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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Mount Sinai scientists establish link between ALS and the body's response to viral infection

A key protein previously implicated in Lou Gehrig's disease and other neurological diseases plays an important role in the response to viral infection, according to a study led by scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published today in Nature Immunology. Neurological diseases have long been associated with inflammation, part of the body's response to injury or infection that occurs when immune cells home in to attack invaders like bacteria and viruses, and to drive healing, but the link between them has not been understood. This new study result ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

How immune cells facilitate the spread of breast cancer

The body's immune system fights disease, infections and even cancer, acting like foot soldiers to protect against invaders and dissenters. But it turns out the immune system has traitors amongst their ranks. Dr. Karin de Visser and her team at the Netherlands Cancer Institute discovered that certain immune cells are persuaded by breast tumors to facilitate the spread of cancer cells. Their findings are published advanced online on March 30 in the journal Nature. In Western countries about one in eight women will develop breast cancer. Of the women who die of this disease, ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

'Lightning bolts' in the brain show learning in action

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have captured images of the underlying biological activity within brain cells and their tree-like extensions, or dendrites, in mice that show how their brains sort, store and make sense out of information during learning. In a study to be published in the journal Nature online March 30, the NYU Langone neuroscientists tracked neuronal activity in dendritic nerve branches as the mice learned motor tasks such as how to run forward and backward on a small treadmill. They concluded that the generation of calcium ion spikes -- which ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Percentage of children eating fast food on a given day drops

A lower percentage of children are eating fast food on any given day and calories consumed by children from burger, pizza and chicken fast food restaurants also has dropped, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. Colin D. Rehm, Ph.D., M.P.H., formerly of the University of Washington, Seattle, now of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, Boston, and Adam Drewnowski, Ph.D., of the University of Washington, Seattle, analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003 to 2010 to examine ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Glyburide associated with more risk of adverse events than insulin in newborns

The medication glyburide, which has been increasingly used to treat gestational diabetes in pregnant women, was associated with higher risk for newborns to be admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit, have respiratory distress, hypoglycemia (low blood glucose), birth injury and be large for gestational age compared with infants born to women treated with insulin, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. The prevalence of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) in the United States has more than doubled during the last 20 years. Given the widespread and ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

An apple a day won't keep the doctor away but maybe the pharmacist

Turns out, an apple a day won't keep the doctor away but it may mean you will use fewer prescription medications, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. The apple has come to symbolize health and healthy habits. But can apple consumption be associated with reduced health care use because patients who eat them might visit doctors less? Matthew A. Davis, D.C., M.P.H., Ph.D., of the University of Michigan School of Nursing, Ann Arbor, and coauthors analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2008 and 2009-2010) ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Prototype 'nanoneedles' generate new blood vessels in mice

Scientists have developed tiny 'nanoneedles' that have successfully prompted parts of the body to generate new blood vessels, in a trial in mice. The researchers, from Imperial College London and Houston Methodist Research Institute in the USA, hope their nanoneedle technique could ultimately help damaged organs and nerves to repair themselves and help transplanted organs to thrive. The nanoneedles work by delivering nucleic acids to a specific area. Nucleic acids are the building blocks of all living organisms and they encode, transmit and express genetic information. ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Family income, parental education related to brain structure in children and adolescents

Characterizing associations between socioeconomic factors and children's brain development, a team including investigators from nine universities across the country reports correlative links between family income and brain structure. Relationships between the brain and family income were strongest in the lowest end of the economic range - suggesting that interventional policies aimed at these children may have the largest societal impact. The study, led by researchers at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles and Columbia University Medical Center, ...

