This news release is available in Portuguese. Cancer patients are more likely to get infections. Pneumonia is the most frequent type of infection in this group and a frequent cause of ICU admission and mortality. A study conducted by researchers from the D'Or Institute for Research and Education (IDOR) in partnership with Brazilian hospitals and universities analyzed the factors associated with severe pneumonia in hospitalized cancer patients and suggests that more personalized treatment protocols can reduce mortality in these patients. Until now, there was a consensus ...

Telomeres are short stretches of repeated nucleotides that protect the ends of chromosomes. In somatic cells, these protective sequences become shorter with each cellular replication until a critical length is reached, which can trigger cell death. In actively replicating cells such as germ cells, embryonic stem cells, and blood stem cells of the bone marrow, the enzyme telomerase replenishes these protective caps to ensure adequate replication. Cancer cells also seem to have the ability to activate telomerase, which allows them to keep dividing indefinitely, with ...

Washington, D.C. - April 10, 2015 - Human norovirus may infect our canine companions, according to research published online April 1 in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. That raises the possibility of dog-to-human transmission, said first author Sarah Caddy, VetMB, PhD, MRCVS, a veterinarian and PhD student at the University of Cambridge, and Imperial College, London, UK. Norovirus is the leading cause of food-borne illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). ...

CHICAGO (April 9, 2015): The Affordable Care Act (ACA) allowed millions of young adults to retain health care coverage through their parents' insurance plans, but new research finds that many young African-American and Hispanic adults who need coverage for trauma care may not get it. The results of the study are published online as an "article in press" in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons and will appear in a print edition later this year. Before the dependent care provision of the Affordable Care Act became law in September 2010, approximately 30 percent ...

Certain types of supernovae, or exploding stars, are more diverse than previously thought, a University of Arizona-led team of astronomers has discovered. The results, reported in two papers published in the Astrophysical Journal, have implications for big cosmological questions, such as how fast the universe has been expanding since the Big Bang. Most importantly, the findings hint at the possibility that the acceleration of the expansion of the universe might not be quite as fast as textbooks say. The team, led by UA astronomer Peter A. Milne, discovered that type ...

Middle-aged people who are underweight (with a Body Mass Index [BMI] less than 20 kg/m2 [1]) are a third more likely to develop dementia than people of similar age with a healthy BMI, according to new research published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. The findings, which come from the largest ever study to examine the statistical association between BMI and dementia risk, also show that middle-aged obese people (BMI greater than 30 kg/m2) are nearly 30% less likely to develop dementia than people of a healthy weight, contradicting findings from some previous ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Researchers at UC Davis have found that a gene, which is not active in some mothers, produces a breast milk sugar that influences the development of the community of gut bacteria in her infant. The sugars produced by these mothers, called "secretors," are not digested by the infant, but instead nourish specific bacteria that colonize the babies' guts soon after birth. Mothers known as "non-secretors" have a non-functional fucosyltransferase 2 (FUT2) gene, which alters the composition of their breast milk sugars and changes how the microbial community, ...

BOSTON (April 9, 2015)- Making small, consistent changes to the types of protein- and carbohydrate-rich foods we eat may have a big impact on long-term weight gain, according to a new study led by researchers at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy at Tufts University. The results were published on-line this week in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Based on more than 16 years of follow-up among 120,000 men and women from three long-term studies of U.S. health professionals, the authors first found that diets with a high glycemic load (GL) from ...

MENLO PARK, Calif.-- Smartphones and other personal electronic devices could, in regions where they are in widespread use, function as early warning systems for large earthquakes according to newly reported research. This technology could serve regions of the world that cannot afford higher quality, but more expensive, conventional earthquake early warning systems, or could contribute to those systems. The study, led by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and published April 10 in the inaugural volume of the new AAAS journal Science Advances, found that the sensors ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- When a missile or meteor strikes the earth, the havoc above ground is obvious, but the details of what happens below ground are harder to see. Duke University physicists have developed techniques that enable them to simulate high-speed impacts in artificial soil and sand in the lab, and then watch what happens underground close-up, in super slow motion. In a study scheduled to appear this week in the journal Physical Review Letters, they report that materials like soil and sand actually get stronger when they are struck harder. The findings help explain ...

WASHINGTON - Broader use of standardized psychological testing for applicants submitting disability claims to the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) should improve the accuracy and consistency of disability determinations, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Some proponents of mandatory psychological testing, in particular validity testing, for SSA disability applicants argue that it would result in a significant reduction of individuals allowed onto the benefits rolls and a substantial cost savings. The committee that conducted the study and wrote ...

A recent study on university-going young adults, by researchers from the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS), is the first ever to show an association between meals eaten away from home and high blood pressure. These findings highlight lifestyle factors that can affect hypertension and emphasise the importance of being aware of the salt and calorie content in food, to facilitate better meal choices when eating out. Globally, high blood pressure, or hypertension, is the leading risk factor for death associated with cardiovascular disease. Studies have ...

NEW YORK (April 10, 2015) - Leading infectious diseases experts have released new guidance for healthcare facilities looking to establish precautions for visitors of patients with infectious diseases. The guidance looks to reduce the potential for healthcare visitors in spreading dangerous bacteria within the healthcare facility and community. The recommendations are published online in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA). "Visitors have initiated or been involved in healthcare-associated ...

