U.S. hospitalizations and deaths from heart disease and stroke dropped significantly in the last decade, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation. "Interestingly, these improvements happened in a period when there were no real 'miracle' clinical advancements," said Harlan Krumholz, M.D., S.M., lead author of the "most comprehensive report card to-date" on America's progress in heart disease and stroke prevention and treatment. "Rather, we saw consistent improvements in the use of evidence-based treatments and medications and an increase ...

The cholesterol-lowering drug fenofibrate cuts cardiovascular disease risks by 30 per cent in women with type-2 diabetes, a new University of Sydney study reveals. "The finding is good news for women," says the study's chairman, University of Sydney Professor, Tony Keech. "The study shows that fenofibrate reduced the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, or having a stroke or other adverse cardiovascular event by 30 per cent in women and 13 per cent in men." The leading cause of death in women, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a constellation of ailments affecting ...

A substantial number of older patients with limited life expectancy continue to receive routine screenings for prostate, breast, cervical and colorectal cancer although the procedures are unlikely to benefit them. The authors are Trevor J. Royce, M.D., M.S., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and colleagues. An aim of Healthy People 2020 is to increase the proportion of individuals who receive cancer screening consistent with the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's (USPSTF) evidence-based guidelines. And there is general agreement that routine cancer screening ...

Racial and ethnic minorities who receive implantable devices to treat heart failure derive the same substantial survival benefit from these therapies as white patients, new UCLA-led research shows. While the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association jointly recommend the use of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices for all eligible patients, minorities have not been well represented in clinical trials of the devices, and previous studies had shown that African American and Hispanic patients ...

It could be a fun party trick – put your cell phone down on a table and watch it fade into the woodwork – or part of a lifesaving technology used by industry or the military. Researchers have developed a technology that allows a material to automatically read its environment and adapt to mimic its surroundings. The technology is described in a paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Cunjiang Yu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Houston and lead author of the paper, said the optoelectronic ...

A new NOAA nationwide analysis shows that between 1996 and 2011, 64,975 square miles in coastal regions--an area larger than the state of Wisconsin--experienced changes in land cover, including a decline in wetlands and forest cover with development a major contributing factor. Overall, 8.2 percent of the nation's ocean and Great Lakes coastal regions experienced these changes. In analysis of the five year period between 2001-2006, coastal areas accounted for 43 percent of all land cover change in the continental U.S. This report identifies a wide variety of land cover ...

BATON ROUGE – LSU Sociology Professor Samuel Stroope is the lead author of a new study, "Neighborhood Ethnic Composition and Problem Drinking among Older Mexican American Men," that will appear in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. Stroope – and co-authors at Baylor University and the University of Texas Medical Branch – found that older Mexican-American men are less likely to engage in problem drinking as residents of neighborhoods with a higher proportion of Mexican-Americans. The study used data on 350 men aged 75 and older from the "Hispanic Established ...

The University of Waterloo has unveiled a new satellite image of Antarctica, and the imagery will help scientists all over the world gain new insight into the effects of climate change. Thanks to a partnership between the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA), the prime contractor for the RADARSAT-2 program, and the Canadian Cryospheric Information Network (CCIN) at UWaterloo, the mosaic is free and fully accessible to the academic world and the public. Using Synthetic Aperture Radar with multiple polarization modes aboard the ...

When investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine applied light-driven stimulation to nerve cells in the brains of mice that had suffered strokes several days earlier, the mice showed significantly greater recovery in motor ability than mice that had experienced strokes but whose brains weren't stimulated. These findings, which will be published online Aug. 18 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help identify important brain circuits involved in stroke recovery and usher in new clinical therapies for stroke, including the placement ...

Just about every parent is familiar with the signs: the crying, the stomping feet and pouting lips, all of which are usually followed by a collapse to the floor and a wailed insistence that, "It's not fair!" While most people – including many parents – see such tantrums merely as part of growing up, a new study conducted by Harvard scientists suggests that, even at a relatively young age, children have advanced ideas about fairness, and are willing to pay a personal price to intervene in what they believe are unfair situations, even when they have not been personally ...

For the past 10 years, scientists have been fascinated by a type of "electric bacteria" that shoots out long tendrils like electric wires, using them to power themselves and transfer electricity to a variety of solid surfaces. Today, a team led by scientists at USC has turned the study of these bacterial nanowires on its head, discovering that the key features in question are not pili, as previously believed, but rather are extensions of the bacteria's outer membrane equipped with proteins that transfer electrons, called "cytochromes." Scientists had long suspected ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—Scientists at Washington State University have identified a crucial step in DNA repair that could lead to targeted gene therapy for hereditary diseases such as "children of the moon" and a common form of colon cancer. Such disorders are caused by faulty DNA repair systems that increase the risk for cancer and other conditions. The findings are published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Regents Professor Michael Smerdon and post-doctoral ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 18, 2014) – Rice University scientists have won a race to find the crystal structure of the first virus known to infect the most abundant animal on Earth. The Rice labs of structural biologist Yizhi Jane Tao and geneticist Weiwei Zhong, with help from researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and Washington University, analyzed the Orsay virus that naturally infects a certain type of nematode, the worms that make up 80 percent of the living animal population. The research reported today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences will help ...

