CHICAGO (June 1, 2014) – As central-line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) pose a danger to vulnerable patients, infection prevention and control experts released new practical recommendations to assist acute care hospitals in implementing and prioritizing prevention efforts. The guidance was published in the July issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology and produced in a collaborative effort led by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Hospital Association, the Association for ...

CHICAGO (June 11, 2014) – A new study found a nationwide effort to control carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in Israel reduced CRE cases by improving compliance of infection control standards and using a coordinated intervention focused on long-term care facilities. The study was published in the July issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "As the global threat of CRE continues to rise, there is a need to better control and understand this bacteria," said Debby Ben-David, MD, ...

Alexandria, Va. — In 2006, a fossil collector and his crew discovered a rare fossil on private land in Montana's Hell Creek Formation: the bones of two fully articulated dinosaurs that appeared to have died together, locked in battle. The fossil duo — a small, pony-sized carnivorous tyrannosaurid and a slightly larger herbivorous ceratopsian, both now preserved in plaster — became known as the "Montana Dueling Dinosaurs." Last November, the fossils were put on the block at Bonhams auction house in New York City — but they did not sell. Had the set fetched the nearly $9 ...

Quebecers are particularly hostile toward the development of shale gas, but this aversion is driven less by 'not in my backyard' (NIMBY) attitudes than 'not in anyone's backyard (NIABY), according to a comparative study of 2,500 Quebecers and Americans conducted by Éric Montpetit and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal's Department of Political Science. Professors Barry G. Rabe of the University of Michigan and Christopher P. Borick of Muhlenberg College co-led the study in the United States. The study, commissioned by Quebec's Ministry of the Environment, ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – With news reports of toxic, cadmium-tainted rice in China, a new study describes a protein that transports metals in certain plants and holds promise for developing iron-rich but cadmium-free crops. Iron and cadmium are both found in soil and are interchangeably taken up by iron transporters in plants. Pollution and heavy fertilizer use have increased soil cadmium levels in China, for example. In humans, cadmium can damage internal organs and cause cancer. At the same time, iron is an essential nutrient for plants and humans. Iron deficiency affects 30 ...

An advance has been achieved towards next generation ultrasonic imaging with potentially 1,000 times higher resolution than today's medical ultrasounds. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have demonstrated a technique for producing, detecting and controlling ultrahigh frequency sound waves at the nanometer scale. Through a combination of subpicosecond laser pulses and unique nanostructures, a team led by Xiang Zhang, a faculty scientist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, produced acoustic ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – A sack-hauling time traveler from the 21st century lands in an Irish potato field in 1849, just before a terrible famine, and asks: If you thought genetically modified potatoes could avert late blight disease, spare a million countrymen from starvation and keep another million from emigrating off the Emerald Isle, would you plant these newfangled spuds? Fast forward to the Internet Age, when communication researchers ran 859 U.S. grocery shoppers through a similar thought experiment: Half the subjects in an online survey read the story of the 1850s Irish ...

(June 11, 2014 Seattle, Wash.) Researchers at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) used cutting-edge tetramer technology developed at BRI to find the T cells that drive rheumatoid arthritis (RA). "By using tetramer technology, we were able to examine whether T cells in people with rheumatoid arthritis were increased in number or were unique in other ways," says BRI Associate Director Jane Buckner, MD, who led the study with BRI Tetramer Core Laboratory Manager Eddie James, PhD. The findings were recently reported online in Arthritis & Rheumatology. This ...

CHICAGO (June 11, 2014) – New guidelines aim to reduce the prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), improve patient safety and prioritize current prevention efforts underway in hospitals. This drug resistant bacterium is a common source of patient morbidity and mortality in U.S. hospitals, causing nearly twice the number of deaths, significantly longer hospital stays and higher hospital costs than other forms of the bacteria. The strategies were published in the July issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology and produced in a collaborative ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 11, 2014–Disagreeing with comments made by Richard Friedman in a recent New York Times op-ed piece, Mary Ellen O'Toole, PhD, Senior FBI Profiler/Criminal Investigative Analyst (ret.), states that there is "a critical and significant difference" between being able to predict and prevent mass shootings. Dr. O'Toole, who is Editor-in-Chief of Violence and Gender, calls on the media to stop using the names of mass murders, which only fuels their desire for fame and is "a very powerful motivator," in a Perspective in the new peer-reviewed journal from ...

Research aimed at developing germ cells—the progenitors of eggs and sperm—in vitro should be held to especially rigorous scientific standards, a distinguished team of reproductive biologists declares in the journal Cell. In the article, authors John Schimenti, Ph.D., of Cornell University and his Jackson Laboratory colleagues, Mary Ann Handel, Ph.D., and John Eppig, Ph.D., note that because "germ cells are the ultimate stem cells," laboratories are racing to develop these cells in vitro for assisted reproduction. Yet the researchers claim that no one has yet conclusively ...

The world of astronomy has changed. An astronomer used to have to travel to a remote location and endure long, cold nights, patiently guiding a telescope to collect precious photons of light. Now, a proliferation of online archives allows astronomers to make discoveries from the comfort of their own offices. By mining such archives, a team of astronomers led by Ivana Damjanov of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) has found a treasure trove of "red nugget" galaxies. These galaxies are compact and densely packed with old, red stars. Their abundance provides ...

