(Millbrook, NY) The month of May brings many things, among them Mother's Day, tulips, and Lyme Disease Awareness campaigns. But according to Dr. Richard S. Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY, if we want to get a leg up on tick-borne illness we need to become vigilant earlier in the season. In New York State, the blacklegged ticks that carry Lyme disease and other pathogens are already active in late April. Ostfeld explains: "For more than two decades, we've been monitoring tick activity in the Hudson Valley region ...

KNOXVILLE--The monk parakeets that have invaded Europe and North America over the last 40-50 years fortifying their massive communal nests atop utility poles in many urban areas appear to have originated from the same small area in South America, according to a new study. Considered one of the best speaking parrots, thousands of these bright green birds have been imported for the pet trade, and feral populations began appearing in the United States in the 1960s and in Europe in the 1980s. And yet, these two independent invasions--in the United States and in Europe--appear ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- UC Davis investigators have settled a long-standing controversy surrounding the molecular basis of an inherited disorder that historically affected Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe but now also arises in other populations of Semitic descent, particularly families from Saudi Arabia. Through a series of elegant experiments, the researchers uncovered the biochemical underpinnings of Canavan disease, a type of leukodystrophy that is an incurable and progressively fatal neurological condition. The UC Davis team identified an abnormally high buildup ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A national survey released today by The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center shows that most women don't know the risks or symptoms females face when it comes to having a stroke. The survey of 1,000 women released in time for Stroke Awareness Month in May found that only 11 percent of women could correctly identify pregnancy, lupus, migraine headaches and oral contraception or hormone replacement therapy as female-specific stroke risks. The survey also found that only 10 percent were aware that hiccups combined with atypical chest pain are among ...

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) have found a long-sought "missing link" between supernova explosions that generate gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and those that don't. The scientists found that a stellar explosion seen in 2012 has many characteristics expected of one that generates a powerful burst of gamma rays, yet no such burst occurred. "This is a striking result that provides a key insight about the mechanism underlying these explosions," said Sayan Chakraborti, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). "This object ...

Older women with urinary tract infections who are taking the commonly prescribed antibiotic nitrofurantoin are more likely to experience treatment failure, resulting in a second antibiotic prescription or a hospital visit, than if they received another antibiotic, according to research in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). More than 25% of older adults have low kidney function, and bladder infections are common. Nitrofurantoin is one of the most commonly prescribed antibiotics for bladder and other urinary tract infections, with an estimated 25 million prescriptions ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Repeated alcohol exposure during adolescence results in long-lasting changes in the region of the brain that controls learning and memory, according to a research team at Duke Medicine that used a rodent model as a surrogate for humans. The study, published April 27 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, provides new insights at the cellular level for how alcohol exposure during adolescence, before the brain is fully developed, can result in cellular and synaptic abnormalities that have enduring, detrimental effects on behavior. "In ...

April 27, 2015--Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health looked at the frequency of nonmedical prescription opioid use and the risk of heroin-related behaviors and found that past-year heroin use rose among individuals taking opioids like oxycontin and these increases varied by race and ethnicity. The most significant rise in heroin use was among Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites, where the rate of heroin use for the latter group increased by 75 percent in 2008-2011 compared to earlier years. Findings are online in the journal Drug and Alcohol ...

Determining whether your snoring is merely annoying, or crosses the threshold into a life-threatening problem, isn't convenient or cheap. The gold standard for diagnosing sleep apnea -- a disease which affects roughly 1 in 13 Americans -- requires an overnight hospital stay and costs thousands of dollars. The patient sleeps in a strange bed, gets hooked up to a tangle of wires, and undergoes an intensive polysomnography test to count how many times a night he or she struggles to breathe. By contrast, a new app developed at the University of Washington uses a smartphone ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (April 27, 2015) -- Two wrongs can make a right, at least in the world of visual perception and motor functioning, according to two University of Oregon brain scientists. In a two-experiment study, published last month in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, UO neuroscientists Paul Dassonville and Scott A. Reed used eye-tracker technology in a dark laboratory to test a developing theory about how the brain determines the locations of nearby objects. In a test of perception, 20 students were asked to report whether a line was tilted left or right ...

BOSTON - Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight knows that it's no fun to feel hungry. In fact, the drive to tame gnawing hunger pangs can sabotage even the best-intentioned dieter. But how exactly is it that fasting creates these uncomfortable feelings - and consuming food takes them away? Working to unravel the complex wiring system that underlies this intense physiological state, investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), part of the National Institutes of Health ...

Although closely related to the notorious carnivore Tyrannosaurus rex, a new lineage of dinosaur discovered in Chile is proving to be an evolutionary jigsaw puzzle, as it preferred to graze upon plants. Palaeontologists are referring to Chilesaurus diegosuarezi as a 'platypus' dinosaur because of its extremely bizarre combination of characters that include a proportionally small skull and feet more akin to primitive long-neck dinosaurs. Chilesaurus diegosuarezi is nested within the theropod group of dinosaurs, the dinosaurian group that gathers the famous meat eaters ...

