A group of deaf adults using American Sign Language in a healthy lifestyle program successfully lost weight, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology & Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity & Metabolism Scientific Sessions 2014. In the first randomized trial of lifestyle modification or weight reduction with deaf people using American Sign Language (ASL), participants had moderate improvements in their weight and level of physical activity after a 16-week program. "Existing mainstream programs focused on weight and weight-related ...

Teaching people how to flavor food with spices and herbs is considerably more effective at lowering salt intake than having them do it on their own, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology & Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity & Metabolism Scientific Sessions 2014. In the first phase of the study, 55 volunteers ate a low-sodium diet for four weeks. Researchers provided all foods and calorie-containing drinks. Salt is the main source of sodium in food. In the second phase, half of the study volunteers participated in a 20-week ...

Many U.S. women don't know most of the warning signs of a stroke, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2014 Scientific Sessions. The study is also published in the American Heart Association journal, Stroke. In a phone survey of 1,205 U.S. women: More than half (51 percent) of the women identified sudden weakness or numbness on one side of the face, arms or legs as a warning sign of a stroke. Less than half (44 percent) identified difficulty speaking or garbled speech ...

West Orange, NJ. March 20, 2014. Kessler Foundation scientists collaborated with colleagues in Spain to study memory and learning in patients with Parkinson Disease (PD). They found that the Parkinson group's ability to learn new information was significantly poorer when compared with the control group. The article was published ahead of print on February 24: Chiaravalloti ND, Ibarretxe-Bilbao N, Deluca J, Rusu O, Pena J, García-Gorostiaga I, Ojeda N. The source of the memory impairment in Parkinson's disease: Acquisition versus retrieval. Movement Disorders 2014 Feb 24. ...

Industry-sponsored, academic research leads to innovative patents and licenses, says a new analysis led by Brian Wright, University of California, Berkeley professor of agricultural and resource economics. The finding calls into question assumptions that corporate support skews science toward inventions that are less accessible and less useful to others than those funded by the government or non-profit organizations. The analysis, based on a study of two decades of records from the University of California system, is in today's science journal Nature. The National ...

Scientists have discovered a new, persistent structure in one of two radiation belts surrounding Earth. NASA's twin Van Allen Probes spacecraft have shown that high-energy electrons in the inner radiation belt display a persistent pattern that resembles slanted zebra stripes. Surprisingly, this structure is produced by the slow rotation of Earth, previously considered incapable of affecting the motion of radiation belt particles, which have velocities approaching the speed of light. Scientists had previously believed that increased solar wind activity was the primary ...

Hungry dogs would be expected to choose alternatives leading to more food rather than less food. But just as with humans and monkeys, they sometimes show a "less is more" effect. Thus conclude Kristina Pattison and Thomas Zentall of the University of Kentucky in the US, who tested the principle by feeding baby carrots and string cheese to ten dogs of various breeds. The findings are published in Springer's journal Animal Cognition. The research was conducted on dogs that would willingly eat cheese and baby carrots when offered, but showed a preference for the cheese. ...

PHILADELPHIA - A new clinical trial will soon begin testing whether early medical intervention in people at risk for Alzheimer's can slow down progression of disease pathology before symptoms emerge, as outlined in Science Translational Medicine. For the first time, people with no Alzheimer's disease symptoms will be told of their risk status before being asked to join the randomized controlled trial. As part of the overall prevention trial, Penn Medicine neurodegenerative ethics experts will monitor how learning about their risk of developing Alzheimer's impacts trial ...

An NJIT physicist is a collaborator in the discovery of a new structure in Earth's inner radiation belt -- a zebra-striped structure of highly energized electrons that could endanger humans in space and also damage low-earth navigation and communication satellites. And surprisingly, the new structure is produced not by solar activity but by Earth's slow rotation. Scientists had previously thought Earth's rotation couldn't affect the motion of radiation belt particles. The data supporting these discoveries comes from a measuring device aboard the two NASA Van Allen Probes ...

Researchers studying intestinal bacteria in newborns have characterized the gut bacteria of premature infants who go on to develop sepsis, a serious and potentially life-threatening condition caused by bacteria in the bloodstream. Their findings suggest new strategies for the early detection and prevention of severe bloodstream infections. The research was funded by several components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), ...

Researchers from the Santa Fe Institute and the Smithsonian Institution have pieced together a highly detailed picture of feeding relationships among 700 mammal, bird, reptile, fish, insect, and plant species from a 48 million year old lake and forest ecosystem. Their analysis of fossilized remains from the Messel deposit near Frankfurt, Germany, provides the most compelling evidence to date that ancient food webs were organized much like modern food webs. Their paper describing the research appears online and open access this week in Proceedings of the Royal Society ...

What immune response should a vaccine elicit to prevent HIV infection? Two studies published online today bring scientists closer to answering this question by identifying previously unrecognized attributes of antibodies that appear to have reduced the risk of HIV infection in the only clinical trial to show efficacy, albeit modest, of an experimental vaccine regimen in people. Earlier analyses of the results of that trial, known as RV144, suggested that antibodies to sites within a part of the HIV envelope called V1V2 correlated with reduced risk of HIV infection. These ...

Beverly, MA, March 19, 2014 – Long-term survivors after esophagectomy with gastric pull-up can enjoy a satisfying meal and good quality of life according to a new study from a team of researchers at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles. This study concluded that pessimism about the long-term quality of life after an esophagectomy on the part of treating physicians and patients is unwarranted. It is published in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, an official publication of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery. ...