A new theoretical advance explains where the power of quantum computation comes from, and will help researchers design and build better computers and algorithms. The strange properties of quantum mechanics give quantum computers the potential to perform some computations exponentially faster than conventional computers. But where the extra power comes from – and how best to take advantage of it – is in many ways still an open question. A new paper in the journal Nature by CIFAR Fellow Joseph Emerson of the program in Quantum Information Science, along with colleagues ...

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team of researchers reports the first-ever detection of molecular gas -- the fuel for star formation -- in two galaxies that were previously rocked by gamma ray bursts (GRBs), the brightest explosions in the Universe. These new observations revealed that the molecular gas was concentrated toward the centers of the galaxies, while the GRBs occurred in unusual environments that were surprisingly bereft of gas yet rich in dust. The researchers speculate that the dearth of molecular gas around the GRBs was due ...

DETROIT – A recently published clinical study in the Journal of the American Medical Association has answered an urgent question that long puzzled ER pediatricians: Is the drug lorazepam really safer and more effective than diazepam – the U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved medication as first line therapy most often used by emergency room doctors to control major epileptic seizures in children? The answer to that question – based on a double-blind, randomized clinical trial that compared outcomes in 273 seizure patients, about half of whom were given lorazepam ...

Commercially available activity-monitoring apps, Web sites, and wearable devices allow for easy self-management of health and wellness. This technology may be particularly helpful for older adults, who can improve their cognitive function through proper diet and exercise. Despite tracking monitors' growing popularity and potential benefits, product designers rarely consider those over 65 to be a viable user group, and new human factors/ergonomics research indicates that the technology presents several usability challenges for this population. "Many older adults have ...

An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have identified the genes encoding a molecule that famously defines Group A Streptococcus (strep), a pathogenic bacterial species responsible for more than 700 million infections worldwide each year. The findings, published online in the June 11 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, shed new light on how strep bacteria resists the human immune system and provides a new strategy for developing a safe and broadly effective vaccine against strep throat, necrotizing ...

Tropical Cyclone 02A has consolidated and strengthened over a 24 hour period between June 10 and 11 and an image from NASA's Aqua satellite showed a more rounded tropical storm, despite wind shear. As Tropical Cyclone 02A consolidated and strengthened into a tropical storm it was re-named Nanauk. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Nanauk on June 11 at 08:29 UTC (4:29 a.m. EDT) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) captured an infrared and near-infrared image of the storm. The near-infrared image provided an almost visible look at the clouds that revealed a well-rounded ...

The human body is comprised of roughly 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. In healthy people, these bacteria are typically harmless and often helpful, keeping disease-causing microbes at bay. But, when disturbances knock these bacterial populations out of balance, illnesses can arise. Periodontitis, a severe form of gum disease, is one example. In a new study, University of Pennsylvania researchers show that bacteria responsible for many cases of periodontitis cause this imbalance, known as dysbiosis, with a sophisticated, two-prong manipulation of the human ...

PRINCETON, N.J.—Mexican immigrants who relocate to the United States often face barriers like poorly paying jobs, crowded housing and family separation. Such obstacles – including the migration process itself – may be detrimental to the health of Mexican immigrants, especially those who have recently moved. A study led by Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs finds that Mexican immigrants who relocate to the United States are more likely to experience declines in health within a short time period compared with other Mexicans. ...

We all know that the Internet has killed the traditional newspaper trade, right? After all, until the general population started interacting with the web in the mid-90s, the newspaper business was thriving—offering readers top notch journalism and pages of ads. But a recently-published study finds that we may be all wrong about the role of the Internet in the decline of newspapers. According to research by University of Chicago Booth School of Business Professor Matthew Gentzkow, assumptions about journalism are based on three false premises. In his new paper, "Trading ...

VIDEO: This shows juvenile Mahi-mahi in swim tunnel, which allows scientists to monitor metabolic rate swim performance. Click here for more information. MIAMI – A new study led by University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science scientists showed up to a 37% decrease in overall swimming performance of Deepwater Horizon oil-exposed juvenile mahi-mahi. The findings reveal the toxic effects of crude oil on ecologically and commercially valuable fish ...

HOUSTON – (June 11, 2014) – Almost all adult Texans were aware of the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplace before the open-enrollment period ended March 31, according to a report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation. The report also found that an estimated 2 million Texans looked for information about the Marketplace and found the federal healthcare.gov website generally helpful. Almost half of Texans who visited the site wanted to purchase insurance or check their eligibility for a ...

White-bread lovers take heart. Scientists are now reporting that this much-maligned food seems to encourage the growth of some of our most helpful inhabitants — beneficial gut bacteria. In addition to this surprising find, their study in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry also revealed that when looking at effects of food on our "microbiomes," considering the whole diet, not just individual ingredients, is critical. Sonia González and colleagues note that the bacteria in our guts, or our microbiome, play an important role in our health. When certain populations ...

Hamilton, ON (June 11, 2014) - McMaster University researchers may have found a novel way to suppress the devastating side effect of statins, one of the worlds' most widely used drugs to lower cholesterol and prevent heart disease. The research team—led by Jonathan Schertzer, assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences and Canadian Diabetes Association Scholar—discovered one of the pathways that link statins to diabetes. Their findings could lead to the next generation of statins by informing potential combination therapies while taking the drug. Approximately ...