A leading expert on reproductive health says young women with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) have a startlingly higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes, even if young and not overweight. The research led by Professor Helena Teede and Dr Anju Joham, from the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University analysed a large-scale epidemiological study, called the Australian Longitudinal Study of Women's Health, which revealed the findings. Over 6000 women aged between 25-28 years were monitored for nine years, including 500 with diagnosed PCOS. ...

Singapore, 24 June 2014—Scientists at A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) have discovered a new class of lipids in the leukaemia cells that are detected by a unique group of immune cells. By recognising the lipids, the immune cells stimulate an immune response to destroy the leukaemia cells and suppress their growth. The newly identified mode of cancer cell recognition by the immune system opens up new possibilities for leukaemia immunotherapy . Leukaemia is characterized by the accumulation of cancer cells originating from blood cells, in the blood or bone marrow. ...

Want to improve your mental finesse? Playing a puzzle game like Cut the Rope could just be the thing you need. A recent study by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) scientists showed that adults who played the physics-based puzzle video game Cut the Rope regularly, for as little as an hour a day, had improved executive functions. The executive functions in your brain are important for making decisions in everyday life when you have to deal with sudden changes in your environment – better known as thinking on your feet. An example would be when the traffic light ...

Every year around 450,000 people in Germany are diagnosed with cancer. Each one of them dreams of a victory in the battle against it. But can cancer ever be completely defeated? Researchers at Kiel University (CAU) have now reached a sobering conclusion: "cancer is as old as multi-cellular life on earth and will probably never be completely eradicated", says Professor Thomas Bosch in his latest research results. The study by an international team led by Bosch was published today (Monday, June 24) in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications. The so-called ...

Solving complex problems is rarely a straightforward process, there are often many variables and countless plausible solutions each one of which has its pros and cons. Mechanical engineers at the Babol University of Technology in Mazandaran, Iran, have turned to nature to devise an algorithm based on the survival trials faced by salmon swimming upstream to the spawning grounds to help them fish out the optimal solution to a given problem. They provide details in the International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology. Bio-inspiration has been widely used in problem ...

Threatened animal species could cope better with the effects of climate change if competition from other animals for the same habitats is restricted, according to new research by Durham University. The Durham team studied the impacts of climate on the Alpine Chamois, a species of mountain goat, and the effects that domestic sheep had on the goats' movements. Observing the goats in the Italian Alps during the summer, the researchers found that Chamois tended to move to higher altitudes where it is cooler on hotter days and in the middle of the day, but moved much higher ...

London (24 June 2014). A project has failed. So why continue to invest in it? This is a pertinent question for large organisations, like the UK National Health Service, which has a history of investing vast amounts of taxpayer's money into unrealistic and ultimately unsuccessful projects. According to business experts, organisations develop blind spots due to a perfect storm of unworkable policies and defensive behaviour. In fact, organisations and individuals have a few things in common, psychologically speaking, when it comes to throwing good money after bad, the experts ...

St. Louis, June 23, 2014 – With opportunities to take increased responsibility for oral health care and to deliver care in a more comprehensive way, it's an exciting time in the profession of dental hygiene. To help prepare to meet these challenges, the editors of The Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice (JEBDP) present the Annual Report on Dental Hygiene, a collection of cutting-edge research and practice updates in the field of dental hygiene. The JEBDP is the foremost publication of information about evidence-based dental practice and is published by Elsevier, ...

Research led by the University of Warwick's Systems Biology Centre and Medical School in collaboration with groups in Nice and Rotterdam has been able to demonstrate how the cycle of cell division in mammalian cells synchronises with the body's own daily rhythm, its circadian clock. The study not only helps to explain why people with sustained disrupted circadian rhythms can be more susceptible to cancer, it may also help establish the optimal time of day to administer chemotherapy. In a paper entitled Phase locking and multiple oscillating attractors for the coupled ...

Trillions of bacteria live in and on the human body; a few species can make us sick, but many others keep us healthy by boosting digestion and preventing inflammation. Although there's plenty of evidence that these microbes play a collective role in human health, we still know very little about most of the individual bacterial species that make up these communities. Employing the use of a specially designed glass chip with tiny compartments, Caltech researchers now provide a way to target and grow specific microbes from the human gut—a key step in understanding which bacteria ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. A Montana State University assistant professor in neuroscience is part of a team that has made progress understanding how the brain processes visual information. In addition to adding to the basic understanding of brain function, the research may also have implications for understanding schizophrenia and attention deficit disorders. MSU's Behrad Noudoost was a co-author with Marc Zirnsak and other neuroscientists from the Tirin Moore Lab at Stanford University in publishing a recent paper on the research in Nature, an international weekly journal for natural ...

DENVER (June 24, 2014) - A University of Colorado Denver study examining collisions between bicycles and motorists, shows bicyclist safety significantly increases when there are more bikes on the road, a finding that could be attributed to a "safety in numbers effect." The study focused on Boulder, Colorado, which has one of the highest rates of bicycling in the country at about 12 percent of the population. That makes it one of the few U.S. cities with enough bicycling to achieve the safety benefits already documented by researchers in Europe, said study co-author ...

