WASHINGTON — Factors other than receipt of painkillers – including opiates – in the emergency department appear to be more important to patient satisfaction, as reflected in an analysis of Press Ganey® patient surveys to be published online today in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Lack of Association between Press Ganey® Emergency Department Patient Satisfaction Scores and Emergency Department Administration of Analgesic Medications"). "The lack of connection between painkillers and patient satisfaction is frankly the opposite of what we expected to find," said lead ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – March 27, 2014) The quest to improve survival of children with a high-risk brain tumor has led St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators to two drugs already used to treat adults with breast, pancreatic, lung and other cancers. The study was published today online ahead of print in the journal Cancer Cell. Researchers demonstrated that the drugs pemetrexed and gemcitabine killed cells from mouse and human brain tumors, called group 3 medulloblastoma, growing in the laboratory. Medulloblastoma is diagnosed in about 400 children annually in ...

As Opening Day rapidly approaches for most Major League Baseball teams, NJIT Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences Bruce Bukiet has prepared his annual MLB projections for the upcoming season. And, to the chagrin of loyal Mets fan Bukiet, New York's National League club looks to be in store for a disappointing year. Bukiet, who developed a mathematical model for calculating expected MLB win totals that was published in Operations Research, forecasts a mere 68 wins and a last-place finish for the Metropolitans. Bukiet's model can be used to project the number of ...

Washington, DC (March 27, 2014)—While a ceasefire in Washington's budget wars has restored funding for a range of programs targeting global health threats like AIDS and tuberculosis (TB), the simultaneous underfunding of the world's biggest sponsor of global health research and development (R&D) puts future progress at risk, warns a new report from a coalition of nonprofit groups focused on advancing innovation to save lives. The Global Health Technologies Coalition (GHTC) released their annual policy report today at a Capitol Hill briefing. "The end of political gridlock ...

VIDEO: This is an animation of a recording from a trial with two male bats competing for prey. Red and blue each represent a bat (red = GR41 and blue =... Click here for more information. As big brown bats wake up from their winter slumber and start zooming around in pursuit of insects to eat, how do they coordinate their activities in the dark of night? For one thing, according to researchers who report their findings on March 27 in the Cell Press journal Current Biology, males ...

Our cells must grow and divide optimally to ensure that our bodies functions properly. It is essential, however, that these processes are carefully controlled in order to prevent unrestrained proliferation that can lead to the formation of tumours. David Shore, a professor at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and his team have uncovered a cellular factor that regulates the timing of DNA replication. This molecule, called Rif1, ensures that only a fraction of the origins of DNA replication is activated at specified times of the cell cycle. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 27, 2014) – Mitochondria, long known as "cellular power plants" for their generation of the key energy source adenosine triphosphate (ATP), are essential for proper cellular functions. Mitochondrial defects are often observed in a variety of diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and Parkinson's disease, and are the hallmarks of a number of genetic mitochondrial disorders whose manifestations range from muscle weakness to organ failure. Despite a fairly strong understanding of the pathology of such genetic mitochondrial disorders, efforts ...

JUPITER, FL – March 27, 2014 – Memories are difficult to produce, often fragile, and dependent on any number of factors—including changes to various types of nerves. In the common fruit fly—a scientific doppelganger used to study human memory formation—these changes take place in multiple parts of the insect brain. Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been able to pinpoint a handful of neurons where certain types of memory formation occur, a mapping feat that one day could help scientists predict disease-damaged neurons in humans ...

VIDEO: In this animated graphic of bats' calls in flight, two bats are represented by different colors, red and blue. The bats' movements and vocalizations have been slowed by a factor... Click here for more information. Look into the spring sky at dusk and you may see flitting groups of bats, gobbling up insect meals in an intricately choreographed aerial dance. It's well known that echolocation calls keep the bats from hitting trees and each other. But now scientists have learned ...

Barcelona, Thursday 27 March 2014.- A team headed by Angel R. Nebreda at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) identifies a dual role of the p38 protein in colon cancer. The study demonstrates that, on the one hand, p38 is important for the optimal maintenance of the epithelial barrier that protects the intestine against toxic agents, thus contributing to decreased tumour development. Intriguingly, on the other hand, once a tumour has formed, p38 is required for the survival and proliferation of colon cancer cells, thus favouring tumour growth. The study is published ...

An international team of researchers, led by Beaumont Health System's Jan Akervall, M.D., Ph.D., looked at biomarkers to determine the effectiveness of radiation treatments for patients with squamous cell cancer of the head and neck. They identified two markers that were good at predicting a patient's resistance to radiation therapy. Their findings were published in the February issue of the European Journal of Cancer. Explains Dr. Akervall, co-director, Head and Neck Cancer Multidisciplinary Clinic, Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, and clinical director of Beaumont's BioBank, ...

HOUSTON – (March 27, 2014) – A new understanding of proteins at the nexus of a cell's decision to survive or die has implications for researchers who study cancer and age-related diseases, according to biophysicists at the Rice University-based Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (CTBP). Experiments and computer analysis of two key proteins revealed a previously unknown binding interface that could be addressed by medication. Results of the research appear this week in an open-source paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The proteins ...

Chronic pain sufferers could be kept physically active by improving the quality of their sleep, new research suggests. The study by the University of Warwick's Department of Psychology, published in PLoS One, found that sleep was a worthy target for treating chronic pain and not only as an answer to pain-related insomnia. "Engaging in physical activity is a key treatment process in pain management. Very often, clinicians would prescribe exercise classes, physiotherapy, walking and cycling programmes as part of the treatment, but who would like to engage in these activities ...