In case of an inflammation the body releases substances that increase the immune defense. During chronic inflammation, this immune response gets out of control and can induce organ damage. A research group from the Department of Biomedicine at the University and the University Children's Hospital of Basel now discovered that innate lymphoid cells become activated and induce specific T and B cell responses during inflammation. These lymphoid cells are thus an important target for the treatment of infection and chronic inflammation. The study was recently published in the ...

Hugely popular non-steroidal anti-inflammation drugs like aspirin, naproxen (marketed as Aleve) and ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) all work by inhibiting or killing an enzyme called cyclooxygenase – a key catalyst in production of hormone-like lipid compounds called prostaglandins that are linked to a variety of ailments, from headaches and arthritis to menstrual cramps and wound sepsis. In a new paper, published this week in the online early edition of PNAS, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine conclude that aspirin has a second effect: ...

The small body size associated with the pygmy phenotype is probably a selective adaptation for rainforest hunter-gatherers, according to an international team of researchers, but all African pygmy phenotypes do not have the same genetic underpinning, suggesting a more recent adaptation than previously thought. "I'm interested in how rainforest hunter-gatherers have adapted to their very challenging environments," said George H. Perry, assistant professor of anthropology and biology, Penn State. "Tropical rainforests are difficult for humans to live in. It is extremely ...

While the powerful solvents known as ionic liquids show great promise for liberating fermentable sugars from lignocellulose and improving the economics of advanced biofuels, an even more promising candidate is on the horizon – bionic liquids. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have developed "bionic liquids" from lignin and hemicellulose, two by-products of biofuel production from biorefineries. JBEI is a multi-institutional partnership led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) that was established by the ...

Mice missing two important proteins of the vascular system develop normally and appear healthy in adulthood, as long as they don't become injured. If they do, their wounds don't heal properly, a new study shows. The research, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, may have implications for treating diseases involving abnormal blood vessel growth, such as the impaired wound healing often seen in diabetes and the loss of vision caused by macular degeneration. The study appears Aug. 18 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) online ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Fish species native to a major Arizona watershed may lose access to important segments of their habitat by 2050 as surface water flow is reduced by the effects of climate warming, new research suggests. Most of these fish species, found in the Verde River Basin, are already threatened or endangered. Their survival relies on easy access to various resources throughout the river and its tributary streams. The species include the speckled dace (Rhinichthys osculus), roundtail chub (Gila robusta) and Sonora sucker (Catostomus insignis). A key component ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – Half of the Earth's land mass is made up of rangelands, which include grasslands and savannas, yet they are being transformed at an alarming rate. Woody plants, such as trees and shrubs, are moving in and taking over, leading to a loss of critical habitat and causing a drastic change in the ability of ecosystems to produce food — specifically meat. Researchers with Arizona State University's School of Life Sciences led an investigation that quantified this loss in both the United States and Argentina. The study's results are published in today's online ...

DALLAS – August 18, 2014 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found a new way that internal body clocks are regulated by a type of molecule known as long non-coding RNA. The internal body clocks, called circadian clocks, regulate the daily "rhythms" of many bodily functions, from waking and sleeping to body temperature and hunger. They are largely "tuned" to a 24-hour cycle that is influenced by external cues such as light and temperature. "Although we know that long non-coding RNAs are abundant in many organisms, what they do in the body, and how they ...

MISSOULA – New research by University of Montana doctoral student Jared Oyler provides improved computer models for estimating temperature across mountainous landscapes. The work was published Aug. 12 in the International Journal of Climatology in an article titled "Creating a topoclimatic daily air temperature dataset for the conterminous United States using homogenized station data and remotely sensed land skin temperature." Collaborating with UM faculty co-authors Ashley Ballantyne, Kelsey Jencso, Michael Sweet and Steve Running, Oyler provided a new climate dataset ...

Security systems based on photo identification could be significantly improved by selecting staff who have an aptitude for this very difficult visual task, a study of Australian passport officers suggests. Previous research has shown that people find it challenging to match unfamiliar faces. "Despite this, photo-ID is still widely used in security settings. Whenever we cross a border, apply for a passport or access secure premises, our appearance is checked against a photograph," says UNSW psychologist Dr David White. To find out whether people who regularly carry out ...

Passport issuing officers are no better at identifying if someone is holding a fake passport photo than the average person, new research has revealed. A pioneering study of Australian passport office staff by a team of psychologists from Aberdeen, York and Sydney, revealed a 15% error rate in matching the person to the passport photo they were displaying. In real life this degree of inaccuracy would correspond to the admittance of several thousand travellers bearing fake passports. The findings are published today (Monday August 18) in the journal PLOS ONE. They ...

New research indicates older species of coral have more of what it takes to survive a warming and increasingly polluted climate, according to biologists from the University of Texas at Arlington and the University of Puerto Rico – Mayagüez. The researchers examined 140 samples of 14 species of Caribbean corals for a study published by the open-access journal PLOS ONE on Aug. 18. Jorge H. Pinzón C., a postdoctoral researcher in the UT Arlington Department of Biology, is lead author on the study. Co-authors are Laura Mydlarz, UT Arlington associate professor of biology, ...