Thanks to the simple use of an alcohol-impregnated cap, Loyola University Medical Center achieved a 68 percent decrease in the overall number of central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) over a 12-month period. A two-year study compared the use of disinfection caps to an intense scrub-the-hub intervention to standard care. Scrub-the-hub refers to cleaning catheter connector hubs and injection ports with alcohol for the recommended 15 seconds before accessing the central line, a catheter placed in a large vein to deliver medicine and liquids during hospitalization. ...

PHILADELPHIA — Advances in the understanding of the genetics of coronary artery disease, or CAD, will revitalize the field and lead to more therapeutic targets for new medicines to combat this common disease, suggests a genetics expert from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in a Perspective article in the new issue of Science Translational Medicine. Daniel J. Rader, MD, chair of the Department of Genetics and associate director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, asserts that the lagging search for new heart medicines ...

A team of UCLA researchers has identified a new gene involved in Parkinson's disease, a finding that may one day provide a target for a new drug to prevent and potentially even cure the debilitating neurological disorder. Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder after Alzheimer's disease, and there is no cure for the progressive and devastating illness. About 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with Parkinson's disease each year. It is estimated that as many as 1 million Americans live with Parkinson's disease, which is more than the number ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — This growing season, crop researchers at the University of Illinois are experimenting with the use of drones – unmanned aerial vehicles – on the university's South Farms. Dennis Bowman, a crop sciences educator with U. of I. Extension, is using two drones to take aerial pictures of crops growing in research plots on the farms. He presented his findings to farmers and other researchers at the 2014 Ford / Iroquois County Agronomy Day meeting. Bowman intentionally made mistakes on one test plot – "areas where we didn't apply enough nitrogen fertilizer, ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.─The number of total knee replacement (TKR) surgeries more than tripled between 1993 and 2009, while the number of total hip replacements (THR) doubled during the same time period. A study appearing in the June Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS) found that an increase in the prevalence of ovrweight and obesity in the U.S. accounted for 95 percent of the higher demand for knee replacements, with younger patients affected to a greater degree. "We observed that growth of knee replacement volumes was far outpacing that of hip replacements and were ...

A new study of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies has found magnetic fields play an impressive role in the systems' dynamics. In fact, in dozens of black holes surveyed, the magnetic field strength matched the force produced by the black holes' powerful gravitational pull, says a team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, Germany. The findings are published in this week's issue of Nature. "This paper for the first time systematically ...

Neutrinos are tiny, neutral elementary particles that, contrary to the standard model of physics, have been proven to have mass. One possible explanation for this mass could be that neutrinos are their own antiparticles, so-called Majorana particles. Though experimental evidence for this is still lacking, many theoretical extensions of the standard model of physics predict the Majorana nature of neutrinos. If this hypothesis proves to be true, many previously unanswered questions about the origin of our universe and the origin of matter could be answered. 650 meters ...

Tropical Depression 2E strengthened into Tropical Storm Boris briefly on June 3 before making landfall in southern Mexico and weakening into a depression. While Boris was building to tropical storm strength, NASA's Aqua and TRMM satellites passed overhead identifying heavy rainfall and the extent of the storm. On June 3 at 19:15 UTC (3:15 p.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Boris over Central America. Boris appeared circular in the imagery and its clouds ...

Cleveland . . . A geologist studied fossils to confirm that stones used in 19th century Ohio grain mills originated from France. Fossils embedded in these millstones were analyzed to determine that stones known as French buhr were imported from regions near Paris, France, to Ohio in the United States. Dr. Joseph Hannibal, curator of invertebrate paleontology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, was lead author on research published in the Society for Sedimentary Geology journal PALAIOS. The study documents a technique that uses fossils to definitively distinguish ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — A team of University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering students created a roof tile coating that when applied to an average-sized residential roof breaks down the same amount of smog-causing nitrogen oxides per year as a car driven 11,000 miles. They calculated 21 tons of nitrogen oxides would be eliminated daily if tiles on one million roofs were coated with their titanium dioxide mixture. They also calculated it would cost only about $5 for enough titanium dioxide to coat an average-sized residential roof. That ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Neuroscientists at Mayo Clinic in Florida and at Aarhus University in Denmark have shed light on why neurons in the brain's reward system can be miswired, potentially contributing to disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They say findings from their study, published online today in Neuron, may increase the understanding of underlying causes of ADHD, potentially facilitating the development of more individualized treatment strategies. The scientists looked at dopaminergic neurons, which regulate pleasure, motivation, ...

WASHINGTON (June 4, 2014) — In order to meet new cancer program accreditation standards, institutions have placed new focus on patient navigation, psychosocial distress screening, and survivorship care plans. Recently published research by the George Washington University (GW) Cancer Institute found these new programs are experiencing "growing pains." The results of a nationwide survey conducted by the GW Cancer Institute and reviewed in the Journal of Oncology Navigation and Survivorship, found that health care professionals could most benefit from greater evaluation of ...

LA JOLLA, CA—June 4, 2014— Hemorrhagic fevers caused by Lassa, dengue and other viruses affect more than one million people annually and are often fatal, yet scientists have never understood why only some virus-infected people come down with the disease and others do not. But now, virologists and immunologists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a major clue to the mystery of "hemorrhagic fever" syndromes. In findings reported this week in an Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team showed that Interferon Type I (IFN-I) ...

