Researchers from the Cochrane Infectious Diseases Group, hosted at LSTM, conducted an independent review of the effects of pre-referral rectal artesunate for people with severe malaria, published in the Cochrane Library today. The review follows a large trial of rectal artesunate in 2009 which led the World Health Organization to recommend its use. Severe malaria is a serious medical condition caused by infection with the Plasmodium parasite. It is treated by giving injections of antimalarial drugs, which need to be started as quickly as possible to reduce the risk of ...

As a new therapeutic approach, Janus kinases are currently in the limelight of cancer research. The focus of interest is the protein JAK2. By inhibiting this protein one tries to cure chronic bone marrow diseases, such as myelofibrosis and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML). Loss of JAK2 is advantageous for leukemia cells Scientists working with Veronika Sexl at the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology may initiate a transformation of thought in regard of JAK2 inhibition. To simulate the human disease as accurately as possible, the scientists used a mouse leukemia ...

As winged dinosaurs underwent a series of evolutionary changes during the transition into Aves, or birds, one pivotal transformation was the appearance of a single-ovary reproductive system. "The most widely accepted hypothesis for the presence of a single functional ovary in living birds is that the right ovary … was lost to reduce body mass in gravid females during flight," report a team of Chinese scientists who are adding new details to the mosaic of understanding how terrestrial dinosaurs gave rise to birds and powered flight. These scientists, led by the director ...

This news release is available in German. Imperfections in the regular atomic arrangements in crystals determine many of the properties of a material, and their diffusion is behind many microstructural changes in solids. However, imaging non-repeating atomic arrangements is difficult in conventional materials. Now, researchers at the University of Vienna have directly imaged the diffusion of a butterfly-shaped atomic defect in graphene, the recently discovered two-dimensional wonder material, over long image sequences. The results are published in the prestigious journal ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The young lemur named Eugenius started to get sick. Very sick. He was lethargic, losing weight and suffering from diarrhea. Duke Lemur Center veterinarians soon pinpointed the cause of his illness: Eugenius tested positive for Cryptosporidium, a microscopic intestinal parasite known to affect people, pets, livestock and wildlife worldwide. In humans, thousands of cases of Cryptosporidium are reported in the United States each year, spread primarily through contaminated water. Since Eugenius was the first animal diagnosed in 1999, the parasite has caused ...

Printable robots — those that can be assembled from parts produced by 3-D printers — have long been a topic of research in the lab of Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. At this year's IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, Rus' group and its collaborators introduce a new wrinkle on the idea: bakable robots. In two new papers, the researchers demonstrate the promise of printable robotic components that, when heated, automatically fold into prescribed three-dimensional configurations. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Among men treated for prostate cancer, those who received radiation therapy were more likely to develop bladder or rectal cancer, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Overall the incidence of these cancers is low. But when men have received radiation treatments, it's important to evaluate carefully any symptoms that could be a sign of bladder or rectal cancer," says senior study author Kathleen A. Cooney, M.D., professor of hematology/oncology and urology at the U-M Medical School. The study, which ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a laser-based instrument that generates artificial sunlight to help test solar cell properties and find ways to boost their efficiency. The novel NIST system simulates sunlight well across a broad spectrum of visible to infrared light. More flexible than conventional solar simulators such as xenon arc-lamps or light-emitting diodes, the laser instrument can be focused down to a small beam spot—with resolution approaching the theoretical limit—and shaped to match any desired spectral ...

Quantum information can't break the cosmic speed limit, according to researchers* from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute. The scientists have shown how attempts to "push" part of a light beam past the speed of light results in the loss of the quantum data the light carries. The results could clarify how noise might limit the transfer of information in quantum computers. The speed of light in vacuum is often thought to be the ultimate speed limit, something Einstein showed to be an unbreakable ...

People with diabetes have about double the risk of premature death as people of the same age without diabetes. Studies also have shown that they have about twice the odds of suffering from depression, which further increases their mortality risk. A new UCLA-led study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society found that among adults 65 and older with diabetes, depression is linked with a far greater chance for early death compared with people of the same age who do not have depression. The researchers suggest that the higher mortality rate among those ...

NFL teams shoulder most of the blame for players' injuries and sports journalists can shift football cultural norms toward valuing players who put their health first. These are the key findings of a new study authored by Clemson University researchers Jimmy Sanderson and Melinda Weathers that examined health and safety issues in sports. It was published in the journal Communication & Sport. "Media coverage of players who decide to sit out or play through an injury may impact players' future decision-making as well as fans' attitudes towards these players," said Sanderson. "Sitting ...

A Curtin University researcher has shown that ancient volcanic eruptions in Australia 510 million years ago significantly affected the climate, causing the first known mass extinction in the history of complex life. Published in prestigious journal Geology, Curtin's Associate Professor Fred Jourdan, along with colleagues from several Australian and international institutions, used radioactive dating techniques to precisely measure the age of the eruptions of the Kalkarindji volcanic province. Dr Jourdan and his team were able to prove the volcanic province occurred ...