DALLAS, March 19, 2014 — Texans, known for enjoying local beers and Dr Pepper soft drinks, now have a growing beverage industry that would appeal to James Bond, who is well-known for enjoying a good martini. Distillers are producing at least 17 Texas vodkas, researchers reported here today, and the most popular are, surprisingly, those that are a bit salty. Their report, "Shaken not stirred, y'all: A comparison of select Texas vodkas," covered the results of group tastings on the vodkas, as well as some surprising facts about the state's alcoholic beverage market. ...

Why do neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's affect only the elderly? Why do some people live to be over 100 with intact cognitive function while others develop dementia decades earlier? More than a century of research into the causes of dementia has focused on the clumps and tangles of abnormal proteins that appear in the brains of people with neurodegenerative diseases. However, scientists know that at least one piece of the puzzle has been missing because some people with these abnormal protein clumps show few or no signs of cognitive decline. A new study ...

New research led by the University of Exeter suggests that rising global temperatures will increase the quantity of the key greenhouse gas methane emitted from freshwater ecosystems to the Earth's atmosphere – which could in turn lead to further warming. The collaborative study, led by Dr Gabriel Yvon-Durocher from the University of Exeter, collated data from hundreds of laboratory experiments and field surveys to demonstrate that the speed at which methane fluxes increase with temperature was the same whether single species populations of methanogens, microbial communities ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A multi-national research team led by Duke Medicine scientists has identified a subclass of antibodies associated with an effective immune response to an HIV vaccine. The finding, reported in the March 19, 2014, issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine, helps explain why a combination of two vaccines was able to show some effect, when one vaccine alone did not. The study also provides key insights that could aid development of new vaccines. "More is not always better with an antibody response," said senior author Georgia D. Tomaras, Ph.D., ...

Glasgow, UK: Women whose breast cancer has spread to just a few lymph nodes under their arm are less likely to have their disease recur or to die from it if they have radiotherapy after mastectomy, according to new research to be presented at the European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-9) on Thursday and published in The Lancet today (Wednesday). [1] Dr Paul McGale will tell the meeting that, until now, there has been uncertainty over whether women with early breast cancer that has spread to just one, two or three lymph nodes under the arm gain any benefit from radiotherapy ...

Researchers from USC and Nanjing University in China have documented evidence suggesting that part of the reason that the Earth has become neither sweltering like Venus nor frigid like Mars lies with a built-in atmospheric carbon dioxide regulator – the geologic cycles that churn up the planet's rocky surface. Scientists have long known that "fresh" rock pushed to the surface via mountain formation effectively acts as a kind of sponge, soaking up the greenhouse gas CO2. Left unchecked, however, that process would simply deplete atmospheric CO2 levels to a point that would ...

Berkeley — Academic research sponsored by industry has a strong track record of leading to innovative patents and licenses, challenging assumptions that corporate support skews science toward inventions that are less accessible and less useful to others than those funded by the government or non-profit organizations, according to a new analysis. The findings, to be published in a Wednesday, March 19, commentary in the journal Nature, are based upon a study of two decades of records from the University of California system. The authors, led by Brian Wright, UC Berkeley ...

New research shows an alternative DNA test offers clinically relevant genetic information to identify why a miscarriage may have occurred years earlier. Researchers were able to identify chromosomal variants and abnormalities in nearly 50 percent of the samples. This first-of-its-kind study was conducted by researchers from Montefiore Medical Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The results were published in the March issue of Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology. The technique used in this study, called rescue karyotyping, allows ...

Building a strong connection to a social group helps clinically depressed patients recover and helps prevent relapse, according to a new study. For the paper, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) Senior Fellow Alexander Haslam, lead author Tegan Cruwys and their colleagues at the University of Queensland conducted two studies of patients diagnosed with depression or anxiety. The patients either joined a community group with activities such as sewing, yoga, sports and art, or partook in group therapy at a psychiatric hospital. In both cases, patients responding ...

Scientists have discovered a new, persistent structure in Earth's inner radiation belt using data from the twin NASA Van Allen Probes spacecraft. Most surprisingly, this structure is produced by the slow rotation of Earth, previously considered incapable of affecting the motion of radiation belt particles, which have velocities approaching the speed of light. Data from the Van Allen Probes Ion Composition Experiment (RBSPICE) on board each of the twin spacecraft orbiting Earth revealed that the highly energized population of electrons of the inner radiation belt is ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — March 19, 2014 — In a scientific first, the fusion of two genes, ALK and EML4, has been identified as the genetic driver in an aggressive type of thyroid cancer, according to a study by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). These groundbreaking findings are based on genetic sequencing of tumor cells from a 62-year-old patient with an aggressive tall cell variant of papillary thyroid cancer, according to the study published Tuesday, March 18, in the World Journal of Surgery, the official journal of the International Society of Surgery. The ...

Lotteries of different kinds have been part of the human culture since remote times. Apparently, the initial idea was to use the money gained through the game to finance government projects. This seems to be how the Great Wall of China was built. Then, lotteries started to be used as a simple form of entertainment. The first known European lottery dates back to the Roman Empire and since then many countries have created different types of lottery. According to Scientific Games, an authority in the global lottery and regulated gaming industry, lottery sales worldwide totaled ...