While a debate was raging between scientists and government regulators on how best to explain to patients the risks of participating in clinical research studies that compare standardized treatments, a team of bioethicists boldly went where no experts had gone before -- to the public. What the respondents said surprised them: Keep it simple, but always ask permission, even when the research only involves gathering data from anonymized medical records. "We didn't anticipate that people would want to grant permission for medical record searches, a research method that ...

ANN ARBOR--Research led by the University of Michigan Life Sciences Institute has identified a gene critical to controlling the body's ability to create blood cells and immune cells from blood-forming stem cells--known as hematopoietic stem cells. The findings, scheduled for online publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation April 13, provide new insights into the underlying mechanics of how the body creates and maintains a healthy blood supply and immune system, both in normal conditions and in situations of stress--like the body experiences following a bone ...

DALLAS, April 13, 2015--The American Heart Association (AHA) released new recommendations today to address gaps in common standards around comprehensive workplace wellness programs (CWWPs). The recommendations improve the design, measurement and recognition of CWWPs, and, if adopted by employers, could significantly impact efforts to improve the cardiovascular health of the American workforce. An advisory panel of experts in population and workplace health, cardiology and preventive medicine conducted the review, which includes an extensive evaluation of workplace ...

WASHINGTON, DC - A medicinal liquid form of marijuana may show promise as a treatment for children with severe epilepsy that is not responding to other treatments, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 67th Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, April 18 to 25, 2015. The study involved 213 people, ranging from toddlers to adults, with a median age of 11 who had severe epilepsy that did not respond to other treatments. Participants had Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, epilepsy types that can lead to intellectual ...

Tropical Cyclone Solo was dissipating over the Southwestern Pacific Ocean when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on April 13, 2015. On April 11 Tropical Cyclone Solo spawned warnings in New Caledonia as it passed by. By April 12, the warnings were dropped and wind shear had taken its toll on the storm weakening it. On April 12 at 0300 UTC (April 11 at 11 p.m. EDT), the Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) issued their final bulletin on Solo. At that time it was 116 nautical miles north of Noumea, New Caledonia near 20.2 south latitude and 165.7 east longitude. Solo ...

Skin is remarkably resistant to tearing and a team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory now have shown why. Using powerful X-ray beams and electron microscopy, researchers made the first direct observations of the micro-scale mechanisms that allow skin to resist tearing. They identified four specific mechanisms in collagen, the main structural protein in skin tissue, that act together to diminish the effects of stress: rotation, straightening, stretching, and sliding. Researchers say they hope to replicate ...

TAMPA, Fla. - Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have developed a new method to identify a previously unknown structure in a protein called MDMX. MDMX is a crucial regulatory protein that controls p53 - one of the most commonly mutated genes in cancer. Known as the tumor suppressor gene, p53 protects the body from cancer development by ensuring that DNA remains intact and does not have mutations. If p53 senses DNA damage, it can either stimulate the cells to repair its DNA, or cause cells to stop growing and undergo cell death. Because of its functions, p53 is often ...

ATLANTA--Chimpanzees are capable of some degree of planning for the future, in a manner similar to human children, while some species of monkeys struggle with this task, according to researchers at Georgia State University, Wofford College and Agnes Scott College. Their findings were published on March 23 in the Journal of Comparative Psychology. The study assessed the planning abilities of chimpanzees, two monkey species (rhesus macaques and capuchin monkeys) and human children (ages 28 to 66 months old) using a computerized game-like program that presented 100 unique ...

A workplace intervention designed to reduce work-family conflict gave employed parents more time with their children without reducing their work time. "These findings may encourage changes in the structure of jobs and culture of work organizations to support families," said Kelly Davis, research assistant professor of human development and family studies. The research is part of the Work, Family and Health Network's evaluation of the effects of a workplace intervention designed to reduce work-family conflict by increasing both employees' control over their schedule ...

(Boston) - Emergency departments (ED) provide a promising venue to address opioid deaths with education on both overdose prevention and appropriate actions in a witnessed overdose. In addition, ED's have the potential to equip patients with nasal naloxone rescue kits as part of this effort. These findings are from a study published in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine, and is the first study to demonstrate the feasibility of ED-based opioid overdose prevention education and naloxone distribution to trained laypersons, patients and their social network. In ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Researchers from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island have demonstrated a promising new way to increase the effectiveness of radiation in killing cancer cells. The approach involves gold nanoparticles tethered to acid-seeking compounds called pHLIPs. The pHLIPs (pH low-insertion peptides) home in on high acidity of malignant cells, delivering their nanoparticle passengers straight to the cells' doorsteps. The nanoparticles then act as tiny antennas, focusing the energy of radiation in the area directly around the cancer ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered how vitamin E deficiency may cause neurological damage by interrupting a supply line of specific nutrients and robbing the brain of the "building blocks" it needs to maintain neuronal health. The findings - in work done with zebrafish - were just published in the Journal of Lipid Research. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health. The research showed that zebrafish fed a diet deficient in vitamin E throughout their life had about 30 percent lower levels of DHA-PC, which is a ...

