New York — March 3, 2014 — A new approach to breast reconstruction surgery aimed at helping patients' bodies get back to normal more quickly cut their postoperative opioid painkiller use in half and meant a day less in the hospital on average, a Mayo Clinic study found. The method includes new pain control techniques, preventive anti-nausea treatment and getting women eating and walking soon after free flap breast reconstruction surgery. It has proved so effective, it is now being used across plastic surgery at Mayo Clinic. The findings were being presented at the Plastic ...

Therefore, such a concert hall shape affects perceived dynamic range even though rooms itself amplify all passages the same amount. "Dynamic expression is an inseparable part of music. For this reason, a concert hall's ability to transmit the orchestra's played dynamics is one of the most important criteria of good acoustics. Our research is the first that explains how halls influence perception of dynamic expression," Dr. Jukka Pätynen says. The importance of early lateral reflections to good concert hall acoustics has been known for decades. Earlier, they were believed ...

Over the last two decades, huge numbers of fossils have been collected from the western Liaoning Province and adjacent parts of northeastern China, including exceptionally preserved feathered dinosaurs, early birds, and mammals. Most of these specimens are from the Cretaceous Period, including the famous Jehol Biota. However, in recent years many fossils have emerged from sites that are 30 million years earlier, from the Middle-Upper Jurassic Period, providing an exceptional window on life approximately 160 million years ago. A new paper published in latest issue of the ...

WASHINGTON — Could a new finding in bats help unlock a mystery about the human brain? Likely so, say researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center who have shown that a small region within the amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the brains of all mammals, is responsible for producing emotional calls and sounds. They say this discovery might be key to locating a similar center in human brains. Localizing and manipulating this center in the human brain may provide a way to treat malfunctions in emotional responses, resulting, for example, in pathological aggression, ...

While a number of strategies can prevent and control HIV transmission and spread, their effective use depends on understanding the sexual networks within and between communities. A paper published in this week's PLOS Medicine reports a detailed analysis with surprising results from the Rakai district in Uganda, one of the most studied areas of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. Mary K. Grabowski, from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, led an international group of scientists in an effort to test the hypothesis that most people who contract HIV outside their ...

Intimate partner violence (IPV) among men who have sex with men (MSM) is linked to greater risk of mental and physical health symptoms, substance misuse, and sexually transmitted infections, according to a research article published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, led by Ana Maria Buller and Loraine Bacchus from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK, working with experts from King's College London, identified associations with negative health indicators for both victims and perpetrators of IPV among MSM. The authors reached these conclusions by ...

While it's clear that diet can affect longevity, there's great uncertainty about which combinations of foods are best for attaining a long and healthy life. Now two groups of researchers publishing in the March 4 issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism each suggest that low protein intake may be a key factor, at least until old age. The first study suggests that consuming moderate to high levels of animal protein prompts a major increase in cancer risk and mortality in middle-aged adults, while elderly individuals have the opposite result. Meanwhile, the second ...

For families who moved out of high-poverty neighborhoods, boys experienced an increase and girls a decrease in rates of depression and conduct disorder, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA. Observational studies have consistently found that youth in high-poverty neighborhoods have high rates of emotional problems. These findings raise the possibilities that neighborhood characteristics affect emotional functioning and neighborhood-level interventions may reduce emotional problems. Available data from observational studies are unclear, according to background ...

The opening or expansion of a casino in a community is associated with increased family income, decreased poverty rates and a decreased risk of childhood overweight or obesity, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA. Obesity disproportionately affects children with low economic resources at the family and community levels. Few studies have evaluated whether this association is a direct effect of economic resources. "American Indian-owned casinos have resulted in increased economic resources for some tribes and provide an opportunity to test whether these resources ...

Although some research has suggested that the use of the anticoagulant warfarin for atrial fibrillation among patients with chronic kidney disease would increase the risk of death or stroke, a study that included more than 24,000 patients found a lower l-year risk of the combined outcomes of death, heart attack or stroke without a higher risk of bleeding, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA. Juan Jesus Carrero, Ph.D., of the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, and colleagues examined outcomes associated with warfarin treatment in relation to kidney function ...

An analysis of nearly 24,000 active human research clinical trials found that between 5 percent and 16 percent fall into a regulatory gap and are not covered by two major federal regulations, according to a study in the March 5 issue of JAMA. These trials studied interventions other than drugs or devices (e.g., behavioral, surgical). The primary federal human subjects protections (HSP) policies in the United States, including requirements for institutional review board review and informed consent, are the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) HSP regulations and the ...

Small satellite-tracking devices attached to sea turtles swimming off Florida's coast have delivered first-of-its-kind data that could help unlock they mystery of what endangered turtles do during the "lost years." The "lost years" refers to the time after turtles hatch and head to sea where they remain for many years before returning to near-shore waters as large juveniles. The time period is often referred to as the "lost years" because not much has been known about where the young turtles go and how they interact with their oceanic environment -- until now. "What ...

The use of chemotherapy in terminally-ill cancer patients in the last months of life is associated with increased risk of undergoing resuscitation and dying in an intensive care unit, suggests a paper published on bmj.com today. The researchers suggest that end-of-life discussions may be particularly important for patients receiving chemotherapy and suggest that caregivers should ensure that patients are aware of their prognosis, likely outcomes of treatment and that their choices are aligned with their end-of-life values. Chemotherapy is used to treat cancer with ...

