Washington, DC (July 31, 2014) — Depressive symptoms and pain in patients on dialysis may have serious negative consequences for patients' health and increase the need for costly medical services, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings indicate that studies should evaluate the potential of anti-depressant and analgesic therapies to improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. Depressive symptoms and pain are common in kidney failure patients receiving chronic hemodialysis, but ...

In a study published today in Genes & Development, Dr Christian Speck from the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre's DNA Replication group, in collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), New York, reveal the intricate mechanisms involved in the enzyme that governs DNA duplication during cell division. By developing a sophisticated system using synthetic, chemical and structural biology approaches, the study reveals how a key enzyme involved in duplicating genetic information embraces DNA through a gated system, which opens up at precise positions allowing for a highly ...

San Antonio — July 31, 2014 — A new terrestrial bombardment model developed by an international group of scientists led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) indicates that Earth's surface was heavily reprocessed — or melted, mixed and buried — as a result of giant asteroid impacts more than four billion years ago. The model, calibrated using existing lunar and terrestrial data, sheds light on the role asteroid collisions played in the geological evolution of the uppermost layers of Earth during the geologic eon call the "Hadean," or first geologic eon, approximately ...

Physicians at Johns Hopkins have developed blood and saliva tests that help accurately predict recurrences of HPV-linked oral cancers in a substantial number of patients. The tests screen for DNA fragments of the human papillomavirus (HPV) shed from cancer cells lingering in the mouth or other parts of the body. A description of the development is published in the July 31 issue of JAMA Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery. "There is a window of opportunity in the year after initial therapy to take an aggressive approach to spotting recurrences and intensively addressing ...

DARIEN, IL – Researchers who studied 100 twin pairs have identified a gene mutation that may allow the carrier to function normally on less than six hours of sleep per night. The genetic variant also appears to provide greater resistance to the effects of sleep deprivation. Results show that a participant with p.Tyr362His – a variant of the BHLHE41 gene – had an average nightly sleep duration of only five hours, which was more than one hour shorter than the non-carrier twin, who slept for about six hours and five minutes per night. The twin with the gene mutation also ...

A long-term follow-up study (HPV-023; NCT00518336) shows the sustained efficacy, immunogenicity and safety of GlaxoSmithKline's human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccine Cervarix. Women vaccinated with the HPV-16/18 AS04-adjuvanted vaccine were followed for more than nine years, and vaccine efficacy (VE) against incident infection was 100%. This is the longest follow-up report for a licensed HPV vaccine. Visit https://www.landesbioscience.com/journals/vaccines/article/29532/ for the full paper. HPV and vaccination Persistent infection with HPV has been clearly established ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Implementation of an algorithm aimed to diagnose pediatric patients with suspected appendicitis reduces the utilization of computed tomography (CT) scans, without affecting diagnostic accuracy, Mayo Clinic Children's Center researchers have found. The study was recently published in the journal Surgery. Acute appendicitis is the most common cause of acute abdominal pain in children. Appendicitis occurs when the appendix becomes inflamed and filled with pus. CT scans are often used to diagnose acute appendicitis because they are accurate, widely available ...

AMHERST, Mass. – A first-of-its-kind study of bigeye tuna movements in the northwestern Atlantic Ocean led by Molly Lutcavage, director of the Large Pelagics Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found among other things that these fish cover a wide geographical range with pronounced north-south movements from Georges Bank to the Brazilian shelf, and they favor a high-use area off Cape Hatteras southwest of Bermuda for foraging. This NOAA-funded research, which used a new approach to study one of the most important commercial tuna species in the ...

As U.S. high schools beef up math and science requirements for graduation, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found that more rigorous academics drive some students to drop out. The research team reported in the June/July issue of the journal Educational Researcher that policies increasing the number of required high school math and science courses are linked to higher dropout rates. "There's been a movement to make education in the United States compare more favorably to education in the rest of the world, and part of that has involved increasing ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Athletes and others reporting cognitive difficulties after a head injury are usually diagnosed as having had a concussion. But is it really a concussion? A new study published by University at Buffalo medical faculty finds that many of the same symptoms are common to concussions and to injuries to the neck and/or balance system, known collectively as cervical/vestibular injuries. The research was based on responses about symptoms from 128 patients – some of whom were professional athletes – who were being treated at UB's Concussion Management Clinic in ...

Scientists have learned that recent fears of invasive lionfish causing fish poisoning may be unfounded. If so, current efforts to control lionfish by fishing derbies and targeted fisheries may remain the best way to control the invasion. And there's a simple way to know for sure whether a lionfish is toxic: test it after it's been cooked. Pacific lionfish were first reported off the coast of Florida in the 1980s, and have been gaining swiftly in number ever since. They're now found in marine habitats throughout the tropical and subtropical Western Atlantic, Caribbean ...

New research, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), counters a widely-held scientific view that thawing permafrost uniformly accelerates atmospheric warming, indicating instead that certain Arctic lakes store more greenhouse gases than they emit into the atmosphere. The study, published this week in the journal Nature, focuses on thermokarst lakes, which occur as permafrost thaws and creates surface depressions that fill with melted fresh water, converting what was previously frozen land into lakes. The research suggests that Arctic thermokarst lakes ...

