September 17, 2014 – People with bipolar disorder who do yoga believe their yoga practice has significant mental health benefits, reports a survey study in the September Journal of Psychiatric Practice. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Some individuals with bipolar disorder believe that yoga has had a significant positive impact on their life." according to the study by Dr Lisa A. Uebelacker of Butler Hospital and Brown University, Providence, R.I., and colleagues. But they note their survey shows that yoga ...

DALLAS – September 17, 2014 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that the most common variant of the circulating protein apolipoprotein E, called apoE3, helps repair the lining of blood vessels. Individuals with another variant, called apoE4, do not get the benefit of this repair, putting them at higher risk for cardiovascular disease. "We believe that we have identified one mechanism by which apoE3 promotes a healthy cardiovascular system and why a genetic variant, apoE4, is detrimental," said Dr. Philip Shaul, Professor of Pediatrics and Vice Chair ...

The work comes out of the molecular therapeutic laboratory directed by Richard G. Moore, MD, of Women & Infants' Program in Women's Oncology. Entitled "HE4 expression is associated with hormonal elements and mediated by importin-dependent nuclear translocation," the research was recently published in the international science journal Scientific Reports, a Nature publishing group. The goal of the study was to investigate the role of the hormone HE4 in modulating an ovarian cancer's response to hormones and hormonal therapies. HE4 is a biomarker that is elevated in ovarian ...

Washington, DC— A team of researchers working on a Carnegie expedition in Australia's Great Barrier Reef has documented that coral growth rates have plummeted 40% since the mid-1970s. The scientists suggest that ocean acidification may be playing an important role in this perilous slowdown. In a quest for historical context on the peril facing coral reefs, the team compared current measurements of the growth rate of a section of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with similar measurements taken more than 30 years ago. Their work is published in Geochimica et Cosmochimica ...

A mathematical model that replicates Ebola outbreaks can no longer be used to ascertain the eventual scale of the current epidemic, finds research conducted by the University of Warwick. Dr Thomas House, of the University's Warwick Mathematics Institute, developed a model that incorporated data from past outbreaks that successfully replicated their eventual scale. The research, titled Epidemiological Dynamics of Ebola Outbreaks and published by eLife, shows that when applying the available data from the ongoing 2014 outbreak to the model that it is, according to Dr ...

Alexandria, Va. — Most people are familiar with the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and are aware of the earthquake risk posed to the Bay Area — and much of California — by the San Andreas Fault. Most people are not aware, however, that a cluster of large earthquakes struck the San Andreas and quite a few nearby faults in the 17th and 18th centuries. That cluster, according to new research, released about the same amount of energy throughout the Bay Area as the 1906 quake. Thus, it appears that the accumulated stress on the region's faults could be released in a series ...

As the United Kingdom forms a new crime unit designed to fight food fraud — in response to an uproar last year over horse meat being passed off as beef — scientists from Germany are reporting a technique for detecting meat adulteration. They describe their approach, which represents a vast improvement over current methods, in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Hans-Ulrich Humpf and colleagues note that food fraud is a major global economic problem. But they also say that adding, for example, horse or pork to other meats without disclosure also can cause ...

California's King Fire tripled in size from Monday, September 15 to Tuesday morning, September 16, and current weather conditions are doing nothing more than helping it along. The hot, drought conditions and winds have produced over 12 major fires that still burn all over California. The King Fire is just one of them. It is located east of Sacramento in the Pollock Pines community. Residents have been given mandatory evacuation orders and over 1,600 homes are currently threatened by this fire. It began Saturday September 13 and has spread rapidly through the area fueling ...

Amsterdam, September 17, 2014 – Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the publication of a position statement by the European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) in the journal Maturitas on the topic of breast cancer screening. Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women, with slightly more than ten percent developing the disease in Western countries. Mammography screening is a well-established method to detect breast cancer. However there are concerns about over diagnosis ...

A fevered search for the next great high-energy, rechargeable battery technology is on. Scientists are now reporting they have overcome key obstacles toward making lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, which have the potential to leave today's lithium-ion technology in the dust. Their study appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters. Xingcheng Xiao, Weidong Zhou, Mei Cai and their colleagues point out that the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries, which power many of our consumer electronics, as well as electric vehicles, have largely plateaued. Scientists have been pursuing ...

Campaigns against disposable plastic shopping bags and their environmental impact recently scored a major win. In August, California lawmakers passed the first statewide ban on the bags, and Governor Jerry Brown is expected to sign it. But the plastic bag industry is not yielding without a fight, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Alexander Tullo, a senior correspondent with C&EN, reports that the anti-bag campaign logged its first small victory in 1990 when Nantucket became the first place ...

Ageing of insulin-secreting cells is coupled to a progressive decline in signal transduction and insulin release, according to a recent study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The finding, which is published in the journal Diabetes, provides a new molecular mechanism underlying age-related impairment of insulin-producing cells and diabetes. Ageing is among the largest known risk factors for many diseases, and type 2 diabetes is no exception. People older than 65 years have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes if their insulin-producing cells ...