Pregnant women who eat a "prudent" diet rich in vegetables, fruits, whole grains and who drink water have a significantly reduced risk of preterm delivery, suggests a study published on bmj.com today. A "traditional" dietary pattern of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables was also linked to a significantly lower risk. Although these findings cannot establish causality, they support dietary advice to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet including vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and fish and to drink water. Preterm delivery (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) is ...

NEW YORK (March 4, 2014) -- Terminal cancer patients who receive chemotherapy in the last months of their lives are less likely to die where they want and are more likely to undergo invasive medical procedures than those who do not receive chemotherapy, according to research in this week's BMJ. The findings underscore a disconnect between the type of care many cancer patients say they want and the kind they receive, and highlight the need for clearer and more balanced discussion of the harms and benefits of palliative chemotherapy at the end of life by doctors, patients ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Mar. 4, 2014 -- Animal flight behavior is an exciting frontier for engineers to both apply knowledge of aerodynamics and to learn from nature's solutions to operating in the air. Flying snakes are particularly intriguing to researchers because they lack wings or any other features that remotely resemble flight apparatus. Before you envision flying snakes raining down from the sky, the ones involved in this study are small -- about 1 meter in length and the width of your thumb -- and live in the lowland tropical forests of Asia and Southeast Asia. Virginia ...

MARCH 4, 2014 — That chicken wing you're eating could be as deadly as a cigarette. In a new study that tracked a large sample of adults for nearly two decades, researchers have found that eating a diet rich in animal proteins during middle age makes you four times more likely to die of cancer than someone with a low-protein diet — a mortality risk factor comparable to smoking. "There's a misconception that because we all eat, understanding nutrition is simple. But the question is not whether a certain diet allows you to do well for three days, but can it help you survive ...

From the Statue of Liberty in New York to the Tower of London or the Sydney Opera House -- sea-level rise not only affects settlement areas for large parts of the world population but also numerous sites of the UNESCO World Heritage. This is shown in a new study by Ben Marzeion from the University of Innsbruck and Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "The physical processes behind the global rise of the oceans are gradual, but they will continue for a very long time," says climate scientist Ben Marzeion. "This will also impact the cultural ...

Some of the world's most recognisable and important landmarks could be lost to rising sea-levels if current global warming trends are maintained over the next two millennia. This is according to a new study, published today, 5 March, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, that has calculated the temperature increases at which the 720 sites currently on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites would be impacted by subsequent sea-level rises. The Statue of Liberty, Independence Hall, Tower of London and Sydney Opera House are among the 136 sites that ...

Exposure to passive smoking in childhood causes irreversible damage to the structure of children's arteries, according to a study published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. The thickening of the arteries' walls associated with being exposed to parents' smoke, means that these children will be at greater risk of heart attacks and strokes in later life. The researchers from Tasmania, Australia and Finland say that exposure to both parents smoking in childhood adds an extra 3.3 years to the age of blood vessels when the children reach adulthood. The ...

A new study published online today in the journal Rheumatology has found that the lower the ratio between a person's index finger (2D) and their ring finger (4D), the higher their risk of developing severe osteoarthritis in their knees, requiring a total knee replacement. Osteoarthritis (OA) is a major public health problem linked with significant disability in knees and hips. Hormonal factors are thought to play a role, which is thought to account for the well documented difference in prevalence of OA between men and women. Anthropological studies have suggested that ...

This news release is available in German. Leipzig. Plants are also able to make complex decisions. At least this is what scientists from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Göttingen have concluded from their investigations on Barberry (Berberis vulgaris), which is able to abort its own seeds to prevent parasite infestation. The results are the first ecological evidence of complex behaviour in plants. They indicate that this species has a structural memory, is able to differentiate between inner and outer conditions as well ...

UCPs or uncoupling proteins are present in mitochondria, the powerhouse of each cell in the body. The functions of most of the five known UCPs remain mysterious (UCP2-UCP5), whereby only the distinct function for UCP1 has thus far been discovered. UCP1 is responsible for heat production when muscle activity is deficient such as is the case with babies and animals in hibernation. The research team at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna were able to provide a fundamental explanatory concept for the function of UCP2 ...

BOSTON – Call it what you will – getting red in the face, hot under the collar, losing your cool, blowing your top – we all experience anger. And while we know that anger is a normal, sometimes even beneficial emotion, we're also aware of the often harmful connection between anger and health. New research from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical shows an even more compelling reason to think about getting anger in check – a nearly fivefold increase in risk for heart attack in the two hours following outbursts of anger. "There has been a lot of research on anger; we already ...

They hitchhike with us under the soles of our shoes and muddy car tires. Harsh and cold climates do not seem to stop alien plants from establishing themselves in high altitudes, where they now successfully penetrate the alpine vegetation, according to a study at Umeå University in Sweden and the University of Antwerp, Netherlands. "Alien plants often gain advantages in their new environment because they lack natural enemies, and in this case the lack of strong competitors amongst alpine plants may be the key to success for generalist native species," says ecologist Ann ...