The invisible chemicals around and within us can tell many complicated stories. By sensing them, security agents can uncover explosive threats. By monitoring them in our breath, doctors can diagnose serious illnesses. And by detecting them on distant planets, astronomers may find signs of life. These chemicals sometimes reveal their secrets when probed with mid-infrared wavelength lasers. Nearly all chemicals, including explosives, industrial, and pollutants, strongly absorb light in the mid-infrared wavelength region, which is often called the "fingerprint region" for ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--It's an old joke that many fusion scientists have grown tired of hearing: Practical nuclear fusion power plants are just 30 years away -- and always will be. But now, finally, the joke may no longer be true: Advances in magnet technology have enabled researchers at MIT to propose a new design for a practical compact tokamak fusion reactor -- and it's one that might be realized in as little as a decade, they say. The era of practical fusion power, which could offer a nearly inexhaustible energy resource, may be coming near. Using these new commercially ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. (July 10,2015) - Just as nations around the globe carefully guard their defense secrets, so do plants. New research in the current issue of Nature, however, has revealed the molecular secrets of plants' defense mechanisms at the atomic level. The study, led by Michigan State University and Van Andel Research Institute, focuses on the plant hormone jasmonate and its interaction with three key proteins. The findings could help scientists develop dream crops that are better equipped to fend off pests, diseases and future challenges created by fluctuating ...

(Vienna, 6 August, 2015) Women who give birth to babies conceived by in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) are at increased risk of experiencing long-term symptoms of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD), according to the results of a study published in the UEG Journal.1 Researchers in Turkey compared two groups of women who had given birth to their first child at least 1 year earlier and found that those who had had IVF were three-times more likely to be diagnosed with GORD than those who had conceived naturally. No differences in GORD prevalence were reported between the women ...

Queen's University professor Nikolaus Troje (Psychology, Biology, School of Computing) believes that it is the consistency of the whole appearance rather than the attractiveness of the parts. "Most previous work on attractiveness focused on the effect of isolated features." says Dr. Troje. "The current study demonstrates how important it is that these features fit together well." Participants were shown schematic point-light displays that depict a person using 15 moving dots. The representation conveyed both the individual characteristics of a person's movements and their ...

Patients in advanced states of myocardial insufficiency generally lose their muscle mass and muscle strength. Indeed a fact that until now has negatively impacted the clinical course of the disease and that has resulted in poor prognoses for patients. Such pathological muscle loss impacts the skeletal muscles in particular. The responsible molecular signaling pathways have not yet been fully understood. One cause of this degenerative process lies in the system that regulates the blood pressure and salt/water supply in the body - the so-called renin-angiotensin-aldosterone ...

If the thought of a math test makes you break out in a cold sweat, Mom or Dad may be partly to blame, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. A team of researchers led by University of Chicago psychological scientists Sian Beilock and Susan Levine found that children of math-anxious parents learned less math over the school year and were more likely to be math-anxious themselves--but only when these parents provided frequent help on the child's math homework. Lead study author Erin A. Maloney ...

How do states decide what laws to adopt to prevent alcohol-impaired driving and keep their roads safe? A new study by public health researchers at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development finds that the severity of the problem within the state is not the most important predictor of whether states adopt new laws to restrict drunk driving - nor is the political makeup of the state government. Instead, the two strongest predictors of states adopting their first drunk driving laws were having a large population of young people and a neighboring ...

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers say they have developed a method that could make a nasal spray flu vaccine effective for those under two and over 49 - two groups for which the vaccine is not approved. By studying the weakened flu virus that is the basis for the nasal spray vaccine in cells from human nasal and sinus cavities, the researchers say they have determined that the virus can be weakened (for young children) or strengthened (in older people) enough to create an appropriate immune response in people of all ages. A report on the findings ...

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 10, 2015 - People who live in areas of California with a higher density of marijuana dispensaries experience a greater number of hospitalizations involving marijuana abuse and dependence, a University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health analysis discovered. The National Institutes of Health-funded research, published online and scheduled for the Sept. 1 issue of the scientific journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence, could be informative as more states consider legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use. It is the first analysis of the ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - A new technique developed by statisticians that is helping doctors optimize the dose of a new cancer treatment patients receive in phase I/ II clinical trials was presented today by Juhee Lee, assistant professor of applied mathematics and statistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, during a session at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. During a session titled Bayesian Dose-Finding in Two Treatment Cycles Based on the Joint Utility of Efficacy and Toxicity, Lee presented the "Optimal Two-Cycle Dose-Finding ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - Statisticians have combined state-of-the-art analytical techniques from the academic and business worlds to tackle the Big Data challenges confronting astrophysicists and astronomers as they explore the mysteries of our universe, Lars K.S. Daldorff and Siavoush Mohammadi today told an audience at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. These technical advances--called automatic explorative analysis of data--have the potential of greatly aiding these scientists as they seek to understand our universe, as well as researchers ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - Statistical models are playing an increasingly important role in risk analysis and helping the United States and other countries around the globe mitigate the effects of natural and man-made disasters, said Siddhartha (Sid) Dalal during a presentation at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) yesterday in Seattle. Dalal presented a talk titled "Challenges in Risk Analysis of Complex Systems: From Space Shuttle Challenger and Dirty Bombs to Medical Drugs and Chemicals" at a luncheon sponsored by the American Statistical Association's ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - A new statistical model that businesses can use to approximate an upper limit on the appropriate amount of marketing dollars they should invest in retaining their most important customers was presented today at a session of the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) in Seattle. Michael Braun, associate professor of marketing at Southern Methodist University's Cox School of Business, unveiled the new model in a presentation titled "Transaction Attributes and Customer Valuation" during a session focused on Big Data and customer analytics. ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - An analysis of pediatric primary health care accessibility and availability in multiple states that uncovered systematic disparities between and within states was presented today at a session of the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings(JSM 2015) in Seattle. During an invited presentation titled "Quantifying Disparities in Accessibility and Availability of Pediatric Primary Care with Implications for Policy Making," statistician Nicoleta Serban said the study shows disparities in wait times for pediatric primary care are not as significant as ...

