HOUSTON – (June 16, 2014) – Submicroscopic particles that contain even smaller particles of iron oxide could make magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) a far more powerful tool to detect and fight disease. Scientists at Rice University and The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI) led an international team of researchers in creating composite particles that can be injected into patients and guided by magnetic fields. Once in position, the particles may be heated to kill malignant tissues or trigger the release of drugs at the site. The "nanoconstructs" should fully ...

Chinese and American scientists collaborating in the study of an active seismic fault that produced one of China's most deadly earthquakes say their deployment of an airborne LiDAR system, which uses pulses of laser light to calculate distances and chart terrain features, has helped them produce the most precise topographical measurements ever of the fault zone. "Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) presents a new approach to build detailed topographic maps effectively," they report. They add that these high-precision three-dimensional models can be used to illustrate ...

London (16 June 2014). Citizen reporters are increasingly getting stories out of remote areas of Syria, which are difficult for traditional media to reach during the conflict, according to data collated for Index on Censorship magazine. It showed more reports were coming from citizen journalists than traditional media, in all areas of the country, with the exception of Homs. Index on Censorship magazine worked with Syria Tracker, the independent news tracker, which has scanned 160,000 news reports and social media updates to look at the scale of citizen journalism. Syria ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Caffeine intake by children and adolescents has been rising for decades, due in large part to the popularity of caffeinated sodas and energy drinks, which now are marketed to children as young as four. Despite this, there is little research on the effects of caffeine on young people. One researcher who is conducting such investigations is Jennifer Temple, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, University at Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions. Her new study finds that after puberty, boys and ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Scientists have used coyote and red fox fur trapping records across North America to document how the presence of wolves influences the balance of smaller predators further down the food chain. From Alaska and Yukon to Nova Scotia and Maine, the researchers have demonstrated that a "wolf effect" exists, favoring red foxes where wolves are present and coyotes where wolves are absent. This effect requires that enough wolves be present to suppress coyotes over a wide area. Fur trapping records from Saskatchewan and Manitoba reveal that where wolves are ...

DENVER - Examination and review of several studies that evaluated patient-centered outcomes for individuals undergoing low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening for lung cancer found that screening does not appear to significantly influence overall health-related quality of life or result in long-term changes in anxiety or distress, but that positive results in the short-term, do increase distress levels. The National Lung Cancer Screening Trial showed that three annual LDCT screens, in contrast to standard lung x-rays, can decrease lung cancer mortality by 20% and ...

DENVER - Investigators of the COSMOS (Continuous Observation of SMOking Subjects) study show good compliance and patient survival outcomes using a 5-year low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening protocol in individuals at high-risk of developing lung cancer. This protocol had fewer patients requiring further diagnostic follow-up compared to other studies, including the National Lung Cancer Screening Trial (NLST), with a minimal number of incorrect diagnoses. The 5-year survival rate for early diagnosed lung cancer is 50% but after the cancer has spread to distant ...

The latest version of a bionic pancreas device has been successfully tested in two five-day clinical trials – one in adults, the other in adolescents – that imposed minimal restrictions on patient activities. A team of investigators from Boston University (BU) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report study results in a New England Journal of Medicine paper being issued online to coincide with a presentation (abstract # 237-OR) at the American Diabetes Association Scientific Sessions. The device controls blood sugar in patients with type 1 diabetes using doses ...

People with type 1 diabetes who used a bionic pancreas instead of manually monitoring glucose using fingerstick tests and delivering insulin using a pump were more likely to have blood glucose levels consistently within the normal range, with fewer dangerous lows or highs. The full report of the findings, funded by the National Institutes of Health, can be found online June 15 in the New England Journal of Medicine. The researchers – at Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital – say the process of blood glucose control could improve dramatically with the ...

CHESTERBROOK, Pennsylvania, June 16, 2014 –Animas Corporation today shared encouraging results from its predictive hypoglycemia-minimizing algorithm in development. Data from a clinical feasibility study demonstrated that the algorithm was capable of helping maintain glucose above hypoglycemic levels an average of 99.1 percent of the time for the 12 participants investigated, all of whom were adults with type 1 diabetes. The study was conducted by Animas in collaboration with industry, academia and JDRF as part of an effort to advance the development of a predictive blood ...

Climate change is unlikely to lead to more days of extreme cold, similar to those that gripped the USA in a deep freeze last winter, new research has shown. The Arctic amplification phenomenon refers to the faster rate of warming in the Arctic compared to places further south. It is this phenomenon that has been linked to a spike in the number of severe cold spells experienced in recent years over Europe and North America. However, new research by University of Exeter expert Dr James Screen has shown that Arctic amplification has actually reduced the risk of cold extremes ...

New treatments for inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and autism could be on the horizon, after a global University of Melbourne – lead study successfully mapped the genes of a parasitic worm in pigs. Lead researcher, Dr Aaron Jex, Faculty of Veterinary Science, said, "We know that humans infected with the harmless, 'pig whipworm' can have significantly reduced symptoms linked to autoimmune diseases. And now we have the genetic sequence of the worm, it opens the door to future human drug designs and treatment." Although the ...

Beneath the barren whiteness of Greenland, a mysterious world has popped into view. Using ice-penetrating radar, researchers have discovered ragged blocks of ice as tall as city skyscrapers and as wide as the island of Manhattan at the very bottom of the ice sheet, apparently formed as water beneath the ice refreezes and warps the surrounding ice upwards. The newly revealed forms may help scientists understand more about how ice sheets behave and how they will respond to a warming climate. The results are published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience. "We see ...

