A Johns Hopkins-led study of outcomes among 1,200 people with implanted defibrillators -- devices intended to prevent sudden cardiac death from abnormal heart rhythms -- shows that within a few years of implantation, one in four experienced improvements in heart function substantial enough to put them over the clinical threshold that qualified them to get a defibrillator in the first place. A report on the study, published in the Aug. 4 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, reveals these patients had markedly lower risk of dying and were far less ...

In a project spearheaded by investigators at UC San Francisco, scientists have devised a new strategy to precisely modify human T cells using the genome-editing system known as CRISPR/Cas9. Because these immune-system cells play important roles in a wide range of diseases, from diabetes to AIDS to cancer, the achievement provides a versatile new tool for research on T cell function, as well as a path toward CRISPR/Cas9-based therapies for many serious health problems. Using their novel approach, the scientists were able to disable a protein on the T-cell surface called ...

Use of gene therapy to deliver a protein that suppresses the development of female reproductive organs may improve the survival of patients with ovarian cancer that has recurred after chemotherapy, which happens 70 percent of the time and is invariably fatal. In their report receiving online publication in PNAS Early Edition, a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team describes how a single injection of a modified version of Mullerian Inhibiting Substance, a protein critical to sexual development, carried on a commonly used viral vector suppressed the growth ...

As many as 20 percent of people may have a benign cyst or tumor in their pituitary gland. The vast majority of pituitary tumors are noncancerous, but can cause headaches and profound fatigue, and can also disrupt hormone function. Currently, surgeons rely on radiologic images and MRIs to gather information about the size and shape of the tumor, but the resolution of such imaging technologies is limited, and additional surgeries to remove more of the tumor may be needed if a patient's symptoms persist. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Estimates of how much nitrous oxide, a significant greenhouse gas and stratospheric ozone-depleting substance, is being emitted in the central United States have been too low by as much as 40 percent, a new study led by University of Minnesota scientists shows. The study, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, measured how much nitrous oxide is emitted from streams in an agriculturally dense area in southern Minnesota. Agriculture, and specifically nitrogen fertilizers used in row-crop farming, is a major contributor to nitrous ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - July 27, 2015 - Two new studies presented today at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 12th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, report that Mobile Stroke Treatment Units (MSTUs) can significantly reduce the time it takes to diagnose and treat patients for stroke, greatly improving survival rates and enhancing a patient's chance of recovery. There are currently four MSTUs in use worldwide. Two are in Germany and two are in the United States (U.S.) - one in Cleveland and one in Houston. MSTUs resemble ambulances on the outside, but contain ...

LAWRENCE -- Providing two years of free community college to qualifying students is expected to be a hot topic during the 2016 presidential campaign. President Barack Obama introduced the plan earlier this year, aimed at boosting educational attainment and workforce opportunities of thousands of students -- especially those from low-income families. Support for expanded education is not the purview of one party, however; President George W. Bush also frequently referenced the significance of two-year colleges. Tennessee and Oregon are offering free community college to ...

MADISON, Wis. - Ten thousand years ago, a golden grain got naked, brought people together and grew to become one of the top agricultural commodities on the planet. Now, University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have found that just a single letter change in the genetic script of corn's ancestor, teosinte, helped make it all possible. Publishing in the journal Genetics this month, UW-Madison professor John Doebley and a team of researchers describe how, during the domestication of corn, a single nucleotide change in the teosinte glume architectural gene (tga1) stripped ...

WASHINGTON (July 27, 2015) - The improved survival rate of HIV patients in sub-Saharan Africa due to effective treatment programs is increasing the ability of researchers in Africa to study the impacts of cardiovascular disease in HIV patients, according to a guest editor page published today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. According to guest editor Pravin Manga, M.B.B.C.H., Ph.D., of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, like South Africa, have created highly active antiretroviral treatment programs ...

Scientific experiments with the herpes virus strain that causes Marek's disease in poultry have confirmed, for the first time, the highly controversial theory that some types of vaccines allow for the evolution and survival of increasingly virulent versions of a virus, putting unvaccinated individuals at greater risk of severe illness. The research has important implications for food-chain security and food-chain economics, as well as for other diseases that affect humans and agricultural animals. The new research, which will be published in the Open Access journal PLOS ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. - July 27, 2015 - Use of mechanical thrombectomy on qualifying stroke patients could result in major savings to the healthcare economy in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and other western countries with a similar healthcare structure, according to a new study presented at the Society of NeuroInterventional Surgery 12th Annual Meeting in San Francisco. The study, Developing an Interventional Stroke Service: Improving Clinical Outcomes and Reducing Cost and Delivering Great Cost Savings Benefits to Health Economy, conducted at the University Hospital of ...

Postpartum depression is a debilitating disorder that affects nearly 20 percent of new mothers, putting their infants at increased risk for poor behavioral, cognitive and social development. Researchers know that the hormone oxytocin, which plays a positive role in healthy birth, maternal bonding, relationships, lower stress levels, mood and emotional regulation, also is associated with postpartum depression when a mother has lower levels of the hormone. A University of Virginia researcher and a team from several institutions in the United States and England have now ...

