ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A record number of elderly people are completing living wills to guide end-of-life medical treatments – up from 47 percent in 2000 to 72 percent in 2010 – according to new research from the University of Michigan and the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System. However, even with nearly double the number of people completing advance directives – which may specify preferences for surrogate decision makers and life-support treatment – there was little difference in hospitalization rates or deaths in the hospital, says the study that appears in the ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Despite knowing that buying life experiences will make them happier than buying material items, shoppers might continue to spend money on the latter because they mistakenly believe items are a better value, according to a San Francisco State University study published today. That belief, however, isn't accurate. Those surveyed after making a purchase rated life experiences both making them happier and as a better use of their money, indicating many are sacrificing their well-being for a sense of value that never materializes. The study is one of the ...

NEW YORK, NY (March, 2014) – A new study published in the American Journal of Hypertension finds evidence that the average daily sodium intake of most Americans is actually associated with better health outcomes than intake levels currently recommended by the CDC and major health departments, which are now being viewed by many in the scientific community as excessively and unrealistically low. The study, "Compared With Usual Sodium Intake, Low-and Excessive-Sodium Diets Are Associated With Increased Mortality: A Meta-Analysis," concluded that 2,645 – 4,945 mg of sodium ...

Pinecone or pine nut? Friend or foe? Distinguishing between the two requires that we pay special attention to the telltale characteristics of each. And as it turns out, us humans aren't the only ones up to the task. According to researchers at the University of Iowa, pigeons share our ability to place everyday things in categories. And, like people, they can hone in on visual information that is new or important and dismiss what is not. "The basic concept at play is selective attention. That is, in a complex world, with its booming, buzzing confusion, we don't attend ...

To speed up reproduction, there's no substitute for the tender touch of a live cockroach. That's the major takeaway from a North Carolina State University study examining whether artificial antennae – in this case, duck feathers – can mimic a cockroach antenna's capacity to hasten reproduction in cockroach females. Female cockroaches that get "touched" – by other female cockroaches and, under certain conditions, even by duck feathers that mimic roach antennae – reproduce faster than female roaches that live in isolation or without tactile stimulation. ...

Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis. "Our findings indicate that ancient nomadic pastoralists were key players in an east-west network that linked innovations and commodities between present-day China and southwest Asia," said study co-author ...

ANN ARBOR—Nearly 4 million children under 5 die from vaccine-preventable diseases worldwide each year, and two University of Michigan doctoral ecology students are working to change that. By taking into account seasonal fluctuations in birth rates, massive vaccination campaigns in the developing world could inoculate more unprotected infants and significantly reduce the number of deaths from diseases like measles, according to Micaela Martinez-Bakker and Kevin Bakker of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. "If you have lots of kindling, you can have ...

Care of patients with heart failure in the UK is inadequate and has not changed in a decade, according to new research published in BMJ Open. The findings by a team at Durham University and Darlington Memorial Hospital - and funded by national charity Heart Research UK - highlight inadequacies in heart failure care as well as an uncoordinated approach to diagnosis and management of the condition between primary and secondary care clinicians. The research showed that clinicians are uncertain about how to diagnose different types of heart failure and about who has overall ...

The extreme cold weather observed across Europe and the east coast of the US in recent winters could be partly down to natural, long-term variations in sea surface temperatures, according to a new study published today. Researchers from the University of California Irvine have shown that a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO)—a natural pattern of variation in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures that switches between a positive and negative phase every 60-70 years—can affect an atmospheric circulation pattern, known as the North Atlantic ...

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have found that naturally high concentrations of the greenhouse gas methane contributes to energy production in chalk rivers, in a new study published today in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Chalk rivers, found from Dorset to Cambridgeshire, sustain a diverse range of protected animals and plants, and are renowned globally for fly fishing, an industry worth more than £4M on the Rivers Test and Itchen (Hampshire) alone. "It's a surprise to find methane is such a big source of energy in these gin-clear ...

LIVERPOOL, UK – 2 April 2014: Female fruit flies with a large number of sexual partners are playing an invaluable role in preventing the extinction of males, research at the University of Liverpool has shown. Scientists have found that flies in the northern parts of the United States are more inclined to have multiple partners in order to reduce the occurrence of an X chromosome which causes the production of only female offspring. This selfish genetic element (SGE) tries to replicate itself by killing sperm that carry the Y chromosome, but has the side-effect that ...

They argue that "universal conclusions about its benefits cannot be drawn" and say further studies and better designed trials are needed. A growing body of evidence indicates that vitamin D may reduce risks of a wide range of diseases, including bone mineral disease, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune disorders, cancer and cardiovascular problems. Yet, despite hundreds of trials, the evidence for vitamin D is still being debated. Two papers published on bmj.com today attempt to make sense of the existing data. The first, by researchers based in the UK, Europe and USA, ...

These findings differ from previous smaller trials and do not support a general recommendation for the use of probiotics to treat colic in infants. Infant colic (excessive crying of unknown cause) affects up to 20% of infants and is a major burden to families and health services. Although it spontaneously resolves three to four months after birth, its cause remains elusive and no single effective treatment exists. Previous small trials suggest that the probiotic Lactobacillus reuteri effectively treats colic in breastfed infants. These studies, however, had limitations ...

