Men with prostate cancer aged 43‒74 achieve bigger and stronger muscles, improve functional capacity, gain positive social experiences and the desire to remain active through playing football for 12 weeks. These are the findings of the "FC Prostate" trial, jointly conducted by the University Hospitals Centre for Health Care Research at The Copenhagen University Hospital, Rigshospitalet and the Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health at the University of Copenhagen. Some of the participants in the FC Prostate Cancer research project after a training session. ...

TORONTO – The question of how neurons and their axons establish spatial polarity and direction in tissues and organs is a fundamental question of any organism or biological system. Our cells and axons precisely orient themselves in response to external cues, but what are the core pathways and how are they integrated? Lead author Dr. Naomi Levy-Strumpf and principal investigator Dr. Joseph Culotti developed a novel conceptual framework, published on-line in PLoS GENETICS, June 5 2014. They investigated netrin and Wnt, signaling pathways that are implicated in cancer ...

TORONTO – A series of simple telephone calls can make a profound difference in helping women to meet their treatment goals for breast cancer, according to a randomized trial of women who are also obese, published online today in Journal of Clinical Oncology by Dr. Pamela Goodwin of Mount Sinai Hospital and the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute. Women who received advice about weight loss from a trained lifestyle coach by telephone achieved weight loss that was still evident after two years, lowering their risk of breast cancer recurrence. It's already known that ...

Chance events may profoundly shape history. What if Franz Ferdinand's driver had not taken a wrong turn, bringing the Duke face to face with his assassin? Would World War I still have been fought? Would Hitler have risen to power decades later? Historians can only speculate on what might have been, but a team of evolutionary biologists studying ancient proteins has turned speculation into experiment. They resurrected an ancient ancestor of an important human protein as it existed hundreds of millions of years ago and then used biochemical methods to generate and characterize ...

They may only be little, but they pack a star-forming punch: new observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show that starbursts in dwarf galaxies played a bigger role than expected in the early history of the Universe. Although galaxies across the Universe are still forming new stars, the majority of the stars were formed between two and six billion years after the Big Bang. Studying this early epoch of the Universe's history is key in order to fully understand how these stars formed, and how galaxies have grown and evolved since. A new study using data ...

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – June 19, 2014) The citizen-designed redistricting plan for the Ventura County supervisorial districts has brought fairer representation, according to a study by a California Lutheran University professor published June 19 by SAGE Open, an open-access journal by SAGE. Gregory Freeland, chairman of the Department of Political Science, compared Ventura County supervisors' decisions to their constituents' votes on state propositions and local measures and interviewed politicians and community activists to draw conclusions that could have implications ...

PHILADELPHIA – Autoimmune disease occurs when the body's own natural defense system rebels against itself. One example is pemphigus vulgaris (PV), a blistering skin disease in which autoantibodies attack desmoglein 3 (Dsg3), the protein that binds together skin cells. Left untreated, PV can be fatal, as skin layers slough off and leave the body vulnerable to dehydration and infection. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania recently found a shared genetic link in the autoimmune response among PV patients that provides important ...

WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK (June 19, 2014)— A special federal fund to support community health centers expires after September 2015, creating a funding cliff for primary care clinics located in medically underserved areas. If this funding is not restored, and if more states do not expand Medicaid, the number of patients cared for by safety-net health centers could fall more than 25 percent – or 7 million patients - by 2020. The loss of care for 7 million patients is equivalent to the population of the state of Arizona or the combined populations of Los Angeles and Houston. These ...

Cincinnati, OH, June 19, 2014 -- Physical fitness in childhood and adolescence is beneficial for both physical and mental health throughout life. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that it may also play a key role in brain health and academic performance. In a new study scheduled for publication in the Journal of Pediatrics, researchers studied the independent and combined influence of components of physical fitness on academic performance. Cardiorespiratory capacity, muscular strength, and motor ability are components of physical fitness that have documented ...

A small, low-powered camera component made from a "smart glass" material has been created by a group of researchers in Germany with the hope of inspiring the next generation of smartphone cameras. The micro-iris is an electro-chemical equivalent to the bulky, mechanical blades that are usually found in cameras and has very low power consumption, making it an ideal component for a wide-range of camera-integrated consumer devices. The device and the first results of its performance have been presented in a study published today, 19 June, in IOP Publishing's Journal of ...

19 June 2014, Oxford, UK: A new study published online in the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) today shows that while job loss is associated with depressive symptoms in both the USA and Europe, the effects of job loss due to plant closure are much stronger in American workers as compared with European workers. The 'Great Recession' of 2008 caused significant job losses in both Europe and the USA, with particularly strong consequences for older workers. Among persons aged 50-64, unemployment rates rose from 3.1% to 7.3% in the USA, and from 5.4% to 6.15% in ...

Aircraft can become more environmentally friendly by choosing flight paths that reduce the formation of their distinctive condensation trails, new research suggests. In a study published today, 19 June 2014, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, researchers from the University of Reading have shown that aircraft contribute less to global warming by avoiding the places where the thinly shaped clouds, called contrails, are produced – even if that means flying further and emitting more carbon dioxide. Contrails only form in regions of the sky where ...

Researchers have found that U.S. Food and Drug Administration warnings about a potential danger for young people taking antidepressants may have backfired, causing an increase in suicide attempts by teens and young adults. The 2003 warnings drew intense and possibly exaggerated media coverage that led to a sudden, steep decline in the number of prescriptions for antidepressants. In a study published in BMJ, researchers at Harvard Medical School's Department of Population Medicine and the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute report that in the year following the warnings, ...