For children with a common middle-ear problem, a simple procedure with a nasal balloon can reduce the impact of hearing loss and avoid unnecessary and ineffective use of antibiotics, according to a randomized controlled trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). It is very common for young children to develop otitis media with effusion, also known as "glue ear," in which the middle ear fills with thick fluid that can affect hearing development. There are frequently no symptoms, and parents often seek medical help only when hearing difficulties occur. "Unfortunately, ...

BOSTON - Delirium is an acute state of confusion that often affects older adults following surgery or serious illness. Now a study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) confirms that inflammation - an immune response that develops when the body attempts to protect itself from harmful stimuli -- plays a role in the onset of delirium. Published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, the new study found that older patients with delirium had significantly elevated levels of the inflammatory marker ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The rapid spread of a common and deadly brain tumor has been slowed down significantly in a mouse model by cutting off the way some cancer cells communicate, according to a team of researchers that includes UF Health faculty. The technique improved the survival time for patients with glioblastoma by 50 percent when tested in a mouse model, said Loic P. Deleyrolle, Ph.D., a research assistant professor of neurosurgery in the UF College of Medicine. Researchers focused on disrupting the cell-to-cell communication that allows cancer stem cells to spread. ...

AUSTIN, Texas - Psychologists at The University of Texas at Austin found that children flexibly choose when to imitate and when to innovate the behavior of others, demonstrating that children are precocious social learners. "There's nothing children are more interested in than other people," said UT Austin psychologist Cristine Legare. "Acquiring the skills and practices of their social groups is the fundamental task of childhood." In order to function within their social groups, children have to learn both technical skills with instrumental goals, such as using a fork ...

A new tool called DeepBind uses deep learning to analyze how proteins bind to DNA and RNA, allowing it to detect mutations that could disrupt cellular processes and cause disease. CIFAR Senior Fellow Brendan Frey (University of Toronto), supervising lead authors Babak Alipanahi and Andrew Delong, developed the method using deep learning -- a machine learning technique pioneered by CIFAR fellows in the Neural Computation & Adaptive Perception program and now used by companies such as Google and Facebook. Hundreds of thousands of proteins in human cells attach themselves ...

About 10 percent of serious and unexpected adverse events are not reported by drug manufacturers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the 15-day timeframe set out in federal regulations, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Health care professionals and consumers can voluntarily report adverse drug events directly to the FDA or the drug manufacturer. Adverse events that are serious (including death, life-threatening, hospitalization, disability and birth defects) and unexpected (any adverse experience not listed in the current ...

An imaging study suggests insulin resistance, a prevalent and increasingly common condition, was associated with lower brain glucose metabolism in a group of late middle-age adults at risk for Alzheimer disease, according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology. Insulin resistance is broadly defined as reduced tissue responsiveness to the action of insulin. According to the American Diabetes Association, 29.1 million individuals in the United States have diabetes and more than half of adults older than 64 have prediabetes. Type 2 diabetes is associated with an ...

Admission rates are increasing for newborns of all weights at neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in the United States, raising questions about possible overuse of this highly specialized and expensive care in some newborns, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The neonatal mortality rate has fallen more than four-fold (from 18.73 per 1,000 live births to 4.04 per 1,000 live births in 2012) since the first NICU opened in the United States 55 years ago to provide highly specialized care to premature and sick infants. Few studies have looked ...

No earlier than last year, did the first, and up until recently only, endemic to Upper Guinea family of torrent tooth-frog come to light. Now, Dr. Michael F. Barej from the Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin, and his colleagues verify the existence of as many as four new highly endangered species. In their study the researchers provide crucial insights for the conservation of the biodiversity hotspot. Their research on the suggested existence of a complex of cryptic (structurally identical) species is published in the open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. Suffice ...

Quantum technology based on light (photons) has great potential for radically new information technology based on photonic circuits. Up to now, the photons in quantum photonic circuits have behaved in the same way whether they moved forward or backward in a photonic channel. This has limited the ability to control the photons and thus build complex circuits for photonic quantum computers. Now researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have discovered a new type of photonic channels, where back and forth are not equal distances! Such a system has been a missing component ...

New Haven, Conn. -- A multidisciplinary team at Yale, led by Yale Cancer Center members, has defined a subgroup of genetic mutations that are present in a significant number of melanoma skin cancer cases. Their findings shed light on an important mutation in this deadly disease, and may lead to more targeted anti-cancer therapies. The study was published July 27 in Nature Genetics. The role of mutations in numerous genes and genomic changes in the development of melanoma -- a skin cancer with over 70,000 new cases reported in the United States each year -- is well established ...

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) frequently develops between the age of two and three. This leukemia has various forms, which differ through certain changes in the genetic material of the leukemia cells. A team of scientists involved in a joint international project headed by Jean-Pierre Bourquin, a pediatric oncologist from the University Children's Hospital Zurich, and Martin Stanulla, a professor at Hannover Medical School, has now succeeded in decoding the genome and transcriptome of an as yet incurable sub-type of acute lymphoblastic leukemia. These results were ...

In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a device which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the "photophone". Bell's idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre-optic cables as light pulses. For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and ...