SAN DIEGO – Mothers who decide to breastfeed their children beyond 1 year of age consider their child's physical and social development to be most important, while the advice of health care professionals, family and friends are least important, according to a study to be presented Monday, Oct. 13 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference & Exhibition in San Diego. To find out why some moms choose to continue nursing after a child's first birthday, researchers surveyed more than 50,000 U.S. women ages 18-50. "The three most important reasons ...

SAN DIEGO – With football season in full swing, there's no shortage of talk about young players — from high school down to the pee wee levels — suffering from concussions. Yet many parents may lack knowledge about this mild traumatic brain injury, according to two studies to be presented Friday, Oct. 10 at a pre-conference symposium on pediatric sports medicine at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference & Exhibition in San Diego. Nearly 175,000 children are treated in U.S. emergency rooms each year for concussions due to sports-related ...

SAN DIEGO – Telling youths who are juggling multiple electronic devices to "focus on the task at hand" may not always be good advice, according to research to be presented by two high school students on Saturday, Oct. 11 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference & Exhibition. Sarayu Caulfield and Alexandra Ulmer, seniors at Oregon Episcopal School in Portland, Ore., will present their study "Capacity Limits of Working Memory: The Impact of Media Multitasking on Cognitive Control in the Adolescent Mind" from 1-1:30 p.m. in Marina Ballroom Salon ...

SAN DIEGO – October 10, 2014. More than 90 percent of potential pediatric fractures are splinted improperly in emergency rooms and urgent care centers, which can lead to swelling and skin injuries, according to a study by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The findings are being presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference & Exhibition in San Diego. The study looked at 275 cases involving children and teenagers up to the age of 18 who were initially treated in community hospital emergency rooms and urgent care ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — A web-based system that allows preschools and child care centers to report illnesses to local public health departments could improve the detection of disease outbreaks and allow resources to be mobilized more quickly, according to University of Michigan research to be presented Saturday, Oct. 11 at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference & Exhibition in San Diego. Researchers who designed the biosurveillance system will describe how it can be used to track illness trends and improve public health response to outbreaks during ...

The seventh depression of the Atlantic Ocean Hurricane Season was born on Oct. 10, but it's subtropical. NASA's Aqua satellite looked at the developing depression in infrared light and saw strong thunderstorms within. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured data on developing Subtropical Depression 7 on Oct. 10 at 05:41 UTC (1:41 a.m. EDT). AIRS identified several areas of strong thunderstorms around the developing center of circulation. Some of those thunderstorms were high in the troposphere with cloud top temperatures ...

Observing the quantum behavior of light is a big part of Alan Migdall's research at the Joint Quantum Institute. Many of his experiments depend on observing light in the form of photons---the particle complement of light waves---and sometimes only one photon at a time, using "smart" detectors that can count the number of individual photons in a pulse. Furthermore, to observe quantum effects, it is normally necessary to use a beam of coherent light, light for which knowing the phase or intensity for one part of the beam allows you to know things about distant parts of ...

BOSTON – Email has become one of the most widespread forms of communication, with its streamlined interactions benefiting both businesses and individuals. With the advent of secure patient web portals and the faith that online access has the potential to improve care, the medical industry is slowly catching up. And while it may take time before it's known what impact email exchanges might have on patients and their care, a new study from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) offers some early insights into the effects on doctors, suggesting that reimbursement ...

Super Typhoon Vongfong continued on its trek north through the Philippine Sea while slightly weakening on Oct. 10. NASA's TRMM and Aqua satellites provided forecasters with cloud extent, rainfall rates and distribution and more. Vongfong was a super typhoon with wind maximum sustained winds of 145 knots (167 mph) when the TRMM satellite flew over on October 8, 2014 at 2328 UTC 7:28 p.m. EDT). TRMM's Microwave Imager showed that Vongfong was producing rainfall over a large area and heavy rainfall in the eye wall (the powerful thunderstorms around the open eye) and in multiple ...

DURHAM, N.C. –- No single "one-size-fits-all" model can explain how biodiversity hotspots come to be, finds a study of more than 700 species of reptiles and amphibians on the African island of Madagascar. By analyzing the geographic distribution of Madagascar's lizards, snakes, frogs and tortoises, an international team of researchers has found that each group responded differently to environmental fluctuations on the island over time. The results are important because they suggest that climate change and land use in Madagascar will have varying effects on different ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone Hudhud on Oct. 10 as it reached hurricane-force. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite read temperatures of thunderstorm cloudtops that make up Tropical Cyclone Hudhud when it passed overhead on Oct. 9 at 19:53 UTC (3:53 p.m. EDT). The data showed the coldest cloud top temperatures were in thunderstorms circling a developing eye. Cloud top temperatures were as cold as -63F/-53C, which have the potential for dropping heavy rainfall. Hudhud's maximum sustained winds ...

Small cues that display a user's transaction history may help a website feel almost as interactive as chatting with an online customer service agent, paving the way for more cost-effective websites, according to researchers. "One of the challenges with online interactivity is trying to imbue the site with a sense of contingency -- the back-and-forth feel of a real conversation," said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory. "What we found is that providing some information about a user's interaction ...

A new study led by a Canadian marine zoologist reviews the world list of specialist driftwood talitrids, which so far comprises a total of 7 representatives, including two newly described species. These tiny animals with peculiar habits all live in and feed on decomposing marine driftwood. Dispersed across distant oceanic islands they use floating driftwood to hitch a ride to their destination. The study was published in the open access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. Tourists are familiar with talitrids as sandhoppers, found in burrows on sand beaches, or shorehoppers, ...

