bordenstein, the associate professor of biological sciences at Vanderbilt University who directed the study, "You can't overstate the significance of the antibiotic ...

Prison policies vary on treating transgendered inmates, which could put inmates and institutions at risk. Gina Gibbs, a University of Cincinnati criminal justice doctoral student, will present a synopsis of the legal issues posed by such inmates at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology. The national conference runs from Nov. 19-22 in San Francisco. At the center of the debate are Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, widely varying policies on the treatment of transgendered populations and, Gibbs says, court crackdowns ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Retired baseball stars Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro each had Hall of Fame-worthy numbers, each hitting more than 500 home runs. All three also were tarred by allegations of steroid use. Their stories, however, received very different treatment over 12 years of national television news coverage, says University of Illinois professor Brian Quick, lead author on a paper about that coverage and its effects, published online Nov. 20 by the journal Communication Research. "We found that Bonds received more than twice as many negative stories ...