New research has found that the Great Barrier Reef, as a whole, is a remarkably effective wave absorber, despite large gaps between the reefs. This means that landward of the reefs, waves are mostly related to local winds rather than offshore wave conditions. As waves break and reduce in height over reefs, this drives currents that are very important for the transport of nutrients and larvae. This reduction in wave height also has implications for shoreline stability. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is the largest coral reef system in the world, extending 2,300 ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 17, 2014—Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI), a specialized magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technique that detects microstructural changes in brain tissue, can help physicians better predict the likelihood for poor clinical outcomes following mild traumatic brain injury compared to conventional imaging techniques such as computed tomography (CT), according to a new study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website until October ...

Tropical Storm Kalmaegi made landfall on September 17 near the border of Vietnam and China and moved inland. Soon after the landfall as a typhoon, NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and captured an image of the weaker tropical storm. The MODIS instrument that flies aboard Aqua took a visible picture of Tropical Storm Kalmaegi on Sept. 17 at 03:35 UTC (Sept. 16 at 11:35 p.m. EDT). The image showed the center of the storm in northeastern Vietnam, just south of the China border. Kalmaegi's clouds extended north into southern China and west into Laos. The Vietnamese ...

New research from the Copenhagen Centre for Social Evolution and Yale University offers compelling support for the general evolutionary theory that birth weight and -length can partially predict the likelihood of being diagnosed with mental health disorders such as autism and schizophrenia later in life. The study analyzed medical records of 1.75 million Danish births, and subsequent hospital diagnoses for up to 30 years, and adjusted for almost all other known risk factors. The study is published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, London B. The number of ...

From the most parched areas of Saudi Arabia to water-scarce areas of the western U.S., the idea of harvesting fog for water is catching on. Now, a novel approach to this process could help meet affected communities' needs for the life-essential resource. Scientists describe their new, highly efficient fog collector, inspired by a shorebird's beak, in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. Cheng Luo and his doctoral student, Xin Heng, explain that deserts and semi-arid areas cover about half of the Earth's land masses. In some of these places, trucks bring in ...

Researchers in Biomedical Informatics at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) and at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) have recently published a study in eLife showing that RNA called non-coding (IncRNA) plays an important role in the evolution of new proteins, some of which could have important cell functions yet to be discovered. Ribosomes produce proteins from the instructions found in an RNA molecule. However, only 2% of the human genome is RNA containing information for the synthesis of proteins, meaning it is coding. Other parts of the ...

A team of Spanish researchers have obtained the first partial genome sequence of an ancient pig. Extracted from a sixteenth century pig found at the site of the Montsoriu Castle in Girona, the data obtained indicates that this ancient pig is closely related to today's Iberian pig. Researchers also discard the hypothesis that Asian pigs were crossed with modern Iberian pigs. The study, published in Heredity, sheds new light on evolutionary aspects of pig species, and particularly on that of the Iberian breed, considered to be representative of original European Mediterranean ...

Smoke from the fires in the Selway Complex is wafting into the Selway River valley in this image taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra satellite on September 15, 2014. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. All the fires began between August 10 and August 25, 2014 by lightning strikes. The following fires are part of the Selway Complex: Raven Creek, Elevator Mountain, Eagle Creek, Vance Mountain, Nick Wynn, and Jerusalem fires. The Johnson Bar fire is also contributing to the smoke ...

Lamprey—slimy, eel-like parasitic fish with tooth-riddled, jawless sucking mouths—are rather disgusting to look at, but thanks to their important position on the vertebrate family tree, they can offer important insights about the evolutionary history of our own brain development, a recent study suggests. The work appears in a paper in the September 14 advance online issue of the journal Nature. "Lamprey are one of the most primitive vertebrates alive on Earth today, and by closely studying their genes and developmental characteristics, researchers can learn more about ...

(MEMPHIS, TENN. – September 16, 2014) A study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators has found the chemotherapy dose threshold below which male childhood cancer survivors are likely to have normal sperm production. The study appears in September 17 edition of the journal Lancet Oncology. By clarifying which patients are at highest risk for reduced sperm production as adults, researchers expect the findings to eventually increase use of pre-treatment fertility preservation methods such as sperm banking. The study involved drugs called alkylating agents ...

State legislators are more attentive to wealthy citizens' political opinions compared to poor citizens' opinions when making policy decisions, but stricter regulations on professional lobbyists can promote more equal political representation, according to a Baylor University study. "Stricter lobbying laws are an important tool for ensuring that citizens' opinions receive more equal consideration when elected officials make important policy decisions," said researcher Patrick Flavin, Ph.D., assistant professor of political science in Baylor's College of Arts & Sciences. The ...

Sticklebacks, the roaches of the fish world, are the ideal animal in which to study the genes that control body shape. They've moved from the ocean into tens of thousands of freshwater streams and lakes around the world, each time changing their skeleton to adapt to the new environment. Breeding studies between marine and freshwater populations of sticklebacks now have turned up one of the genes that controls tooth number, plus evidence that a simple change in that gene's regulation in a freshwater population is associated with a near doubling in the number of teeth. ...

A new study of high school activities bears this message for incoming high school students: Play what the smart kids play. Joining an extra-curricular team or club with members that get good grades can double a high school student's odds of going to college. And Brigham Young University sociologist and study co-author Lance Erickson knows how to sell the study to teens. "Tell your parents, whatever they ground you from, it shouldn't be from practice or a club activity," said Erickson. "If they ground you from a school club, you are more likely to end up living at ...