Rochester, MN, October 7, 2014 – Numerous randomized clinical trials have shown the effectiveness of the two major forms of smoking cessation treatment – behavioral support and medication - in helping smokers quit. Researchers have now demonstrated that this approach can successfully translate to the "real world" and that a combination of the two treatments offers almost a threefold chance of success over attempts to quit without using a cessation aid. Their findings are published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. "Randomized clinical trials have a high internal ...

There is evidence that hunter-gatherers are optimal foragers whose behaviour is influenced by costs associated with foraging, and therefore for example rising the costs of ammunition could potentially help conserving wild animals. However, there has been a paucity of studies on whether the behaviour of bushmeat hunters, like that of consumers, is cost sensitive moneywise. In Ecuador, ammunition prices rose unexpectedly by 300 per cent in early 2009, because of a tax imposed by the national Government. This happened right when Anders Sirén, then postdoc researcher ...

Adolescence is often a turbulent time, and it is marked by substantially increased rates of depressive symptoms, especially among girls. New research indicates that this gender difference may be the result of girls' greater exposure to stressful interpersonal events, making them more likely to ruminate, and contributing to their risk of depression. The findings are published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "These findings draw our focus to the important role of stress as a potential causal factor in the development ...

The human and environmental dangers posed by a widely used manufacturing technique could be almost eradicated thanks to research led by Plymouth University. Fibre-reinforced polymer matrix composites are painted or sprayed onto products to provide a high-quality finish in transport applications, chemical plants, renewable energy systems and pipelines. But that finishing process causes the vapours of a volatile organic compound – styrene, found in polyesters and vinyl-esters – to be emitted, posing potential health and wellbeing risks to the workforces involved ...

Scientists from the University of Leeds have taken a crucial step forward in bio-nanotechnology, a field that uses biology to develop new tools for science, technology and medicine. The new study, published in print today in the journal Nano Letters, demonstrates how stable 'lipid membranes' – the thin 'skin' that surrounds all biological cells – can be applied to synthetic surfaces. Importantly, the new technique can use these lipid membranes to 'draw' – akin to using them like a biological ink – with a resolution of 6 nanometres (6 billionths ...

VIDEO: The Arctic and the Antarctic are regions that have a lot of ice and acts as air conditioners for the Earth system. This year, Antarctic sea ice reached a record... Click here for more information. Sea ice surrounding Antarctica reached a new record high extent this year, covering more of the southern oceans than it has since scientists began a long-term satellite record to map sea ice extent in the late 1970s. The upward trend in the Antarctic, however, is only about ...

Stretch sensors in our muscles participate in reflexes that serve the subconscious control of posture and movement. According to a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience, these sensors respond weakly to muscle stretch caused by one's voluntary action, and most strongly to stretch that is imposed by external forces. The ability to reflect causality in this manner can facilitate appropriate reflex control and accurate self-perception. "The results of the study show that stretch receptors in our muscles indicate more than which limb is moving or how fast; these ...

Just like adjusting a watch, the key to accurately telling evolutionary time is based upon periodically calibrating against a gold standard. Scientists have long used DNA data to develop molecular clocks that measure the rate at which DNA changes, i.e., accumulates mutations, as a premiere tool to peer into the past evolutionary timelines for the lineage of a given species. In human evolution, for example, molecular clocks, when combined with fossil evidence, have helped trace the time of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans to 5-7 million years ago, and ...

During cell division, chromosomes acquire a characteristic X-shape with the two DNA molecules (sister chromatids) linked at a central "connection region" that contains highly compacted DNA. It was unknown if rearrangements in this typical X-shape architecture could disrupt the correct separation of chromosomes. A recent study by Raquel Oliveira, from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (Portugal), in collaboration with colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz (USA), now shows that the dislocation of particular DNA segments perturbs proper chromosome ...

One key to animal survival is bitter taste----the better to avoid ingesting potentially harmful poisons or foods. The evolution of bitter taste has been a hot topic amongst evolutionary biologists, and with more and more DNA data available, a rich area of exploration. Now, professor Maik Behrens, et. al. examined the genetic repertoire of bitter taste receptor genes in chickens and frogs, which represent two extremes. Chickens only have 3 bitter taste receptor genes (Tas2rs), while frogs have more than 50 (humans are somewhere in the middle). They studied the different ...

This news release is available in French. The association between saturated fat and cardiovascular risk has become a hot topic in nutrition. Researchers at the Institute of nutrition and functional foods (INAF) of Université Laval are calling for a review of dietary recommendations on saturated fat (SFA) in relation to cardiovascular disease (CVD). In a Comment paper, published today in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism the authors provide a number of arguments for the urgency to re-assess the association between dietary saturated fat ...

Researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) have managed to generate a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) model that reproduces human colon cancer. With two publications appearing in PLoS One and EMBO Reports, the IRB team also unveil the function of a key gene in the development of the disease. "The breakthrough is that we have generated cancer in an adult organism and from stem cells, thus reproducing what happens in most types of human cancer. This model has allowed us to identify subtle interactions in the development of cancer that are ...

