Case Western Reserve University scientists have discovered that a protein called Kruppel-like Factor 4 (KLF4) controls mitochondria -- the "power plants" in cells that catalyze energy production. Specifically, they determined KLF4's pivotal role through its absence -- that is, the mitochondria malfunction without enough of the protein, which in turn leads to reduced energy. This decline is particularly problematic in the heart because lower energy can lead to heart failure and death. The researchers' findings appear in the August edition of The Journal of Clinical Investigation ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)--By coordinating with state health departments and communicating with each other about patients with C. difficile and antibiotic-resistant infections, hospitals, long-term acute-care facilities and nursing homes could reduce the number of such hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) by an estimated 619,000 cases in the next five years, a new Centers for Disease Control 9 (CDC)-led report has found. As highlighted in the CDC's monthly Vital Signs monthly report, published on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2015, mathematical modeling was used to project the number of infections ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Astronomers using the Subaru Telescope's Hyper Suprime-Cam prime-focus camera recently observed the nearby large spiral galaxy M81, together with its two brightest neighbors, M82 and NGC3077. The results of their observations are deep, super wide-field images of the galaxies and their populations of young stars. As part of a Galactic Archaeology study, the team discovered that the spatial distribution of the young stars around these galaxies follows very closely that of their distribution of neutral hydrogen. "This ...

Physicists at the University of California, Berkeley, have cooled a gas to the quietest state ever achieved, hoping to detect faint quantum effects lost in the din of colder but noisier fluids. While the ultracold gas's temperature - a billionth of a degree above absolute zero - is twice as hot as the record cold, the gas has the lowest entropy ever measured. Entropy is a measure of disorder or noise in a system; a record low temperature gas isn't necessarily the least noisy. "This 'lowest entropy' or 'lowest noise' condition means that the quantum gas can be used to ...

Glenview, Ill. (August 4, 2015)--Researchers have found the risk for hospital readmission to be nearly three times higher after COPD exacerbation if a follow-up visit to a pulmonologist is skipped. The Israeli study published today in the journal CHEST The Association Between Hospital Readmission and Pulmonologist Follow-up Visits in Patients With COPD examined the impact of a pulmonologist follow-up visit during the month after discharge from the hospital on reducing readmissions. COPD exacerbations account for 500,000 hospital admissions and $18 billion in direct health-care ...

Glenview, Ill. (August 4, 2015) -- A case study published in the August issue of the journal CHEST found lenalidomide treatments may have an immediate effect in the treatment of sarcoidosis-related symptoms. Sarcoidosis, a disease that involves abnormal collections of inflammatory cells that can form nodules in various organs, can affect individuals from all racial and age groups. To date, no optimal therapies have been effective in managing this condition. This finding was reported in the case of a 71-year-old woman with a long-standing history of refractory pulmonary ...

An expanded program of treatment for hypertension could prevent about 800,000 cardiovascular disease (CVD) events every year in China, according to a modeling study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The predictions of this simulation, reported by Andrew Moran of Columbia University and colleagues, indicate that such a program should also be borderline cost-effective, provided low cost essential anti-hypertensive drugs are used. Hypertension is the leading cardiovascular risk factor in China, the world's most populous country. About 325 million adults in China have ...

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS- Marketers would love to get inside the consumer brain. And now they can. Researchers at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business are using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to see if what people say about brands matches what they are actually thinking. In their paper, "From 'Where' to 'What': Distributed Representations of Brand Associations in the Human Brain (Journal of Marketing Research: August 2015, Vol. 52, No. 4), co-authors Ming Hsu and Leif Nelson, Berkeley-Haas marketing professors, and Yu-Ping ...

While most people might know some algae as "pond scum," to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), they are tiny organisms that could provide a source of sustainable fuels. Like plants, they can convert light into energy-rich chemical compounds; unlike plants, they require less space and don't need arable soil to grow. Some algae like Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (or "Chlamy," as it's known to its large research community) produce energy-dense oils or lipids when stressed, and these lipids can then be converted into fuels. However, researchers walk a fine line in not killing ...

Most robots on a factory floor are fairly ham-handed: Equipped with large pincers or claws, they are designed to perform simple maneuvers, such as grabbing an object, and placing it somewhere else in an assembly line. More complex movements, such as adjusting the grasp on an object, are still out of reach for many industrial robots. Engineers at MIT have now hit upon a way to impart more dexterity to simple robotic grippers: using the environment as a helping hand. The team, led by Alberto Rodriguez, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and graduate student ...

Washington, DC-Even before a child is conceived, the parents' exposure to environmental stressors can alter the way genes are expressed and ultimately harm the child's health when those genes are passed down to the next generation, according to a new article published in the Endocrine Society's journal Endocrinology. Exposure to environmental stressors such as endocrine-disrupting chemicals, psychological stress and malnutrition may result in disadvantageous epigenetic "reprogramming" that can echo through multiple generations. When these stressors disrupt early developmental ...

WASHINGTON D.C., August 4, 2015 -- The following articles are freely available online from Physics Today, the world's most influential and closely followed magazine devoted to physics and the physical science community. You are invited to read, share, blog about, link to, or otherwise enjoy: 1) IS PHYSICS RESEARCH ANOTHER CASUALTY OF UKRAINIAN CONFLICT? David Kramer of Physics Today discusses the negative impact that the conflict in eastern Ukraine has had on physicists and students forced to relocate from their homes and universities. "More than 25 universities and ...

