Washington, DC (April 24, 2014) — Dialysis patients with more muscle mass had better scores on a 6-minute walking test as well as better scores on physical and mental health questionnaires in a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). The findings suggest that physical activity that builds muscle mass may help improve the health and quality of life of dialysis patients. Physical functional ability is often significantly impaired in patients on maintenance hemodialysis. Srinivasan Beddhu, MD (University ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have applied a new image processing technique to obtain near-infrared scattered light photos of five disks observed around young stars in the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes database. These disks are telltale evidence for newly formed planets. If astronomers initially miss something in their review of data, they can make new discoveries by revisiting earlier data with new image processing techniques, thanks to the wealth of information stored in the Hubble data archive. This is what Rémi Soummer, of the Space Telescope ...

PHILADELPHIA – A new study suggests that targeting B cells, which are a type of white blood cell in the immune system, may be associated with reduced disease activity for people with multiple sclerosis (MS). The study is released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. For the study, 231 people with relapsing-remitting MS received either a placebo or one of several low dosages of the drug ofatumumab, which is an anti-B cell antibody, for 24 weeks, with the first 12 weeks making up ...

Fetal heart experts working with the American Heart Association have developed guidelines to help healthcare providers care for unborn babies with heart problems, as well as their families. The statement, Diagnosis and Treatment of Fetal Cardiac Disease, is published in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation. "Congenital heart disease is the most common birth defect that can result in either death or significant health problems in newborn babies," said Mary T. Donofrio, M.D., lead writer of the statement, and director of the Fetal Heart Program and Critical ...

A substantial proportion of risk for developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD), resides in genes that are part of specific, interconnected biological pathways, according to researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who conducted a broad study of almost 2,500 families in the United States and throughout the world. The study, titled "Convergence of Genes and Cellular Pathways Dysregulated in Autism Spectrum Disorders," was first published online in the American Journal of Human Genetics on April 24. ASD affects about one percent of the population ...

Have you ever accidently missed a red light or a stop sign? Or have you heard someone mention a visible event that you passed by but totally missed seeing? "When we have different things competing for our attention, we can only be aware of so much of what we see," said Kyle Mathewson, Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois. "For example, when you're driving, you might really be concentrating on obeying traffic signals." But say there's an unexpected event: an emergency vehicle, a pedestrian, or an animal running into the road—will you actually ...

Sifting through the chemical clues left behind by arson is delicate, time-consuming work, but University of Alberta researchers teaming with RCMP scientists in Canada, have found a way to speed the process. A computer program developed by University of Alberta chemistry professor James Harynuk, his team of graduate and undergraduate researchers and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police National Forensic Laboratory Services, can cut the need for extra levels of human analysis, reducing the waiting time to find out the cause of a deliberately set fire. That means quicker ...

PULLMAN, Wash. – New research from Washington State University reveals how youth who work with horses experience a substantial reduction in stress – and the evidence lies in kids' saliva. The results are published in the American Psychological Association's Human-Animal Interaction Bulletin this month. Pendry-80"We were coming at this from a prevention perspective," said Patricia Pendry, a developmental psychologist at WSU who studies how stress "gets under the skin" and the effects of prevention programs on human development. "We are especially interested in optimizing ...

Ex vivo expansion of hematopoietic stem cells from cord blood Compared to hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) isolated from adults, HSCs isolated from cord blood (CB) have enhanced proliferative potential and can lead to hematological reconstitution when engrafted in children with hematological malignancies or genetic defects. Unfortunately, small numbers of HSCs are present in single CB collections, limiting their use as grafts for adults. For several decades investigators have used a variety of strategies to expand the numbers of CB HSC ex vivo with limited success. Evidence ...

It's broadly understood that the world's oceans play a crucial role in the global-scale cycling and exchange of carbon between Earth's ecosystems and atmosphere. Now scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have taken a leap forward in understanding the microscopic underpinnings of these processes. When phytoplankton use carbon dioxide to make new cells, a substantial portion of that cellular material is released into the sea as a buffet of edible molecules collectively called "dissolved organic carbon." The majority of these molecules are eventually ...

Suicide is a general risk for people with psychosis. According to the Journal of Psychiatry, 20 percent to 40 percent of those diagnosed with psychosis attempt suicide, and up to 10 percent succeed. And teens with psychotic symptoms are nearly 70 times more likely to attempt suicide than adolescents in the general population, according to a 2013 study in JAMA Psychiatry. But what contributes to such high numbers? Jane Timmons-Mitchell, PhD, from Case Western Reserve University's social work school, and Tatiana Falcone, MD, from the Cleveland Clinic, reviewed studies ...

This release is available in Japanese. An exceptionally bright supernova reported in 2013 is so luminous, a new study reports, because a lens in the sky amplified its light. The discovery of the lens settles an important controversy in the field of astronomy. In 2010, a team of scientists observed a supernova, PS1-10afx, shining brighter than any other in its class. "PS1-10afx is like nothing we have seen before," said senior author Robert Quimby of the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe. Its exceptional glow ...

New Haven, Conn. – An international team of researchers led by the Yale School of Public Health has successfully sequenced the genetic code of the tsetse fly, opening the door to scientific breakthroughs that could reduce or end the scourge of African sleeping sickness in sub-Saharan Africa. The study is published in the journal Science. It took nearly 10 years and more than 140 scientists from numerous countries to map the genome of the fly, also known as Glossina morsitans. Tsetse flies are the sole insect vectors of a disease that threatens the health of millions ...

