Chapel Hill, N.C., April 17, 2015 - Achelios Therapeutics will announce results from a Phase IIa placebo-controlled clinical trial in moderate and severe migraine sufferers treated with TOPOFEN (TM), the company's proprietary topical anti-migraine therapy. The data to be presented demonstrate that the simple application of a well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), using the company's proprietary formulation on the skin, over the trigeminal nerve branches, can be a safe and effective alternative treatment for patients suffering from acute migraine. William ...

Study shows there are six different types of obese people Treating individuals according to which 'type' could be more effective Targeted strategies would also mean a more efficient use of NHS services One size does not fit all when it comes to tackling obesity, according to a new study by the University of Sheffield. Researchers looking at how to tackle the country's obesity issue - which costs the NHS £6billion pounds every year* - found that currently individuals are often treated the same regardless of how healthy they are, where they live or their ...

A new paper by a team of researchers led by Karel Matous, College of Engineering Associate Professor of Computational Mechanics in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, describes how an accurate statistical description of heterogeneous particulate materials, which is used within statistical micromechanics theories, governs the overall thermo-mechanical properties. This detailed statistical description was computed using a novel adaptive interpolation/integration scheme on the nation's largest parallel supercomputers. Quantifying ...

According to the World Health Organization's 2014 World Malaria Report, there are an estimated 198 million cases of malaria worldwide with 3.3 billion people at risk for contracting the infection. Although the impact of malaria is still significant, the statistics reflect a considerable reduction in the global malaria burden. Since 2010, disease transmission has been reduced by 30 percent and mortality due to malaria has decreased by almost half. Artemisinins are powerful drugs that have the most rapid action of all current drugs against Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite ...

For decades, frustrated parents and teachers have barked at fidgety children with ADHD to "Sit still and concentrate!" But new research shows that if you want ADHD kids to learn, you have to let them squirm. The foot-tapping, leg-swinging and chair-scooting movements of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder are actually vital to how they remember information and work out complex cognitive tasks, according to a study published in an early online release of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology. The findings show the longtime prevailing methods for ...

April 17, 2015 - A multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan scientists, led by researchers from NYU Langone Medical Center, have discovered the most diverse collection of bodily bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Indians in the remote Amazonian jungles of southern Venezuela. By comparison, the microbiome of people living in industrialized countries is about 40 percent less diverse, the scientists estimate. The team reports its findings today in the journal Science Advances. The results, the researchers say, suggest a link between modern antibiotics ...

Research by scientists at The University of Manchester has revealed that the colour of light has a major impact on how the brain clock measures time of day and on how the animals' physiology and behavior adjust accordingly. The study, for the first time, provides a neuronal mechanism for how our internal clock can measure changes in light colour that accompany dawn and dusk. In research publishing on April 17th in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, the researchers looked at the change in light around dawn and dusk to analyze whether colour could be used to determine ...

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine, collaborating with a multicenter team of U.S. and Venezuelan researchers, have discovered the most diverse collection of bacteria yet in humans among an isolated tribe of Yanomami Amerindians in the remote Amazonian jungles of Venezuela. Bacterial diversity in the Yanomami, previously unexposed to antibiotics or industrialized diets, was found to be nearly double that of people living in industrialized countries, and was also significantly higher than in other remote populations moderately exposed to modern practices. The team ...

An annual report from Tel Aviv University researchers reveals that anti-Semitic incidents rose dramatically worldwide in 2014, with violent attacks on Jews ranging from armed assaults to vandalism against synagogues, schools, and cemeteries. The report, released on April 15 by TAU's Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, recorded 766 incidents, mostly in Western Europe, compared to 554 in 2013 -- a surge of nearly 40 percent. The report called 2014 the worst year for anti-Semitic attacks since 2009. The authors of the report characterized such attacks ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have created an in vitro, live-cell artificial vessel that can be used to study both the application and effects of devices used to extract life-threatening blood clots in the brain. The artificial vessel could have significant implications for future development of endovascular technologies, including reducing the need for animal models to test new devices or approaches. The findings are published in the current online issue of the journal Stroke. Cerebrovascular disease covers a group of dysfunctions ...

Early indicators of the malaria parasite in Africa developing resistance to the most effective drug available have been confirmed, according to new research published in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. Researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine found Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites with a mutation to the gene Ap2mu were less sensitive to the antimalarial drug artemisinin. A study in 2013, also led by the School, suggested an initial link between a mutation in the ap2mu gene and low levels of malaria parasites remaining in the blood ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Previous research published by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and three other institutions showed that when children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and serious physical aggression were prescribed both a stimulant and an antipsychotic drug, along with teaching parents behavior management techniques, they had a reduction of aggressive and serious disruptive behavior. Now, L. Eugene Arnold and Michael Aman, professors emeritus at the Nisonger Center at Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center, and their colleagues ...

RICHMOND, Va. (April 17, 2015) -- In a recent study, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers predicted which cirrhosis patients would suffer inflammations and require hospitalization by analyzing their saliva, revealing a new target for research into a disease that accounts for more than 30,000 deaths in the United States each year. The findings could trigger a change in the way researchers study chronic liver disease and associated microbiota, the network of tiny organisms in the human body such as bacteria and fungi that can either bolster an ...

