Dengue fever could make headway in popular European holiday destinations if climate change continues on its predicted trajectory, according to research published in open access journal BMC Public Health. The University of East Anglia study used current data from Mexico, where dengue fever is present, and information about EU countries in order to model the likelihood of the disease spreading in Europe. They found that coastal regions in around the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas, the Po Valley and North East Italy were most at risk. Dengue fever is a tropical disease ...

This news release is available in French. NAIROBI (22 August 2014)—With the steady drain of essential nutrients from African soils looming as a major threat to food security across the continent, a new report released today finds that over the last five years, 1.7 million African farmers in 13 countries have embraced farming practices that have rejuvenated 1.6 million hectares and helped them double or even triple crop yields. The analysis from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) focuses on intensive efforts initiated five years ago to move aggressively ...

Washington, DC (August 21, 2014) — Calcium buildup in the coronary arteries may be a better indicator of kidney disease patients' risk of heart disease than traditional risk factors used in the general population, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings provide valuable new information that could help safeguard the heart health of patients with kidney disease. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in individuals with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Some studies have found that conventional ...

Calcium buildup in the coronary arteries of chronic kidney disease patients may be a strong indicator of heart disease risk, according to a new study in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health assert that coronary calcium outperforms two other commonly used measures of subclinical atherosclerosis in predicting the risk of heart disease among individuals with kidney disease. Approximately 50 percent of all patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) die from cardiovascular disease, but ...

For many people, finding motivation to exercise is a challenge. Thankfully, there are Zombies chasing you. At least that's the approach of Zombies, Run!—one of more than 31,000 health and fitness apps on the market today, and one of the growing number of apps that use games to increase physical activity. Gamification is currently the popular trend for mobile fitness app makers looking to cash in to help people get fit. Whether or not it's the best way to exercise remains to be seen. "It's just been assumed that gamified apps will work, but there has been no research ...

Using telecommunications to connect stroke experts to stroke patients in rural areas continued to improve and sustain stroke care, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. This is the largest and longest evaluation of telemedicine for stroke and took place in rural Bavaria, Germany. With the tele-medical linked Stroke Units, patients in regional hospitals had around-the-clock access to consultations with vascular neurologists at stroke centers, including evaluation of brain imaging and patient examination via videoconferencing when ...

Researchers at the University of Surrey have discovered how the receptors responsible for contractions in the bladder, regulate the body's clock genes. The new study, published today in The FASEB Journal, has found that this clock activity in turn regulates the cycle of all cells in the body. The team of researchers also discovered that the local biological clock and its control are weakened in ageing bladders, demonstrating the importance of the clock in bladder physiology and ageing. While currently much is known about the central biological clock, little is known ...

Bottom Line: Vision loss can adversely affect the ability of older adults to perform instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), such as using the telephone, shopping and doing housework, which are all measures of an individual's ability to live independently, and that subsequently increases the risk for death. Author: Sharon L. Christ, Ph.D., of Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind., and colleagues. Background: Visual impairment (VI) can have negative effects on a person's physical and psychosocial health. VI is associated with a variety of functional and health ...

Bottom Line: Patients with advanced laryngeal cancer appear to have better survival if they are treated with surgery than nonsurgical chemoradiation. Author: Uchechukwu C. Megwalu, M.D., M.P.H., of the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and colleagues. Background: Approximately 11,000 to 13,000 cases of laryngeal cancer are diagnosed each year and squamous cell carcinoma accounts for the vast majority of these tumors. Prior to 1991, total surgical removal of the larynx with postoperative radiation was the standard of care for advanced cancer. Since then, ...

The first direct observations of how facets form and develop on platinum nanocubes point the way towards more sophisticated and effective nanocrystal design and reveal that a nearly 150 year-old scientific law describing crystal growth breaks down at the nanoscale. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used highly sophisticated transmission electron microscopes and an advanced high-resolution, fast-detection camera to capture the physical mechanisms that control the evolution of facets – flat faces ...

DURHAM, NC -- Researchers have pinpointed the environmental source of fungal infections that have been sickening HIV/AIDS patients in Southern California for decades. It literally grows on trees. The discovery is based on the science project of a 13-year-old girl, who spent the summer gathering soil and tree samples from areas around Los Angeles hardest hit by infections of the fungus named Cryptococcus gattii (CRIP-to-cock-us GAT-ee-eye). Cryptococcus, which encompasses a number of species including C. gattii, causes life-threatening infections of the lungs and brain ...

(Boston) — African American women born at a low or very low birth weight may be at a higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes. The findings, which appear in Diabetes Care, may explain in part the higher occurrence of type 2 diabetes in African American populations, which has a high prevalence of low birth weight. Researchers from Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center followed more than 21,000 women enrolled in the Black Women's Health Study over the course of 16 years, analyzing characteristics such as birth weight, current age, family history of diabetes, body ...

The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced two $10 million projects to create cloud computing testbeds--to be called "Chameleon" and "CloudLab"--that will enable the academic research community to develop and experiment with novel cloud architectures and pursue new, architecturally-enabled applications of cloud computing. Cloud computing refers to the practice of using a network of remote servers to store, manage and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. In recent years, cloud computing has become the dominant method of providing ...

