CORVALLIS, Ore. – As researchers continue to work toward vaccines for serious tropical diseases such as dengue fever, experts caution in a new report that such vaccines will probably cause temporary but significant spikes in the disease in the years after they are first used. This counter-intuitive and unwanted result could lead to frustrated policy makers, a skeptical public and concerns that the vaccine is making things worse instead of better, researchers say. In fact, it will just be the natural result of complex interactions between less-than-perfect vaccine protection ...

Munich, Germany: The latest evidence on the potential benefits and risks of e-cigarettes has been presented this week at the European Respiratory Society's International Congress in Munich. Electronic cigarettes have received much attention in recent years as their use has increased across Europe. As the devices are relatively new, there is little long-term evidence detailing the potential harm or benefit that these devices can cause. During the ERS Congress, a number of abstracts will be presented on the topic. The key outcomes are revealed here: Research into ...

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 5, 2014) — Restarting infliximab therapy after a drug holiday is safe and effective for patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), according to a new study1 in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "Our findings suggest that starting infliximab after a history of prior therapy can be very beneficial to patients," said lead study author Filip Baert, MD, PhD, from the department of gastroenterology, University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium. "Most striking, ...

A new blood test allowing doctors to predict which ovarian cancer patients will respond to particular types of treatment is a step closer following a new study by Manchester scientists. Researchers from The University of Manchester and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust - both part of Manchester Cancer Research Centre - say the test could be developed and used in hospitals within the next few years. It would mean medics could see which patients could benefit from blood vessel-targeting drugs - such as bevacizumab - in addition to conventional therapy. Meanwhilehile others ...

The number of California blue whales has rebounded to near historical levels, according to new research by the University of Washington, and while the number of blue whales struck by ships is likely above allowable U.S. limits, such strikes do not immediately threaten that recovery. This is the only population of blue whales known to have recovered from whaling – blue whales as a species having been hunted nearly to extinction. Blue whales – nearly 100 feet in length and weighing 190 tons as adults – are the largest animals on earth. And they are the heaviest ever, weighing ...

The Glanville fritillary has long been an internationally known model species for ecology and evolutionary biology, whose population biology has been studied on the Åland Islands for more than twenty years. Now the species has become even more significant. Led by Research Professor Ilkka Hanski, the Metapopulation Research Group (MRG) at the University of Helsinki has sequenced the full genome of the Glanville fritillary together with three groups from the Institute of Biotechnology at the same university. Before the sequencing of the Glanville fritillary genome, which ...

An international team of researchers has found that the majority of threatened species are 'invisible' when using modern methods to predict species distributions under climate change. Using African amphibians as a case study, the researchers found that more than 90 per cent of the species listed as threatened on The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species are omitted by the most popular tools for species distribution modelling. The study, led by researchers from the Universities of York and Copenhagen and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring ...

Caffeine therapy for apnea of prematurity has no long-term harmful effects on sleep or control of breathing, according to a new study of 201 preterm children assessed at ages 5-12, the first study in humans to examine the long-term effects of neonatal caffeine treatment on sleep regulation and ventilatory control. "Animal studies have suggested that administration of neonatal caffeine to premature infants, while improving survival and other outcomes, may have long-term detrimental effects on sleep and control of breathing during sleep," said lead author Carole L. Marcus, ...

PHILADELPHIA — A population-based case-control study found no association between bra wearing and increased breast cancer risk among postmenopausal women, according to research published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "There have been some concerns that one of the reasons why breast cancer may be more common in developed countries compared with developing countries is differences in bra-wearing patterns," said Lu Chen, MPH, a researcher in the Public Health Sciences Division at Fred Hutchinson ...

Materials made from nanoparticles hold promise for myriad applications, from improved solar energy production to perfect touch screens. The challenge in creating these wonder-materials is organizing the nanoparticles into orderly arrangements. Nanoparticles of magnetite, the most abundant magnetic material on earth, are found in living organisms from bacteria to birds. Nanocrystals of magnetite self-assemble into fine compass needles in the organism that help it to navigate. Collaborating with nanochemists led by Rafal Klajn at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, ...

BOSTON (Sept. 4, 2014) — Residential geography, time spent in the sun, and whether or not sunglasses are worn may help explain why some people develop exfoliation syndrome (XFS), an eye condition that is a leading cause of secondary open-angle glaucoma and can lead to an increased risk of cataract and cataract surgery complications, according to a study published on Sept. 4 in JAMA, Ophthalmology. Despite improvements in understanding the cause of this common yet life-altering condition, more work needs to be done. "The discovery that common genetic variants in the lysyl ...

Tropical Storm Dolly fizzled out quickly on September 3 after making landfall in eastern Mexico, and NASA's Aqua satellite saw some of the remnants moving into southern Texas. NASA's TRMM satellite analyzed the rainfall occurring in the storm as it was approaching landfall. NASA's Aqua satellite captured the remnants of Tropical Depression Dolly over northeastern Mexico on Sept. 3 at 19:40 UTC (3:40 p.m. EDT). The image, captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument showed the center of Dolly over northeastern Mexico with a band of thunderstorms ...

The Eastern Pacific's Hurricane Norbert resembled a pinwheel in an image from NASA's Terra satellite as bands of thunderstorms spiraled into the center. NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission has helped forecasters see that Norbert has lost some of its organization early on September 4. The MODIS instrument or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible picture of Tropical Storm Norbert on Sept. 4 at 2:15 p.m. EDT when it resembled a pinwheel. The western bands of Norbert were moving over Socorro Island, ...