This news release is available in German. Bonn, April 16 /Tokyo, April 17, 2015 - An international team of researchers at German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have revealed in a collaborative study - published today in NEURON, that neurons in the eye change on the molecular level when they are exposed to prolonged light. The researchers could identify that a feedback signalling mechanism is responsible for these changes. The innate neuronal property might be utilized to protect neurons from degeneration ...

By combining two highly innovative experimental techniques, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have for the first time simultaneously observed the structure and the correlated function of specific proteins critical in the repair of DNA, providing definitive answers to some highly debated questions, and opening up new avenues of inquiry and exciting new possibilities for biological engineering. Scientists who study biological systems at the molecular level have over the years looked to the structure of protein molecules--how the atoms are organized--to ...

In anticipation of the forthcoming 2015 White House Conference on Aging (WHCoA), The Gerontological Society of America (GSA) has produced a special issue of The Gerontologist that outlines a vision for older adults' economic and retirement security, health, caregiving, and social well-being for the next decade and beyond. And because this year also marks the 50th anniversary of Medicare, Medicaid, and the Older Americans Act, as well as the 80th anniversary of Social Security, articles within the issue also explore ways to safeguard the continuing success of these programs. The ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Many years of research have shown that for students from lower-income families, standardized test scores and other measures of academic success tend to lag behind those of wealthier students. A new study led by researchers at MIT and Harvard University offers another dimension to this so-called "achievement gap": After imaging the brains of high- and low-income students, they found that the higher-income students had thicker brain cortex in areas associated with visual perception and knowledge accumulation. Furthermore, these differences also correlated ...

Geneva, Switzerland, 17 April 2015 -- Cancer DNA circulating in the bloodstream of lung cancer patients can provide doctors with vital mutation information that can help optimise treatment when tumour tissue is not available, an international group of researchers has reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The results have important implications for the use of cancer therapies that target specific cancer mutations, explains Dr Martin Reck from the Department of Thoracic Oncology at Lung Clinic Grosshansdorf, Germany, who presented ...

Geneva, Switzerland, 17 April 2015 -- Almost one in four patients (24%) with advanced lung cancer in Europe, Asia and the US are not receiving EGFR test results before being started on treatment, researchers report at the European Lung Cancer Conference. Medical Oncologist James Spicer from King's College London at Guy's Hospital, London, and colleagues studied how widely hospitals had implemented testing for mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor gene among lung cancer patients. Targeted therapies can more effectively treat cancers that are known to carry ...

Recent research published in The Diabetes Educator by Dr. Shiela Strauss, associate professor of nursing and co-director of the Statistics and Data Management Core for NYU's Colleges of Nursing and Dentistry, along with a team of NYU researchers, reveals differing perceptions among adult populations at-risk for diabetes that may offer new approaches to diabetes education and prevention. "We found that there are differences in the perceptions of those who are at risk for diabetes that depend on the specific characteristics that place them at risk," said Strauss. Illness ...

A team from Disney Research and Carnegie Mellon University have devised a 3-D printer that layers together laser-cut sheets of fabric to form soft, squeezable objects such as bunnies, doll clothing and phone cases. These objects can have complex geometries and incorporate circuitry that makes them interactive. "Today's 3-D printers can easily create custom metal, plastic, and rubber objects," said Jim McCann, associate research scientist at Disney Research Pittsburgh. "But soft fabric objects, like plush toys, are still fabricated by hand. Layered fabric printing is one ...

Disney Research has demonstrated that battery-free, radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used to cheaply and unobtrusively determine how people use and interact with daily objects, enabling new types of interactive play, smart homes and work environments, and new methods for studying consumer shopping habits. RFID tags are designed to simply report an identifying code when energized by an RFID reader, but a Disney Research team directed by Dr. Alanson Sample showed that the radio frequency signals transmitted by these tags provide a unique RF signature which ...

An international team of scientists have put forward a blueprint for a purely space-based system to solve the growing problem of space debris. The proposal, published in Acta Astronautica, combines a super-wide field-of-view telescope, developed by RIKEN's EUSO team, which will be used to detect objects, and a recently developed high-efficiency laser system, the CAN laser that was presented in Nature Photonics in 2013, that will be used to track space debris and remove it from orbit. Space debris, which is continuously accumulating as a result of human space activities, ...

Half of all patients who survive a cardiac arrest experience problems with cognitive functions such as memory and attention. This has been shown by a major international study led from Lund University. Surprisingly, however, a control group comprising heart attack patients had largely the same level of problems. This suggests that it is not only the cardiac arrest and the consequent lack of oxygen to the brain that is the cause of the patients' difficulties. The study led by Lund University involved 950 cardiac arrest patients in Europe and Australia. Six months after ...

This news release is available in Japanese. It seems unnatural that a species could survive without having sex. Yet over the ages, evolution has endowed females of certain species of amphibians, reptiles and fish with the ability to clone themselves, and perpetuate offspring without males. Researchers at the at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) found that in species where females have evolved the ability to reproduce without males relatively recently, fertilization is still ensuring the survival of the maximum number of healthy ...