Despite its name, the Dead Sea does support life, and not just in the sense of helping visitors float in its waters. Algae, bacteria, and fungi make up the limited number of species that can tolerate the extremely salty environment at the lowest point on Earth. Some organisms thrive in salty environments by lying dormant when salt concentrations are very high. Other organisms need salt to grow. To learn which survival strategy the filamentous fungus Eurotium rubrum uses, a team of researchers led by Eviatar Nevo from the University of Haifa in Israel, Igor Grigoriev ...

WASHINGTON, DC and NEW YORK (May 9, 2014)— An estimated 1.1 million community health center patients are left without the benefits of health coverage simply because they live in one of 24 states that have opted out of the Medicaid expansion, a key part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to a new report. The research, by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University also shows that the vast majority (71 percent) of the 1.1 million ...

An implantable device that reduces blood pressure by sending electrical signals to the brain has been created by a group of researchers in Germany. The device has successfully reduced the blood pressure in rats by 40 per cent without any major side effects, and could offer hope for a significant proportion of patients worldwide who do not respond to existing medical treatment for the condition. The first results have been published today, 9 May, in IOP Publishing's Journal of Neural Engineering. The device consists of 24 individual electrodes that are integrated into ...

New research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) indicates that brief bursts of intense exercise before meals (termed exercise 'snacking' by the study authors) helps control blood sugar in people with insulin resistance more effectively than one daily 30-minute session of moderate exercise. The research was conducted by exercise science and medicine researchers, including Monique Francois and Associate Professor James Cotter from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. The study used a cross-over design, ...

From the age of 30 onwards, physical inactivity exerts a greater impact on a woman's lifetime risk of developing heart disease than the other well-known risk factors, suggests research published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. This includes overweight, the finding show, prompting the researchers to suggest that greater effort needs to be made to promote exercise. The researchers wanted to quantify the changing contribution made to a woman's likelihood of developing heart disease across her lifetime for each of the known top four risk factors in Australia: ...

Frequent arguments with partners, relatives, or neighbours may boost the risk of death from any cause in middle age, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. Men and those not in work seemed to be the most vulnerable, the findings indicate. The evidence suggests that supportive social networks and strong relationships are good for general health and wellbeing, but the authors wanted to find out if the stressors inherent in family relationships and friendships had any impact on the risk of death from any cause. They therefore ...

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita may have been responsible for up to half of all recorded stillbirths in the worst hit areas, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. And the true fetal death toll may even be higher, because of the displacement of people whose homes and way of life were destroyed, suggest the authors. Hurricane Katrina struck the state of Louisiana, USA, on August 29 2005, followed by Hurricane Rita a month later on September 24. Katrina was the costliest natural disaster in American history, while Rita was the ...

A team of scientists has found that the woody growth of forests in north Borneo is half as great again as in the most productive forests of north-west Amazonia, an average difference of 3.2 tons of wood per hectare per year. The new study, published today in the Journal of Ecology, examined differences in above-ground wood production (one component of the total uptake of carbon by plants) which is critically important in the global cycling of carbon. Trees are taller for a given diameter in Southeast Asia compared with South America, meaning they gain more biomass ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have identified a specific biochemical process that can cause normal and healthy skin cells to transform into cancerous melanoma cells, which should help predict melanoma vulnerability and could also lead to future therapies. More than 70,000 cases of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, develop in the U.S. every year. The work was published today in PLoS Genetics, in work supported by the National Institutes of Health. "We believe this is a breakthrough in understanding exactly what leads to cancer ...

Highly pathogenic (dangerous) influenza strains elicit a strong immune response which can lead to uncontrolled inflammation in the lung and potentially fatal lung injury. A study published on May 8th in PLOS Pathogens demonstrates the importance of IL-27 for the control of immunopathology—damage to the lung tissue caused by the immune system—and the therapeutic potential of well-timed IL-27 application to treat life-threatening inflammation during lung infection. Alf Hamann, from Deutsches Rheuma-Forschungszentrum and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and colleagues, ...

Certain influenza strains are highly virulent—they cause more serious disease and kill more people. Some of the damage is caused by the stronger immune response such strains elicit, especially in the lung. A study published on May 8th in PLOS Pathogens identifies SOCS4 as a key regulator of the immune response against influenza virus. Lukasz Kedzierski, Sandra Nicholson, and colleagues from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and the University of Melbourne, Australia, studied mice with a mutation in the Socs4 gene, a member of a gene family whose ...

Washington, DC (May 8, 2014) — More frequent face-to-face physician visits in the month following hospital discharge may help reduce a kidney failure patient's chances of needing to be sent back to the hospital. That's the conclusion of a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The study also found that closer outpatient monitoring of kidney failure patients following hospital discharge could cut health care costs significantly. A major goal of health policy reform has been to reduce hospital readmissions within ...

Neurovance, Inc. today announced complete results from its phase 2a pilot study of EB-1020 SR, a non-stimulant, in adult male patients with all subtypes of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). EB-1020 SR is a norepinephrine- and dopamine-preferring triple reuptake inhibitor. The data showed a statistically significant improvement in ADHD symptoms on the ADHD-Rating Scale-IV (ADHD-RS-IV), the primary outcome measure, in a range similar to that reported in previously published trials with stimulants. EB-1020 SR appears to be well tolerated at the doses studied. ...