SEATTLE, WA, AUGUST 10, 2015 - The world's population will increase from today's 7.3 billion people to 9.7 billion in 2050 and 11.2 billion at century's end, John R. Wilmoth, the director of the United Nations (UN) Population Division, told a session focused on demographic forecasting at the 2015 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM 2015) today in Seattle. The UN projection suggests there will not be an end to world population growth this century unless there are unprecedented fertility declines in those parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are still experiencing rapid population ...

This news release is available in German. Chromosomes differentiate men from women. A woman's somatic cells have two X chromosomes, while a man's carry only one. If both X chromosomes and all of their genes were to be active in women, they would have twice as many copies of the proteins that they produce in men. This would consequently result in a disequilibrium that would disrupt the finely balanced biochemistry of the human body. Nature ensures this does not happen: one of the X chromosomes is completely and permanently inactivated during a female's early development ...

Beijing, China, August 10, 2015 - A recent study published in the Journal of Environmental Sciences (JES) shows that embryonic stem cells could serve as a model to evaluate the physiological effects of environmental pollutants efficiently and cost-effectively. The use of stem cells has found another facade. In the world we live in today, people are constantly exposed to artificial substances created by various industrial processes. Many of these materials, when exposed to humans, can cause acute or chronic diseases. As a consequence, validated toxicity tests to address ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 10, 2015 - Venous thromboembolism (VTE), encompassing deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clots in leg veins, and pulmonary embolism (PE), or clots that travel to the lungs, is the most common cause of preventable death in hospital settings. While these clots can be prevented by an approach called VTE prophylaxis, and this reduces mortality by as much as 80%, VTE prophylaxis is not universally prescribed for high-risk patients. In a study in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology, researchers found that even after educating healthcare providers about ...

Research reveals that most individuals with cancer have religious and spiritual beliefs, or derive comfort from religious and spiritual experiences. But what impact does this have on patients' health? Recent analyses of all published studies on the topic--which included more than 44,000 patients--shed new light on the associations of religion and spirituality with cancer patients' mental, social, and physical well-being. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the analyses indicate that religion and spirituality have significant ...

Drugs used to treat common complaints could delay the recovery of brain injury patients according to research led by University of East Anglia (UEA) scientists working with other UK universities including Aston and the NHS, published today in Brain Injury. Prescribed for up to 50 per cent of older people, medications with anticholinergic properties are used to treat a broad range of common conditions including bladder problems, depression and insomnia. Anticholinergics are already known to have side effects such as temporary cognitive impairment, dizziness and confusion. ...

While the risk of suicide by offenders in prison has been identified as a priority for action, understanding and preventing suicides among offenders after release has received far less attention. A study undertaken by Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, supported by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care South West Peninsula (CLAHRC SWP/PenCLAHRC), addresses this issue for the first time. It is published today on-line in the journal Sociology of Health and Illness. The ...

Marked rescue effect of the drug UDCA on cell batteries (mitochondria) in Parkinson's disease patient tissue First study to demonstrate beneficial effects of UDCA on the nerve cells affected in Parkinson's disease in a genetic animal model of Parkinson's disease UDCA is already approved for use in human liver disease Results of the study support fast track of UDCA to clinical trials and could save years of research and hundreds of millions of pounds A drug which has already been in use for decades to treat liver disease could be an effective treatment to slow ...

Giving all pregnant women iodine supplements, even in mildly iodine deficient countries like the UK, could result in huge cost savings for health care systems and society, according to new modelling research published in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. The new estimates suggest that introducing iodine supplementation in pregnancy in the UK could save the National Health Service (NHS) around £200 per expectant mother and provide monetary benefits to society of around £4500 per child from increased lifetime earnings and lower public sector costs. ...

This news release is available in Spanish and French. MONTREAL AND LOS ANGELES, AUGUST 9, 2015 - Researchers at the University of Montreal have developed techniques that enable computer cursors to interact in 3D in single or multiuser, local or remote collaboration scenarios. The system, unveiled today at the SIGGRAPH 2015 Conference in Los Angeles, is not so much about turning Word into an IMAX experience as offering designers an opportunity to navigate through and modify their creations manipulating 3D objects with 3D interactions. "Our new technology challenges ...