The cognitive differences between humans and our closest living cousins, the chimpanzees, are staggeringly obvious. Although we share strong superficial physical similarities, we have been able to use our incredible mental abilities to construct civilisations and manipulate our environment to our will, allowing us to take over our planet and walk on the moon while the chimps grub around in a few remaining African forests. But a new study suggests that human muscle may be just as unique. Scientists from Shanghai's CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology, together ...

Disturbed patterns of blood flow induce lasting epigenetic changes to genes in the cells that line blood vessels, and those changes contribute to atherosclerosis, researchers have found. The findings suggest why the protective effects of good blood flow patterns, which aerobic exercise promotes, can persist over time. An epigenetic change to DNA is a chemical modification that alters whether nearby genes are likely to be turned on or off, but not the letter-by-letter sequence itself. The results are scheduled for publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Atherosclerosis ...

Older people who undertake at least 25 minutes of moderate or vigorous exercise everyday need fewer prescriptions and are less likely to be admitted to hospital in an emergency, new research has revealed. The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, reinforce the need for exercise programmes to help older people stay active. It could also reduce reliance on NHS services and potentially lead to cost savings. In the first study of its kind looking at this age group, researchers from the University of Bristol looked at data from 213 people whose average age was 78. Those ...

In certain patients with abdominal pain after gallbladder removal (cholecystectomy), undergoing an endoscopic procedure involving the bile and pancreatic ducts did not result in fewer days with disability due to pain, compared to a placebo treatment, according to a study in the May 28 issue of JAMA. Post-cholecystectomy pain is a common clinical problem. More than 700,000 patients undergo cholecystectomy each year in the United States, and at least 10 percent are reported to have pain afterwards. Most of these patients have no significant abnormalities on imaging or ...

An analysis of more than 600 class I (procedure/treatment should be performed/administered) American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association guideline recommendations published or revised since 1998 finds that about 80 percent were retained at the time of the next guideline revision, and that recommendations not supported by multiple randomized studies were more likely to be downgraded, reversed, or omitted, according to a study in the May 28 issue of JAMA. As adherence to recommended clinical practice guidelines increasingly is used to measure performance, ...

PHILADELPHIA –Clinical practice guideline recommendations related to screening and treatment can change markedly over time as new evidence about best practices and clinical outcomes of various treatments emerges. In a first-of-its-kind study, Penn Medicine researchers examined high-level recommendations published by the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) between 1998 and 2007 and found that recommendations which were supported by multiple randomized controlled trials were the most "durable" and least likely to change over time. ...

Science crowdsourcing was used to disprove a widely held theory that "supertasters" owe their special sensitivity to bitter tastes to an usually high density of taste buds on their tongue, according to a study published in the open-access journal Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience. Supertasters are people who can detect and are extremely sensitive to phenylthiocarbamide and propylthiouracil, two compounds related to the bitter molecules in certain foods such as broccoli and kale. Supertasting has been used to explain why some people don't like spicy foods or "hoppy" ...

Oncologists now have a new understanding of the toxicity levels of specific chemotherapy regimens used for women with early stage breast cancer, according to research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The retrospective study, published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, used large population-based data to compare the risk of hospitalization for six common chemotherapy regimens. Reasons for hospitalization included infection, fever, anemia, dehydration, neutropenia (low white blood cell count), thrombocytopenia (low blood platelets) and delirium. ...

A genetic variant linked to sudden cardiac death leads to protein overproduction in heart cells, Johns Hopkins scientists report. Unlike many known disease-linked variants, this one lies not in a gene but in so-called noncoding DNA, a growing focus of disease research. The discovery, reported in the June 5 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics, also adds to scientific understanding of the causes of sudden cardiac death and of possible ways to prevent it, the researchers say. "Traditionally, geneticists have studied gene variants that cause disease by producing ...

The agency charged to protect patients from dangerous drug side effects needs to be far more vigilant when it comes to medications that affect blood pressure. Robert P. Blankfield, MD, MS, a clinical professor of family medicine, issues this call to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in an editorial published recently in an online edition of the Journal of Cardiovascular Pharmacology and Therapeutics; the print version of the article is expected to appear this autumn. The editorial notes that several medications survived FDA scrutiny, only to be pulled from ...

Disturbed blood flow induces epigenetic alterations to promote atherosclerosis Arterial hardening, also known as atherosclerosis, is the result of plaque buildup in the walls of arteries and over time can lead to cardiovascular complications, including heart attack, stroke, and peripheral vascular disease. Atherosclerotic plaques typically develop in arterial regions with disrupted blood flow. While blood flow disturbances are known to alter endothelial gene expression and function, it is not clear how altered blood flow induces these changes in endothelial cells. In ...

MISSOULA – A new article by researchers from the University of Montana, the U.S. Geological Survey and Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks asserts that climate warming is increasing the hybridization of trout – interbreeding between native and non-native species – in the interior western United States. Clint Muhlfeld, a research assistant professor in the UM Division of Biological Sciences' Flathead Lake Biological Station and research ecologist with the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center in Glacier National Park, is the lead author of the article, titled "Invasive ...