HEIDELBERG, 8 October 2014 – Researchers in Spain have determined how a transcription factor known as Mirror regulates tumour-like growth in the intestines of fruit flies. The scientists believe a related system may be at work in humans during the progression of colorectal cancer due to the observation of similar genes and genetic interactions in cultured colorectal cancer cells. The results are reported in the journal EMBO Reports. Colorectal cancer leads to more than half a million deaths worldwide each year. The disease originates in the epithelial cells of the ...

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 8, 2014 -- Employees who are verbally abused by supervisors are more likely to "act out" at work, doing everything from taking a too-long lunch break to stealing, according to a new study led by a San Francisco State University organizational psychologist. Even if the abuse is meant to be motivational -- like when a football coach berates his team or a drill sergeant shames her cadets -- the abused employees are still more likely to engage in counter-productive work behaviors, said Kevin Eschleman, assistant professor of psychology at SF State. The ...

New research from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that large chain restaurants, whose core menu offerings are generally high in calories, fat and sodium, introduced newer food and beverage options that, on average, contain 60 fewer calories than their traditional menu selections in 2012 and 2013. Researchers say this could herald a trend in calorie reduction in anticipation of expected new federal government rules requiring large chain restaurants – including most fast-food places – to post calorie counts on their menus. The appearance ...

PHILADELPHIA – (Oct. 8, 2014) – Numerous experts and policy makers have called for hospitals to screen patients for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections and isolate anyone testing positive to prevent the spread of these so-called "Superbugs" in healthcare settings. Several states have enacted laws requiring patients be screened for MRSA upon admission. Two new abstracts, scheduled for presentation on Friday at IDWeek, the annual scientific meeting for infectious disease specialists, found universal MRSA screening and isolation of ...

This news release is available in French. Researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital are warning parents that difficult eaters could have underlying psychological issues, as they have found that restrictive behaviours can appear before puberty. "Many researchers believe that bulimia only appears at adolescence, but our studies indicate that the problem can arises much earlier. It is possible that it is currently under-diagnosed due to a lack of awareness and investigation," explained clinical psychologist and ...

How the largest animals to have ever walked the Earth fed, and how this allowed them to live alongside one another in prehistoric ecosystems is the subject of new research from the University of Bristol and the Natural History Museum, London. The sauropods – large, long-necked plant-eating dinosaurs such as Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus – dominated the land between 210 and 65 million years ago. They were the largest land animals of all time, with the biggest weighing 80 tonnes (more than 11 elephants) and would have needed vast amounts of food. Despite ...

Schools are a vital way of reaching the 10–20% of children and young people across the globe who would benefit from some sort of mental health intervention, according to a new Series on mental health interventions in schools published in The Lancet Psychiatry. The Series highlights that childhood is an important window for intervention because around 75% of adults who access mental health services have had a diagnosable disorder before the age of 18 [1]. What is more, estimates from high-income countries (HICs) indicate that only 25% of children with a mental health ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study pinpoints working memory as a source of learning difficulties in people with schizophrenia. Working memory is known to be affected in the millions of people – about 1 percent of the population – who have schizophrenia, but it has been unclear whether that has a specific role in making learning more difficult, said study lead author and Brown University postdoctoral researcher Anne Collins. "We really tend to think of learning as a unitary, single process, but really it is not," said Collins, who along ...

VIDEO: This is an animation of NIST's new method for measuring electric field strength based on the quantum properties of atoms. The technique works for abroad range of frequencies, 1-500 gigahertz,... Click here for more information. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Michigan have demonstrated a technique based on the quantum properties of atoms that directly links measurements of electric field strength to the International ...

UPTON, NY - Increasing the oil content of plant biomass could help fulfill the nation's increasing demand for renewable energy feedstocks. But many of the details of how plant leaves make and break down oils have remained a mystery. Now a series of detailed genetic studies conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and published in The Plant Cell reveals previously unknown biochemical details about those metabolic pathways-including new ways to increase the accumulation of oil in leaves, an abundant source of biomass for fuel production. Using ...

ST. LOUIS -- A vaccine that protects against an old strain of avian flu primes the immune system to mount a rapid response when a vaccine designed to protect against a related but different and new strain of avian flu is given a year later, according to Saint Louis University research findings reported in JAMA. In addition, when combined with an adjuvant, which is a chemical that stimulates the immune system to produce more antibodies, a lower dose of the new avian flu vaccine worked better in triggering an immune response than a stronger dose without adjuvant. That means ...

A one-day prevalence survey of 183 hospitals found that approximately 50 percent of hospitalized patients included in the survey were receiving antimicrobial drugs, and that about half of these patients were receiving 2 or more antimicrobial drugs, according to a study in the October 8 JAMA, a theme issue on infectious disease. Most antimicrobial use was for infection treatment. Despite the evidence supporting early, appropriate antimicrobial therapy, a substantial proportion of antimicrobial use in U.S. acute care hospitals may be inappropriate, based on factors such ...

Two randomized trials in the October 8 issue of JAMA examine new vaccination strategies for the prevention and control of avian influenza, often referred to as "bird flu." This is a theme issue on infectious disease. In one study, Mark J. Mulligan, M.D., of the Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, and colleagues compared the safety and antibody responses (immunogenicity) of different doses of influenza A/Shanghai/2/13 (H7N9) vaccine mixed with or without the MF59 adjuvant (a component that improves immunogenicity and enhances efficacy of inactivated influenza ...