Scientists have for the first time witnessed the mechanism behind explosive energy releases in the Sun's atmosphere, confirming new theories about how solar flares are created. New footage put together by an international team led by University of Cambridge researchers shows how entangled magnetic field lines looping from the Sun's surface slip around each other and lead to an eruption 35 times the size of the Earth and an explosive release of magnetic energy into space. The discoveries of a gigantic energy build-up bring us a step closer to predicting when and where ...

Research from Prof. Alexandra Kalev of Tel Aviv University's Department of Sociology and Anthropology reveals that current workplace downsizing policies are reducing managerial diversity and increasing racial and gender inequalities. According to the study, layoff practices focusing on positions and tenure, rather than worker performance, minimized the share of white women in management positions by 25 percent and of black men by 20 percent. Prof. Kalev found that a striking two-thirds of the companies surveyed used tenure or position as their core criteria for downsizing. ...

Boston, MA—There is a growing recognition that in health care institutions where professionalism is not embraced and expectations of acceptable behaviors are not clear and enforced, an increase in medical errors and adverse events and a deterioration in safe working conditions can occur. In 2008 Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) created the Center for Professionalism and Peer Support (CPPS) and has seen tremendous success in this initiative. Researchers recently analyzed data from the CPPS from 2010 through 2013 and found that employees continue to turn to the center for ...

This news release is available in German. The material class of topological insulators has been discovered a few years ago and displays amazing properties: In their inside, they behave electrically insulating but at their surface they form metallic, conducting states. The electron spin, i. e., their intrinsic angular momentum, is playing a decisive role. Their sense of rotation is directly coupled to their direction of movement. This coupling leads not only to a high stability of the metallic property but also enables a particularly lossless electrical conduction. ...

The reason why some animals can regenerate tissues after severe organ loss or amputation while others, such as humans, cannot renew some structures has always intrigued scientists. In a study now published in PLOS ONE*, a research group from Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC, Portugal) led by Joaquín Rodríguez León provided new clues to solve this central question by investigating regeneration in an adult vertebrate model: the zebrafish. It was known that zebrafish is able to regenerate organs, and that electrical currents may play a role in this process, but the exact ...

Scientists at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), University College London, University of New Hampshire and University of Washington analysed 300 summer Arctic sea ice forecasts from 2008 to 2013 and found that forecasts are quite accurate when sea ice conditions are close to the downward trend that has been observed in Arctic sea ice for the last 30 years. However, forecasts are not so accurate when sea ice conditions are unusually higher or lower compared to this trend. "We found that in years when the sea ice extent departed strongly from the trend, such ...

PRINCETON, N.J.—In a study of 14,000 U.S. children, 40 percent lack strong emotional bonds — what psychologists call "secure attachment" — with their parents that are crucial to success later in life, according to a new report. The researchers found that these children are more likely to face educational and behavioral problems. In a report published by Sutton Trust, a London-based institute that has published more than 140 research papers on education and social mobility, researchers from Princeton University, Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political ...

WASHINGTON (March 27, 2014) — George Washington University (GW) researcher Narine Sarvazyan, Ph.D., has invented a new organ to help return blood flow from veins lacking functional valves. A rhythmically contracting cuff made of cardiac muscle cells surrounds the vein acting as a 'mini heart' to aid blood flow through venous segments. The cuff can be made of a patient's own adult stem cells, eliminating the chance of implant rejection. "We are suggesting, for the first time, to use stem cells to create, rather than just repair damaged organs," said Sarvazyan, professor ...

Clemson University research assistant professor Ashley Kay Childers has been selected to participate in a forum to discuss quality improvement programs in U.S. hospitals that reduce preventable readmissions, prevent medical errors, improve patient outcomes and cut costs. Childers, who also is a member of the South Carolina Hospital Association (SCHA) Quality and Patient Safety team, will participate in the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Surgical Health Care Quality Forum South Carolina in Columbia April 1. The forum will focus on Childers' work with the Safe Surgery ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- In recent years, behavioral neuroscientists have debated the meaning and significance of a plethora of independently conducted experiments seeking to establish the impact of chronic, early-life stress upon behavior – both at the time that stress is experienced, and upon the same individuals later in life, during adulthood. These experiments, typically conducted in rodents, have on the one hand clearly indicated a link between certain kinds of early stress and dysfunction in the neuroendocrine system, particularly in the so-called HPA axis (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal), ...

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have discovered that altered islet cell function and reduced insulin clearance contribute to excessive post-meal insulin response in patients experiencing low blood sugar symptoms (hypoglycemia) following gastric bypass surgery. These findings, led by Marzieh Salehi, MD, associate professor in the UC division of endocrinology, metabolism and diabetes, are featured online this month in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, and are part of an ongoing effort by UC researchers to better understand the effect ...

NASA released Thursday an image of a comet that, on Oct. 19, will pass within 84,000 miles of Mars -- less than half the distance between Earth and our moon. The image on the left, captured Mar. 11 by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows comet C/2013 A1, also called Siding Spring, at a distance of 353 million miles from Earth. Hubble can't see Siding Spring's icy nucleus because of its diminutive size. The nucleus is surrounded by a glowing dust cloud, or COMA, that measures roughly 12,000 miles across. The right image shows the comet after image processing techniques ...