PITTSBURGH—Spontaneous thoughts, intuitions, dreams and quick impressions. We all have these seemingly random thoughts popping into our minds on a daily basis. The question is what do we make of these unplanned, spur-of-the-moment thoughts? Do we view them as coincidental wanderings of a restless mind, or as revealing meaningful insight into ourselves? A research team from Carnegie Mellon University and Harvard Business School set out to determine how people perceive their own spontaneous thoughts and if those thoughts or intuitions have any influence over judgment. ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The slopes of a giant Martian volcano, once covered in glacial ice, may have been home to one of the most recent habitable environments yet found on the Red Planet, according to new research led by Brown University geologists. Nearly twice as tall as Mount Everest, Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars and one of the largest mountains in the solar system. This new analysis of the landforms surrounding Arsia Mons shows that eruptions along the volcano's northwest flank happened at the same time that a glacier covered the ...

Using your brain – particularly during adolescence – may help brain cells survive and could impact how it functions after puberty. According to a recently published study in Frontiers in Neuroscience, Rutgers University behavioral neuroscientist Tracey Shors, who co-authored the study, found that the newborn brain cells in young rats that were successful at learning survived while the same brain cells in animals that didn't master the task died quickly. "In those that didn't learn, three weeks after the new brain cells were made, one-half of them were no longer there," ...

Women with blood in their urine (hematuria) were less than half as likely as men with the same issue to be referred to a urologist for further tests, according to a new Vanderbilt University study. The findings may help explain why women with bladder cancer are often diagnosed at a later stage in the disease and have worse mortality than men. The study, presented by Jeffrey Bassett, M.D., MPH, fellow in Urologic Oncology, and Principal Investigator Daniel Barocas, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of Urologic Surgery, was shared during the American Urological Association ...

Since it started more than 30 years ago, funding the graduate medical education (GME) system has not evolved even as there has been a revolution in GME. The United States contributes almost $10 billion a year from Medicare into funding the GME system. However this system fails to provide the workforce needed for the 21st century and lacks the necessary transparency and accountability. With an aging population and millions of people newly registered for health insurance because of the Affordable Care Act, there is a pressing need to increase the number of primary care ...

Tropical forests are a sometimes-underappreciated asset in the battle against climate change. They cover seven percent of land surface yet hold more than 30 percent of Earth's terrestrial carbon. As abandoned agricultural land in the tropics is taken over by forests, scientists expect these new forests to mop up industrial quantities of atmospheric carbon. New research by Smithsonian scientists shows increasingly abundant vines could hamper this potential and may even cause tropical forests to lose carbon. In the first study to experimentally demonstrate that competition ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Impact craters reveal one of the most spectacular geologic process known to man. During the past 3.5 billion years, it is estimated that more than 80 bodies, larger than the dinosaur-killing asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, have bombarded Earth. However, tectonic processes, weathering, and burial quickly obscure or destroy craters. For example, if Earth weren't so dynamic, its surface would be heavily cratered like the Moon or Mercury. Work by B.C. Johnson and T.J. Bowling predicts that only about four of the craters ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (May 27, 2014) -- Developmental biologists at Tufts University, using a tadpole model, have shown that bioelectrical signals from distant cells control the incidence of tumors arising from cancer-causing genes and that this process is impacted by levels of a common fatty acid produced by bacteria found in the tadpole and also in humans. "Genetic information is often not enough to determine whether a cell will become cancerous; you also have to take into account the physiology of the cell and the bioelectrical signals it receives from other ...

Among older adults at risk of disability, participation in a structured moderate-intensity physical activity program, compared with a health education intervention, significantly reduced the risk of major mobility disability (defined in this trial as loss of ability to walk 400 meters, or about a quarter mile), according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting. Mobility—the ability to walk without assistance—is a critical characteristic for functioning ...

With just a daily 20-minute walk, older adults can help stave off major disability and enhance the quality of their later years, according to results of the Lifestyle Interventions and Independence for Elders (LIFE) Study, conducted by researchers at Yale School of Medicine in collaboration with seven other institutions around the country. The study is published in the May 27 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Mobility, the ability to walk without assistance, is key to functioning independently. Reduced mobility is common in older adults and is ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — It's something we've all heard for years: Exercise can help keep older adults healthy. But now a study, the first of its kind to look at frail, older adults, proves that physical activity can help these people maintain their mobility and dodge physical disability. A new University of Florida study shows daily moderate physical activity may mean the difference between seniors being able to keep up everyday activities or becoming housebound. In fact, moderate physical activity helped aging adults maintain their ability to walk at a rate 18 percent higher ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 27, 2014—The commonly used food additive monosodium glutamate (MSG) has been linked to obesity and disorders associated with the metabolic syndrome including progressive liver disease. A new study that identifies MSG as a critical factor in the initiation of obesity and shows that a restrictive diet cannot counteract this effect but can slow the progression of related liver disease is published in Journal of Medicinal Food, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.. The paper is available on the Journal of Medicinal Food website. Makoto ...

Researchers have announced the first ever method for controlling the growth of metal-crystals from single atoms. Published in the journal Nature Communications and developed at the University of Warwick, the method, called Nanocrystallometry, allows for the creation of precise components for use in nanotechnology. Professor Peter Sadler from the University's Department of Chemistry commented that "The breakthrough with Nanocrystallometry is that it actually allows us to observe and directly control the nano-world in motion". Using a doped-graphene matrix to slow ...