An ultrasound of the lungs could help doctors quickly determine if a pregnant woman with preeclampsia is at risk for respiratory failure, suggests preliminary research published in the April issue of Anesthesiology. About 60,000 women worldwide die as a result of preeclampsia, which causes severely high blood pressure. Potential complications include stroke, bleeding and excess fluid in the lungs – called pulmonary edema – which can lead to respiratory failure. The study suggests a lung ultrasound can help doctors easily learn whether a woman with preeclampsia is suffering ...

Although cardiac arrest during childbirth is rare, it may be two times more common than previously reported in the literature, suggests the first large U.S. study on the potentially deadly condition published in the April issue of Anesthesiology. The study, based on data for more than 56 million births, also found that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) was often successful, and that the survival rate improved between 1998 and 2011. Maternal cardiac arrest means that the mother's heart stops beating, either before or after childbirth. More than one in 12,000 American ...

Germany, Austria and Cuba have at least one thing in common: they have all experienced what it means to be 'left out in the cold' and be considered 'bad company' by Western powers. However, just as Iran and South Africa, these three countries have handled this form of stigmatization very differently. According to new research, the reason for this is that diplomatic pressure and sanctions by the international community (the 'shaming method' ) fail to have the intended effect because isolation and shaming may boost national pride and sense of cohesion and thus support the ...

More than 40 percent of pregnant low-income women discharged from the hospital after a diagnosis of false or early labor did not want to be sent home, with the most common reasons being that they were in too much pain or lived too far away, according to a study by Baylor University's Louise Herrington School of Nursing (LHSON) and Parkland Health & Hospital System. Many of the women dissatisfied with being sent home stated that receiving specific written instructions about when to return to the hospital may have made them happier about going home. However, there was evidence ...

Agricultural fires continue to burn in the Indochina region as evidenced by this Aqua image taken on March 18, 2014. This natural-color image was taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, aboard the Aqua satellite. More fires have been set in both Burma and Laos since the last image taken by MODIS on March 07. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. Fire is used in cropland areas for pest and weed control and to prepare fields for planting. Crop residue burning helps farmers as it is a cheap and effective ...

A team of University of Toronto physicists led by Alex Hayat has proposed a novel and efficient way to leverage the strange quantum physics phenomenon known as entanglement. The approach would involve combining light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with a superconductor to generate entangled photons and could open up a rich spectrum of new physics as well as devices for quantum technologies, including quantum computers and quantum communication. Entanglement occurs when particles become correlated in pairs to predictably interact with each other regardless of how far apart they ...

NASA's TRMM satellite passed over the remnants of Tropical Cyclone Gillian and spotted some towering thunderstorms and areas of heavy rainfall, indicating there's still power in the former tropical storm. Over the past few days former tropical cyclone Gillian's remnants moved from the Gulf of Carpentaria into the Timor Sea. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM found a few strong convective thunderstorms when it passed above these remnants on March 18, 2014 at 0431 UTC. TRMM's Precipitation Radar (PR) instrument measured rain falling at a rate ...

URBANA, Ill. – Even after the agricultural reforms of 2002-03, for wheat, rice, and pearl millet farmers in India, grain markets are still pretty sticky. Two University of Illinois economists analyzed infrastructure of interstate trade for food-grain crops in three Indian states and found that grain farmers are unable to cash in on India's market reforms and take advantage of a price difference between two or more markets. "We wanted to see if there was more integration in the markets since the 2002 reforms," said Kathy Baylis. "We were surprised at how little integration ...

Technology used in video games is making its way to hospital rooms, where researchers at the University of Missouri hope to learn new ways to prevent falls among hospital patients. Between 700,000 and 1 million people each year fall in U.S. hospitals, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Hospitals nationwide are looking for ways to reduce that number. "Since 2008, we've investigated ways to detect and prevent falls by older adults living in independent senior apartments," said Marilyn Rantz, PhD, RN, a leader of the MU research team and a professor ...

A critically endangered plant known as marsh sandwort (Arenaria paludicola) is inching back from the brink of extinction thanks to the efforts of a UC Santa Cruz plant ecologist and her team of undergraduate students. Ingrid Parker, the Langenheim professor of plant ecology and evolution at UC Santa Cruz, got involved in the marsh sandwort recovery effort at the request of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). Although it used to occur all along the west coast, from San Diego to Washington state, this wetland plant with delicate white flowers had dwindled to one ...

A team of scientists from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, the Medical University of South Carolina and San Diego-based American Life Science Pharmaceuticals, Inc., report that cathepsin B gene knockout or its reduction by an enzyme inhibitor blocks creation of key neurotoxic pGlu-Aβ peptides linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Moreover, the candidate inhibitor drug has been shown to be safe in humans. The findings, based on AD mouse models and published online in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, support continued development of cysteine ...

People who experience chronic sleep disturbance—either through their work, insomnia or other reasons—could face an earlier onset of dementia and Alzheimer's, according to a new pre-clinical study by researchers at Temple University. "The big biological question that we tried to address in this study is whether sleep disturbance is a risk factor to develop Alzheimer's or is it something that manifests with the disease," said Domenico Praticò, professor of pharmacology and microbiology/immunology in Temple's School of Medicine, who led the study. Initially, the researchers ...

