Anyone living in a major U.S. city for the past decade may have noticed a change in the air. The change is apparent in new NASA satellite images unveiled this week that demonstrate the reduction of air pollution across the country. After ten years in orbit, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA's Aura satellite has been in orbit sufficiently long to show that people in major U.S. cities are breathing less nitrogen dioxide – a yellow-brown gas that can cause respiratory problems. Nitrogen dioxide is one of the six common pollutants regulated by the U.S. Environmental ...

DALLAS – June 26, 2014 – A drug that blocks the action of the enzyme Cdk5 could substantially reduce brain damage if administered shortly after a stroke, UT Southwestern Medical Center research suggests. The findings, reported in the June 11 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, determined in rodent models that aberrant Cdk5 activity causes nerve cell death during stroke. "If you inhibit Cdk5, then the vast majority of brain tissue stays alive without oxygen for up to one hour," said Dr. James Bibb, Associate Professor of Neurology and Neurotherapeutics at UT Southwestern ...

TORONTO, June 26, 2014—Foreign-trained physicians feel there are not enough residency positions for them in countries such as Canada and the United States and this information was not communicated to them before they emigrated, a new study has found. Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital surveyed international medical graduates to better understand the concepts of "brain drain," the migration of health care workers from low- and middle-income countries to higher-income countries, and "brain waste," where their skills are under-utilized or not utilized in their new country. ...

Why does one physician in a walk-in practice order laboratory monitoring tests for patients more often than a colleague working down the hallway? Which factors influence the use of these important tests that can help doctors ensure that high-risk drugs are prescribed safely? Clues to these questions lie in the age and general health of the patient, and whether the doctor is a specialist or not, says Shira Fischer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. She is the lead author of a study¹ which appears in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 26, 2014 - First-grade teachers in the United States may need to change their instructional practices if they are to raise the mathematics achievement of students with mathematics difficulties (MD), according to new research published online today in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. VIDEO: Co-author Paul L. Morgan discusses key findings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCAzLGSZ6aM&feature=youtu.be "Which Instructional Practices Most Help First-Grade Students with ...

Complementing the five basic tastes of sweet, bitter, salty, sour and umami, a large variety of odors also contribute to the overall sensory impression of a foodstuff. In recent decades, approximately 10,000 volatile food compounds have been identified. Scientists from Technische Universität München (TUM) and the German Research Center for Food Chemistry (DFA) have carried out a meta-analysis on the odorant patterns of 227 food samples. How cognac gets its complex notes They were surprised to find that the almost unlimited variety of food smells is based on 230 key ...

A simple non-surgical gum disease treatment markedly reduces the thickness of the wall of the arteries, a risk factor for heart disease, according to a first of its kind study among Aboriginal Australians. The study findings may be of particular importance to Aboriginal Australians, who in general have poorer oral health and higher rates of cardiovascular disease. Published in the latest issue of Hypertension, the study reports a significant decline in thickening of the wall of the carotid artery a year after a single session of gum treatment. "The study shows that ...

German researchers have found strong evidence that attaining a higher level of education and spending more years in school are two factors associated with a greater prevalence and severity of nearsightedness, or myopia. Published online this month in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the research is the first population-based study to demonstrate that environmental factors may outweigh genetics in the development of myopia. While common, nearsightedness has become even more prevalent around the world in recent years and presents a growing ...

Geologists have discovered three previously unrecorded volcanoes in volcanically active southeast Australia. The new Monash University research, published in the Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, gives a detailed picture of an area of volcanic centres already known to geologists in the region. Covering an area of 19,000 square kilometres in Victoria and South Australia, with over 400 volcanoes, the Newer Volcanics Province (NVP) features the youngest volcanoes in Australia including Mount Schank and Mount Gambier. Focusing on the Hamilton region, lead researcher ...

VIDEO: Two oil drops, covered with particles of different properties, coalesce due to the action of an alternating electric field, forming a Janus capsule. Click here for more information. Everything depends on how you look at them. Looking from one side you will see one face; and when looking from the opposite side – you will see a different one. So appear Janus capsules, miniature, hollow structures, in different fragments composed of different micro- and nanoparticles. Theoreticians ...

Remember those molecule models made from sticks and balls you could assemble to study complex molecules back in school? Something similar has taken shape in the Interactive Geometry Lab at ETH Zurich. ETH-professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung and her team do not study molecules but ways to manipulate virtual shapes, like animated characters on a computer screen. Now they have developed an input device or "joystick" to move and pose virtual characters, made up – similar to the molecule models – of modular building blocks. An artist can assemble these blocks into an approximate ...

In a new study, researchers from Imperial College Business School, Columbia University and the University of Maryland found that wealthy individuals in the US can get in relative terms up to 70 per cent times greater returns on their investments than those with modest wealth, when the yields on assets such as stocks and bonds are calculated. The team say that this further widens the income gap between rich and poor and potentially creates disparities in society. Income inequality in the US has been steadily rising. According to a report by Oxfam International released ...

