June 9, 2015 - New approaches, based on body mass index (BMI) or other simple measures, are needed to improve assessment of obesity in adolescents with physical disabilities, reports a paper in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer. Obesity is a major problem in children and adolescents with mobility limitations, but standard assessments tend to underestimate it, according to the new research by Brooks C. Wingo, PhD, of University of Alabama ...

Nagoya, Japan - A team of chemists and biologists at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM), Nagoya University have succeeded in finding new molecules that change the circadian rhythm in mammals by applying synthetic chemistry methods, which makes use of highly selective metal catalysts. Most living organisms have a biological clock with an approximately 24-hour circadian rhythm, which regulates important body functions such as sleep/wake cycles, hormone secretion, and metabolism. Disruption of the circadian rhythm by genetic mutations and environmental ...

LOS ANGELES (JUNE 8, 2015) - The witness on the stand says he saw the accused at the scene of the crime. Is he sure? How sure? The jury's verdict could hinge on that level of certainty. Many decisions we make every day are influenced by our memories and the confidence we have in them. But very little is known about how we decide whether we can trust a memory or not. A new Cedars-Sinai study provides some of the answers. Researchers have identified a unique set of neurons in the medial temporal lobe, an area of the brain where memories and memory-based decisions are ...

The use of camera traps -- remote automatic cameras triggered by heat or motion -- has revolutionized wildlife ecology and conservation research. But the large number of images generated through the traps creates the problem of categorizing and analyzing all the images. For a recent project conducted in the Serengeti National Park, Alexandra Swanson, turned to another relatively new technology -- a citizen science platform. The Snapshot Serengeti project asked non-scientist volunteers to review 1.2 million sets of images. A description of the project, 'Snapshot Serengeti, ...

A variety of factors including questions about risk and reluctance to offend patients limits clinician willingness to prescribe a potentially life-saving medication that counteracts the effects of an opioid overdose, according to a Kaiser Permanente Colorado study published today in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. The number of fatal overdoses from opioid medications has quadrupled in the U.S. since 1999. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), each day 44 people die of prescription painkiller overdoses. In the event of an overdose, ...

American physicians with waivers allowing them to provide office-based medication-assisted buprenorphine treatment to patients addicted to opioids were able to increase potential access to effective medication-assisted treatment by 74 percent from 2002 to 2011, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Published in the June issue of the journal Health Affairs, the study shows that the increased number and geographic distribution of physicians obtaining waivers to prescribe buprenorphine has widened potential access to effective treatment for those with addiction to heroin ...

Getting through the pollen season can now become easier for some of the approximately 500 million people worldwide who suffer from sneezing and a runny nose, watery eyes and drowsiness during the allergy season (seasonal allergic rhinitis). This is indicated by a controlled trial carried out by researchers from Aarhus University. The trial, which took place over two days, included 65 people with grass pollen allergies who were not receiving any medical treatment at that time. They were either equipped with a nasal filter or a placebo device. The conclusion was that the ...

Chicago, June 9, 2015 - A more aggressive approach to treating degenerative mitral valve disease, using earlier surgical intervention and less invasive techniques, is more beneficial to the patient than "watchful waiting," according to an article in the June 2015 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Earlier surgical intervention using less invasive surgical techniques is better than watchful waiting for patients with degenerative mitral valve disease. Over the 25 years observed, mortality rates remained low, hospital length of stay was shorter, ...

Athens, Ga. - Researchers in the University of Georgia's Regenerative Bioscience Center are visually capturing the first process of chromosome alignment and separation at the beginning of mouse development. The findings could lead to answers to questions concerning the mechanisms leading to birth defects and chromosome instability in cancer cells. "We've generated a model that is unique in the world," said Rabindranath De La Fuente, an associate professor in the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine. "Because we removed ATRX protein expression only in the oocyte, the female ...

The handling of agricultural crop residues appears to have a large impact on soil's ability to retain carbon, making land management practices increasingly important, especially under a scenario where cellulosic materials become more heavily used as a feedstock for ethanol production, according to a recently published study led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. "Plants and soil are carbon sinks," said Argonne climate scientist Beth Drewniak, who led the study. "Soils lock carbon away for long periods of time. But when plant ...

Computers and water typically don't mix, but in Manu Prakash's lab, the two are one and the same. Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford, and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets. The computer is nearly a decade in the making, incubated from an idea that struck Prakash when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science - an operating clock. "In this work, we finally demonstrate ...

One potential way to combat ongoing climate change, eliminate air pollution mortality, create jobs and stabilize energy prices involves converting the world's entire energy infrastructure to run on clean, renewable energy. This is a daunting challenge. But now, in a new study, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, and colleagues, including U.C. Berkeley researcher Mark Delucchi, are the first to outline how each of the 50 states can achieve such a transition by 2050. The 50 individual state plans call for aggressive changes ...