VIDEO: A protein called SOCS4 has been shown to act as a handbrake on the immune system's runaway reaction to flu infection, providing a possible means of minimising the impact of... Click here for more information. A protein called SOCS4 has been shown to act as a handbrake on the immune system's runaway reaction to flu infection, providing a possible means of minimising the impact of flu pandemics. Scientists from Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have found that ...

A genomic investigation by University of British Columbia researchers has revealed that a lethal parasite infecting a wide range of insects actually originated from pond scum, but has completely shed its green past on its evolutionary journey. A team led by UBC Botany Prof. Patrick Keeling sequenced the genome of Helicosporidium – an intracellular parasite that can kill juvenile blackflies, caterpillars, beetles and mosquitoes – and found it evolved from algae like another notorious pathogen: malaria. Keeling and colleagues had previously reported that malaria shared ...

Eating more fruits and vegetables may reduce the risk of stroke worldwide, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. Researchers conducted a meta-analysis of 20 studies published over the last 19 years to assess the effects of fruit and vegetable consumption on risk of stroke globally. The combined studies involved 760,629 men and women who had 16,981 strokes. Stroke risk decreased by 32 percent with every 200 grams of fruit consumed each day and 11 percent with every 200 grams of vegetables consumed each day. "Improving diet and lifestyle ...

Hamilton, ON (May 8, 2014) – New research from McMaster University suggests that a commonly performed test during certain types of heart surgery is not helpful and possibly harmful. The testing procedure, known as defibrillator testing (DT), is commonly used on people who require implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) to prevent sudden cardiac death. It involves putting the patient into cardiac arrest to determine if the defibrillator can first recognize, then successfully shock the patient back into a normal heart rhythm. It requires the use of general anesthesia ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Children with autism experience deficits in a type of immune cell that protects the body from infection. Called granulocytes, the cells exhibit one-third the capacity to fight infection and protect the body from invasion compared with the same cells in children who are developing normally. The cells, which circulate in the bloodstream, are less able to deliver crucial infection-fighting oxidative responses to combat invading pathogens because of dysfunction in their tiny energy-generating organelles, the mitochondria. The study is published ...

The sun emitted a mid-level solar flare, peaking at 6:07 a.m. EDT on May 8, 2014, and NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, captured images of it. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however -- when intense enough -- they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel. To see how this event may impact Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government's ...

Leptin-dependent regulation of reproduction Individuals that lack the adipose-derived hormone leptin fail to complete puberty and are infertile. Leptin-deficient mice recapitulate human phenotypes; however, it is not clear how leptin and leptin signaling impact the reproductive axis. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Vincent Prevot and colleagues at INSERM U837 evaluated leptin deficient animals and determined that leptin acts directly on neurons in the preoptic region of the hypothalamus that synthesize nitric oxide to regulate peripheral levels ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Looking at a smooth sheet of plastic in one University of Illinois laboratory, no one would guess that an impact had recently blasted a hole through it. Illinois researchers have developed materials that not only heal, but regenerate. Until now, self-repairing materials could only bond tiny microscopic cracks. The new regenerating materials fill in large cracks and holes by regrowing material. Led by professor Scott White, the research team comprises professors Jeffry S. Moore and Nancy Sottos and graduate students Brett Krull, Windy Santa Cruz and ...

A Case Western Reserve University student and his mentor have discovered an ancient kitten-sized predator that lived in Bolivia about 13 million years ago—one of the smallest species reported in the extinct order Sparassodonta. Third-year undergraduate student Russell Engelman and Case Western Reserve anatomy professor Darin Croft made the finding by analyzing a partial skull that had been in a University of Florida collection more than three decades. The researchers report their finding in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2013.827118#.U2p8-S8njhM. "The ...

A key challenge in the biofuels landscape is to get more advanced biofuels—fuels other than corn ethanol and vegetable oil-based biodiesel—into the transportation pool. Utilization of advanced biofuels is stipulated by the Energy Independence and Security Act; however, current production levels lag behind proposed targets. Additionally, certain transportation sectors, such as aviation, are likely to continue to require liquid hydrocarbon fuels in the long term even as light duty transportation shifts to alternative power sources. A multi-university team lead by George ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- MIT researchers have devised a novel cancer treatment that destroys tumor cells by first disarming their defenses, then hitting them with a lethal dose of DNA damage. In studies with mice, the research team showed that this one-two punch, which relies on a nanoparticle that carries two drugs and releases them at different times, dramatically shrinks lung and breast tumors. The MIT team, led by Michael Yaffe, the David H. Koch Professor in Science, and Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering, describe the findings in the May 8 online ...

Ozone pollution across the continental United States will become far more difficult to keep in check as temperatures rise, according to new research results. The study shows that Americans face the risk of a 70 percent increase in unhealthy summertime ozone levels by 2050. The results appear online this week in a paper in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, published by the American Geophysical Union. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy. Warmer temperatures and other changes in the atmosphere ...