AURORA, Colo. (March 17, 2014) - Helping children learn to eat well can be a challenge. Some children happily eat whatever is put in front of them while others seem to eat like birds and exist more on air than food. A new study by a researcher at the University of Colorado School of Medicine shows that parents influence how much children eat more than they may think. In this collaborative study between the CU School of Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine and University of Alabama Birmingham, researchers observed normal, everyday mealtimes in the homes of 145 parents ...

DALLAS, March 18, 2014 — As some countries and companies roll out new rules to limit animal testing in pharmaceutical products designed for people, scientists are stepping in with a new way to test therapeutic drug candidates and determine drug safety and drug interactions — without using animals. The development of "chemosynthetic livers," which could dramatically alter how drugs are made, was presented at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting features more than 10,000 presentations ...

STANFORD, Calif. — California sea lions exposed to a toxin in algae develop a form of epilepsy that is similar to one in humans, according to a new study led by Stanford University School of Medicine researchers. Every year, hundreds of sea lions wash up along the California coast, suffering seizures caused by exposure to domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can produce memory loss, tremors, convulsions and death. Domoic acid is produced by algae blooms that have been proliferating along the coast in recent years, accumulating in anchovies and other small fish that the sea ...

WASHINGTON D.C., March 18, 2014 -- A powerful, new three-dimensional model provides fresh insight into the turbulent death throes of supernovas, whose final explosions outshine entire galaxies and populate the universe with elements that make life on Earth possible. The model is the first to represent the start of a supernova collapse in three dimensions, said its developer, W. David Arnett, Regents Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Arizona, who developed the model with Casey Meakin and Nathan Smith at Arizona and Maxime Viallet of the Max-Planck Institut ...

A scientist has discovered 19 new species of praying mantis from Central and South America. The new species of bark mantises were discovered in tropical forests and also found among existing museum collections. Dr. Gavin Svenson, curator of invertebrate zoology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History, described the new species and published a revision of the genus Liturgusa in the open access journal ZooKeys. Svenson collected the insects from eight countries in Central and South America, as well as gathered hundreds of specimens from 25 international museums in ...

A new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that children treated with stimulants for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experienced slower body mass index (BMI) growth than their undiagnosed or untreated peers, followed by a rapid rebound of BMI that exceeded that of children with no history of ADHD or stimulant use and that could continue to obesity. The study, thought to be the most comprehensive analysis of ADHD and stimulant use in children to date, found that the earlier the medication began, and the longer ...

Even in a crowded room full of background noise, the human ear is remarkably adept at tuning in to a single voice — a feat that has proved remarkably difficult for computers to match. A new analysis of the underlying mechanisms, conducted by researchers at MIT, has provided insights that could ultimately lead to better machine hearing, and perhaps to better hearing aids as well. Our ears' selectivity, it turns out, arises from evolution's precise tuning of a tiny membrane, inside the inner ear, called the tectorial membrane. The viscosity of this membrane — its firmness, ...

LOS ANGELES (March 18, 2014) – Investigators at the Cedars-Sinai Regenerative Medicine Institute have discovered eye abnormalities that may help reveal features of early-stage Alzheimer's disease. Using a novel laboratory rat model of Alzheimer's disease and high-resolution imaging techniques, researchers correlated variations of the eye structure, to identify initial indicators of the disease. Alzheimer's disease is the leading cause of dementia, which is characterized by loss of memory and a progressive decline in cognitive function. To date, more than 26 million people ...

LOS ANGELES – (March 18, 2014) – In the only long-term, National Institutes of Health-funded study of prenatal methamphetamine exposure and child outcome, researchers found youngsters exposed to the potent illegal drug before birth had increased cognitive problems at age 7.5 years, highlighting the need for early intervention to improve academic outcomes and reduce the potential for negative behaviors, according to the study published online by The Journal of Pediatrics. The researchers studied 151 children exposed to methamphetamine before birth and 147 who were not ...

Farmers in Africa can increase their food production if they avoid over dependence on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and practice agricultural intensification - growing more food on the same amount of land – using natural and resource-conserving approaches such as agroforestry. According to scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), crop production in Africa is seriously hampered by the degradation of soil fertility, water and biodiversity resources. Currently, yields for important cereals such as maize have stagnated at 1 tone per hectare. Climate change ...

Archaeologists have found the oldest complete example in the world of a human with metastatic cancer in a 3,000 year-old skeleton. The findings are reported in the academic journal PLOS ONE today (17 March). The skeleton of the young adult male was found by a Durham University PhD student in a tomb in modern Sudan in 2013 and dates back to 1200BC. Analysis has revealed evidence of metastatic carcinoma, cancer which has spread to other parts of the body from where it started, from a malignant soft-tissue tumour spread across large areas of the body, making it ...

Augusta, Ga. – A bacterial infection can throw off the equilibrium between two key proteins in the lungs and put patients at risk for a highly lethal acute lung injury, researchers report. Bacteria can alter a single amino acid in the protein RhoA, pushing its activity level well above that of Rac1 and prompting blood vessels to leak and flood thousands of tiny air sacs in the lungs, said Dr. Stephen Black, cell and molecular physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. The study in The Journal of Biological Chemistry also proposes ...

Severe and sometimes fatal lung disease caused by a group of bacteria in the same family as those that cause tuberculosis is much more common than previously thought, with Caucasians 55 and older at greatest risk, report researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. The study is published online March 14 in PLOS ONE. Nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM) include more than 150 types of bacteria, found in water and soil, that can infect the lungs when inhaled. Unlike tuberculosis, NTM is not contagious and cannot spread from person to person. The ...