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Environment30 Mar 2015

Direct evidence for a positive feedback in climate change

A new study has confirmed the existence of a positive feedback operating in climate change whereby warming itself may amplify a rise in greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that in addition to the well understood effect of greenhouse gases on the Earth's temperature, researchers can now confirm directly from ice-core data that the global temperature has a profound effect on atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. This means that as the Earth's temperature rises, the positive feedback in the ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Researchers find new link between neurodegenerative diseases and abnormal immune responses

Hamilton, ON (March 30, 2015) - Researchers from McMaster University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York have discovered that a protein associated with neurodegenerative diseases like ALS also plays an important role in the body's natural antiviral response. The study, published today in Nature Immunology, offers new insight into the link between neurodegenerative disorders and inflammation, and provides a framework to explore more fully the possibility that viral infection may lead to onset of these diseases. Matthew Miller, an investigator at ...

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Physics30 Mar 2015

Super sensitive measurement of magnetic fields

There are electrical signals in the nervous system, the brain and throughout the human body and there are tiny magnetic fields associated with these signals that could be important for medical science. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute have just developed a method that could be used to obtain extremely precise measurements of ultra-small magnetic fields. The results are published in the scientific journal Nature Physics. The tiny magnetic fields are all the way down on the atomic level. The atoms do not stand still, they revolve around themselves and the axis is ...

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Environment30 Mar 2015

Glimpses of the future: Drought damage leads to widespread forest death

Washington, D.C.-- The 2000-2003 drought in the American southwest triggered a widespread die-off of forests around the region. A Carnegie-led team of scientists developed a new modeling tool to explain how and where trembling aspen forests died as a result of this drought. It is based on damage to the individual trees' ability to transport water under water-stressed conditions. If the same processes and threshold govern the future, their results suggest that more widespread die-offs of aspen forests triggered by climate change are likely by the 2050s. Tree mortality ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

High-tech method allows rapid imaging of functions in living brain

Researchers studying cancer and other invasive diseases rely on high-resolution imaging to see tumors and other activity deep within the body's tissues. Using a new high-speed, high-resolution imaging method, Lihong Wang, PhD, and his team at Washington University in St. Louis were able to see blood flow, blood oxygenation, oxygen metabolism and other functions inside a living mouse brain at faster rates than ever before. Using photoacoustic microscopy (PAM), a single-wavelength, pulse-width-based technique developed in his lab, Wang, the Gene K. Beare Professor of Biomedical ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Early stage NSCLC patients with low tumor metabolic activity have longer survival

DENVER - Low pre-surgery uptake of a labeled glucose analogue, a marker of metabolic activity, in the primary tumor of patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is associated with increased overall survival and a longer time before tumor recurrence. Patients with high labeled glucose uptake may benefit from additional therapy following surgery. Surgery is the standard of care for patients with stage I NSCLC but not all patients are cured, as demonstrated by a 5-year survival rate of less than 60% in these patients. There is a clear need for a diagnostic ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

'Pay-for-performance' may lead to higher risk for robotic prostate surgery patients

DETROIT - A "perverse disincentive" for hospitals that have invested in expensive technology for robotic surgery may be jeopardizing prostate cancer patients who seek out the procedure, concluded a new study led by Henry Ford Hospital researchers. The study, which compared complication rates in hospitals with low volumes of robot-assisted radical prostatectomies (RARPs) to institutions with high volumes of the procedure, suggested that current pay-for-performance healthcare models are to blame. The new study was published online this month by BJU International. "Patients ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Fat grafting technique improves results of breast augmentation

March 30, 2015 - In women undergoing breast augmentation, a technique using transplantation of a small amount of the patient's own fat cells can produce better cosmetic outcomes, reports a study in the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). In particular, the fat grafting technique can achieve a more natural-appearing cleavage--avoiding the "separated breasts" appearance that can occur after breast augmentation, according to the report by Dr. Francisco G. Bravo of Clinica ...

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Earth Science30 Mar 2015

Compound from soil microbe inhibits biofilm formation

Researchers have shown that a known antibiotic and antifungal compound produced by a soil microbe can inhibit another species of microbe from forming biofilms--microbial mats that frequently are medically harmful--without killing that microbe. The findings may apply to other microbial species, and can herald a plethora of scientific and societal benefits. The research is published online ahead of print on March 30, 2015, in the Journal of Bacteriology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology. The study will be printed in a special section of the journal ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Roll up your screen and stow it away?