MADISON – When chemist Tehshik Yoon looks out his office window, he sees a source of energy to drive chemical reactions. Plants "learned" to synthesize chemicals with sunlight eons ago; Yoon came to the field a bit more recently. But this week, in the journal Science, he and three collaborators detail a way to use sunlight and two catalysts to create molecules that are difficult to make with conventional techniques. In chemistry, heat and ultraviolet (UV) light are commonly used to drive reactions. Although light can power reactions that heat cannot, UV has disadvantages, ...

Nearly a decade ago, the era of optogenetics was ushered in with the development of channelrhodopsins, light-activated ion channels that can, with the flick of a switch, instantaneously turn on neurons in which they are genetically expressed. What has lagged behind, however, is the ability to use light to inactivate neurons with an equal level of reliability and efficiency. Now, Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists have used an analysis of channelrhodopsin's molecular structure to guide a series of genetic mutations to the ion channel that grant the power to ...

This news release is available in French. Although our chromosomes are relatively stable within our lifetimes, the genetic material found in our mitochondria is highly variable across individuals and may impact upon human health, say researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine Hospital. Genomes are changing, not just from generation to generation, but even and in fact within our individual cells. The researchers are the first to identify the extent to which the editing processes of RNA code can vary across a large number of individuals. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- The smallest, most abundant marine microbe, Prochlorococcus, is a photosynthetic bacteria species essential to the marine ecosystem. An estimated billion billion billion of the single-cell creatures live in the oceans, forming the base of the marine food chain and occupying a range of ecological niches based on temperature, light and chemical preferences, and interactions with other species. But the full extent and characteristics of diversity within this single species remains a puzzle. To probe this question, scientists in MIT's Department of Civil ...

Scientists have bioengineered, in neurons cultured from rats, an enhancement to a cutting edge technology that provides instant control over brain circuit activity with a flash of light. The research funded by the National Institutes of Health adds the same level of control over turning neurons off that, until now, had been limited to turning them on. "What had been working through a weak pump can now work through a highly responsive channel with many orders of magnitude more impact on cell function," explained Karl Deisseroth, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, Stanford, ...

Mining the genome of the disease-transmitting tsetse fly, researchers have revealed the genetic adaptions that allow it to have such unique biology and transmit disease to both humans and animals. The tsetse fly spreads the parasitic diseases human African trypanosomiasis, known as sleeping sickness, and Nagana that infect humans and animals respectively. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, 70 million people are currently at risk of deadly infection. Human African trypanosomiasis is on the World Health Organization's (WHO) list of neglected tropical diseases and since 2013 ...

STANFORD, Calif. — In 2005, a Stanford University scientist discovered how to switch brain cells on or off with light pulses by using special proteins from microbes to pass electrical current into neurons. Since then, research teams around the world have used the technique that this scientist, Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, dubbed "optogenetics" to study not just brain cells but heart cells, stem cells and the vast array of cell types across biology that can be regulated by electrical signals — the movement of ions across cell membranes. Optogenetics gave researchers a powerful ...

This press release is available in Japanese. Kashiwa Japan - A team of researchers led by Robert Quimby at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has announced the discovery of a galaxy that magnified a background, Type Ia supernova thirtyfold through gravitational lensing. This is the first example of strong gravitational lensing of a supernova confirms the team's previous explanation for the unusual properties of this supernova. The team has further shown how such discoveries of supernovae of Type Ia (SNIa) can be made far ...

Approved in 2012, Brazil's new Forest Code has few admirers. Agricultural interests argue that it threatens the livelihoods of farmers. Environmentalists counter that it imperils millions of hectares of forest, threatening to release the billions of tons of carbon they contain. A new study, co-authored by Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC) scientists Michael Coe, Marcia Macedo and Brazilian colleagues, published this week in Science, aims to clarify the new law. Entitled "Cracking Brazil's Forest Code," the article is the first to quantify the implications of recent changes ...

An international team led by researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University reports a breakthrough on understanding the demographic history of Stone-Age humans. A genomic analysis of eleven Stone-Age human remains from Scandinavia revealed that expanding Stone-age farmers assimilated local hunter-gatherers and that the hunter-gatherers were historically in lower numbers than the farmers. The study is published today, ahead of print, in the journal Science. The transition between a hunting-gathering lifestyle and a farming lifestyle has been debated for a century. ...

To most people, 86-degree Fahrenheit water is pleasant for bathing and swimming. To most sea creatures, however, it's deadly. As climate change heats up ocean temperatures, the future of species such as coral, which provides sustenance and livelihoods to a billion people, is threatened. Through an innovative experiment, Stanford researchers led by biology Professor Steve Palumbi have shown that some corals can – on the fly – adjust their internal functions to tolerate hot water 50 times faster than they would adapt through evolutionary change alone. The findings, published ...

A decade-long effort by members of the International Glossina Genome Initiative (IGGI) has produced the first complete genome sequence of the tsetse fly, Glossina morsitans. The blood-sucking insect is the sole transmitter of sleeping sickness, a potentially deadly disease endemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The vast store of genetic data will help researchers develop new ways to prevent the disease and provide insights into the tsetse fly's unique biology. The tsetse fly is quite unique in the insect world: it feeds exclusively on the blood of humans and animals, gives birth ...