DALLAS, July 1, 2015 -- While menopause is commonly considered a risk factor for heart disease, menopausal women had a lower risk of dying from heart attack than men; however, this difference was less pronounced among blacks, according to research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. In the first study to compare men and women and how menopause types impact risk of heart attack, researchers studied 23,086 black and white adults over age 45 and found: White women who had surgical-induced menopause had a 35 percent reduced risk of non-fatal heart attacks ...

As we walk along a forest path, the soil beneath our feet seems like a uniform substance. However, it is an intricate network of soil particles, pores, minerals, soil microbes, and more. It is awash in variety. Soil is a living, dynamic substance, and the microbial life within it is crucial to providing plant life with the food they need to grow. The microbes can be bacteria or fungi, but both need space--the pores--for a good living environment. Soil particles that clump together are aggregates. These are the architectural building blocks of soil. Their presence ...

Alexandria, VA - Analyzing thousands of records, researchers have reinforced the claim that for marine life, bigger has been better for the last 542 million years. The study examined Cope's rule - the idea, named for paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, that species evolve to larger sizes over time. With the help of undergraduate students and high-school interns, the researchers compiled information on five major marine phyla, including arthropods, brachiopods, chordates, echinoderms and mollusks. Find out how much bigger things got in the June issue of EARTH Magazine: ...

New research shows that the fearsome teeth of the saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis fully emerged at a later age than those of modern big cats, but grew at a rate about double that of their living relatives. The findings, published today in the journal PLOS ONE and based on a new technique that combines isotopic analysis and x-ray imaging, for the first time provide specific ages for developmental events in Smilodon, notably in their teeth. The study estimates that the eruption rate of S. fatalis's permanent upper canines was 6 millimeters per month--double the growth ...

Statins are a hugely popular drug class used to manage blood cholesterol levels and reduce the risk of heart disease. Previous studies had raised questions about adverse behavioral changes with statins, such as irritability or violence, but findings with statins have been inconsistent. In the first randomized trial to look at statin effects on behavior, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that aggressive behavior typically declined among men placed on statins (compared to placebo), but typically increased among women placed on ...

A newly-discovered, 48-million-year-old fossil, known as a "Jesus lizard" for its ability to walk on water, may provide insight into how climate change may affect tropical species, according to a study published July 1 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jack Conrad from American Museum of Natural History. Modern relatives of the Jesus lizard live in an area stretching from central Mexico to northern Colombia, flourishing in the higher temperatures found at the equator. Members of various animal, plant, fungal, and other clades currently confined to the tropics or ...

An international team of researchers has found some of the first solid evidence that narcolepsy may be a so-called "hit-and-run" autoimmune disease. The researchers sought to determine why, of two different flu vaccines widely deployed during the 2009 swine flu pandemic, only one was associated with a spike in the incidence of narcolepsy, a rare sleep disorder. A paper describing their findings will be published July 1 in Science Translational Medicine. Lawrence Steinman, MD, a professor of pediatrics and of neurology and neurological sciences, is the senior author. ...

While most Americans do not support policies designed to increase distribution of naloxone - a medication that reverses the effects of a drug overdose - certain types of educational messages about its lifesaving benefits may bolster support for its use, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. In a report published July 1 in the journal PLOS ONE, the researchers say that combining educational messages about naloxone with sympathetic narratives about people who could have been saved had the drug been available could be key to increasing support ...

Widely hailed as 'green' sources of renewable energy, hydroelectric dams have been built worldwide at an unprecedented scale. But research from the University of East Anglia reveals that these major infrastructure projects are far from environmentally friendly. A study published today in PLOS ONE reveals the drastic effects of the major Amazonian Balbina Dam on tropical rainforest biodiversity. The research reveals a loss of mammals, birds and tortoises from the vast majority of islands formed by the creation of the vast Balbina Lake, one of the world's largest hydroelectric ...

Vitamin B12 supplements offer no benefits for neurological or cognitive function in older people with moderate vitamin B12 deficiency, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Around one sixth of people in the UK aged over 75 have vitamin B12 deficiency, which when severe can lead to significant problems in the nervous system including muscle weakness, problems with walking, tiredness, and pins and needles, as well as depression and problems with memory and other important everyday cognitive functions. Vitamin B12 is found in everyday ...

New collaborative research between NOAA, University of Alaska and an Alaskan shellfish hatchery shows that ocean acidification may make it difficult for Alaskan coastal waters to support shellfish hatcheries by 2040 unless costly mitigation efforts are installed to modify seawater used in the hatcheries. "Our research shows there could be significant effects from ocean acidification on Alaska's emerging shellfish hatchery industry in a matter of two and half decades," said Jeremy Mathis, Ph.D., an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and a ...

Mandatory targets to reduce salt in processed food would help tackle inequalities in coronary heart disease that lead to excess deaths in deprived areas of England, according to research by the University of Liverpool. Consuming high amounts of salt causes high blood pressure which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Current average UK salt intakes are around eight grams per adult per day, whilst the UK government recommends less than six grams per day. Individuals living in more deprived areas of England often consume larger amounts of salt, and this contributes ...