In a discovery decades in the making, scientists have detected the first of a "theoretical" class of stars first proposed in 1975 by physicist Kip Thorne and astronomer Anna Żytkow. Thorne-Żytkow objects (TŻOs) are hybrids of red supergiant and neutron stars that superficially resemble normal red supergiants, such as Betelguese in the constellation Orion. They differ, however, in their distinct chemical signatures that result from unique activity in their stellar interiors. TŻOs are thought to be formed by the interaction of two massive stars―a ...

New research reveals how the algae behind red tide thoroughly disables – but doesn't kill – other species of algae. The study shows how chemical signaling between algae can trigger big changes in the marine ecosystem. Marine algae fight other species of algae for nutrients and light, and, ultimately, survival. The algae that cause red tides, the algal blooms that color blue ocean waters red, carry an arsenal of molecules that disable some other algae. The incapacitated algae don't necessarily die, but their growth grinds to a halt. This could explain part of why blooms ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Gamma and neutron imaging offer possible improvements over existing techniques such as X-ray or CT, but their safety is not yet fully understood. Using computer simulations, imaging the liver and breast with gamma or neutron radiation was found to be safe, delivering levels of radiation on par with conventional medical imaging, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The findings, published in the June issue of the journal Medical Physics, will help researchers to move testing of gamma and neutron imaging into animals and later humans. Conventional ...

Anaheim, Calif., June 4, 2014 – For every 15 healthcare providers who receive the influenza vaccination, one fewer person in the community will contract an influenza-like illness, according to a study using California public health data from 2009 – 2012. In an abstract that will be presented on June 7 at the 41st Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), a researcher analyzed archival data from the California Department of Public Health to determine the relationship between vaccinating healthcare personnel against ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – One of the biggest challenges for medical researchers studying the effectiveness of stem cell therapies is that transplants or grafts of cells are often rejected by the hosts. This rejection can render experiments useless, making research into potentially life-saving treatments a long and difficult process. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have shown that a new line of genetically modified pigs will host transplanted cells without the risk of rejection. "The rejection of transplants and grafts by host bodies is a huge hurdle for medical researchers," ...

Boston, MA (June 4, 2014) ─ Limiting saturated fat could help people whose genetic make-up increases their chance of being obese. In a new study, researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (USDA HNRCA) at Tufts University identified 63 gene variants related to obesity and used them to calculate a genetic risk score for obesity for more than 2,800 white, American men and women enrolled in two large studies on heart disease prevention. People with a higher genetic risk score, who also consumed more of their calories as saturated fat, ...

Changes in coldness, creaminess or texture that we experience in the mouth while we are eating an ice cream can be visualised on a screen using coloured curves. Graphs help manufacturers improve product quality, as proven by researchers at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology in Valencia, Spain. In the last five years a technique known as 'Temporal Dominance of Sensations' (TDS) has become popular, used to analyse how consumer impressions evolve from the moment they taste a product. Researchers at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (CSIC) ...

Weight loss surgery might have more value than simply helping morbidly obese people to shed unhealthy extra pounds. It reduces their risk of cancer to rates almost similar to those of people of normal weight. This is the conclusion of the first comprehensive review article taking into account relevant studies about obesity, cancer rates and a weight loss procedure called bariatric surgery. Published in Springer's journal Obesity Surgery, the review was led by Daniela Casagrande of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. With bariatric surgery, a part ...

Intense light from the enormous explosion of a star more than 12 billion years ago — shortly after the Big Bang — recently reached Earth and was visible in the sky. Known as a gamma-ray burst, light from the rare, high-energy explosion traveled for 12.1 billion years before it was detected and observed by a telescope owned by Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Gamma-ray bursts are believed to be the catastrophic collapse of a star at the end of its life. SMU physicists report that their telescope was the first on the ground to observe the burst and to capture an ...

When people work in socially homogeneous groups, they overestimate their own contributions to the group's success, according to a new study co-authored by an MIT scholar. In fact, in some cases such "self-serving bias" occurs to a degree about five times as great in homogeneous groups as in ethnically diverse groups. Such results raise a larger point, suggests Evan Apfelbaum, the W. Maurice Young Assistant Professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the lead author of the new study: Researchers have often used homogeneous social groups ...

WASHINGTON – Arguing for a continuation of the nation's human space exploration program, a new congressionally mandated report from the National Research Council concludes that the expense of human spaceflight and the dangers to the astronauts involved can be justified only by the goal of putting humans on other worlds. The report recommends that the nation pursue a disciplined "pathway" approach that encompasses executing a specific sequence of intermediate accomplishments and destinations leading to the "horizon goal" of putting humans on Mars. The success of this approach ...

Los Angeles, London (June 04, 2014). Growing up in a multilingual home has many advantages, but many parents worry that exposure to multiple languages might delay language acquisition. New research could now lay some of these multilingual myths to rest, thanks to a revealing study that shows both monolingual and bilingual infants learn a new word best from someone with a language background that matches their own. While 1.5 year old babies are powerful word learners, they can have difficulty learning similar-sounding words (e.g., "coat" and "goat"). A string of previous ...