From smartphones and tablets to computer monitors and interactive TV screens, electronic displays are everywhere. As the demand for instant, constant communication grows, so too does the urgency for more convenient portable devices -- especially devices, like computer displays, that can be easily rolled up and put away, rather than requiring a flat surface for storage and transportation. A new Tel Aviv University study, published recently in Nature Nanotechnology, suggests that a novel DNA-peptide structure can be used to produce thin, transparent, and flexible screens. ...

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Physics30 Mar 2015

Princess Margaret scientists convert microbubbles to nanoparticles

(TORONTO, Canada - March 30, 2015) - Biomedical researchers led by Dr. Gang Zheng at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have successfully converted microbubble technology already used in diagnostic imaging into nanoparticles that stay trapped in tumours to potentially deliver targeted, therapeutic payloads. The discovery, published online today in Nature Nanotechnology, details how Dr. Zheng and his research team created a new type of microbubble using a compound called porphyrin - a naturally occurring pigment in nature that harvests light. In the lab in pre-clinical ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Mother's diet influences weight-control neurocircuits in offspring

Maternal diet during pregnancy and lactation may prime offspring for weight gain and obesity later in life, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers, who looked at rats whose mothers consumed a high-fat diet and found that the offsprings' feeding controls and feelings of fullness did not function normally. Previous research shows that obesity compromises the neurocircuits that control how the stomach and intestine work to regulate how much we eat, and that the time around pregnancy and lactation is important in the development of these circuits. In both ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Study: Worked-based wellness programs reduce weight

A new study shows that workplace wellness programs can be effective in helping people lose weight by providing healthier food choices and increasing opportunities for physical activity, particularly if these efforts are designed with the input and active participation of employees. The two-year project - the results of which appear in the American Journal of Public Health - successfully reduced the number or people considered overweight or obese by almost 9 percent. "Worksites are self-contained environments with established communication systems where interventions ...

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Science30 Mar 2015

Reviewing online homework at scale

In computer-science classes, homework assignments consist of writing programs. It's easy to create automated tests that determine whether a given program yields the right outputs to a series of inputs. But those tests say nothing about whether the program code is clear or confusing, whether it includes unnecessary computation, and whether it meets the terms of the assignment. Professors and teaching assistants review students' code to try to flag obvious mistakes, but even in undergraduate lecture courses, they usually don't have time for exhaustive analysis. And that ...

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Environment30 Mar 2015

LiDAR studies of the Sept. 2013 Colorado Front Range flooding and debris flows

Boulder, Colo., USA - Scott W. Anderson and colleagues use repeat aerial LiDAR to quantify the erosional impact of the heavy rains that inundated the Colorado Front Range in September 2013. The five-day storm triggered more than 1,100 landslides and debris flows in a 3,430-square-kilometer area due to 200-450 mm of heavy, steady rainfall. This number of hillslope failures in a single event represents unprecedented activity for the region in its ~150 years of written history. This study for Geology addresses the role of such large, rare events in shaping landscapes by ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Promoting maternal interaction improves growth, weight gain in preemies

An intervention to teach mothers of preterm infants how to interact with their babies more effectively results in better weight gain and growth for the infants, according to a study funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. A subsequent study showed that infants who had the benefit of a major component of this intervention more rapidly developed the muscle control needed for feeding successfully from a bottle. The initial findings were published on line in the Journal of Perinatology and the subsequent study in Advances in Neonatal Care. Briefly, the intervention ...

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Medicine30 Mar 2015

Short bouts of high-intensity exercise before a fatty meal best for vascular health

A short burst of intensive exercise before eating a high fat meal is better for blood vessel function in young people than the currently recommended moderate-intensity exercise, according to a new study from the University of Exeter. Cardiovascular diseases including heart attacks and stroke are the leading cause of death in the UK, and the process underlying these diseases start in youth. An impairment in the function of blood vessels is thought to be the earliest event in this process, and this is known to occur in the hours after consuming a high fat meal. Performing ...

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