High total and saturated fat intake were associated with greater risk of estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor-positive (ER+PR+) breast cancer (BC), and human epidermal growth factor 2 receptor-negative (HER2-) disease, according to a new study published April 9 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Published data from epidemiological and case-control studies on the association between high fat intake and BC risk have been conflicting, which may be attributable to difficulties obtaining accurate information on fat intake and because of limited heterogeneity ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Older people who are starting to have memory and thinking problems, but do not yet have dementia may have a lower risk of dying from cancer than people who have no memory and thinking problems, according to a study published in the April 9, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease are less likely to develop cancer, but we don't know the reason for that link," said study author Julián Benito-León, MD, PhD, of University Hospital 12 of October in Madrid, ...

PASADENA, Calif., April 9, 2014 — Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who participated in any level of moderate to vigorous physical activity had a lower risk of hospital readmission within 30 days compared to those who were inactive, according to a study published today in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Researchers examined the electronic health records of 6,042 Kaiser Permanente patients in Southern California who were 40 years or older and who were hospitalized with COPD between Jan. 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2012. As part of Kaiser ...

Bottom Line: Most colorectal cancer surgeries are performed on patients older than 65 years, and older patients have worse outcomes than younger patients, although the total number of colon cancer operations has decreased in the past decade. Author: Mehraneh D. Jafari, M.D., and colleagues from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, Orange. Background: Gastrointestinal cancers are common in the elderly with peak occurrences in the sixth and seventh decades of life. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of death and surgery remains the curative ...

MADISON, Wis. — As one of the most widely consumed and commercially important beverages on the planet, one would expect the experts to know everything there is to know about lager beer. But it was just a few years ago that scientists identified the South American yeast that, hundreds of years ago, somehow hitched a ride to Bavaria and combined with the domesticated Old World yeast used for millennia to make ale and bread to form the hybrid that makes lager or cold stored beer. The mystery of the cold-adapted yeast that blended with a distant cousin to make the lager-churning ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Statistics show that the amount of older adults in the criminal justice system has quadrupled in the past 15 years. Many of the adults have histories of mental health problems and are being placed in court-based treatment programs, where government officials and social workers tend to think that they are more likely to experience success compared to their younger counterparts. However, new research by Kelli Canada, assistant professor in the University of Missouri School of Social Work, shows that although mental health court participants older than 50 adhere ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — April 9, 2014 — Two cell surface receptors might be responsible for the most common form of lung cancer spreading to other parts of the body, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). The hepatocyte growth factor receptor (HGFR/MET) and fibroblast growth factor-inducible 14 (FN14) are proteins associated with the potential spread of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the TGen study published online April 8 by the scientific journal Clinical & Experimental Metastasis. NSCLC represents more than 85 ...

Coral Gables, FL (April 9, 2014) -- Approximately 26 percent of the U.S. population has impaired fasting glucose, which is a predisposition for developing type 2 diabetes, and chromium supplementation has been suggested as a method that may help control and prevent the disease. A new study by a University of Miami (UM) researcher analyses nearly three decades of data on the effect of chromium supplementation on blood sugar and concludes that chromium supplements are not effective at lowering fasting blood sugar in healthy individuals, or diabetics. Chromium is a mineral ...

An international team of scientists has reported the first experimental observation of the quantum critical point (QCP) in the extensively studied "unconventional superconductor" TiSe2, finding that it does not reside as predicted within the superconducting dome of the phase diagram, but rather at a full GPa higher in pressure. The surprising result, reported in Nature Physics, suggests that the emergence of superconductivity in TiSe2 isn't associated with the melting of a charge density wave (CDW), as prevailing theory holds; in fact the CDW's amplitude decreases under ...

By attaching short sequences of single-stranded DNA to nanoscale building blocks, researchers can design structures that can effectively build themselves. The building blocks that are meant to connect have complementary DNA sequences on their surfaces, ensuring only the correct pieces bind together as they jostle into one another while suspended in a test tube. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made a discovery with implications for all such self-assembled structures. Earlier work assumed that the liquid medium in which these DNA-coated pieces float ...

Drastically improved efforts to provide modern energy access to the poor opens up a new approach to development efforts and action on climate change, an international group of energy and environment scholars say in a new report, Our High-Energy Planet. The report is the first of three in the Climate Pragmatism project, a partnership of Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) and The Breakthrough Institute. "Climate change can't be solved on the backs of the world's poorest people," said Daniel Sarewitz, a report coauthor and co-director ...

Rochester, Minn. — Rheumatoid arthritis patients are likelier than the average person to develop chronic kidney disease, and more severe inflammation in the first year of rheumatoid arthritis, corticosteroid use, high blood pressure and obesity are among the risk factors, new Mayo Clinic research shows. Physicians should test rheumatoid arthritis patients periodically for signs of kidney problems, and patients should work to keep blood pressure under control, avoid a high-salt diet, and eliminate or scale back medications damaging to the kidneys, says senior author Eric ...

VIDEO: Professor Kevin Du and his team at Syracuse University have identified apps that could cause problems for smartphone users, allowing hackers easy access to sensitive information. Click here for more information. Professor Kevin Du and a team of researchers from the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University have recently discovered that some of the most common activities among smartphone users—scanning 2D barcodes, finding free Wi-Fi access points, ...

