The rate of hospitalisation for the most serious type of heart attack, ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), more than quadrupled in China between 2001 and 2011, according to new research published in The Lancet. The study, funded by the Chinese government, evaluates medical records, care processes, and outcomes for 13,815 hospital admissions for STEMI in 162 hospitals across China. It shows that in 2001, there were an estimated 3•7 hospital admissions for STEMI per 100,000 population, but in 2011 this rate had more than quadrupled to 15•8 hospital admissions ...

Writing about the weird soft-bodied fossils found in the Burgess Shale in the Canadian Rockies, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould noted that of 25 initial body plans exhibited by the fossils, all but four were quickly eliminated. If we rewound the tape, he asked, and cast the dice once more, would the same four body plans be selected? He thought it unlikely. We can't repeat the Burgess Shale experiment, but Washington University in St. Louis biologist Ken Olsen, PhD, says there are other ways to ask whether evolution is repeatable. One is to look at related species that ...

An invading species of shrew first discovered in Ireland in the pellets of barn owls and kestrels in 2007 is spreading across the landscape at a rate of more than five kilometres a year, according to findings published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE. University College Dublin scientists who conducted the study say that the invading species, the greater white-toothed shrew (Crocidura russula) is capable of colonizing the entire island by 2050. This, they say, is leading to the disappearance of the pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus) from Ireland, one of the world's smallest ...

Bottom Line: Cardiac resynchronization therapy plus defibrillator implantation (CRT-D) sometimes helps women with heart failure more than men, although women are less likely to receive CRT-D than men. Author: Robbert Zusterzeel, M.D., and colleagues at the Center for Devices and Radiological Health at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Silver Spring, Md. Background: Women are underrepresented in CRT trials for heart failure, making up only about 20 percent of participants. In selected heart failure patients CRT, or biventricular pacing, is used to help improve ...

Bottom Line: Higher scores that gauged education (years of school completed) and occupation (based on attributes, complexities of a job), as well as higher levels of mid/late-life cognitive activity (e.g., reading books, participating in social activities and doing computer activities at least three times per week) were linked to better cognition in older patients. Author: Prashanthi Vemuri, Ph.D., of the Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Rochester, Minn., and colleagues. Background: Previous research has linked intellectual enrichment with possible protection against ...

Bottom Line: A web-based program for teen drivers appears to improve driving performance and quality supervised practice time before teens are licensed. Author: Jessica H. Mirman, Ph.D., of The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and colleagues. Background: During the learner phase of driver education, most states have requirements for supervisors and practice content. However, parent supervisors can vary in their interest, ability and approach to driving supervision. Inexperience is a contributing factor in car crashes involving novice drivers. How the Study ...

Biologists have long wondered if mammals share the elegant system used by insects, bacteria and other invertebrates to defend against viral infection. Two back-to-back studies in the journal Science last year said the answer is yes, but a study just published in Cell Reports by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found the opposite. In the Mount Sinai study, the results found that the defense system used by invertebrates — RNA interferences or RNAi — is not used by mammals as some had argued. RNAi are small molecules that attach to molecular scissors ...

WASHINGTON — Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) screening for emergency patients at an institution with a large number of ethnic minority, underinsured and uninsured people reveals few are HIV positive, but of those who are, nearly one-quarter are in the acute phase and more than one-quarter have infections that have already advanced to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The results of the study were reported online yesterday in Annals of Emergency Medicine ("Identification of Acute HIV Infection Using Fourth Generation Testing in an Opt-Out Emergency Department ...

Researchers believe they have learned how mutations in the gene that causes Huntington's disease kill brain cells, a finding that could open new opportunities for treating the fatal disorder. Scientists first linked the gene to the inherited disease more than 20 years ago. Huntington's disease affects five to seven people out of every 100,000. Symptoms, which typically begin in middle age, include involuntary jerking movements, disrupted coordination and cognitive problems such as dementia. Drugs cannot slow or stop the progressive decline caused by the disorder, which ...

(NEW YORK – June 23) A specific preparation of cocoa-extract called Lavado may reduce damage to nerve pathways seen in Alzheimer's disease patients' brains long before they develop symptoms, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published June 20 in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease (JAD). Specifically, the study results, using mice genetically engineered to mimic Alzheimer's disease, suggest that Lavado cocoa extract prevents the protein β-amyloid- (Aβ) from gradually forming sticky clumps in the brain, which ...

A team of genome scientists has identified a "hit-and-run" mechanism that allows regulatory proteins in the nucleus to adopt a "Tom Sawyer" behavior when it comes to the work of initiating gene activation. Their research, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, focuses on transcription factors—proteins that orchestrate the flow of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA (mRNA). Their results show how transcription factors (TFs) activate mRNA synthesis of a gene, and leave the scene – in a model termed "hit-and-run" transcription. "Much ...

One of the most basic rules for playing the game "Twenty Questions" is that all of the questions must be definitively answered by either "yes" or "no." The exchange of information allows the players to correctly guess the item in question. Fungal researchers have been using a variation of Twenty Questions to determine if wood-decaying fungi fall under one of two general classes. If a fungus can break down all the components – cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin – of plant cell walls it is considered a white rot fungus. If a fungus can only break down cellulose and hemicellulose ...

