VIDEO: Columbia researchers discuss how e-cigarettes may promote illicit drug use and addiction. Click here for more information. NEW YORK, NY (September 3, 2014)—Like conventional cigarettes, electronic cigarettes (or e-cigarettes) may function as a "gateway drug"—a drug that lowers the threshold for addiction to other substances, such as marijuana and cocaine—according to the 120th Shattuck lecture, presented to the Massachusetts Medical Society by Columbia researchers ...

Prostate cancer patients whose tumors contain a shortened protein called AR-V7, which can be detected in the blood, are less likely to respond to two widely used drugs for metastatic prostate cancer, according to results of a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center. If large-scale studies validate the findings, the investigators say men with detectable blood levels of AR-V7 should avoid these two drugs and instead take other medicines to treat their prostate cancer. A report on the work is described online Sept. 3 in the New England Journal of ...

Bottom Line: Airline pilots and cabin crews appear to have twice the incidence of melanoma as the general population. Author: Martina Sanlorenzo, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues. Background: Melanoma is a common cancer in the United States; in 2014, 76,100 people will be diagnosed with the skin cancer and 9,710 people will die. Several studies have suggested a higher incidence of melanoma in pilots and flight crew. Flight-based workers are thought to have a greater occupational hazard risk of melanoma because of increased altitude-related ...

Bottom Line: A diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) appears to be associated with higher rates of schizophrenia and schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Authors: Sandra M. Meier, Ph.D., of Aarhus University, Denmark, and colleagues. Background: OCD and schizophrenia are distinct and infrequently overlapping disorders. But some studies have suggested higher rates of co-existing illness with the two disorders in patients. How the Study Was Conducted: The authors assessed the potential relationship between the two disorders using data from Danish registers. ...

Parents of twins often tell them apart through subtle differences such as facial expression, moles, voice tone and gait. Similarly, physicians treating women with endometrial cancer must be able to distinguish between different versions of this disease form that, on the surface, appear the same. With endometrial cancer, the most common gynecological cancer in the western world and the fourth most prevalent in the U.S., it can literally be a matter of life and death. Mortality rates from this cancer have nearly tripled in the last 25 years and are thought to be attributed ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Sleep difficulties may be linked to faster rates of decline in brain volume, according to a study published in the September 3, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Sleep has been proposed to be "the brain's housekeeper", serving to repair and restore the brain. The study included 147 adults 20 and 84 years old. Researchers examined the link between sleep difficulties, such as having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep at night, and brain volume. All participants underwent two MRI brain scans, ...

Polyester clothes smell worse than cotton, following intensive exercise by their wearers, because bacteria that cause odor grow better on polyester, according to research published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. In the study, the investigators collected t-shirts from 26 healthy individuals following an intensive, hour-long bicycle spinning session, and incubated the shirts for 28 hours before having them inspected by a trained odor panel. The researchers also investigated the taxonomy of the bacteria on the shirts, and in the axillaries. ...

NASA has Tropical Storm Dolly covered by satellite and the remotely piloted Global Hawk aircraft. Both captured data on Dolly before it made landfall in eastern Mexico. The MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite took an image of Tropical Storms Norbert in the Eastern Pacific and Dolly in the Gulf of Mexico at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Sept. 2. The image showed Dolly is a much more organized storm than Norbert, and revealed Dolly's strongest, towering thunderstorms around the center of circulation. Norbert is close to the ...

Approximately every 11 years, the sun undergoes a complete personality change from quiet and calm to violently active. The height of the sun's activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of numerous sunspots, punctuated with profound eruptions that send radiation and solar particles out into the far reaches of space. However, the timing of the solar cycle is far from precise. Since humans began regularly recording sunspots in the 17th century, the time between successive solar maxima has been as short as nine years, but as long as 14, making it hard to determine its cause. ...

Tropical Storm Norbert has now triggered Tropical Storm Warnings for Mexico's West Coast, and NASA's Terra satellite showed how close it is to land. On Wednesday, September 3, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued a Tropical Storm Warning from La Paz to Santa Fe, Mexico. There is also a Tropical Storm Watch in effect from north of Santa Fe northward to Cabo San Lazaro, Mexico. he MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite took an image of Tropical Storms Norbert in the Eastern Pacific and Dolly in the Gulf of ...

Ithaca, N.Y.— Hundreds of thousands of volunteer data collectors are due for some thanks from scientists, according to a new paper that reveals the role of citizen science in studies of birds and climate change. Data collected by amateurs underpins up to 77 percent of the studies in this field, but that fact is largely invisible by the time the research appears in journals, according to a study published today in the open-access journal PLOS ONE: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0106508 "Our paper is a chance to say thank you to the ...

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (Sept. 3, 2014) -- Social networks have become a dominant force in society. Family, friends, peers, community leaders and media communicators are all part of people's social networks. Individuals within a network may have different opinions on important issues, but it's their collective actions that determine the path society takes. To understand the process through which we operate as a group, and to explain why we do what we do, researchers have developed a novel computational model and the corresponding conditions for reaching consensus in a wide ...

