Bethesda, MD (Sept. 25, 2014) — Taller individuals are less likely to develop esophageal cancer and it's precursor, Barrett's esophagus, according to a new study1 in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "Individuals in the lowest quartile of height (under 5'7" for men and 5'2" for women) were roughly twice as likely as individuals in the highest quartile of height (taller than 6' for men and 5'5" for women) to have Barrett's esophagus or esophageal cancer," said Aaron P. Thrift, ...

CIFAR researchers have shown that information stored in quantum bits can be exponentially compressed without losing information. The achievement is an important proof of principle, and could be useful for efficient quantum communications and information storage. Compression is vital for modern digital communication. It helps movies to stream quickly over the Internet, music to fit into digital players, and millions of telephone calls to bounce off of satellites and through fibre optic cables. But it has not been clear if information stored in quantum bits, or qubits, ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 25, 2014—The increasing popularity of social media, online dating sites, and mobile applications for meeting people and initiating relationships has made online dating an effective means of finding a future spouse. The intriguing results of a new study that extends this comparison of online/offline meeting venues to include non-marital relationships, and explores whether break-up rates for both marital and non-marital relationships differ depending on whether a couple first met online or offline are reported in an article in Cyberpsychology, ...

If it's true that good things come in small packages, then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make anyone working with nanoparticles very happy. NIST recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created for validating measurements of these man-made, ultrafine particles between 1 and 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size. RM 8027 consists of five hermetically sealed ampoules containing one milliliter of silicon nanoparticles—all certified to be close to 2 nanometers in diameter—suspended ...

Astronomers usually have to peer very far into the distance to see back in time, and view the Universe as it was when it was young. This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy DDO 68, otherwise known as UGC 5340, was thought to offer an exception. This ragged collection of stars and gas clouds looks at first glance like a recently-formed galaxy in our own cosmic neighbourhood. But, is it really as young as it looks? Astronomers have studied galactic evolution for decades, gradually improving our knowledge of how galaxies have changed over cosmic history. ...

New evolutionary psychology research shows gender differences in age preferences regarding sexual partners. Men and women have different preferences regarding the age of their sexual partners and women's preferences are better realized than are men's. Regarding the age of their actual sexual partners, the difference is however much smaller. Researchers in psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, suggest that this pattern reflect the fact that when it comes to mating, women control the market. Grounding their interpretation in evolutionary theory, the ...

This news release is available in German. Sugars are usually known as energy storage units in plants and the insects that feed on them. But, sugars may also be part of a deadly game of tag between plant and insect according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Grasses and crops such as maize attach sugars to chemical defenses called benzoxazinoids to protect themselves from being poisoned by their own protective agents. Then, when an insect starts feeding, a plant enzyme removes the sugar to deploy the active toxin. The Max Planck scientists ...

Typical cave-dwelling organisms, unpigmented and eyeless, were discovered in a karst area located in northeastern Brazil. The organisms were assigned to a new genus and species of freshwater flatworm and may constitute an oceanic relict. They represent the first obligate cave-dwelling flatworm in South America. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Freshwater flatworms occur on a wide range of habitats, namely streams, lagoons, ponds, among others. Some species also occur in subterranean freshwater environments. Brazil has more than 11,000 caves, ...

MANHATTAN — Two Kansas State University biologists are studying streams to prevent tallgrass prairies from turning into shrublands and forests. By looking at 25 years of data on the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Allison Veach, doctoral student in biology, Muncie, Indiana, and Walter Dodds, university distinguished professor of biology, are researching grassland streams and the expansion of nearby woody vegetation, such as trees and shrubs. They have found that burn intervals may predict the rate of woody vegetation expansion along streams. Their latest research ...

SAN ANTONIO (Sept. 25, 2014) — The long-observed association between pneumonia and heart failure now has more physical evidence, thanks to research in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The researchers found proof that Streptococcus pneumoniae, the leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia, actually physically damages the heart. The bacterium leaves tiny lesions that researchers detected in mouse, rhesus macaque and human autopsy tissue samples. "If you have had severe pneumonia, this finding suggests your heart ...

New research by biomedical engineers at the University of Minnesota shows that people who practice yoga and meditation long term can learn to control a computer with their minds faster and better than people with little or no yoga or meditation experience. The research could have major implications for treatments of people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases. The research is published online in TECHNOLOGY, a new scientific journal featuring cutting-edge new technologies in emerging fields of science and engineering. In the study, researchers involved ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue researchers have discovered the structure of the enzyme that makes cellulose, a finding that could lead to easier ways of breaking down plant materials to make biofuels and other products and materials. The research also provides the most detailed glimpse to date of the complicated process by which cellulose - the foundation of the plant cell wall and the most abundant organic compound on the planet - is produced. "Despite the abundance of cellulose, the nitty-gritty of how it is made is still a mystery," said Nicholas Carpita, professor ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Is my child lagging behind physically, mentally or emotionally? Should I be concerned? When should I ask our pediatrician about it? What can I do to help my child? A new study from Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute researchers reports that a computerized clinical decision support system is helping parents answer such questions. The system, which they developed to automate pediatric care guidelines, significantly increased the number of children screened for developmental delay at 9, 18 and 30 months of age, as recommended ...