New clinical research from UC San Francisco shows that 341 HIV-infected men who reported using stimulants such as methamphetamine or cocaine derived life-saving benefits from being on antiretroviral therapy that were comparable to those of HIV-infected men who do not use stimulants. That said, those who reported using stimulants at more than half of at least two study visits did have modestly increased chances of progressing to AIDS or dying after starting antiretroviral therapy compared to non-users. The data was collected between 1996 and 2012. "Patients with HIV ...

PHILADELPHIA –The pneumococcal vaccine recommended for young children not only prevents illness and death, but also has dramatically reduced severe antibiotic-resistant infections, suggests nationwide research being presented at IDWeek 2014™. Pneumococcal infection – which can cause everything from ear infections to pneumonia and meningitis – is the most common vaccine-preventable bacterial cause of death. The 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13), first available in 2010 (replacing 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, PCV7), reduced the ...

PHILADELPHIA – Old-school face-to-face social networking is a more effective way to identify people with HIV than the traditional referral method, suggests research being presented at IDWeek 2014™. The study shows that social networking strategies (SNS) – enlisting people in high-risk groups to recruit their peers to get tested – is more efficient and targeted than traditional testing and referral programs, resulting in 2-1/2 times more positive test results. As many as 20 percent of HIV-positive people are unaware of being infected with the virus, ...

The experiments were carried out on endofullerenes, molecules of C60 into which smaller molecules of Hydrogen (H2) had been inserted. The results, published in Physical Review Letters, represent the first known example of a quantum selection rule found in a molecule. Similar techniques were also used by the same team to uncover an exciting new symmetry-breaking interaction of water molecules with C60 cages, published last month in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. The use of fullerenes such as C60 to trap smaller molecules, using cutting-edge molecular surgery techniques, ...

This news release is available in German. The distance between the Earth and the Sun has no influence on the decay rate of radioactive chlorine. You could ask: "And why should it anyway?", because it is well known that the decay of radionuclides is as reliable as a Swiss clock. Recently, US-American scientists, however, attracted attention when they postulated that the decay rate depends on the flow of solar neutrinos and, thus, also on the distance from the Earth to the Sun. Their assumption was based, among other things, on older measurement data of the Physikalisch-Technische ...

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 10, 2014 - Mineral coatings on sand particles actually encourage microbial activity in the rapid sand filters that are used to treat groundwater for drinking, according to a paper published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. These findings resoundingly refute, for the first time, the conventional wisdom that the mineral deposits interfere with microbial colonization of the sand particles. "We find an overwhelmingly positive effect of mineral deposits on microbial activity and density," says corresponding author Barth ...

A study on the global burden of venous thromboembolism—when a dangerous clot forms in a blood vessel—found that annual incidences range from 0.75 to 2.69 per 1,000 individuals in the population. The incidence increased to between 2 and 7 per 1,000 among those 70 years of age or more. "Venous thromboembolism in hospitalized patients was responsible for more years lost due to ill-health than hospital-acquired pneumonia, catheter-related blood stream infections, and side effects from drugs," said Dr. Gary Raskob, co-author of the Journal of Thrombosis & Haemostasis ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 9, 2014 – Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have identified a set of RNA molecules that are detectable in tissue samples and urine of prostate cancer patients but not in normal healthy individuals. The study sets the stage for the development of more sensitive and specific noninvasive tests for prostate cancer than those currently available, which could result in fewer unnecessary prostate biopsies with less treatment-related morbidity, according to a new study in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. According to ...

Stanford engineers have invented a wireless pressure sensor that has already been used to measure brain pressure in lab mice with brain injuries. The underlying technology has such broad potential that it could one day be used to create skin-like materials that can sense pressure, leading to prosthetic devices with the electronic equivalent of a sense of touch. A nine-member research team led by Chemical Engineering Professor Zhenan Bao detailed two medical applications of this technology in Nature Communications. In one simple demonstration they used this wireless ...

Researchers from the University of Melbourne have established how two diseases that present in similar ways are in fact quite different. Progressive Supranuclear palsy and Parkinson's Disease have overlapping symptoms but remain difficult to distinguish. However, a first ever paper on the topic published in the Journal of Neuropsychology (British Psychological Society publication) now suggests that people with PSP experience more severe and extensive cognitive impairments than those with PD early on. The study indicates that patients with PSP experience more severe ...

The initial benefits of an outpatient antimicrobial stewardship intervention designed to reduce the rate of inappropriate antibiotic prescriptions were lost after discontinuation of audit and feedback to clinicians, according to a study published in JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with the IDWeek 2014 meeting. Antibiotics are the most frequently prescribed medications for children; most are prescribed for outpatient acute respiratory tract infections. Because antibiotic prescribing is often inappropriate, Jeffrey S. Gerber, M.D., Ph.D., of ...

The so-called Signal Transducers and Activators of Transcription, or STATs, are key components of many different signalling pathways. Not surprisingly, then, when something goes wrong with their regulation the consequences can be severe and many types of cancer are known to be associated with increased activities of one or more STAT protein. STAT3 is a frequent culprit and is often found to be activated in tumour cells. Considerable efforts are going into developing inhibitors of STAT3 for use in cancer therapy but it is unclear whether these will turn out to be suitable ...