BOSTON -- Young adults who lack health care insurance are more likely to be diagnosed in advanced stages of cancer and have a higher risk of death, according to a study from Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (DF/BWCC) and Harvard Medical School. Consequently, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, may improve cancer outcomes in young adults as it expands coverage to many who have been uninsured, said first author Ayal Aizer, MD, MHS, of the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and senior author Paul Nguyen, MD, of Radiation Oncology at DF/BWCC in a report ...

By the time they reach age 18, about 12% of American children experience a confirmed case of maltreatment in the form of neglect, physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, according to a new study by researchers at Yale University. The numbers are even more sobering for black and Native American children, with one in five black children and one in seven Native American children experiencing maltreatment during the time period studied. The results are published in the June 2 issue of the journal JAMA Pediatrics. The authors estimated the cumulative prevalence of confirmed ...

OAKLAND, Calif. June 2, 2014 – Patients with specific HER2+ breast cancer tumors had a low risk of the cancer recurring five years after diagnosis, even without chemotherapy or treatment with a common antibody, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Researchers reviewed 16,975 cases of breast cancer diagnosed in Kaiser Permanente patients between 2000 and 2006. They found that for patients with the smallest HER2+ tumors (0.5 centimeters or less) who did not receive treatment with the antibody trastuzumab or chemotherapy, ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Aphids are devastating insect pests and cause great losses to agriculture worldwide. These sap-feeding plant pests harbor in their body cavity bacteria, which are essential for the aphids' fecundity and survival. Buchnera, the bacterium, benefits also because it cannot grow outside the aphid. This mutually beneficial relationship is sabotaged, however, by the bacterium which proceeds to betray the aphid, a research team led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside has found. "Although this betrayal is unintentional, it nevertheless ...

LEBANON, NH (June 2, 2014) – In spite of early concerns that hospitals' economic strengths would lead them to dominate the formation of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), a new study published in the June issue of Health Affairs reveals the central role of physician leadership in the first wave of ACOs. "The broad reach of physician leadership in ACOs has important implications for the future of health care reform", said Carrie Colla, PhD, lead investigator of the study. "A central role for physicians in the leadership of ACOs is likely to have a powerful influence ...

A new Yale-led study challenges the long-held assumption that climate is the primary driver of how quickly organic matter decomposes in different regions, a key piece of information used in formulating climate models. In a long-term analysis conducted across several sites in the eastern United States, a team of researchers found that local factors — from levels of fungal colonization to the specific physical locations of the wood — play a far greater role than climate in wood decomposition rates and the subsequent impacts on regional carbon cycling. Because decomposition ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — A widely available dietary supplement that had been considered safe — and that some claim provides anti-aging and other health benefits — caused significant developmental abnormalities in the pancreas of offspring of pregnant monkeys who were given the supplement, according to a study published today in the FASEB Journal, from the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology. Because of the results, authors of the study strongly recommend that pregnant women or women who might get pregnant avoid taking the supplement. The supplement contains ...

Mucin concentration contributes to a sticky situation in cystic fibrosis Patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) accumulate thick, sticky mucus in the lungs that clogs the airways and leads to life-threatening lung infections. It has recently been proposed that differing concentrations of mucin with in mucus layers of the CF lung contribute to decreased mucus clearance; however, it has been challenging to accurately access mucin concentration. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Mehmet Kesimer and colleagues at the University of North Carolina applied size ...

Some 56 million years ago, a massive pulse of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere sent global temperatures soaring. In the oceans, carbonate sediments dissolved, some organisms went extinct and others evolved. Scientists have long suspected that ocean acidification played a part in the crisis—similar to today, as manmade CO2 combines with seawater to change its chemistry. Now, for the first time, scientists have quantified the extent of surface acidification from those ancient days, and the news is not good: the oceans are on track to acidify at least as much as they did ...

In the coming Atlantic hurricane season, watch out for hurricanes with benign-sounding names like Dolly, Fay or Hanna. According to a new article from a team of researchers at the University of Illinois, hurricanes with feminine names are likely to cause significantly more deaths than hurricanes with masculine names, apparently because storms with feminine names are perceived as less threatening. An analysis of more than six decades of death rates from U.S. hurricanes shows that severe hurricanes with a more feminine name result in a greater death toll, simply because ...

TEMPE, Ariz. — During the past few decades, the field of biology has dramatically expanded, incorporating many diverse sub-disciplines and specialty areas such as microbiology and evolutionary biology. However, teaching biology to undergraduate students has not kept pace with the changes, and core biology curriculum varies widely from university to university, and classroom to classroom. In an effort to both capture the diversity of biology and condense what is taught, an Arizona State University researcher is leading a grassroots effort to improve biology education throughout ...

Athens, Ga. – The promise of affordable transportation fuels from biomass—a sustainable, carbon neutral route to American energy independence—has been left perpetually on hold by the economics of the conversion process. New research from the University of Georgia has overcome this hurdle allowing the direct conversion of switchgrass to fuel. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, documents the direct conversion of biomass to biofuel without pre-treatment, using the engineered bacterium Caldicellulosiruptor bescii. Pre-treatment ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The cause of potato late blight and the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s has been tracked to a pretty, alpine valley in central Mexico, which is ringed by mountains and now known to be the ancestral home of one of the most costly and deadly plant diseases in human history. Research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by researchers from Oregon State University, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and five other institutions, concludes that Phytophthora infestans originated in this valley and co-evolved with potatoes ...