One of North America's last remaining long-distance land migrations, better known as the Path of the Pronghorn, is being threatened by a mosaic of natural gas field development, highway traffic, and fencing in the upper Green River Basin, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society. WCS scientists used a model traditionally applied to identify resource related stopovers for migrating animals in order to identify impediments to migration of pronghorn. The long-distance travels of the fleet-footed pronghorn through this part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem was the ...

CLEVELAND: Two recently published studies by a research team at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center Seidman Cancer Center have the potential to advance treatments for small cell lung cell cancer (SCLC). This aggressive form of lung cancer has seen no treatment advances in 30 years and "is a disease in urgent need of new drug therapies," write the study's authors. "In small cell lung cancer, which impacts about 30-40,000 people each year in the United States, there has been no therapeutic progress and very little research," says Afshin Dowlati, MD, lead author ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Coaching patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease to manage stress, practice relaxation and participate in light exercise can boost a patient's quality of life and can even improve physical symptoms, researchers at Duke Medicine report. In a study published online Sept. 25, 2014, in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Duke researchers examined how telephone-based coaching could help patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, a progressive disease that limits airflow in the lungs. About 15 million Americans have COPD, and ...

Washington, D.C.— Gallium arsenide, GaAs, a semiconductor composed of gallium and arsenic is well known to have physical properties that promise practical applications. In the form of nanowires and nanoparticles, it has particular potential for use in the manufacture of solar cells and optoelectronics in many of the same applications that silicon is commonly used. But the natural semiconducting ability of GaAs requires some tuning in order to make it more desirable for use in manufacturing these types of products. New work from a team led by Carnegie's Alexander Goncharov ...

Australian researchers have achieved groundbreaking results in a clinical trial using hookworms to reduce the symptoms of celiac disease. The results are also good news for sufferers of other inflammatory conditions such as asthma and Crohn's disease. In the small trial run over a year, 12 participants were each experimentally infected with 20 Necator americanus (hookworm) larvae. They were then given gradually increasing doses of gluten – beginning with just one-tenth of a gram per day (the equivalent of less than a one-inch segment of spaghetti) and increasing in ...

Land-ice decay at the end of the last five ice-ages caused global sea-levels to rise at rates of up to 5.5 metres per century, according to a new study. An international team of researchers developed a 500,000-year record of sea-level variability, to provide the first account of how quickly sea-level changed during the last five ice-age cycles. The results, published in the latest issue of Nature Communications, also found that more than 100 smaller events of sea-level rise took place in between the five major events. Dr Katharine Grant, from the Australian National ...

More than half of the patients who have suffered a stroke with no well-defined aetiology have an enlarged left atrial appendage of the heart, according to a Finnish study. The results indicate that the enlargement of the left atrial appendage may be an independent risk factor of strokes with cardiac origin. Mr Mikko Taina, Licentiate of Medicine, presented the results in his doctoral thesis at the University of Eastern Finland. Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability and a major burden on health-care resources worldwide. Stroke is responsible for 10 per ...

Osteoarthritis of the hip is a progressive degenerative disorder affecting the hip joints, which affects one in 10 adults. The symptoms range from pain after intense joint loading to morning pain/stiffness and impaired mobility in everyday life. To date, no cure exists. Appropriate exercise therapy can, however, delay progression of the disease and alleviate symptoms, as shown in a randomized controlled study reported by Inga Krauß et al in Deutsches Ärzteblatt (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2014; 111: 592–9). The physicians treated patients with hip osteoarthritis according to the ...

Every year, 11.2 of every 100 000 women in Germany develop cervical cancer. Persistent infection with a high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) type is a necessary prerequisite for the development of dysplasia and neoplasia of the cervix. HPV vaccination has been a subject of heated debate since it was incorporated into the vaccination recommendations of the German Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO) in 2007. This edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2014; 111: 584–91) reveals that Yvonne Deleré of Berlin's Robert Koch Institute et al. have ...

Inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsive behavior in children with ADHD can result in social problems and they tend to be excluded from peer activities. They have been found to have impaired recognition of emotional expression from other faces. The research group of Professor Ryusuke Kakigi of the National Institute for Physiological Sciences, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, in collaboration with Professor Masami K. Yamaguchi and Assistant Professor Hiroko Ichikawa of Chuo University first identified the characteristics of facial expression recognition of children ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Bacillus anthracis bacteria have very efficient machinery for injecting toxic proteins into cells, leading to the potentially deadly infection known as anthrax. A team of MIT researchers has now hijacked that delivery system for a different purpose: administering cancer drugs. "Anthrax toxin is a professional at delivering large enzymes into cells," says Bradley Pentelute, the Pfizer-Laubauch Career Development Assistant Professor of Chemistry at MIT. "We wondered if we could render anthrax toxin nontoxic, and use it as a platform to deliver antibody ...

Geographers at the University of Southampton have developed a new way to measure the 'health' of poor regional communities. They aim to improve the wellbeing of people by guiding sustainable development practices to help avoid social and environmental collapse. The researchers have pioneered a methodology that examines the balance between factors such as; standards of living, natural resources, agriculture, industry and the economy. The results help identify critical limits, beyond which regions risk tipping into ecological and social downturn, or even collapse. The ...