The problems people with autism have with memory formation, higher-level thinking and social interactions may be partially attributable to the activity of receptors inside brain cells, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have learned. Scientists were already aware that the type of receptor in question was a potential contributor to these problems – when located on the surfaces of brain cells. Until now, though, the role of the same type of receptor located inside the cell had gone unrecognized. Such receptors inside cells significantly ...

Starting about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, brachiopod groups disappeared in large numbers, along with 90 percent of the planet's species. Today, only a few groups, or genera, of brachiopods remain. "Most people won't be familiar with brachiopods. They're pretty rare in the modern ocean," said Jonathan Payne, a paleobiologist at Stanford University. Meanwhile, bivalves flourished, diversifying into a staggering variety of shapes and sizes, and spread from marine to freshwater habitats. "After the end-Permian mass extinction, we find far fewer ...

The study found a 'stop mechanism' that determined brain signals telling the individual to stop drinking water when no longer thirsty, and the brain effects of drinking more water than required. Researcher Professor Derek Denton from the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences at the University of Melbourne said the study provided insight into the human instincts that determine survival behaviour and are also of medical importance. 
 "Different areas of the brain involved in emotional decision-making were activated when people drank water after becoming ...

Seattle, WA—A new team approach has improved safety—reducing rates of major complications by two thirds—for complex spinal reconstructive surgery for spinal deformity in adult Group Health patients at Virginia Mason Hospital & Seattle Medical Center. An article in the March issue of Spine Deformity gives a detailed description of the standardized protocol before, during, and after the surgery, stressing the new approach's three main features: Two spine surgeons in the operating room A live preoperative screening conference Monitoring bleeding during the operation The ...

Creating surrogate human organs, coupled with insights from highly sensitive mass spectrometry technologies, a new project is on the brink of revolutionizing the way we screen new drugs and toxic agents. ATHENA, the Advanced Tissue-engineered Human Ectypal Network Analyzer project team, is developing four human organ constructs – liver, heart, lung and kidney – that are based on a significantly miniaturized platform. Each organ component will be about the size of a smartphone screen, and the whole ATHENA "body" of interconnected organs would fit neatly on a desk. "By ...

Washington, DC—Although people live longer today than they did 50 years ago, people who were overweight and obese as teenagers aren't experiencing the same gains as other segments of the population, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The life expectancy of the average American born in 2011 was 78.7 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The average lifespan has increased by more than a decade since 1950, but rising obesity rates threaten to take a toll on ...

New research shows sugary drinks are the worst offenders in the fight against youth obesity and recommends that B.C. schools fully implement healthy eating guidelines to reduce their consumption. Data from the 2008 Adolescent Health survey among 11,000 grade seven to 12 students in British Columbia schools indicates sugary drinks like soda increased the odds of obesity more than other foods such as pizza, french fries, chips and candies. The study, published today in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, found that students in schools ...

A team of researchers from Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island commanded a national stage to present the results of a study evaluating the use of sentinel lymph node dissection in women with vulvar malignancies, and then follow the patients for complications and recurrence. The team – Drs. Richard G. Moore, Dario Roque, Carolyn McCourt, Ashley Stuckey, Paul A. DiSIlvestro, James Sung, Margaret Steinhoff, Cornelius Granai III, and Katina Robison – presented their work at the annual meeting of the Society of Gynecologic Oncologists (SGO) in Tampa. The oral presentation ...

This news release is available in German. Organisms must be able to sense signals from the outside and translate these into biochemical cues in order to adequately respond to their environment. This capability is also required to process information that reaches the brain. Within the brain, stimulation of neurons activates genes that are required, for example for learning and memory. In collaboration with an international and interdisciplinary team the research group led by Prof. Jean Pieters from the Biozentrum, University of Basel, has now uncovered the role of ...

Scientists at the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies have used PET imaging to visualize the distribution in the body of copper, which is deregulated in Menkes disease, a genetic disorder, using a mouse model. This study lays the groundwork for PET imaging studies on human Menkes disease patients to identify new therapy options. Menkes disease, though rare, is a fearsome genetic disorder. Most affected babies die within the first few years of life. The disease is caused by an inborn fault in the body's ability to absorb copper. The standard treatment today for ...

Scientists of the Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management (IGM) and of the Institute of Epidemiology II (EPI II) at Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU), together with colleagues of the German Diabetes Center (DDZ) in Düsseldorf, investigated the association between self-management behavior and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes. HMGU and the DDZ are partners in the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD). High self-management index – low mortality 340 study participants with type 2 diabetes were interviewed with regard to their patient behavior ...

The popular TV series "CSI" is fiction, but every day, real-life investigators and forensic scientists collect and analyze evidence to determine what happened at crime scenes. In a study published in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, scientists say they have developed a more rapid and accurate method that could allow crime scene investigators to tell what kind of ammunition was shot from a gun based on the residue it left behind. Igor K. Lednev and Justin Bueno point out that when someone fires a gun, burnt particles from the bullet spray out of the weapon onto a ...

Mesenchymal stem cell transplantation is a novel means of treating cerebral ischemia/reperfusion, and can promote angiogenesis and neurological functional recovery. Acupuncture at Conception and Governor vessels also has positive effects as a treatment for cerebral ischemia/reperfusion. Therefore, Prof. Haibo Yu and co-workers from Affiliated Shenzhen Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine in China hypothesized that electro-acupuncture at Conception and Governor vessels plus mesenchymal stem cell transplantation may have better therapeutic ...