Researchers have deduced essential biological and genetic information from the genome sequence of the whipworm, an intestinal parasitic worm that infects hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. This information acts as the foundation for the development of new strategies and treatments against this debilitating parasite. The whipworm is one of three types of soil-transmitted parasitic worms that collectively infect nearly two billion people. While infections often result in mild disease they may also lead to serious and long-term damage such as malnutrition, ...

June 15, 2014 (San Francisco) – With the increase in childhood obesity and the associated increase in type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents, there is growing interest in how children's bodies process the foods they eat and how obesity and diabetes begin to develop at early ages. Two studies presented at the American Diabetes Association's 74th Scientific Sessions® help to shed light on this topic. One study, by researchers at the Yale School of Medicine, compared how the brains of adolescents and adults differed in their response to ingestion of a glucose drink. ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Social scientists' analysis of 290,119,348 tweets from 193,522 "politically engaged" Twitter users during the 2012 presidential campaign conventions and debates found little creative thinking, and a slavish blitz of retweeting "elites" like @billmaher and @seanhannity, according to a new study. "Frankly, we're rather disappointed," says Cornell University's Drew Margolin. "Social media has so much potential to improve the diversity of voices and quality of exchanges in political discussion by giving individuals the technological capability to compete with ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – When it hasn't been your day – your week, your month, or even your year – it might be time to turn to Facebook friends for a little positive reinforcement. According to a new study by social scientists at Cornell University, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Facebook, emotions can spread among users of online social networks. The researchers reduced the amount of either positive or negative stories that appeared in the news feed of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users, and found that the so-called "emotional contagion" effect worked ...

For prediabetics, many interventions focus on lifestyle changes and weight loss, but new research on periodic fasting has identified a biological process in the body that converts bad cholesterol in fat cells to energy, thus combating diabetes risk factors. Researchers at the Intermountain Heart Institute at Intermountain Medical Center in Murray, Utah, noticed that after 10 to 12 hours of time fasting, the body starts scavenging for other sources of energy throughout the body to sustain itself. The body pulls LDL (bad) cholesterol from the fat cells and uses it as energy. "Fasting ...

WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J., June 14, 2014 – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced results from a late-breaking observational study that assessed the differences in time to initiation of insulin use and the proportion of the population initiating insulin among patients with type 2 diabetes taking the combination of JANUVIA® (sitagliptin) and metformin, and patients taking the combination of a sulfonylurea and metformin. In this study, patients treated with a combination of JANUVIA and metformin initiated insulin therapy at a ...

WHITEHOUSE STATION, N.J., June 14, 2014 – Merck (NYSE: MRK), known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, today announced results from a post-hoc analysis showing that patients with type 2 diabetes having treatment intensified with insulin glargine therapy while also being treated with JANUVIA® (sitagliptin) 100 mg once-daily had a lower incidence of nighttime (nocturnal) hypoglycemia compared to patients also receiving placebo. Results were presented at the American Diabetes Association 74th Scientific Sessions. "Type 2 diabetes is a progressive disease, so that ...

June 14, 2014 (San Francisco) – Improving the overall quality of one's diet helps to prevent type 2 diabetes, independent of other lifestyle changes, according to a study presented at the American Diabetes Association's 74th Scientific Sessions®. The study, by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, found that those who improved their diet quality index scores by 10 percent over four years – by eating more whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and less sweetened beverages and saturated fats, for example – reduced their risk for type 2 diabetes by about 20 percent, ...

SAN DIEGO, CA (June 14, 2014): Use of anti-oxidants may be ineffective or even contribute to kidney disease and other complications of diabetes, rather than helping to treat such health problems. That conclusion, based on growing unexpected findings that stimulating mitochondrial function and superoxide production results in improved markers of renal, cardiovascular and nerve dysfunction, was presented this week in a "State-of-the-Art Lecture" at the 74th Scientific Sessions of the American Diabetes Association. "Scientists have long hypothesized that oxidative stress ...

TORONTO, June 14, 2014—Canola is Canada's oil and new research from St. Michael's Hospital suggests it should also be one of the oils of choice for people with Type 2 diabetes. Dr. David Jenkins, head of the hospital's Clinical Nutrition and Risk Factor Modification Centre, compared people with Type 2 diabetes who ate either a low glycemic index diet that included bread made with canola oil, or a whole wheat diet known to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. His study, published today (Saturday, June 14) in the journal Diabetes Care, found that those on the canola ...

"Don't forget! Check blood sugar before and after physical activity." "Use small plates! Portions will look larger and you may feel more satisfied after eating." "Tick, tock. Take your medication at the same time every day!" These are just a few of the text messages that participants received as part of the Dulce Digital study conducted by the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute, a subsidiary of Scripps Health and one of the nation's leading diabetes research, patient care and education organizations. Initial results of the Dulce Digital study were presented at ...

If the icy surface of Pluto's giant moon Charon is cracked, analysis of the fractures could reveal if its interior was warm, perhaps warm enough to have maintained a subterranean ocean of liquid water, according to a new NASA-funded study. Pluto is an extremely distant world, orbiting the sun more than 29 times farther than Earth. With a surface temperature estimated to be about 380 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (around minus 229 degrees Celsius), the environment at Pluto is far too cold to allow liquid water on its surface. Pluto's moons are in the same frigid environment. Pluto's ...