Everything we know nowadays about novel materials and the underlying processes in them we also know thanks to studies at contemporary synchrotron facilities like BESSY II. Here, relativistic electrons in a storage ring are employed to generate very brilliant and partly coherent light pulses from the THz to the X-ray regime in undulators and other devices. However, most of the techniques used at synchrotrons are very "photon hungry" and demand brighter and brighter light pulses to conduct innovative experiments. The general greed for stronger light pulses does, however, ...

Scientists working to understand the devastating bat disease known as white-nose syndrome (WNS) now have a new, non-lethal tool to identify bats with WNS lesions —ultraviolet, or UV, light. If long-wave UV light is directed at the wings of bats with white-nose syndrome, it produces a distinctive orange-yellow fluorescence. This orange-yellow glow corresponds directly with microscopic skin lesions that are the current "gold standard" for diagnosing white-nose syndrome in bats. "When we first saw this fluorescence of a bat wing in a cave, we knew we were on to something," ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A law designed to combat police misconduct is hamstrung by limited resources, a lack of transparency and "political spillover" at the U.S. Department of Justice, says a recently published empirical study by Stephen Rushin, a law professor at the University of Illinois and expert in criminal law and policing. In 1994, Congress passed 42 U.S.C. Section 14141 as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, granting the U.S. attorney general the power to initiate structural reform litigation against local police departments engaged in a pattern ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Scientists at the University of Utah (U of U), the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues have developed a powerful tool called pVAAST that combines linkage analysis with case control association to help researchers and clinicians identify disease-causing mutations in families faster and more precisely than ever before. In a study in Nature Biotechnology, the researchers describe cases in which pVAAST (the pedigree Variant Annotation, Analysis and Search Tool) identified mutations in two families with separate diseases ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — As population grows, society needs more — more energy, more food, more paper, more housing, more of nearly everything. Meeting those needs can lead to changes in how land is used. Native grasslands, forests and wetlands may be converted into croplands, tree plantations, residential areas and commercial developments. Those conversions can, in turn, diminish the health of natural ecosystems and their ability to provide an array of valuable services, such as clean air and water, wildlife and opportunities for recreation, to name a few. In two ...

Smoking waterpipes, or hookahs, creates hazardous concentrations of indoor air pollution and poses increased risk from diminished air quality for both employees and patrons of waterpipe bars, according to a new study from the Institute for Global Tobacco Control at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In an analysis of air quality in seven Baltimore waterpipe bars, researchers found that airborne particulate matter and carbon monoxide exceeded concentrations previously measured in public places that allowed cigarette smoking and that air nicotine was markedly ...

Solar panels made in China have a higher overall carbon footprint and are likely to use substantially more energy during manufacturing than those made in Europe, said a new study from Northwestern University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory. The report compared energy and greenhouse gas emissions that go into the manufacturing process of solar panels in Europe and China. "We estimated that a solar panel's carbon footprint is about twice as high when made in China and used in Europe, compared to those locally made and used in Europe," said ...

May 29, 2014 -- The sudden loss of a loved one can trigger a variety of psychiatric disorders in people with no history of mental illness, according to researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and colleagues at Columbia's School of Social Work and Harvard Medical School. While previous studies have suggested there is a link between sudden bereavement and an onset of common psychiatric disorders, this is the first study to show the association of acute bereavement and mania in a large population sample. Findings are published online in the American ...

A new analysis of European archaeological sites containing large numbers of dead mammoths and dwellings built with mammoth bones has led Penn State Professor Emerita Pat Shipman to formulate a new interpretation of how these sites were formed. She suggests that their abrupt appearance may have been due to early modern humans working with the earliest domestic dogs to kill the now-extinct mammoth -- a now-extinct animal distantly related to the modern-day elephant. Shipman's analysis also provides a way to test the predictions of her new hypothesis. Advance publication of ...

VIDEO: During this year's Atlantic hurricane season, NASA is redoubling its efforts to probe the inner workings of hurricanes and tropical storms with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flying over storms... Click here for more information. During this year's Atlantic hurricane season, NASA is redoubling its efforts to probe the inner workings of hurricanes and tropical storms with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flying over storms and two new space-based missions. NASA's ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study has discovered how resistance develops in patients taking ibrutinib, a new and highly effective drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). It identifies gene mutations that cause ibrutinib resistance in CLL patients. "Knowledge of these mutations is the first step in the development of ...

Athens, Ga. – New tools to collect and share information could help stem the loss of the world's threatened species, according to a paper published today in the journal Science. The study—by an international team of scientists that included John L. Gittleman, dean of the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology—was led by Stuart L. Pimm of Duke University and Clinton N. Jenkins of the Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas in Brazil. "As databases coalesce and policymakers have access to greater information, we see real and improving successes for conservation science," ...

VIDEO: In addition to monitoring weather on Earth, the GOES-R satellites will monitor weather in space caused by electromagnetic radiation and charged particles released from solar storms on the Sun. Many... Click here for more information. Two of the six instruments that will fly on NOAA's first Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite - R (GOES-R) satellite have completed integration with the spacecraft. The Solar Ultraviolet Imager (SUVI) and Extreme Ultraviolet and ...