The smells of summer — the sweet fragrance of newly opened flowers, the scent of freshly cut grass and the aroma of meats cooking on the backyard grill — will soon be upon us. Now, researchers are reporting that the very same beer that many people enjoy at backyard barbeques could, when used as a marinade, help reduce the formation of potentially harmful substances in grilled meats. The study appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. I.M.P.L.V.O. Ferreira and colleagues explain that past studies have shown an association between consumption of grilled ...

Scientists have shown for the first time that a chemical in the brain called galanin is involved in the risk of developing depression. And the research, undertaken by a European research team, points to a strong reason to develop drugs that modify galanin functioning as a new class of antidepressant drug. Galanin is a neuropeptide (a small protein) that was discovered and investigated over 30 years ago by various groups including the Swedish scientist Tomas Hokfelt. He is one of the senior authors of the paper published in the journal PNAS. Professor Hokfelt and ...

NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have released the first images captured by their newest Earth-observing satellite, the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, which launched into space Feb. 27. The images show precipitation falling inside a March 10 cyclone over the northwest Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,000 miles east of Japan. The data were collected by the GPM Core Observatory's two instruments: JAXA's Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR), which imaged a three-dimensional cross-section of the storm; and, NASA's GPM Microwave ...

Despite the well-documented disadvantages of graduating from college during a recession, could graduates actually be happier with their jobs in the long run? A new article from Administrative Science Quarterly examines whether earning a college or graduate degree in a recession or an economic boom has lasting effects on job satisfaction. Across three studies, well-educated graduates who entered the workforce during economic downturns were happier with their work than those who first searched for jobs during more prosperous times. In fact, they were happier with their ...

Geneva, Switzerland, 26 March 2014 -- A new era of lung cancer therapy is close to dawning, using drugs that can prevent tumour cells from evading the immune system, experts have said at the 4th European Lung Cancer Congress. For decades, scientists and doctors thought immunotherapy –treatments that harness the immune system to fight a disease-- was of marginal benefit in lung cancer, says Jean-Charles Soria, Institute Gustave Roussy in Paris, France. However a new class of drugs known as "immunocheckpoint regulators" have shown huge potential, Soria says. New data ...

In early 2010, LANXESS decided to enter a new field of business, water purification: A production facility for Lewabrane reverse osmosis membrane filter elements was supposed to be built by the fall of 2011. Together with the company's experts, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg designed and had the manufacturing technology ready for production in just nine months. Afterward, they built a second, fully automatic and, therefore, more complex plant in just one year. Part of this plant – scaled down – will be on ...

A new report published online in The FASEB Journal may lead the way toward new treatments or a cure for a common cause of blindness (proliferative retinopathies). Specifically, scientists have discovered that the body's innate immune system does more than help ward off external pathogens. It also helps remove sight-robbing abnormal blood vessels, while leaving healthy cells and tissue intact. This discovery is significant as the retina is part of the central nervous system and its cells cannot be replaced once lost. Identifying ways to leverage the innate immune system ...

A new international study has revealed how genetics could explain why different environmental exposures can trigger the onset of different forms of rheumatoid arthritis. A team at the Arthritis Research UK Centre for Genetics and Genomics at The University of Manchester, part of a large international consortium involving scientists from across 15 academic institutions, believe their findings could have important implication for the way that rheumatoid arthritis is diagnosed and treated. Publishing their findings in the journal American Journal of Human Genetics, they ...

CINCINNATI – Septic shock is a severe systemic infection and major cause of death for the old and young alike. Unfortunately, researchers say testing new drug regimens to stop the infection is confounded because clinical trials include patients who are either too sick to be saved by experimental therapies or not sick enough to warrant the treatments. In a study published in the April edition of Critical Care Medicine, researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati report a new blood test that helps solve the dilemma by identifying ...

PULLMAN, Wash. - A Washington State University food scientist and colleagues at Texas A&M have found that compounds in peaches can inhibit the growth of breast cancer cells and their ability to spread. Writing in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, the researchers say the compounds could be a novel addition to therapies that reduce the risk of metastasis, the primary killer in breast and many other cancers. The compounds could be given as an extract or, judging from the doses given mice in the study, two to three peaches a day. "I would do three peaches a day," said ...

KNOXVILLE – In many group-living species, high-rank individuals bully their group-mates to get what they want, but their contribution is key to success in conflict with other groups, according to a study that sheds new light on the evolutionary roots of cooperation and group conflict. In a series of mathematical models, researchers from the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis and the University of Oxford uncovered a mechanism for explaining how between-group conflict influences within-group cooperation and how genes for this behavior might be ...

Recent California symposium highlights women injured in the workplace Article provided by Sacks & Zolonz, LLP Visit us at http://www.sackszolonzdefense.com In February the California Applicants' Attorneys Association held a symposium regarding workplace injuries that affect women. "Working Women's Injuries Symposium: Causes, Consequences and Prevention" examined the causes of injuries to women in the workplace and attempted to generate policies that would reduce and better address women's safety while at work. At the symposium, experts and safety advocates ...