The publication of the new joint ESC/ESA Guidelines on non-cardiac surgery: cardiovascular assessment and management introduces a number of recommendations in the field. Among other topics, the Guidelines include updated information on the use of clinical indices and biomarkers in risk assessment, and the use of novel anticoagulants, statins, aspirin and beta-blockers in risk mitigation. Worldwide, non-cardiac surgery is associated with an average overall complication rate of between 7% and 11% and a mortality rate between 0.8% and 1.5%, depending on safety precautions. ...

A team of chemists from New York University and the University of Cambridge has developed a method for examining the inner workings of battery-like devices called supercapacitors, which can be charged up extremely quickly and can deliver high electrical power. Their technique, based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), establishes a means for monitoring and potentially enhancing the performance of such devices. The work, which appears in the latest issue of the journal Nature Communications, focuses on electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs), a type of so-called supercapacitor. ...

Charlottesville, VA (August 1, 2014). The Journal of Neurosurgery is pleased to announce today's publication of a supplement to the August issue entitled "Race Against the Clock: Overcoming Challenges in the Management of Anticoagulant-Associated Intracerebral Hemorrhage." Authored by Peter Le Roux, MD, Charles V. Pollack, Jr., MA, MD, Melissa Milan, MD, and Alisa Schaefer, PhD, the 20-page supplement covers the current knowledge of anticoagulant-associated intracerebral hemorrhage (AAICH) and methods in use for management of the condition. Provided by Paradigm Medical ...

The co-authors of a new study, including two Simon Fraser University research associates, cite new reasons why scientists, industry representatives and policymakers must collaborate closely on minimizing damage to the natural world from shale gas development. Viorel Popescu and Maureen Ryan, David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellows in SFU's Biological Sciences department, are among eight international co-authors of the newly published research in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. Shale gas development is the extraction of natural gas from shale formations ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (August 1, 2014) – Women over the age of 65 face numerous barriers to good health: an increased risk for obesity, greater struggles against poverty and higher rates of asthma with worse health outcomes. An article published in the August issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), outlines the challenges faced by older women in treating asthma, and offers practical solutions to improve their care. "Allergists want older women to understand that ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (August 1, 2014) – If you have asthma, you may have an asthma action plan with a "stoplight system" to help you recognize and respond to changes and understand when symptoms are getting worse and need more attention. If you're in the green zone, you're doing well, yellow means your asthma has worsened and action is needed, and red means you require urgent care. New guidelines are now available to help your allergist steer you out of the yellow zone, back into green and away from the red zone. "Management of acute loss of asthma control in the ...

PHILADELPHIA — Women who recently used birth control pills containing high-dose estrogen and a few other formulations had an increased risk for breast cancer, whereas women using some other formulations did not, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Our results suggest that use of contemporary oral contraceptives [birth control pills] in the past year is associated with an increased breast cancer risk relative to never or former oral contraceptive use, and that this risk may vary by oral contraceptive ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Graphene, an ultrathin form of carbon with exceptional electrical, optical, and mechanical properties, has become a focus of research on a variety of potential uses. Now researchers at MIT have found a way to control how the material conducts electricity by using extremely short light pulses, which could enable its use as a broadband light detector. The new findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters, in a paper by graduate student Alex Frenzel, Nuh Gedik, and three others. The researchers found that by controlling the concentration ...

In the United States, natural-gas production from shale rock has increased by more than 700 percent since 2007. Yet scientists still do not fully understand the industry's effects on nature and wildlife, according to a report in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. As gas extraction continues to vastly outpace scientific examination, a team of eight conservation biologists from various organizations and institutions, including Princeton University, concluded that determining the environmental impact of gas-drilling sites — such as chemical contamination ...

A little over a decade ago, prestin was found to be a key gene responsible for hearing in mammals. Prestin makes a protein found in the hair cells of the inner ear that contracts and expands rapidly to transmit signals that help the cochlea, like an antique phonograph horn, amplify sound waves to make hearing more sensitivity. Now, in a new study published in the advanced online edition of Molecular Biology and Evolution, Peng Shi, et al., have shown that prestin has also independently evolved to play a critical role in the ultrasonic hearing range of animal sonar, ...

In this month's issue of Physics World, Ashley Dale from the University of Bristol warns of the "catastrophic" and "long-lasting" impacts of "solar super-storms" and the dangers we face if the threat continues to go unnoticed. Dale, who was a member of an international task force – dubbed SolarMAX – set up to identify the risks of a solar storm and how its impact could be minimized, explains how it is only a matter of time before an exceptionally violent solar storm is propelled towards Earth. Such a storm would wreak havoc with our communication systems and power supplies, ...

A new study of liver patients by the University of Southampton shows that a Minimum Unit Price (MUP) policy for alcohol is exquisitely targeted towards the heaviest drinkers with cirrhosis. Published today in Clinical Medicine, the peer review journal for the Royal College of Physicians, the researchers studied the amount and type of alcohol drunk by 404 liver patients, and also asked patients how much they paid for alcohol. They found that patients with alcohol related cirrhosis were drinking on average the equivalent of four bottles of vodka each week, and were buying ...

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 ...