PITTSBURGH, April, 13, 2015 - A serendipitous combination of technology and scientific discovery, coupled with a hunch, allowed University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) researchers to reveal a previously invisible biological process that may be implicated in the rapid growth of some cancers. The project, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is described in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "I was so amazed by what I was seeing," said lead author Masahiro Shuda, Ph.D., research assistant professor in Pitt's ...

HOUSTON - (April 13, 2015) - For decades, scientists and physicians have puzzled over the fact that infants with the postnatal neurodevelopmental disorder Rett syndrome show symptoms of the disorder from one to two years after birth. In a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Huda Zoghbi and her colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine and the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children's Hospital, unravel the mystery by looking at when and how the causal gene involved (methyl-CpG binding protein 2 or MECP2) binds ...

Fresh insights into how bacteria protect themselves - by forming a waterproof raincoat - could help develop improved products to protect plants from disease. Researchers have discovered how communities of beneficial bacteria form a waterproof coating on the roots of plants, to protect them from microbes that could potentially cause plant disease. Their insights could lead to ways to control this shield and improve its efficiency, which could help curb the risk of unwanted infections in agricultural or garden plants, the team says. Scientists at the Universities of ...

A new analysis of the chemical make-up of meteorites has helped scientists work out when the Earth formed its layers. The research by an international team of scientists confirmed the Earth's first crust had formed around 4.5 billion years ago. The team measured the amount of the rare elements hafnium and lutetium in the mineral zircon in a meteorite that originated early in the solar system. "Meteorites that contain zircons are rare. We had been looking for an old meteorite with large zircons, about 50 microns long, that contained enough hafnium for precise analysis," ...

Diversity of life abounds on Earth, and there's no need to look any farther than the ocean's surface for proof. There are over 200,000 species of phytoplankton alone, and all of those species of microscopic marine plants that form the base of the marine food web need the same basic resources to grow--light and nutrients. A study by a team of scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), University of Rhode Island (URI), and Columbia University, published April 13 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals how species of diatoms--one ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - One of the brain's main jobs is information processing - what is critical, however, is that information in the brain gets transferred to the right places at the right times. Research on large-scale brain networks by the University of Michigan Medical School reveals that "hubs" in the brain - highly connected regions that like hubs of the airport system - tend to consistently attract information flow. "Understanding how information transfer occurs in the brain is critical, especially if network hubs are taken off line by anesthesia, tumor or stroke," ...

This news release is available in German. How can a pleasant vehicle climate be achieved efficiently? Researchers at the Technische Universität München (TUM) pursued this question in the context of the research project Visio.M funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) with a total of 7.1 million euro. The results of their research show that the potential of energy efficient air conditioning is all but exhausted. And this applies also to gasoline powered cars. Inefficiency has its advantages, too: In the past, waste heat ...

Researchers are beginning to explore whether the genetics of patients who experience a placebo effect are different from those of patients who don't. It's well known that people can feel better if they believe they are receiving treatment, but the biological pathways involved are relatively unexplored. In a new review, publishing April 13 in Trends in Molecular Medicine, scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center discuss what we know as well as possible ethical issues related to conducting genetic tests to determine whether a patient is a placebo responder. "Understanding ...

A new strategy to rule-out and rule-in heart attacks in emergency departments will help physicians treat patients faster, found a clinical trial published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Acute myocardial infarction (MI) is a common cause of death and disability around the world. Early diagnosis is critical for treatment and survival. Swiss and Spanish researchers conducted a clinical trial to determine whether a new technique, previously tested in a small pilot study, would be effective in determining whether a patient has had a heart attack. They enrolled ...

Family physicians have an important role in advising women about the benefits and risks of egg freezing, argues an analysis in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "With growing public awareness of social egg freezing, Canadian women may increasingly approach physicians in search of information and advice about the procedure," writes Dr. Angel Petropanagos, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, with coauthors Alana Cattapan, Françoise Baylis and Arthur Leader. "Family physicians are uniquely positioned at the front lines of medical ...

Melanoma cells become drug resistant by using surrounding healthy cells to provide a 'safe haven' from treatment, according to new research* published in Cancer Cell today (Monday). Around half of melanomas are caused by a mutation in a gene called BRAF. Drugs called BRAF inhibitors treat these melanomas by targeting the faulty gene. But these cancers can quickly develop resistance to these targeted treatments. Scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, funded by Cancer Research UK, and at the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute have discovered that a side effect ...

A drug with the potential to reverse resistance to immunotherapy has been developed by scientists at the University of Southampton. It has shown great promise in pre-clinical models and will be available to patients with certain leukaemias and non-Hodgkin lymphomas in clinical trials later this year. Targeted drugs made from engineered immune proteins - called monoclonal antibodies - have revolutionised treatment for several types of cancer in recent years. They work by sticking to specific proteins found on the surface of cancer cells, flagging them up to be killed by ...

BOSTON -Placebos have helped to ease symptoms of illness for centuries and have been a fundamental component of clinical research to test new drug therapies for more than 70 years. But why some people respond to placebos and others do not remains under debate. With the advent of genomics, researchers are learning that placebo responses are modified by a person's genetics, a discovery that raises important new questions regarding the role of the placebo in patient care and in drug development: How many genetic biomarkers exist? Can the medical field harness the placebo ...