Centenarians are more likely to die of pneumonia and frailty or "old age" and less likely to die of the chronic conditions often associated with old age, such as cancer or ischemic heart disease, compared with older adults younger than 100 years, according to a study by Catherine Evans and colleagues from King's College London, London, UK. Centenarians were most likely to die in a care home (61%) or hospital (27%) and less likely to die at home (10%) or in hospice care (0.2%). Higher care bed capacity was associated with fewer deaths of centenarians in hospital. The ...

Over 35,000 people lived to 100 years or more in England over the last ten years, with a large proportion subsequently dying from frailty exacerbated by pneumonia, according to a new study by King's College London. With the number of centenarians set to grow, end-of-life care needs to be tailored to the increasing frailty in this age group, warn the King's palliative care researchers. Boosting care home capacity and planning health services for the rise in centenarians could help to reduce reliance on hospital admission at the end of life and ensure a better quality of ...

The social insects, including bees, wasps, ants and termites have developed a highly advanced society where division of labor amongst workers to serve the queen's reproduction has long fascinated biologists who have wanted to uncover the molecular pathways driving the complex behavior of insect societies. In the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, Claire Morandin et al. performed molecular evolutionary analyses on the egg yolk forming protein, Vitellogenin (Vg), and its many forms, amongst seven Formica ant species. Vitellogenin is known to play ...

Cutting-edge observations with the 1.6-meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California have taken research into the structure and activity of the Sun to new levels of understanding. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), the telescope at Big Bear is the most powerful ground-based instrument dedicated to studying the Sun. A group of astronomers led by Dr. Santiago Vargas Domínguez has analyzed the highest- resolution solar observations ever made. A summary of their work at BBSO was presented on June 2 at the 224th meeting of the American ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Not all cancer cells are created equal – some stay put in the primary tumor, while others move and invade elsewhere. A major goal for cancer research is predicting which cells will metastasize, and why. A Cornell cancer research team is taking a new approach to screening for these dangerous cells, using a microfluidic device they invented that isolates only the most aggressive, metastatic cells. "The approach we've taken is a reverse approach from what is conventionally done," said Cynthia Reinhart-King, associate professor of biomedical engineering and ...

Only a third of older breast cancer patients saw a cardiologist within 90 days of developing heart problems, in a study presented at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Breast cancer patients with heart problems who saw a cardiologist were more likely to receive standard therapy for their heart failure than those who did not see a heart specialist, the study found. "The majority of older women who develop heart problems after their breast cancer therapy aren't treated by a cardiologist, and they had lower ...

Minorities at a higher risk of developing hypertension used a community-based program to significantly lower their blood pressure, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Minorities at a higher risk of developing hypertension used a community-based program to significantly lower their blood pressure, researchers said at the American Heart Association's Quality of Care and Outcomes Research 2014 Scientific Sessions. Researchers assessed the use of the American Heart Association's Check. Change. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) are associated with improved survival among heart failure patients whose left ventricles only pump 30 to 35 percent of blood out of the heart with each contraction, according to a study from the Duke Clinical Research Institute. The findings, published in the June 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, support existing recommendations to implant ICDs in patients with a left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) – a measurement of how much blood is squeezed out of the heart – of 35 percent ...

Individuals who are hospitalized for the skin conditions of Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis appear to have a high risk of recurrence, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) are life-threatening conditions that develop primarily as responses to drugs, and result in extensive epidermal detachment (upper layers of the skin detach from the lower layers). Recurrence has been reported in isolated cases, and the overall risk of recurrence has been unknown, according to background ...

In a study that included nearly 65,000 older patients hospitalized with pneumonia, treatment that included azithromycin compared with other antibiotics was associated with a significantly lower risk of death and a slightly increased risk of heart attack, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Pneumonia and influenza together are the eighth leading cause of death and the leading causes of infectious death in the United States. Although clinical practice guidelines recommend combination therapy with macrolides (a class of antibiotics), including azithromycin, ...

An examination of the benefit of preventive placement of implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) in patients with a less severe level of heart failure, a group not well represented in clinical trials, finds significantly better survival at three years than that of similar patients with no ICD, according to a study in the June 4 issue of JAMA. Although clinical trials have established the ICD as the best currently available therapy to prevent sudden cardiac death in patients with heart failure, some uncertainties remain regarding preventive use of ICDs in patients ...

June 3, 2014 – BRONX, NY – The study was led by researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI)─designated Albert Einstein Cancer Center of Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Einstein Center for Cancer Care and was published online today in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). "Tests assessing metastatic risk can help doctors identify which patients should receive aggressive therapy and which patients should be spared," said Thomas Rohan, M.D., Ph.D., the lead and corresponding author of the study and professor ...