VIDEO: In this animation, the Earth rotates slowly as the Arctic sea ice advances over time from March 21, 2014 to August 3, 2014. Click here for more information. As we near the final month of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, NASA scientists are watching the annual seasonal melting of the Arctic sea ice cover. The floating, frozen cap that stretches across the Arctic Ocean shrinks throughout summer until beginning to regrow, typically around mid-September. As of Aug. 19, ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Using heart-lung support technology, the University of Michigan's Transplant Center was able to increase the number of kidneys, livers and pancreases available for transplant by about 20 percent. The results were published in the journal Transplantation and detail the impact of more than 10 years of using Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, or ECMO, to improve the quality and viability of organs donated after circulatory determination of death. "Organ transplant is limited by the number of donated organs available, so the use of organs that are donated ...

A new study by University of Toronto and University of Tübingen researchers suggests that Islam is not as much of an impediment to liberal democracy as is often thought. "One of the key markers for a successful liberal democracy is a high degree of social tolerance," says U of T sociologist Robert Andersen. "We wanted to see the extent to which this existed in countries with a majority of Muslims compared to Western countries." Andersen, U of T sociologist Robert Brym and Scott Milligan of the University of Tübingen used data from the World Values Survey – a global ...

Athens, Ga. – An international team of scientists including researchers from the University of Georgia recently published the genome of Brassica napus—commonly known as canola—in the journal Science. Their discovery paves the way for improved versions of the plant, which is used widely in farming and industry. Canola is grown across much of Canada and its native Europe, but the winter crop is increasingly cultivated in Georgia. Canola oil used for cooking is prized for its naturally low levels of saturated fat and rich supply of omega-3 fatty acids, but the plant is ...

Despite a significant reduction in smog-producing toxins in past decade, GTA still violates Canada's ozone standards A new study shows that while the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) has significantly reduced some of the toxins that contribute to smog, the city continues to violate the Canada-wide standards for ozone air pollution. Smog, which can cause or aggravate health problems such as asthma, emphysema and chronic bronchitis, is produced by a set of complex photochemical reactions involving volatile organic compounds (VOCs), nitrogen oxides and sunlight, which form ground-level ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A new study of American singles found that during sex with a familiar partner, men have the highest orgasm rates. On average, men experience orgasm 85.1 percent of the time, with their sexual orientation making little difference. For women, however, orgasm occurrence is less predictable. On average, women experience orgasm 62.9 percent of the time during sex with a familiar partner -- and this pattern varies with women's sexual orientation, with lesbian women experiencing orgasm more often than heterosexual or bisexual women. The Indiana University ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Aug. 21, 2014 – Overweight individuals with diabetes who lose weight by dieting and increasing their physical activity can reduce their health care costs by an average of more than $500 per year, according to a new study. "Lifestyle interventions promoting weight loss and physical activity are recommended for overweight and obese people with Type 2 diabetes to improve their health," said Mark A. Espeland, professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and lead author of the study. "This is the first study to show that weight ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 21, 2014—New measurements of atomic-scale magnetic behavior in iron-based superconductors by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt University are challenging conventional wisdom about superconductivity and magnetism. The study published in Advanced Materials provides experimental evidence that local magnetic fluctuations can influence the performance of iron-based superconductors, which transmit electric current without resistance at relatively high temperatures. "In the past, everyone thought ...

CHICAGO—Most consumers have an idea what they want their pizza slice to look like. Golden cheese with that dark toasted-cheese color scattered in distinct blistery patches across the surface with a bit of oil glistening in the valleys. A new study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), evaluated the pizza baking performance of different cheeses (mozzarella, cheddar, colby, Edam, Emmental, Gruyere, and provolone) in conjunction with a new quantifiable evaluation technique to see how their composition and functional differences ...

CHICAGO -- While okra has been widely used as a vegetable for soups and stews, a new study in the Journal of Food Science, published by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT), shows how okra extracts can be used as a stabilizer in ice cream. Ice cream quality is highly dependent on the size of ice crystals. As ice cream melts and refreezes during distribution and storage, the ice crystals grow in size causing ice cream to become courser in texture which limits shelf life. Stabilizers are used to maintain a smooth consistency, hinder melting, improve the handling properties, ...

Honeybee colonies are dying at alarming rates worldwide. A variety of factors have been proposed to explain their decline, but the exact cause—and how bees can be saved—remains unclear. An article published on August 21st in PLOS Pathogens examines the viral landscape in honeybee colonies in New Zealand after the recent arrival of the parasitic Varroa destructor mite. Varroa is thought to be one of the main stressors that reduce bee fitness. As they feed on the blood of pupae and adult bees, the mites can transmit several honeybee viruses with high efficiency. Uncontrolled ...

An article published on August 21st in PLOS Pathogens reports the first animal model that recapitulates the severe and sometimes lethal respiratory symptoms seen in human patients and suggests that the common marmoset will play an important role in the development effective countermeasures against Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus. Recent studies had identified how the MERS-CoV recognizes and invades human cells: its spike protein binds to DPP4, a protein on the surface of human cells, and this leads to internalization of the virus which then takes over the ...