The findings are part of a review into the global HIV epidemic published in The Lancet, co-authored by Monash University Professor Sharon Lewin. The review shows that because of advancements in treatment, people with the virus are living longer. Overall, new infections have decreased from 3.3 million in 2002 to 2.3 million in 2012. Global AIDS-related deaths peaked at 2.3 million in 2005, decreasing to 1.6 million by 2012. Professor Lewin, Head of the Department of Infectious Diseases at the University, said in the past decade there had been huge advancements in ways ...

Findings from a new study (i) published in Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases show that the fatty acids in nuts have the potential to help reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) in people with type 2 diabetes. Researchers from the University of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, Canada, found that incorporating about two ounces of tree nuts (almonds, Brazils, cashews, hazelnuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios, macadamias and walnuts) and peanuts into the diet of people with diabetes, was inversely associated with CHD risk factors and 10-year ...

Smartphones are everywhere, and they may be smarter than you think. Our cell phones actually reflect the personal microbial world of their owners, with potential implications for their use as bacterial and environmental sensors, according to new research. New research focused on the personal microbiome – the collection of microorganisms on items regularly worn or carried by a person - demonstrates the significant microbiological connection we share with our phones. To test our biological connection with phones, University of Oregon researchers sequenced microbes from ...

Forgotten passwords are a serious problem for both IT managers and users. The root of the problem is a trade-off between memorability and security: simple passwords are easy to remember but easy to crack; complex passwords are hard to crack but hard to remember. A newly proposed alternative based on the psychology of face recognition was announced today. Dubbed 'Facelock', it could put an end to forgotten passwords, and protect users from prying eyes. Decades of psychological research has revealed a fundamental difference in the recognition of familiar and unfamiliar ...

Stem cells have the unique ability to become any type of cell in the body. Given this, the possibility that they can be cultured and engineered in the laboratory makes them an attractive option for regenerative medicine. However, some conditions that are commonly used for culturing human stem cells have the potential to introduce contaminants, thus rendering the cells unusable for clinical use. These conditions cannot be avoided, however, as they help maintain the pluripotency of the stem cells. In a study published in Scientific Reports, a group from the RIKEN Center ...

Genes that increase the risk of developing schizophrenia may also increase the likelihood of using cannabis, according to a new study led by King's College London, published today in Molecular Psychiatry. Previous studies have identified a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia, but it has remained unclear whether this association is due to cannabis directly increasing the risk of the disorder. The new results suggest that part of this association is due to common genes, but do not rule out a causal relationship between cannabis use and schizophrenia risk. The ...

Computer analysis of photographs could help doctors diagnose which condition a child with a rare genetic disorder has, say Oxford University researchers. The researchers, funded in part by the Medical Research Council (MRC), have come up with a computer programme that recognises facial features in photographs; looks for similarities with facial structures for various conditions, such as Down's syndrome, Angelman syndrome, or Progeria; and returns possible matches ranked by likelihood. Using the latest in computer vision and machine learning, the algorithm increasingly ...

Supermarkets in the UK could be hindering efforts to reduce harmful drinking by not fully passing tax increases onto the price of the cheapest beers and spirits, according to health and business researchers. A pioneering study, led by the University of Sheffield's School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) with business experts from the University of East Anglia and Loughborough University and funded by the Medical Research Council, discovered retailers appear to respond to increases in alcohol taxes by 'under-shifting' their cheaper products (raising prices below ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) shows that calcium and vitamin D supplementation improves the metabolic profile of pregnant women with gestational diabetes. The research is by Dr Ahmad Esmaillzadeh, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran, and colleagues. Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), a pregnancy complication, is characterised by carbohydrate intolerance and metabolic disorders. Approximately 7% of all pregnancies in the United States are affected by GDM, but the prevalence ...

The rate of hospitalisation for the most serious type of heart attack, ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), more than quadrupled in China between 2001 and 2011, according to new research published in The Lancet. The study, funded by the Chinese government, evaluates medical records, care processes, and outcomes for 13,815 hospital admissions for STEMI in 162 hospitals across China. It shows that in 2001, there were an estimated 3•7 hospital admissions for STEMI per 100,000 population, but in 2011 this rate had more than quadrupled to 15•8 hospital admissions ...

Writing about the weird soft-bodied fossils found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted that of 25 initial body plans exhibited by the fossils, all but four were quickly eliminated. If we rewound the tape, he asked, and cast the dice once more, would the same four body plans be selected? He thought it unlikely. We can't repeat the Burgess Shale experiment, but Washington University in St. Louis biologist Ken Olsen, PhD, says there are other ways to ask whether evolution is repeatable. One is to look at related species that ...

An invading species of shrew first discovered in Ireland in the pellets of barn owls and kestrels in 2007 is spreading across the landscape at a rate of more than five kilometres a year, according to findings published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. University College Dublin scientists who conducted the study say that the invading species, the greater white-toothed shrew (Crocidura russula) is capable of colonizing the entire island by 2050. This, they say, is leading to the disappearance of the pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus) from Ireland, one of the world's smallest ...

Bottom Line: Cardiac resynchronization therapy plus defibrillator implantation (CRT-D) sometimes helps women with heart failure more than men, although women are less likely to receive CRT-D than men. Author: Robbert Zusterzeel, M.D., and colleagues at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Md. Background: Women are underrepresented in CRT trials for heart failure, making up only about 20 percent of participants. In selected heart failure patients CRT, or biventricular pacing, is used to help improve ...