Spiders from five different families prey on small fish in the wild, according to a systematic review published June 18, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Martin Nyffeler from University of Basel, Switzerland, and Bradley Pusey from The University of Western Australia. Spiders are known to prey on insects, but in recent years, researchers have become increasingly aware that spiders are not exclusively insectivorous, and that certain larger-sized species might supplement their insect diet by occasionally catching small vertebrate prey. Semi-aquatic spiders in ...

Spiders are traditionally viewed as predators of insects. Zoologists from Switzerland and Australia have now published a study that shows: spiders all over the world also prey on fish. The academic journal PLOS ONE has just published the results. Although viewed by ecologists as the classical predators of insects, researchers have become increasingly aware that spiders are not exclusively insectivorous. Certain larger-sized species supplement their diet by occasionally catching small fish. This shows a new study by zoologist and spider expert, Martin Nyffeler from the ...

A new survey of North Carolina doctors finds that many are concerned about the increasing number of requests they are receiving to assess their patients' competency to carry concealed weapons. In particular, a majority of physicians who responded to the survey said they were worried about the potential ethical consequences in the doctor-patient relationship if they participated in the concealed-weapon permit process. "This is not a small problem," said Dr. Adam Goldstein, corresponding author of the study and a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University ...

Sooner than almost anyone expected, a new, genome-based technology for demystifying undiagnosed illnesses—particularly rare childhood diseases—is moving from research laboratories into general medical practice. Now, two leading scientists have sketched out what doctors need to know in order to use the new technology effectively. "This primer illustrates how rapidly the use of genome sequencing has moved into clinical practice," said NHGRI Director Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D. "Its authors lay out an approach for physicians to follow when using these exciting new technologies." ...

BOSTON, MA – Clinical genome and exome sequencing (CGES) was once deemed exotic, but is increasingly being used by clinical geneticists and other specialists to diagnose rare, clinically unrecognizable, or puzzling disorders that are suspected to be genetic in origin. Several thousand CGES tests across the country have already been ordered for patients and thousands more are expected in coming years. CGES is quickly moving from research laboratories into clinical medical practice, across all specialties. A review article titled, "Diagnostic Clinical Genome and Exome ...

Cambridge, Mass. Wed. June 18, 2014 – By scouring the DNA of thousands of patients, researchers at the Broad Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and their colleagues have discovered four rare gene mutations that not only lower the levels of triglycerides, a type of fat in the blood, but also significantly reduce a person's risk of coronary heart disease — dropping it by 40 percent. The mutations all cripple the same gene, called APOC3, suggesting a powerful strategy in developing new drugs against heart disease. The work, which appears in the June 18 issue of the ...

PHILADELPHIA – It's a long way from DNA to RNA to protein, and only about two percent of a person's genome is eventually converted into proteins. In contrast, a much higher percentage of the genome is transcribed into RNA. What these non-protein-coding RNAs do is still relatively unknown. However, given their vast numbers in the human genome, researchers believe that they likely play important roles in normal human development and response to disease. Large-scale sequencing has allowed investigators to identify thousands of non-coding RNAs. Small non-coding RNAs, including ...

Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen and Rigshospitalet have shown that people with variation in a gene that inhibits a specific protein in the blood – the so-called apolipoprotein C3 – have a significantly lower level of normal blood lipids than people without this gene variation. Furthermore, the same individuals also have a 41 per cent lower risk of arteriosclerosis. The research is highly relevant as at least one pharmaceutical company has a drug in the pipeline which inhibits precisely apolipoprotein C3, says Anne Tybjærg-Hansen, Chief Physician ...

UT Arlington researchers have successfully used a portable brain-mapping device to show limited prefrontal cortex activity among student veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when they were asked to recall information from simple memorization tasks. The study by bioengineering professor Hanli Liu and Alexa Smith-Osborne, an associate professor of social work, and two other collaborators was published in the May 2014 edition of NeuroImage: Clinical. The team used functional near infrared spectroscopy to map brain activity responses during cognitive activities related ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study suggests that people with muscle diseases such as muscular dystrophies may benefit more from group doctor visits than individual appointments. The study is published in the June 18, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "In this age when the demand for neurologists is rising faster than the supply and health care costs continue to rise, it's important to look for finding solutions that are both effective and efficient," said study author Femke M. Seesing, MSc, of Radboud University Medical ...

Women 55 and younger are twice as likely to suffer a heart attack, die or require artery-opening procedures if they're moderately or severely depressed, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. "Women in this age group are also more likely to have depression, so this may be one of the 'hidden' risk factors that can help explain why women die at a disproportionately higher rate than men after a heart attack," said Amit Shah, M.D., M.S.C.R., study author and assistant professor of Epidemiology at Emory University in Atlanta, Ga. Investigators ...

The use of sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) to stage early breast cancer increased in both black and white women from 2002 to 2007, but the rates remained lower in black than white patients, a disparity that contributed to disparities in the risk for lymphedema (arm swelling common after breast cancer treatment because of damage to the lymphatic system). SLNB was developed to replace axillary (arm pit) lymph node dissection (ALND) for staging early breast cancer to minimize complications. SLNB can often provide patients with a much more limited surgery. Racial ...