More than 2 percent of all emergency department visits are now related to nontraumatic dental conditions, according to a study by researchers at Stanford University, the University of California-San Francisco, Truven Health Analytics and the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Although the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act has made millions of low-income and rural Americans eligible for health insurance, many states don't provide dental coverage for adults under their Medicaid programs. Paying for dental insurance on the individual market ...

This news release is available in French. In summertime, bats are a common feature in the night sky, swooping around backyards to gobble up mosquitos. Bats also help with crops: they act as a natural pesticide by feeding on harmful insects. But these winged mammals are now under threat. As agricultural intensification expands across the world, the conversion of their natural habitats has caused a dramatic decline in population. North American bats are also plagued with white-nose syndrome, an emerging infectious disease that's decimating their numbers. "Many bat ...

The nonmedical use of prescription opioids (POs) has become an area of increasing public health concern in the United States and rates of use are particularly high among young adults. In the past decade, an emerging "epidemic" of nonmedical PO use has been reported. Among young adults, self-reported use is 11% and overdose deaths involving POs now exceed deaths involving heroin and cocaine combined. Sexual violence is also a serious problem in the United States receiving increased national attention, and the relationship between substance use and sexual violence is well ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 4, 2015 - Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, near the San Andreas Fault, granite boulders that should have been toppled by earthquakes long ago resolutely remain. In exploring why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes. In a study to be published online Aug. 5 in Seismological Research Letters, Lisa Grant Ludwig, associate professor of public health at ...

SAN FRANCISCO-- Stacked in gravity-defying arrangements in the western San Bernardino Mountains, granite boulders that should have been toppled long ago by earthquakes are maintaining a stubborn if precarious balance. In puzzling out why these rocks still stand, researchers have uncovered connections between Southern California's San Jacinto and San Andreas faults that could change how the region plans for future earthquakes. In their study published online August 5 in Seismological Research Letters (SRL), Lisa Grant Ludwig of University of California, Irvine and colleagues ...

While cognitive abilities naturally diminish as part of the normal aging process, it may be possible to take a bite out of this expected decline. Eating a group of specific foods known as the MIND diet may slow cognitive decline among aging adults, even when the person is not at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to researchers at Rush University Medical Center. This finding is in addition to a previous study by the research team that found that the MIND diet may reduce a person's risk in developing Alzheimer's disease. The recent study shows that older ...

Los Angeles, CA (August 4, 2015) The Journal of Endovascular Therapy (JEVT), official publication of the INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF ENDOVASCULAR SPECIALISTS (ISES), announces that is it today publishing the latest update of the Inter-Society Consensus for the Management of Peripheral Arterial Disease (TASC II),1 an internationally recognized set of guidelines for the management of patients with peripheral arterial disease (PAD). JEVT is a SAGE journal. Originally published in 2000, the TASC document represents the collaboration of international vascular specialties involved ...

Washington, DC - August 4, 2015 - The pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes grows on refrigerated smoked salmon by way of different metabolic pathways from those it uses when growing on laboratory media. The research could lead to reduced incidences of food-borne illness and death, said principal investigator Teresa Bergholz, PhD. The research appears July 24 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In the study, the investigators showed that L. monocytogenes grows on cold smoked salmon by using different metabolic pathways ...

Our nation's veterans continue to suffer emotional and psychological effects of war--some for decades. And while there has been greater attention directed recently toward post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and more veterans are seeking help, current psychotherapy treatments are less than optimal, according to a new narrative review published in the August 4, 2015 issue of JAMA. In a review of medical literature over a 35-year period, researchers from the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Post-Traumatic Stress and Traumatic Brain Injury -- a program in the Department ...

AURORA, Colo. (Aug. 4, 2015) - Physicians should improve the way they discuss firearm safety with patients by showing more respect for the viewpoints of gun owners, according to an article by a University of Colorado School of Medicine faculty member published in the Aug. 4 issue of JAMA. Marian "Emmy" Betz, MD, MPH, associate professor of emergency medicine, and Garen J. Wintemute, MD, MPH, professor of emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, write that physician counseling about gun safety is a key component of preventing firearm injury and death. ...

In a randomized trial that included veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), those who received mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy showed greater improvement in self-reported PTSD symptom severity, although the average improvement appears to have been modest, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. Posttraumatic stress disorder affects 23 percent of veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Left untreated, PTSD is associated with high rates of other disorders, disability, and poor quality of life. ...

Even though homicide and assault rates have decreased in the U.S. in recent years, the number of these and other types of violent acts remains high, according to a report in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. The authors write that multiple strategies exist to improve interpersonal violence prevention efforts, and health care providers are an important part of this solution. Interpersonal violence is a pervasive public health, social, and developmental threat that affects millions of U.S. residents each year. It is a leading cause of death ...

A brief motivational intervention delivered during an emergency department visit did not improve outcomes for women with heavy drinking involved in abusive relationships, according to a study in the August 4 issue of JAMA, a violence/human rights theme issue. There is a strong and reciprocal association between two highly prevalent public health problems: intimate partner violence (IPV) and heavy drinking. Each risk individually represents major costs to individuals, families, and society. The emergency department (ED) visit is conceptualized as a sensitive period or ...