Enzalutamide (trade name: Xtandi) has been approved since December 2014 for men who have metastatic prostate cancer that is not susceptible to hormone-blocking therapy, who have no symptoms or only mild ones, and in whom chemotherapy is not yet indicated. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. According to the findings, in comparison with watchful waiting the drug can prolong overall survival and delay the occurrence of ...

Professor Jonathan Stamler's latest findings regarding nitric oxide have the potential to reshape fundamentally the way we think about the respiratory system - and offer new avenues to save lives. It may be time to rewrite the textbooks. Scientific dogma has the respiration process involving only two elements -- oxygen and carbon dioxide. Specifically, the delivery of oxygen from lungs to tissues, and the removal of the waste product, carbon dioxide, through exhaling. Recently published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Stamler ...

A simple and effective portable tool to predict avian flu outbreaks on farms has been created by University of Guelph researchers. U of G researchers devised a real-time way to analyze chickens and other farm birds for avian flu. The tool uses a small blood sample and relies on a simple chemical colour change to see not only whether a chicken has avian flu but also what viral strain is involved. Current tests require samples to be sent to a lab, where it can take eight hours to a couple of days to yield results. That's too long, said Prof. Suresh Neethirajan, School ...

CLEMSON, S.C. -- You're going to have to think very small to understand something that has the potential to be very big. A team of researchers, including Kyle Brinkman of Clemson University, developed a material that acts as a superhighway for ions. The material could make batteries more powerful, change how gaseous fuel is turned into liquid fuel and help power plants burn coal and natural gas more efficiently. The team reported its findings Friday in the journal Nature Communications. Ye Lin, Shumin Fang and Fanglin Chen, all of the University of South Carolina, ...

Strategic partnering has become commonplace when introducing innovations to systems markets. In standards battles, network affiliation has been used as a market signal to create confidence in a format's success. This paper's authors thus develop and test a model aimed at finding the right partners to sponsor an innovative technology. The results suggest that company characteristics shape expectations about a system's future value and the likelihood of its survival. Partners that have proven successful in adjacent industries are especially suited to drive diffusion. Attracting ...

Major steps forward in the use of plants for renewable materials, energy and for building construction could soon arise, thanks to a key advance in understanding the structure of wood. The step forward follows research by the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge and the unexpected discovery of a previously unknown arrangement of molecules in plant cell walls. The paper describing this work was Editors' Choice for the American Chemical Society for March 25th. The researchers investigated the polymer xylan, which comprises a third of wood matter. Professor Ray ...

A study by researchers at The University of Manchester and the University of Liverpool has examined the psychological treatment of more than 300 people suffering from psychosis, showing that, whatever the therapy, it is the relationship between the patient and therapist which either improves or damages wellbeing. The research relates to one of the more controversial ideas in psychotherapy research - the Dodo bird conjecture. Named after a bird in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland which sent several characters on a race and then declared them all winners, this conjecture ...

Consumers whose drinking water can be contaminated by the release of untreated wastewater after heavy rains face increased risk for gastrointestinal illness, according to a report in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. "Combined" sewer systems collect both sewage and stormwater runoff on the way to treatment facilities. When heavy rainfall fills these systems beyond their capacity, untreated wastewater can back up into homes. To reduce the risk of home flooding during heavy precipitation, municipalities often discharge some of the untreated flow into nearby ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio--A new study provides an inside look at the most powerful explosions in the universe: gamma-ray bursts. These rare explosions happen when extremely massive stars go supernova. The stars' strong magnetic fields channel most of the explosion's energy into two powerful plasma jets, one at each magnetic pole. The jets spray energetic particles for light-years in both directions, at close to light speed. On Earth, we detect bits of the resulting debris as gamma rays. Researchers also suspect--but haven't been able to prove conclusively--that GRBs are the source ...

Scientists from South Carolina's leading public universities--the University of South Carolina and Clemson University--have made a discovery that could dramatically improve the efficiency of batteries and fuel cells. The research, which is published in the journal Nature Communications, involves improving the transport of oxygen ions, a key component in converting chemical reactions into electricity. The team studied a well-known material, gadolinium doped ceria (GDC), which transports oxygen ions and is currently in use as a solid oxide fuel cell electrolyte. Through ...

Washington, DC (April 10, 2015) - Using tech, like iPads, in schools has turned into a heated political debate. Los Angeles infamously spent $1.3 billion on a program to give iPads to each student that has subsequently been plagued with problems. In the United Kingdom the head of the National Association of Head Teachers claimed he was dubious about using tech as a teaching aid in non-IT classes. One solution could be using shared tech in classrooms. A promising study by a researcher at Northwestern University found that kindergartners in classes with shared iPads significantly ...

In 1997 when the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, was launched, its mission was scheduled to last just a few years. Now, 17 years later, the TRMM mission has come to an end. NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) stopped TRMM's science operations and data collection on April 8 after the spacecraft depleted its fuel reserves. TRMM observed rainfall rates over the tropics and subtropics, where two-thirds of the world's rainfall occurs. TRMM carried the first precipitation radar flown in space, which returned data that were made into 3-D imagery, ...