A frontier lies deep within our cells. Our bodies are as vast as oceans and space, composed of a dizzying number of different types of cells. Exploration reaches far, yet the genes that make each cell and tissue unique have remained largely obscure. That's changing with the help of a team led by Gregorio Valdez, an assistant professor at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. Valdez and his team designed a search engine – called EvoCor – that identifies genes that are functionally linked. The name, a portmanteau of "evolution" and "correlation," points to ...

A new study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that new therapies for kidney disease could be developed more quickly by revising the definition of kidney disease progression used during clinical trials. If adopted, the new definition could shorten the length of some clinical trials and also potentially encourage more clinical trials in kidney disease. The findings will be published in the June 3, 2014 online edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a worldwide public health ...

Faster electronic device architectures are in the offing with the unveiling of the world's first fully two-dimensional field-effect transistor (FET) by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Unlike conventional FETs made from silicon, these 2D FETs suffer no performance drop-off under high voltages and provide high electron mobility, even when scaled to a monolayer in thickness. Ali Javey, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and a UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer science, led ...

The 1.6 meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California has given researchers unparalleled capability for investigating phenomena such as solar flares. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), the BBSO instrument is the most powerful ground-based telescope dedicated to studying the star closest to Earth. On June 2, Distinguished Professor of Physics Haimin Wang joined NJIT colleagues at the 224th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), held in Boston, Massachusetts, to present intriguing data about solar flares — specifically, ...

Multi-wavelength observations of sunspots with the 1.6-meter telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California and aboard NASA's IRIS spacecraft have produced new and intriguing images of high-speed plasma flows and eruptions extending from the Sun's surface to the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, the corona. Operated by New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), BBSO houses the largest ground-based telescope dedicated to solar research. On June 2, NJIT researchers reported on the acquisition of these images at the 224th meeting of the American Astronomical ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Eating, like breathing and sleeping, seems to be a rather basic biological task. Yet chewing requires a complex interplay between the tongue and jaw, with the tongue positioning food between the teeth and then moving out of the way every time the jaw clamps down to grind it up. If the act weren't coordinated precisely, the unlucky chewer would end up biting more tongue than burrito. Duke University researchers have used a sophisticated tracing technique in mice to map the underlying brain circuitry that keeps mealtime relatively painless. The study, ...

Tinkering with climate change through climate engineering isn't going to help us get around what we have to do says a new report authored by researchers at six universities, including Simon Fraser University. After evaluating a range of possible climate-altering approaches to dissipating greenhouse gases and reducing warming, the interdisciplinary team concluded there's no way around it. We have to reduce the amount of carbon being released into the atmosphere. "Some climate engineering strategies look very cheap on paper. But when you consider other criteria, like ...

Studying mice, researchers have found a way to prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, the most common cause of chronic liver disease worldwide. Blocking a path that delivers dietary fructose to the liver prevented mice from developing the condition, according to investigators at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In people, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease often accompanies obesity, elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure and other markers of metabolic syndrome. Some ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —A Purdue University-led research team has figured out how to disable a part of the SARS virus responsible for hiding it from the immune system; a critical step in developing a vaccine against the deadly disease. The findings also have potential applications in the creation of vaccines against other coronaviruses, including MERS, said Andrew Mesecar, who led the research. "This is a first step toward creating a weakened and safe virus for use in an attenuated live vaccine," said Mesecar, Purdue's Walther Professor of Cancer Structural Biology and ...

NEW YORK (June 2, 2014) -- Primary care doctors practicing in a model of coordinated, team-based care that leverages health information technology are more likely to give patients recommended preventive screening and appropriate tests than physicians working in other settings, according to research published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study comparing quality of care by physicians using a delivery model known as the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) to care from physicians in non-PCMH practices provides evidence that the previously unproven but popular ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have developed a new biochip sensor that can selectively measure concentrations of glucose in a complex solution similar to human saliva. The advance is an important step toward a device that would enable people with diabetes to test their glucose levels without drawing blood. The new chip makes use of a series of specific chemical reactions combined with plasmonic interferometry, a means of detecting chemical signature of compounds using light. The device is sensitive enough to detect differences ...

Prior to this survey, astronomers were in a curious position. They knew a lot about star formation occurring in nearby galaxies thanks to UV telescope facilities such as NASA's Galex observatory, which operated from 2003 to 2013. And, thanks to Hubble's near-infrared and visible capability, they had also studied star birth in the most distant galaxies. We see these distant galaxies in their most primitive stages due to the vast amount of time it takes their light to reach us. However, between 5 and 10 billion light-years away from us -- corresponding to a time period ...

BIOMETRICS – The eyes have it . . . By discovering and quantifying the "limbus effect," Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have advanced the state of the art for human iris recognition systems. While the iris is a proven and reliable biometric for verification or identification, non-ideal images -- such as those captured off axis -- are problematic. Reasons include cornea refraction and the limbus effect, causing iris recognition performance to decrease and in many cases fail entirely. Now, using an anatomically accurate human eye model and some slick math, a ...