Observations by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope of several stellar eruptions, called novae, firmly establish these relatively common outbursts almost always produce gamma rays, the most energetic form of light. "There's a saying that one is a fluke, two is a coincidence, and three is a class, and we're now at four novae and counting with Fermi," said Teddy Cheung, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, and the lead author of a paper reporting the findings in the Aug. 1 edition of the journal Science. A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening ...

HOUSTON -- (July 31, 2014) -- Scientists have new clues this week about one of the baffling electronic properties of the iron-based high-temperature superconductor barium iron nickel arsenide. A Rice University-led team of U.S., German and Chinese physicists has published the first evidence, based on sophisticated neutron measurements, of a link between magnetic properties and the material's tendency, at sufficiently low temperatures, to become a better conductor of electricity in some directions than in others. The odd behavior, which has been documented in a number ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have unexpectedly discovered the most distant galaxy that acts as a cosmic magnifying glass. Seen here as it looked 9.6 billion years ago, this monster elliptical galaxy breaks the previous record-holder by 200 million years. These "lensing" galaxies are so massive that their gravity bends, magnifies, and distorts light from objects behind it, a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. Finding one in such a small area of the sky is so rare that you would normally have to survey a region hundreds of times larger to find just ...

HOUSTON – (July 31, 2014) – A flu virus acts like a Trojan horse as it attacks and infects host cells. Scientists at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine have acquired a clearer view of the well-hidden mechanism involved. Their computer simulations may lead to new strategies to stop influenza, perhaps even a one-size-fits-all vaccine. The discovery detailed this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science shows the path taken by hemagglutinin, a glycoprotein that rides the surface of the influenza virus, as it releases fusion peptides to invade ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- By tracing nearly 3,000 genes to the earliest common ancestor of butterflies and moths, University of Florida scientists have created an extensive "Tree of Lepidoptera" in the first study to use large-scale, next-generation DNA sequencing. Among the study's more surprising findings: Butterflies are more closely related to small moths than to large ones, which completely changes scientists' understanding of how butterflies evolved. The study also found that some insects once classified as moths are actually butterflies, increasing the number of butterfly ...

The prevalence of heroin use has been rising steadily in the U.S in recent years. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the number of individuals reporting past year heroin use almost doubled between 2007 (373,000) and 2012 (669,000). Emerging evidence suggests the increase may be linked to prescription opioid (PO) users who transition from oral and/or intranasal PO use to heroin use, with POs providing the entryway to regular opioid use, and ultimately, heroin injection. This drug-use trajectory appears to have become increasingly common over the past ...

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos are the largest minority group in the United States, comprising 16.7% of the population. Approximately one-third of Latinos are obese and are 1.2 times as likely to be obese compared to non-Hispanic Whites. NYU College of Nursing student researcher Lauren Gerchow, BSN, RN, MSN candidate, has sought to identify the factors that contribute to this problem by compiling a systematic review of qualitative studies that focused on food patterns in Latina women recently published in Nursing Research. "The review focuses on women ...

It has long been known that biomass burning – burning forests to create agricultural lands, burning savannah as a ritual , slash-and-burn agriculture and wildfires – figures into both climate change and public health. But until the release of a new study by Stanford University Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, the degree of that contribution had never been comprehensively quantified. Jacobson's research, detailed in a paper published July 30 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, is based on a three-dimensional computer model ...

There is epidemiological evidence that links type B coxsackie virus (CVB) infection with heart disease, and research published on July 31st in PLOS Pathogens now suggests a mechanism by which early infection impairs the heart's ability to tolerate stress at later stages of life. CVB infection is very common and affects mostly children. The symptoms range widely: over half of the infections are thought to be asymptomatic, the majority of children who get sick have only a mild fever, and a very small proportion get inflammation of the heart or brain. On the other hand, ...

Quantifying and transforming the history of culture into visual representation isn't easy. There are thousands of individual stories across millennia to consider, and some historical conditions are nearly impossible to measure. Addressing this challenge, Dr. Maximilian Schich, associate professor of arts and technology at The University of Texas at Dallas, has brought together a team of network and complexity scientists to create and quantify a big picture of European and North American cultural history. Schich, an art historian who works under the umbrella of the ...

VIDEO: This movie is an animated version of how birds arose from a very special lineage of evolving dinosaurs. Click here for more information. A new study involving scientists from the University of Southampton has revealed how massive, meat-eating, ground-dwelling dinosaurs evolved into agile flying birds: they just kept shrinking and shrinking, for over 50 million years. Today, in the journal Science, the researchers present a detailed family tree of dinosaurs and their ...

Cambridge, MA. Thurs. July 31, 2014 — Extensive sequencing of DNA from thousands of individuals in Finland has unearthed scores of mutations that destroy gene function and are found at unusually high frequencies. Among these are two mutations in a gene called LPA that may reduce a person's risk of heart disease. These findings are an exciting proof-of-concept for a new "genotype first" approach to identifying rare genetic variants associated with, or protecting from, disease followed by extensive medical review of carriers. The new study by researchers from the Broad Institute, ...

Alan Turing, the British mathematician (1912-1954), is famous for a number of breakthroughs, which altered the course of the 20th century. In 1936 he published a paper, which laid the foundation of computer science, providing the first formal concept of a computer algorithm. He next played a pivotal role in the Second World War, designing the machines which cracked the German military codes, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis in several crucial battles. And in the late 1940's he turned his attention to artificial intelligence and proposed a challenge, now called the ...