Researchers at the Hanover Centre for Optical Technologies (HOT), University of Hanover, Germany, have developed a self-contained fiber optic sensor for smartphones with the potential for use in a wide variety of biomolecular tests, including those for detecting pregnancy or monitoring diabetes. The readings of the sensor can run through an application on a smartphone which provide real-time results. When properly provisioned, the smartphone-user has the ability to monitor multiple types of body fluids, including: blood, urine, saliva, sweat or breath. In case of medical ...

BOSTON - Hospitals have made significant strides to reduce or eliminate physical harm to patients since the landmark 1999 Institute of Medicine Report "To Err is Human." In a new paper published in BMJ, patient care leaders at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) say hospitals must now devote similar attention to eliminating emotional harms that damage a patient's dignity and can be caused by a failure to demonstrate adequate respect for the patient as a person. "Emotional harms can erode trust, leave patients feeling violated and damage patient-provider relationships," ...

LAWRENCE -- A new study that is the first to use Social Security Administration's personal income tax data tracking the same individuals over 20 years to measure individual lifetime earnings has confirmed significant long-term economic benefits of college education. ChangHwan Kim, a University of Kansas researcher, said the research team was also able to account for shortcomings in previous studies by including factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, place of birth and high school performance that would influence a person's lifetime earnings and the probability of college ...

A study by City College of New York physicists Flaviano Morone and Hernán A. Makse suggests that "smaller is smarter" when it comes to influential superspreaders of information in social networks. This is a major shift from the widely held view that "bigger is better," and could have important consequences for a broad range of social, natural and living networked systems. "The problem of identifying the minimal set of influential nodes in complex networks for maximizing viral marketing in social media, optimizing immunization campaigns and protecting networks under ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. - Opioid painkiller addiction and accidental overdoses have become far too common across the United States. To try to identify who is most at risk, Mayo Clinic researchers studied how many patients prescribed an opioid painkiller for the first time progressed to long-term prescriptions. The answer: 1 in 4. People with histories of tobacco use and substance abuse were likeliest to use opioid painkillers long-term. The findings are published in the July issue of the medical journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. While the study identified past or present nicotine ...

Premature babies are at an increased risk for developing autism spectrum disorder. But a small study indicates that preemies who avoid eye contact in early infancy are less likely to demonstrate symptoms of autism at age 2 than preemies who maintain eye contact during early interactions, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "Children with autism typically have challenges with social interaction and may avoid eye contact, but it turned out that children in this study who had characteristics of autism at age 2 were more likely ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.--Participation in sports by women and girls has increased from 310,000 individuals in 1971 to 3.37 million in 2010. At the same time, sports-related injuries among female athletes have skyrocketed. According to a new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), women with symptoms known as the "female athlete triad" are at greater risk of bone stress injuries and fractures. "The female athlete triad is a spectrum of symptoms that include low energy availability, menstrual cycle abnormalities, and low bone mineral density. ...

There may be far fewer galaxies further out in the universe then might be expected, according to a new study led by Michigan State University. Over the years, the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed astronomers to look deep into the universe. The long view stirred theories of untold thousands of distant, faint galaxies. The new research, appearing in the current issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, however, offers a theory that reduces the estimated number of the most distant galaxies by 10 to 100 times. "Our work suggests that there are far fewer faint galaxies ...

People have evolved to be smarter and taller than their predecessors, a study of populations around the world suggests. Those who are born to parents from diverse genetic backgrounds tend to be taller and have sharper thinking skills than others, the major international study has found. Researchers analysed health and genetic information from more than 100 studies carried out around the world. These included details on more than 350,000 people from urban and rural communities. The team found that greater genetic diversity is linked to increased height. It is also ...

The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft first began orbiting comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in August 2014. Almost immediately, scientists began to wonder about several surprisingly deep, almost perfectly circular pits on the comet's surface. Now, a new study based on close-up imagery taken by Rosetta suggests that these pits are sinkholes, formed when ices beneath the comet's surface sublimate, or turn directly to gas. The study, which appears in the July 2, 2015 issue of the journal Nature, reveals that the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is variable and ...

DALLAS - July 1, 2015 - UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists collaborating with University of Michigan researchers have found a previously unidentified mechanism that helps explain why stem cells undergo self-renewing divisions but their offspring do not. Adult stem cells provide a ready supply of new cells needed for tissue homeostasis throughout the life of an organism. Specialized environments called "niches" help to maintain stem cells in an undifferentiated and self-renewing state. Cells that comprise the niche produce signals and growth factors essential for ...

DURHAM, N.C. - A pair of brain-imaging studies suggest researchers may be able to predict how likely young adults are to develop problem drinking or engage in risky sexual behavior in response to stress. The new research is part of the ongoing Duke Neurogenetics Study (DNS), which began in 2010 to better understand how interactions between the brain, genome and environment shape risky behaviors that can predict mental illnesses including depression, anxiety, and addiction. "By knowing the biology that predicts risk, we hope to eventually change the biology -- or at ...

GeoSpace Beijing quadrupled in size in a decade, new study finds Researchers tracked the changing physical infrastructure in Beijing, China, and found that the city's physical area quadrupled between 2000 and 2009, according to a new study published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres. Eos.org Seismic Hazard Assessment: Honing the Debate, Testing the Models Earthquake experts learn that "take a hike" isn't an insult, but a way to resolve hotly debated scientific issues. The scientists found common ground by trekking over it. New research papers Disappearance ...