CHICAGO — In examining why some advanced melanoma patients respond so well to the experimental immunotherapy MK-3475, while others have a less robust response, researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida found that the size of tumors before treatment was the strongest variable. MULTIMEDIA ALERT: Video and audio are available for download on the Mayo Clinic News Network. They say their findings, being presented June 2 at the 50th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), offered several clinical insights that could lead to different treatment strategies ...

A study by Belgian doctoral researcher Wouter De Haes (KU Leuven) and colleagues provides new evidence that metformin, the world's most widely used anti-diabetic drug, slows ageing and increases lifespan. In experiments reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers tease out the mechanism behind metformin's age-slowing effects: the drug causes an increase in the number of toxic oxygen molecules released in the cell and this, surprisingly, increases cell robustness and longevity in the long term. Mitochondria – the energy factories ...

A team of University of South Carolina researchers led by Mitzi Nagarkatti, Prakash Nagarkatti and Xiaoming Yang have discovered a novel pathway through which marijuana can suppress the body's immune functions. Their research has been published online in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Marijuana is the most frequently used illicit drug in the United States, but as more states legalize the drug for medical and even recreational purposes, research studies like this one are discovering new and innovative potential health applications for the federal Schedule I drug. ...

Which look bigger, packages of complicated shape or packages of simple shape? Some prior research shows that complex packages appear larger than simple packages of equal volume, while other research has shown the opposite - that simple packages look bigger than the more complex. US researchers, writing in the International Journal of Management Practice believe they have resolved this dilemma. Lawrence Garber of Elon University in North Carolina and Eva Hyatt and Ünal Boya of Appalachian State University report that human beings are just not very good at estimating the ...

PITTSBURGH—It is well established that being involved in more social roles, such as being married, having close friends, close family members, and belonging to social and religious groups, leads to better mental and physical health. However, why social integration — the total number of social roles in which a person participates — influences health and longevity has not been clear. New research led by Carnegie Mellon University shows for the first time that social integration impacts pulmonary function in the elderly. Lung function, which decreases with age, is an important ...

Toronto – Want to be able to smell the roses? You might consider buying into a neighbourhood where there are more sit-down restaurants than fast-food outlets, suggests a new paper from the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management. The paper looks at how exposure to fast food can push us to be more impatient and that this can undermine our ability to smell the preverbal roses. One study, surveyed a few hundred respondents throughout the US on their ability to savor a variety of realistic, enjoyable experiences such as discovering a beautiful waterfall on ...

Fairfax, Va., June 2, 2014—Combining oncolytic adenovirus-mediated cytotoxic gene therapy (OAMCGT) with intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) reduces the risk of having a positive prostate biopsy two years after treatment in intermediate-risk prostate cancer without affecting patients' quality of life, according to a study published in the June 1, 2014 edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Previous prospective ...

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2014 — Thomas Edison is hands-down one of the greatest inventors in history. He also had a love of chemistry that banished him to the basement as a kid. This week, the Reactions team went behind the scenes at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park to see how Edison's love of chemistry fueled his world-changing inventions. Recently named a National Historic Chemical Landmark, the complex is home to more than 400,000 artifacts (which we definitely weren't allowed to touch) and is considered the template for modern research-and-development labs everywhere. ...

MADISON, Wis. — A grandfather clock is, on its surface, a simple yet elegant machine. Tall and stately, its job is to steadily tick away the time. But a look inside reveals a much more intricate dance of parts, from precisely-fitted gears to cable-embraced pulleys and bobbing levers. Like exploring the inner workings of a clock, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers is digging into the inner workings of the tiny cellular machines called spliceosomes, which help make all of the proteins our bodies need to function. In a recent study published in the journal ...

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a tool that allows hardware designers and system builders to test security- a first for the field. One of the tool's potential uses is described in the May-June issue of IEEE Micro magazine. "The stakes in hardware security are high", said Ryan Kastner, a professor of computer science at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. There is a big push to create the so-called Internet of Things, where all devices are connected and communicate with one another. As a result, embedded ...

VIDEO: This 3-D animated fly-by of developing tropical low pressure System 93E on June 2 revealed the highest thunderstorms (in red) as it continues to develop. Click here for more information. There's a new tropical low pressure area brewing in the Eastern Pacific and NASA's TRMM satellite flew overhead and got a read on its rainfall rates and cloud heights. The eastern Pacific Ocean has become active on cue with the start of the hurricane season in that area. Only a few days ...

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA — A new open-access article in the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing is garnering attention for research that could aid in the campaign to prevent drunk driving: a device that can detect alcohol in cars. The Journal of Applied Remote Sensing is published by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. The article "Stand-off detection of alcohol in car cabins," by Jarosław Młyńczak, Jan Kubicki, and Krzysztof Kopczyński of the Military University of Technology in Warsaw, details experiments using an external ...