Growing agave and other carefully chosen plants amid photovoltaic panels could allow solar farms not only to collect sunlight for electricity but also to produce crops for biofuels, according to new computer models by Stanford scientists. This co-location approach could prove especially useful in sunny, arid regions such as the southwestern United States where water is scarce, said Sujith Ravi, who is conducting postdoctoral research with professors David Lobell and Chris Field, both on faculty in environmental Earth system science and senior fellows at the Stanford Woods ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Low-risk Medicare patients entering home health care who received medication therapy management by phone were three times less likely to be hospitalized within the next two months, while those at greater risk saw no benefit, according to a study led by Purdue University. The study helped determine which patients benefit most from medication therapy management by phone and a way to identify them through a standardized risk score, said Alan Zillich, associate professor of pharmacy practice at Purdue, who led the research. "Hopefully, this study ...

According to a clinical trial led by University of Cincinnati researchers, a snack food ingredient called olestra has been found to speed up the removal of toxins in the body. Results are reported in the April edition of the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. The trial demonstrated that olestra—a zero-calorie fat substitute found in low-calorie snack foods such as Pringles—could reduce the levels of serum polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in people who had been exposed to PCBs. High levels of PCBs in the body are associated with an increase in hypertension and diabetes. ...

TEMPE, Ariz. - If desert mirages occur on Mars, "Lake Gusev" belongs among them. This come-and-go body of ancient water has come and gone more than once, at least in the eyes of Mars scientists. Now, however, it's finally shifting into sharper focus, thanks to a new analysis of old data by a team led by Steve Ruff, associate research professor at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in the School of Earth and Space Exploration. The team's report was just published in the April 2014 issue of the journal Geology. The story begins in early 2004, when NASA ...

UC Santa Barbara physicist Tarun Grover has provided definitive mathematical evidence for supersymmetry in a condensed matter system. Sought after in the realm of subatomic particles by physicists for several decades, supersymmetry describes a unique relationship between particles. "As yet, no one has found supersymmetry in our universe, including at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)," said the associate specialist at UCSB's Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP). He is referring to the underground laboratory in Switzerland where the famous Higgs boson was identified ...

Violent behavior and beliefs among middle school students can be reduced through the implementation of a targeted violence intervention program, according to a Vanderbilt study released in the Journal of Injury and Violence Research. Manny Sethi, M.D., assistant professor of Orthopaedic Surgery and Rehabilitation, and his Vanderbilt co-authors evaluated 27 programs nationwide as part of a search for an appropriate school-based violence prevention program. Their findings led to a single, evidence-based conflict resolution program that was evaluated in a pilot study of ...

Stanford University scientists have found a new, highly efficient way to produce liquid ethanol from carbon monoxide gas. This promising discovery could provide an eco-friendly alternative to conventional ethanol production from corn and other crops, say the scientists. Their results are published in the April 9 advanced online edition of the journal Nature. "We have discovered the first metal catalyst that can produce appreciable amounts of ethanol from carbon monoxide at room temperature and pressure – a notoriously difficult electrochemical reaction," said Matthew ...

BOSTON – By manipulating a biochemical process that underlies cells' energy-burning abilities, investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have made a novel discovery that could lead to a new therapy to combat obesity and diabetes. Published in the April 10 issue of the journal Nature, the new findings show that reducing the amount of nicotinamide N-methyltransferase (NNMT) protein in fat and liver dramatically reduces the development of obesity and diabetes in mice. 'With this discovery, we now have a means of metabolic manipulation that could ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Drugs used to block copper absorption for a rare genetic condition may find an additional use as a treatment for certain types of cancer, researchers at Duke Medicine report. The researchers found that cancers with a mutation in the BRAF gene require copper to promote tumor growth. These tumors include melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer that kills an estimated 10,000 people in the United States a year, according to the National Cancer Institute. "BRAF-positive cancers like melanoma almost hunger for copper," said Christopher M. Counter, ...

Programming living cells offers the prospect of harnessing sophisticated biological machinery for transformative applications in energy, agriculture, water remediation and medicine. Inspired by engineering, researchers in the emerging field of synthetic biology have designed a tool box of small genetic components that act as intracellular switches, logic gates, counters and oscillators. But scientists have found it difficult to wire the components together to form larger circuits that can function as "genetic programs." One of the biggest obstacles? Dealing with a small ...

Using a laser to place individual rubidium atoms near the surface of a lattice of light, scientists at MIT and Harvard University have developed a new method for connecting particles — one that could help in the development of powerful quantum computing systems. The new technique, described in a paper published today in the journal Nature, allows researchers to couple a lone atom of rubidium, a metal, with a single photon, or light particle. This allows both the atom and photon to switch the quantum state of the other particle, providing a mechanism through which quantum-level ...

Synthetic collagen invented at Rice University may help wounds heal by directing the natural clotting of blood. The material, KOD, mimics natural collagen, a fibrous protein that binds cells together into organs and tissues. It could improve upon commercial sponges or therapies based on naturally derived porcine or bovine-derived collagen now used to aid healing during or after surgery. The lab of Jeffrey Hartgerink, a chemist and bioengineer based at Rice's BioScience Research Collaborative, developed synthetic collagen several years ago. The lab's analysis of KOD ...