If you're finding it difficult to stick to a weight-loss diet, scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus say you can likely blame hunger-sensitive cells in your brain known as AGRP neurons. According to new experiments, these neurons are responsible for the unpleasant feelings of hunger that make snacking irresistible. The negative emotions associated with hunger can make it hard to maintain a diet and lose weight, and these neurons help explain that struggle, says Scott Sternson, a group leader at Janelia. In an environment where food ...

Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that neurons are risk takers: They use minor "DNA surgeries" to toggle their activity levels all day, every day. Since these activity levels are important in learning, memory and brain disorders, the researchers think their finding will shed light on a range of important questions. A summary of the study will be published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience on April 27. "We used to think that once a cell reaches full maturation, its DNA is totally stable, including the molecular tags attached to it to control its genes and ...

Eating 3,000 mg per day of salt or more appears to have no adverse effect on blood pressure in adolescent girls, while those girls who consumed 2,400 mg per day or more of potassium had lower blood pressure at the end of adolescence, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The scientific community has historically believed most people in the United States consume too much salt in their diets. The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends limiting sodium intake to less than 2,300 mg per day for healthy individuals between the ages of 2 and ...

Survivors of Hodgkin lymphoma appear to be at higher risk for cardiovascular diseases and both physicians and patients need to be aware of this increased risk, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a curable cancer with 10-year survival rates exceeding 80 percent. Treatment for HL has been associated with increased risks for other cancers and cardiovascular diseases, and those later cardiovascular complications may be the consequence of radiotherapy and chemotherapy in HL treatment, according to the study background. Flora ...

Researchers have developed a large-scale sequencing technique called Genome and Transcriptome Sequencing (G&T-seq) that reveals, simultaneously, the unique genome sequence of a single cell and the activity of genes within that single cell. The study, published today in Nature Methods, has experimentally established for the first time that when a cell loses or gains a copy of a chromosome during cell division, the genes in that particular region of DNA show decreased or increased expression. While this has long been assumed by genetic researchers, it has not been seen ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (April 27, 2015) - Add water to a half-filled cup and the water level rises. This everyday experience reflects a positive material property of the water-cup system. But what if adding more water lowers the water level by deforming the cup? This would mean a negative compressibility. Now, a quantum version of this phenomenon, called negative electronic compressibility (NEC), has been discovered, a team of researchers led by physicists at Boston College reports today in the online edition of the journal Nature Materials. Physicists have long theorized ...

Reluctance to share data about personal energy use is likely to be a major obstacle when implementing 'smart' technologies designed to monitor use and support energy efficient behaviours, according to new research led by academics at The University of Nottingham. The study, published online by the journal Nature Climate Change, found that while more than half of people quizzed would be willing to reduce their personal energy consumption, some were wary about sharing their information with third parties. Increasing energy efficiency and encouraging flexible energy use ...

April 27, 2015 -- A new breast cancer gene has been identified in a study led by Women's College Hospital (WCH) researcher Dr. Mohammad Akbari, who is also an assistant professor with the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. The study, which was published online today in Nature Genetics, describes how mutations in a gene called RECQL are strongly linked to the onset of breast cancer in two populations of Polish and French-Canadian women. "Our work is an exciting step in identifying all of the relevant genes that are associated with inherited ...

New York, New York -- A multi-year study led by researchers from the Simons Center for Data Analysis (SCDA) and major universities and medical schools has broken substantial new ground, establishing how genes work together within 144 different human tissues and cell types in carrying out those tissues' functions. The paper, to be published online by Nature Genetics on April 27 (at http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ng.3259), also demonstrates how computer science and statistical methods may combine to aggregate and analyze very large -- and stunningly diverse -- genomic 'big-data' ...

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have discovered that mitochondria, the major energy source for most cells, also play an important role in stem cell development -- a purpose notably distinct from the tiny organelle's traditional job as the cell's main source of the adenosine triphosphate (ATP) energy needed for routine cell metabolism. Specifically, the NYU Langone team found that blocking the action of the mitochondrial ATP synthase enzyme stalled egg cell development from stem cells in experiments in fruit flies, one of the main organisms used to study cell ...

An international team of scientists has discovered what amounts to a molecular reset button for our internal body clock. Their findings reveal a potential target to treat a range of disorders, from sleep disturbances to other behavioral, cognitive, and metabolic abnormalities, commonly associated with jet lag, shift work and exposure to light at night, as well as with neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression and autism. In a study published online April 27 in Nature Neuroscience, the authors, led by researchers at McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal, report ...

Bethesda, MD (April 27, 2015) -- Patients are always interested in understanding what they should eat and how it will impact their health. Physicians are just as interested in advancing their understanding of the major health effects of foods and food-related diseases. To satisfy this need, the editors of Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association, are pleased to announce the publication of this year's highly anticipated special 13th issue on food, the immune system and the gastrointestinal tract. "This special issue provides ...

DARIEN, IL - A new study of night shift workers suggests that overnight occupational and cognitive impairment is more strongly correlated to insomnia than it is to sleepiness. Results show that night shift workers classified as alert insomniacs had the highest level of impairment in work productivity and cognitive function, which was significantly worse than controls. This occupational impairment was more severe in alert insomniacs than in insomniacs with excessive sleepiness. The study also found that alert insomniacs reported significantly greater fatigue than sleepy ...