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina presented their joint recommendations on "Scientific Freedom and Scientific Responsibility" on 26 June 2014 in Berlin. Attended by representatives from the media, the Professors Jörg Hacker and Peter Strohschneider, Presidents of the Leopoldina and the DFG respectively, presented recommendations for handling security-relevant research, placing the subject against the background of the current political debate. With the publication the research organisations ...

This news release is available in German. Over 150 million people throughout the world suffer from chronic infection with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), which causes massive damage to the liver. Advanced liver diseases often necessitate liver transplants. In the new clinical study Dr. Felix Bohne and his colleagues studied together with Prof. Alberto Sánchez-Fueyo from King's College London 34 hepatitis C patients at the Liver Unit of the University Hospital Clínic de Barcelona who had received new livers. The researchers had two objectives here: first, they wanted ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The evolution of language in humans continues to perplex scientists and linguists who study how humans learn to communicate. Considered by some as "operant learning," this multi-tiered trait involves many genes and modification of an individual's behavior by trial and error. Toddlers acquire communication skills by babbling until what they utter is rewarded; however, the genes involved in learning language skills are far from completely understood. Now, using a gene identified in fruit flies by a University of Missouri researcher, scientists involved in ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Patients who have post-operative complications following high-risk surgery have a significantly lower risk of being readmitted to the hospital within 30 days if they go see their primary care physician soon following discharge, a new study in JAMA Surgery shows. The study shows that better coordination of care between surgeons and primary care physicians is important to help reduce hospital readmissions within 30 days for those high-risk surgery patients who have post-operative complications or live with a chronic disease, according to Benjamin S. Brooke, ...

Chlorinated chemicals perform a host of societally useful functions, but they also have a dark side. Once their use life has ended, such agents often become environmental contaminants, sometimes resistant to bioremediation. In a series of new studies, Anca Delgado, a researcher at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute, examines unique groups of microorganisms, capable of converting hazardous chlorinated chemicals like trichloroetheene (TCE) into ethene, a benign end product of microbial biodegradation. The research was conducted as part of her doctorate work ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (June 26, 2014) – It's tough being the parent of a child with food allergies. Constant vigilance is needed for everything your child eats, when a single food item containing a hidden ingredient can be fatal. Although worry is a factor for anyone caring for a child with food allergies, according to a study published in the July issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the scientific publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), there is increased anxiety and strain for caregivers of children allergic to milk ...

Old World monkeys have undergone a remarkable evolution in facial appearance as a way of avoiding interbreeding with closely related and geographically proximate species, researchers from New York University and the University of Exeter have found. Their research provides the best evidence to date for the role of visual cues as a barrier to breeding across species. "Evolution produces adaptations that help animals thrive in a particular environment, and over time these adaptations lead to the evolution of new species," explains James Higham, an assistant professor in ...

Green-chemistry researchers at McGill University have discovered a way to use water as a solvent in one of the reactions most widely used to synthesize chemical products and pharmaceuticals. The findings, published June 26 in Nature Communications, mark a potential milestone in efforts to develop organic reactions in water. Chao-Jun Li and Feng Zhou of McGill's Department of Chemistry report that they have discovered a catalytic system which for the first time allows direct metal-mediated reactions between aryl halides and carbonyl compounds in water. For the past ...

TORONTO, June 26, 2014—Tuberculosis infection among people taking corticosteroid pills may be underestimated, new research suggests. Current guidelines for what constitutes a positive TB skin test among corticosteroid pill users may not be capturing all those who are infected, said Dr. Nicholas Vozoris, a respirologist in the Tuberculosis Program at St. Michael's Hospital. Previous research has shown that people who take corticosteroid pills, such as Prednisone, and have inhaled the TB bacteria, have an eight times higher risk of the bacteria becoming active than people ...

TORONTO, June 26, 2014 – Women with chronic physical illnesses are more likely to use mental health services than men with similar illnesses; they also seek out mental health services six months earlier than those same men, according to new study from St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES). "Chronic physical illness can lead to depression," said Dr. Flora Matheson, a scientist in the hospital's Centre for Research on Inner City Health. "We want to better understand who will seek mental health services when diagnosed with a chronic ...

PHILADELPHIA — The longer a person took low-dose aspirin, the lower his or her risk for developing pancreatic cancer, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "We found that the use of low-dose aspirin was associated with cutting the risk of pancreatic cancer in half, with some evidence that the longer low-dose aspirin was used, the lower the risk," said Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, professor of epidemiology in the Department of Chronic Disease Epidemiology at the Yale School ...

Current guidelines to help prevent bloodstream infections during intravenous feeding may need revisions to strengthen protections for patients, a new study finds. Researchers at the United Kingdom's University of Southampton found that current guidelines do not account for other independent factors that can affect the growth of potentially deadly microorganisms. Their study was published today in the OnlineFirst version of the Journal of Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (JPEN), the research journal of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.). ...

On the heels of the 2014 hurricane season, researchers are calling for home parenteral and enteral nutrition (HPEN) consumers and their homecare providers to have a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan (EPP) to ensure that special needs are met during the time of a disaster. In a paper published today in the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition's (A.S.P.E.N.) Nutrition in Clinical Practice journal, researchers with Coram Specialty Infusion Services outline the experiences of HPEN consumers and homecare providers in New Jersey affected by Hurricane ...