VIDEO: When confined in a water droplet, B. subtilis bacteria collectively and spontaneously form a swirling vortex, with some bacteria moving in one direction and others moving the opposite way. Researchers... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When a bunch of B. subtilis bacteria are confined within a droplet of water, a very strange thing happens. The chaotic motion of all those individual swimmers spontaneously organizes into a swirling ...

Wheat fields are often tilled immediately after the crop is harvested, removing the light-coloured stubble and crop residues from the soil surface and bringing dark bare earth to the top. Post-harvest tilling is a widely practised and common management technique in Europe. However, ploughed fields can have a negative effect on the local climate during a heat wave. This effect was addressed in a recent study conducted by researchers at ETH Zurich led by Edouard Davin, senior lecturer at the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, and Sonia Seneviratne, professor of ...

WHAT: An experimental vaccine designed to spur production of antibodies against a key malaria parasite protein, AMA1, was developed more than decade ago by scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. It showed promise in test-tube and animal experiments and in early-stage clinical trials, but returned disappointing results in recent human trials conducted in malaria-endemic countries. Now, the NIAID scientists have improved on their original vaccine with a new candidate that delivers AMA1 ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Rett syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes mental retardation, autism, and physical deformities, has no cure. However, a small clinical trial has found that a growth factor known as IGF1 can help treat some symptoms of the disease. Children who received the drug for four weeks showed improvements in mood and anxiety, as well as easier breathing, in a trial led by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital. MIT scientists first identified IGF1 as a possible treatment for Rett syndrome in 2009. "This trial shows that IGF1 is safe in the cohort ...

MBL, WOODS HOLE, MA—A new computational method for analyzing bacterial communities has uncovered closely related, previously indistinguishable bacteria living in different parts of the human mouth. The technique, developed by Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) scientists, provides high taxonomic resolution of bacterial communities and has the capacity to improve the understanding of microbial communities in health and disease. The study will be published in PNAS Online Early Edition the week of June 23-27, 2014. An important step in understanding the role of oral bacteria ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 23, 2014—Scientists have applied a new technique to comprehensively analyze the human oral microbiome—providing greater knowledge of the diversity of the bacteria in the mouth. For the first-time, scientists can provide high-resolution bacterial classification at the sub-species level. This work will enable researchers to more closely examine the role of bacterial communities in health and disease. The study, "Oligotyping analysis of the human oral microbiome," will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and available ...

June 23, Boston -- Current drug-delivery systems used to administer chemotherapy to cancer patients typically release a constant dose of the drug over time - but a new study challenges this "slow and steady" approach and offers a novel way to locally deliver the drugs "on demand," as reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Led by David J. Mooney, Ph.D., a Core Faculty member at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at the Harvard School of Engineering ...

CHICAGO, IL — A new study shows that for at least two years after bariatric surgery, patients continue to lose bone, even after their weight stabilizes. The results—in patients undergoing gastric bypass, the most common type of weight loss surgery—were presented Monday at the joint meeting of the International Society of Endocrinology and the Endocrine Society: ICE/ENDO 2014 in Chicago. "The long-term consequences of this substantial bone loss are unclear, but it might put them at increased risk of fracture, or breaking a bone," said Elaine Yu, MD, MSc, the study's principal ...

The symptoms of Cushing disease are unmistakable to those who suffer from it – excessive weight gain, acne, distinct colored stretch marks on the abdomen, thighs and armpits, and a lump, or fat deposit, on the back of the neck. Yet the disorder often goes misdiagnosed. To help combat misdiagnosis, Saleh Aldasouqi, an associate professor in the College of Human Medicine at Michigan State University, is drawing more attention to the rare disease through a case study, which followed a young patient displaying classic, yet more pronounced signs of the condition. Caused ...

Date labeling variations on food products contribute to confusion and misunderstanding in the marketplace regarding how the dates on labels relate to food quality and safety, according to a scientific review paper in the July issue of Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety. This confusion and misunderstanding along with different regulatory date labeling frameworks, may detract from limited regulatory resources, cause financial loss, and contribute to significant food waste. In the United States, the United States Department of Agriculture Economic Research ...

The Greenland Ice Sheet is a 1.7 million-square-kilometer, 2-mile thick layer of ice that covers Greenland. Its fate is inextricably linked to our global climate system. In the last 40 years, ice loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet increased four-fold contributing to one-quarter of global sea level rise. Some of the increased melting at the surface of the ice sheet is due to a warmer atmosphere, but the ocean's role in driving ice loss largely remains a mystery. Research by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the Univ. of Oregon sheds new light ...

A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) calls for completing the legacy of Wilderness lands on the Flathead National Forest in Montana. The report identifies important, secure habitats and landscape connections for five species—bull trout, westslope cutthroat trout, grizzly bears, wolverines, and mountain goats. These iconic species are vulnerable to loss of secure habitat from industrial land uses and/or climate change. Located in northwest Montana adjacent to Glacier National Park, the 2.4 million-acre Flathead Forest is a strategic part of the stunning ...

Measurements taken at the molecular scale have for the first time confirmed a key property that could improve our knowledge of how the heart and lungs function. University of Washington researchers have shown that a favorable electrical property is present in a type of protein found in organs that repeatedly stretch and retract, such as the lungs, heart and arteries. These findings are the first that clearly track this phenomenon, called ferroelectricity, occurring at the molecular level in biological tissues. The researchers published their findings online June 23 ...