Faced with climate change and diminishing opportunities to expand productive agricultural acreage, the world needs to invest in a global research agenda addressing farm and food systems, landscape and regional issues and institutional and policy matters if it is to meet the growing worldwide demand for food, fiber and fuel, suggests an international team of researchers. In a paper appearing online in the journal Agriculture and Food Security, the authors summarize the findings of the second international Climate Smart Agriculture conference held in March 2013 at UC Davis. "Climate-smart ...

The U.S. government is doing a better job of communicating on Twitter with people in sensitive areas like the Middle East and North Africa without the participation of media organizations, according to a study co-authored by a University of Georgia researcher. The study looked at the U.S. State Department's use of social media and identified key actors who drive its messages to audiences around the world. In particular, it examined the role played by news media and the government in bridging the State Department communication with people domestically and internationally. ...

DALLAS – Sept. 4, 2014 – Rare stem cells in testis that produce a biomarker protein called PAX7 help give rise to new sperm cells — and may hold a key to restoring fertility, research by scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center suggests. Researchers studying infertility in mouse models found that, unlike similar types of cells that develop into sperm, the stem cells that express PAX7 can survive treatment with toxic drugs and radiation. If the findings hold true in people, they eventually could lead to new strategies to restore or protect fertility in men undergoing ...

The taste of common sugar substitutes is often described as being much more intense than sugar, but participants in a recent study indicated that these non-nutritive sugar substitutes are no sweeter than the real thing, according to Penn State food scientists. In the study, participants compared the taste of non-nutritive sweeteners that are often used as low- or no-calorie sugar substitutes with those of nutritive sweeteners, such as sugar, maple syrup and agave nectar. The participants indicated they could perceive the non-nutritive sweeteners -- such as aspartame, ...

Move over, graphene. An atomically thin, two-dimensional, ultrasensitive semiconductor material for biosensing developed by researchers at UC Santa Barbara promises to push the boundaries of biosensing technology in many fields, from health care to environmental protection to forensic industries. Based on molybdenum disulfide or molybdenite (MoS2), the biosensor material — used commonly as a dry lubricant — surpasses graphene's already high sensitivity, offers better scalability and lends itself to high-volume manufacturing. Results of the researchers' study have been ...

Endoscopic biopsy of lymph nodes between the two lungs (mediastinum) is a sensitive and accurate technique that can replace mediastinal surgery for staging lung cancer in patients with potentially resectable tumours. Such were the conclusions of a prospective controlled trial conducted under Dr. Moishe Liberman, a researcher at the CHUM Research Centre (CRCHUM) and an Associate Professor at the Université de Montréal. Moreover, the study showed that it is not necessary to perform surgery to confirm negative results obtained through the endoscopic approach during the pre-operative ...

Researchers from the University of Leicester have for the first time provided experimental evidence for a genetic link between two major timing mechanisms, the circadian clock and the seasonal timer. New research from the Tauber laboratory at the University of Leicester, which will be published in the academic journal PLOS Genetics on 4 September, has corroborated previous observations that flies developed under short days become significantly more cold-resistant compared with flies raised in long-days, suggesting that this response can be used to study seasonal photoperiodic ...

PITTSBURGH—Yaoying Ma says that biology, by nature, has a yin and a yang—a push and a pull. Addiction, particularly relapse, she finds, is no exception. Ma is a research associate in the lab of Yan Dong, assistant professor of neuroscience in the University of Pittsburgh's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. She is the lead author of a paper published online today in the journal Neuron that posits that it may be possible to ramp up an intrinsic anti-addiction response as a means to fight cocaine relapse and keep the wolves of relapse at bay. This paper ...

A new concept in metallic alloy design – called "high-entropy alloys" - has yielded a multiple-element material that not only tests out as one of the toughest on record, but, unlike most materials, the toughness as well as the strength and ductility of this alloy actually improves at cryogenic temperatures. This multi-element alloy was synthesized and tested through a collaboration of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge National Laboratories (Berkeley Lab and ORNL). "We examined CrMnFeCoNi, a high-entropy alloy that contains ...

Boulder, Colo. — Sept. 4, 2014 — NASA's Alice ultraviolet (UV) spectrograph aboard the European Space Agency's Rosetta comet orbiter has delivered its first scientific discoveries. Rosetta, in orbit around comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, is the first spacecraft to study a comet up close. As Alice began mapping the comet's surface last month, it made the first far ultraviolet spectra of a cometary surface. From these data, the Alice team discovered that the comet is unusually dark at ultraviolet wavelengths and that the comet's surface — so far — shows no large water-ice ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – September 4, 2014) A study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists found the avian influenza A H3N8 virus that killed harbor seals along the New England coast can spread through respiratory droplets and poses a threat to humans. The research appears in the current issue of the scientific journal Nature Communications. The avian H3N8 virus was isolated by scientists investigating the 2011 deaths of more than 160 harbor seals. Researchers discovered the virus had naturally acquired mutations in a key protein that previous laboratory research ...

The increased visual realism of 3-D films is believed to offer viewers a more vivid and lifelike experience—more thrilling and intense than 2-D because it more closely approximates real life. However, psychology researchers at the University of Utah, among those who use film clips routinely in the lab to study patients' emotional conditions, have found that there is no significant difference between the two formats. The results were published recently in PLOS ONE. The study aimed to validate the effectiveness of 3-D film, a newer technology, as compared to 2-D film that ...