The government is putting pressure on commissioners, and in turn general practitioners, to make more diagnoses of dementia, but no analysis has been done to assess the harm that these targets could cause. Dr Martin Brunet, a GP from Surrey, says that "medicine depends on a fundamental, unspoken agreement between patients and doctors […] the only factor influencing the decision to diagnose should be the best interests of patients". He adds that the idea of doctors being motivated by self interest is "abhorrent and undermines the basis of the relationship". He says that ...

The "check 'em Tuesday" campaign is a weekly call for women to examine their breasts. Readers are asked to send in photos to prove compliance and can even sign up for a text message reminder. But Dr McCartney argues that teaching women to examine their breasts regularly "has been shown not to reduce deaths from breast cancer and actually increases the chances of a benign biopsy result." She says it is "unfair to tell women that regular self examination will save their lives when it may simply incur anxiety and have the potential to harm." She points out that this is ...

In a systematic review and meta-analysis of 47 studies with 15,158 patients, Amit Singal (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) and colleagues found that patients with cirrhosis who underwent surveillance (via liver ultrasound with or without measurement of serum alpha fetoprotein) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) had cancers detected at an earlier stage, were more likely to receive curative instead of palliative treatment, and had longer survival. Across all the studies, the pooled 3-year survival rate was 50.8% among the 4735 patients who underwent HCC surveillance, ...

Right now, options are limited for preventing heart attacks. However, the day may come when treatments target the heart attack gene, myeloid related protein-14 (MRP-14, also known as S100A9) and defang its ability to produce heart attack-inducing blood clots, a process referred to as thrombosis. Scientists at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and University Hospitals Case Medical Center have reached a groundbreaking milestone toward this goal. They have studied humans and mice and discovered how MRP-14 generates dangerous clots that could trigger heart attack or ...

As the climate continues to change, it's unclear to what extent different species will be able to keep pace with altered temperatures and shifted seasons. Living organisms are the survivors of previous environmental changes and might therefore be expected to adapt, but are there limits? According to research to be published in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology on April 1, some species may be much less able to cope with the effects of climate change than previously thought. The study, by Floriane Plard, Jean-Michel Gaillard, Christophe Bonenfant and colleagues, looked ...

Sleep is essential for human health. But with increasing age, many people experience a decline in sleep quality, which in turn reduces their quality of life. In a new study publishing April 1 in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology, Scientists at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) for Biology of Ageing in Cologne have investigated the mechanisms by which ageing impairs sleep in the fruit fly. Their findings suggest that age-related sleep decline can be prevented and might even be reversible. To uncover basic age-related sleep mechanisms, the Max Planck scientists studied the ...

How B lymphocytes are able to direct mutations to their antibody genes to produce millions of different antibodies has fascinated biologists for decades. A new study publishing in the Open Access journal PLOS Biology on April 1 by Buerstedde and colleagues shows that this process of programed, spatially targeted genome mutation (aka. somatic hypermutation) is controlled by nearby transcription regulatory sequences called enhancers. Enhancers are usually known to control gene transcription, and these antibody enhancers are now shown to also act in marking the antibody genes ...

The vesper bats are the largest and best-known common family of bats, with more than 400 species spread across the globe, ranking second among mammals in species diversity. Authors Ray et al., wanted to get at the root cause of this diversity by taking advantage of two vesper bat species whose genomes have recently been sequenced. They speculated that one cause of this diversity might be jumping elements in the genome, called DNA transposons, which are more active and recent in the evolutionary history of this family than any other mammal. Why and how this DNA transposon ...

New research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville has implicated a poorly understood protein called PLAC8 in the spread of colon cancer. While elevated PLAC8 levels were known to be associated with colon cancer, the researchers now have shown that the protein plays an active role in shifting normal cells lining the colon into a state that encourages metastasis. The work appears April 1 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. "We knew levels of this protein are elevated in colon cancer," said ...

Delivering a single injection of a scar-busting gene therapy to the spinal cord of rats following injury promotes the survival of nerve cells and improves hind limb function within weeks, according to a study published April 2 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest that, with more confirming research in animals and humans, gene therapy may hold the potential to one day treat people with spinal cord injuries. The spinal cord is the main channel through which information passes between the brain and the rest of the body. Most spinal cord injuries are caused ...

This news release is available in German. Just a few short weeks ago, dimethyl fumarate was approved in Europe as a basic therapy for multiple sclerosis. Although its efficacy has been established in clinical studies, its underlying mode of action was still unknown, but scientists from Bad Nauheim's Max Planck Institute for Heart and Lung Research and the University of Lübeck have now managed to decode it. They hope that this knowledge will help them develop more effective therapeutic agents. Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the central ...

This news release is available in German. Elderly flies do not sleep well – they frequently wake up during the night and wander around restlessly. The same is true of humans. For researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, the sleeplessness experienced by the fruit fly Drosophila is therefore a model case for human sleeping behaviour. The scientists have now discovered molecules in the flies' cells that affect how the animals sleep in old age: if insulin/IGF signalling is active, the quality of the animals' sleep is reduced and they wake ...