For the past several years, Anthony Wagner has been developing a computer program that can read a person's brain scan data and surmise, with a high degree of certainty, whether that person is experiencing a memory. The technology has great promise to influence a number of fields, including marketing, medicine and evaluation of eyewitness testimony. Now, Wagner, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Stanford, and his colleagues have shown that with just a little bit of coaching and concentration, subjects are easily able to obscure real memories, or even create ...

BARCELONA, Spain, June 9, 2015 -- Aimmune Therapeutics, Inc., a privately held biopharmaceutical company developing desensitization treatments for food allergies, announced today that a Phase 2 study (ARC001) evaluating the company's lead investigational product, AR101 for the treatment of peanut allergy, met its primary endpoint and additional endpoint of desensitizing patients to cumulative amounts of peanut protein of 443 mg and 1,043 mg, respectively. Of the 23 active-arm patients who completed the study, 100 percent tolerated exposure to 443 mg cumulative amounts ...

Los Angeles, CA (June 9, 2015) Children diagnosed with AD/HD can improve their behavior and social interactions in the classroom by playing a computer game that exercises their concentration, finds new research out today. The study marks the 1000th article published in SAGE Open, a peer-reviewed, open-access journal launched in 2011 which covers the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. The software studied in the research syncs with a wireless headband that monitors brainwaves during game-play, and works by adjusting the level of difficulty ...

In Kenya, where rape and violence against women are rampant, a short educational program produced lasting improvements in teenage boys' and young men's attitudes toward women, a study from the Stanford University School of Medicine has found. The boys and men in the study also were more likely to try to halt violence against women after participating in the program. The study will be published online June 9 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. The program was developed by No Means No Worldwide, a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that works in the slums ...

New York, N.Y. (June 9, 2015) - The largest-ever multinational study of parental age and autism risk, funded by Autism Speaks, found increased autism rates among the children of teen moms and among children whose parents have relatively large gaps between their ages. The study also confirmed that older parents are at higher risk of having children with autism. The analysis included more than 5.7 million children in five countries. The study was published today in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. "Though we've seen research on autism and parental age before, this study ...

A single dose of intravenous glutamine (GLN) administered immediately after a non-lethal lower limb ischemia reduces the reperfusion inflammatory reaction locally and systemically according to a new study. The study, published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), used a mice model to compare the effects of GLN on hind limb ischemia reperfusion (IR) injury. The study subjected three groups of mice to 90 minutes of ischemia ...

Multidisciplinary health care professionals who hold the Certified Nutrition Support Credential (CNSC) scored significantly higher on a survey about their approaches to nutrition support practice than those who do not hold the credential according to new study. The study, results of which were published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), was targeted to health care professionals affiliated with A.S.P.E.N. The electronic ...

A new study finds that supplementing enteral nutrition with Lactobacillus reuteri (L. reuteri) DSM 17938 as a probiotic may reduce the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) in premature infants. NEC is a condition where portions of the bowel undergo tissue death. It is the second most common cause of death among premature infants. The study, published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.), is a systematic review of randomized ...

Deficiency of vitamin D is a common problem for patients with severe burn injuries and can lead to further health compromise. However, there are no evidence-based guidelines for vitamin D replenishment in such patients. A new clinical trial by researchers at Cincinnati's Shriners Hospital for Children compared the outcomes of vitamin D2 and D3 supplementation on pediatric burn patients. The results of that research was published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for ...

Food wasted means money wasted which can be an expensive problem especially in homes with financial constraints. A new study from the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and the Getulio Vargas Foundation, shows that the top causes of food waste in such homes include buying too much, preparing in abundance, unwillingness to consume leftovers, and improper food storage. "Fortunately," notes lead author Gustavo Porpino, PhD candidate at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and Visiting Scholar at the Cornell Food and Brand Lab, "most of the factors that lead to food waste, can be easily remedied ...

Breast cancer patients are four times less likely to have potentially lifesaving surgery if diagnosed as an emergency rather than through an urgent GP referral, according to a new data* published today (Monday). This is the first study of its kind that looks at how treatment varies across cancers depending on the patients' route to diagnosis. The report from Cancer Research UK and Public Health England's National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) is being launched at the annual NCIN Cancer Outcomes Conference in Belfast. It presents the proportion of patients having ...

Housing improvements could reduce malaria cases by half in some settings, according to research published in the open access Malaria Journal. As mosquitoes become resistant to insecticides and malaria parasites become resistant to drugs, researchers looked at how making changes to houses might contribute to tackling the deadly disease. Researchers reviewed 90 studies in Africa, Asia and South America comparing malaria cases in traditional houses (mud, stone, bamboo or wood walls; thatched, mud or wood roofs; earth or wood floors) and modern houses (closed eaves, ceilings, ...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (June 8, 2015) - There are more boys than girls diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Now, a study led by a University of Miami (UM) researcher shows that behaviors relevant to autism are more frequently observed in boys than in girls, whether they're at risk of autism or not. "The results imply that there may be an overrepresentation of boys with autism, based on sex differences that affect all children," said Daniel S. Messinger, professor of psychology in the UM College of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator of the study. "In other ...