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is no longer a fatal condition, thanks to newer medications inhibiting the retrovirus, but a puzzling phenomenon has surfaced among these patients — non-AIDS complications. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have resolved the mystery with their discovery of the leaky gut as the offender. Bacterial products seep out of the colon, trigger inflammation throughout the body and set into motion the processes of cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, chronic kidney and metabolic diseases, and cancer. Their ...

DARIEN, IL – New research suggests that sleeping 7 to 8 hours per night is associated with the lowest risk of absence from work due to sickness. The results underscore the importance of the "Sleep Well, Be Well" campaign of the National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project, a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Sleep Research Society and other partners. Results show that the risk of an extended absence from work due to sickness rose sharply among those who reported sleeping less than 6 hours or more than ...

Scientists discovered two new species of sea-dwelling, mushroom-shaped organisms, according to a study published September 3, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jean Just from University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and colleagues. Scientists classify organisms based on shared characteristics using a taxonomic rank, including kingdom, phylum, and species. In 1986, the authors of this study collected organisms at 400 and 1000 meters deep on the south-east Australian continental slope and only just recently isolated two types of mushroom-shaped organisms that they couldn't ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Few people would guess that some of the most detrimental damage from a traumatic brain injury is to the lungs, but transplant specialists are keenly aware of this phenomenon. Indiana University research published Sept. 3 in Science Translational Medicine sheds light on the potentially lethal process. Research conducted by an interdisciplinary team co-led by Fletcher A. White, Ph.D., the Vergil K. Stoelting Professor of Anesthesia, and David S. Wilkes, M.D., executive associate dean for research affairs and director of the Center for Immunobiology at the ...

The current way of diagnosing type-2 diabetes using blood glucose levels needs to be revised, research by scientists from The University of Manchester and King's College London suggests. The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE today (3 September), show the current method of diagnosis - using blood glucose levels - means patients are diagnosed too late so that their blood vessels may already be damaged. Type 2 diabetes, which affects over 90% of all adults with diabetes, often leads to heart damage and blood vessel problems in the brain, eyes and kidneys. It ...

A new study calls into question the evolutionary stability of an ecological explanation of biodiversity. The study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, brings together evolutionary theory and ecology to explore one of the big questions in ecology: How is biodiversity developed and maintained? "This is a fundamental question if we want to protect biodiversity—what exactly do we need to protect?" says IIASA Evolution and Ecology Program Director Ulf Dieckmann, who led the study together with Florian Hartig from the University of Freiburg, collaborating with colleagues from ...

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania demonstrates that wearable sensors could one day transform the correctional system by tracking gun use by community-based offenders, who account for a disproportionate share of fatal and non-fatal shootings. Currently, detecting and deterring this type of crime can be challenging in the absence of reliable evidence that a particular community-supervised offender illegally used a firearm. In the study, published this week in the journal PLOS ONE, Charles Loeffler, an assistant professor of criminology at Penn, demonstrates ...

Alexandria, Va., USA – The International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) have published a paper titled "SSRIs and the Risk of Osseointegrated Implant Failure – A Cohort Study." Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs), the most widely used drugs for the treatment of depression, have been reported to reduce bone formation and increase the risk of bone fracture. Since osseointegration is influenced by bone metabolism, this study investigates the association between SSRIs and the risk of failures in osseointegrated implants. The manuscript, ...

To arrange for an interview with a researcher, please contact the Communications staff member identified at the end of each tip. For more information on ORNL and its research and development activities, please refer to one of our media contacts. If you have a general media-related question or comment, you can send it to news@ornl.gov. OPTICS – Precision projectile tracker … Rifle optical sighting systems with a 19th century heritage could blast into modern times with a laser-based bullet tracking system being developed by a team led by Slobodan Rajic of Oak Ridge National ...

Completing tasks and crossing them off the ubiquitous "to-do" list is a great feeling. But what about those nagging tasks we keep putting off? What's the difference between those jobs that get completed and those that do not? The answer may be our perception of time, according to new research by Yanping Tu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. The study, "The Categorization of Time and Its Impact on Task Initiation," recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research, finds that people are more likely to begin a job when, ...

TORONTO, September 3, 2014 – Keeping upright in a low-gravity environment is not easy, and NASA documents abound with examples of astronauts falling on the lunar surface. Now, a new study by an international team of researchers led by York University professors Laurence Harris and Michael Jenkin, published today in PLOS ONE, suggests that the reason for all these moon mishaps might be because its gravity isn't sufficient to provide astronauts with unambiguous information on which way is "up". "The perception of the relative orientation of oneself and the world is important ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Using high-resolution topography models not available in the past, geologists can greatly enrich their research. However, current methods of acquisition are costly and require trained personnel with high-tech, cumbersome equipment. In light of this, Kendra Johnson and colleagues have developed a new system that takes advantage of affordable, user-friendly equipment and software to produce topography data over small, sparsely vegetated sites at comparable (or better) resolution and accuracy to standard methods. Their workflow is based on structure ...

VIDEO: Athletic performance varies from day to day, which can make it difficult for strength and conditioning professionals to judge whether athletes' improvements are due to effective training. Now, University of... Click here for more information. COLUMBIA, Mo. –Athletic performance varies from day to day, which can make it difficult for strength and conditioning professionals to judge whether athletes' improvements are due to effective training. Now, University of Missouri ...