LEBANON, NH – When women are choosing a contraceptive, health care providers should be aware that the things they want to discuss may differ from what women want to hear, according to a survey published in the recent issue of the journal Contraception. Most of the information women receive about contraceptives focuses heavily on the effectiveness in preventing pregnancy, but this information was ranked fifth in importance by women, according to the study conducted by researchers at Dartmouth College. The researchers conducted an online survey of 417 women, aged 15-45, ...

Clinical trial evaluates ex vivo cultured cord blood Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is a rich source of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) that can be used for bone marrow transplantation; however, UCB transplantation is hampered by low numbers of HSPCs per donation, which delays engraftment and immune reconstitution. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Mitchell Horwitz and colleagues at Duke University Medical Center conducted a phase I clinical trial to test the long term engraftment capability of UCB HSPCs that were expanded ex vivo for ...

BOSTON – As elite soldiers of the body's immune response, B cells serve as a vast standing army ready to recognize and destroy invading antigens, including infections and cancer cells. To do so, each new B cell comes equipped with its own highly specialized weapon, a unique antibody protein that selectively binds to specific parts of the antigen. The key to this specialization is the antigen-binding region that tailors each B cell to a particular antigen, determining whether B cells survive boot camp and are selected for maturation and survival, or wash out and die. Now, ...

Your first response to an infectious agent or antigen ordinarily takes about a week, and is relatively weak. However, if your immune system encounters that antigen a second time, the so-called memory response is rapid, powerful, and very effective. Now, a team of researchers at The Wistar Institute offers evidence that a protein, called Foxp1, is a key component of these antibody responses. Manipulating this protein's activity, they say, could provide a useful pathway to boosting antibody responses to treat infectious diseases, for example, or suppressing them to treat ...

The Academy of Radiology Research reported in the current issue of Nature Biotechnology (Volume 32, Issue 6) that patent output from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is vital to understanding which various areas of science are contributing most to America's innovation economy. The report, "Patents as Proxies: NIH Hubs of Innovation," confirms an increased economic value of NIH patents as compared to private sector patents, as well as meaningful differences in the rate and quality of invention across different research and development (R&D) investments. "The Academy ...

Four of the most common mosquito pesticides used along the east and Gulf coasts show little risk to juvenile hard clams and oysters, according to a NOAA study. However, the study, published in the on-line journal Archives of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, also determined that lower oxygen levels in the water, known as hypoxia, and increased acidification actually increased how toxic some of the pesticides were. Such climate variables should be considered when using these pesticides in the coastal zone, the study concluded. "What we found is that larval oysters ...

DETROIT – Researchers have found that antiviral therapy may be successful in preventing hepatitis B virus from developing into the most common form of liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). That was the finding of a study published in the May issue of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. Investigators from Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Geisinger Health System in Danville, Pa., and Kaiser Permanente in Honolulu, Hawaii and Portland, Ore. participated in the study, along with investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Helping farmers around the globe apply more-precise amounts of nitrogen-based fertilizer can help combat climate change. In a new study published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Michigan State University researchers provide an improved prediction of nitrogen fertilizer's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural fields. The study uses data from around the world to show that emissions of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas produced in the soil following nitrogen addition, rise faster than previously expected ...

SAN DIEGO (June 6, 2014) — Humans and corals are about as different from one another as living creatures get, but a new finding reveals that in one important way, they are more similar than anyone ever realized. A biologist at San Diego State University has discovered they share the same biomechanical pathway responsible for triggering cellular self-destruction. That might sound scary, but killing off defective cells is essential to keeping an organism healthy. The finding will help biologists advance their understanding of the early evolution of multicellular life, ...

Neuroscientists agree that abuse of drugs hijacks circuits in the brain that are crucial for decision-making, but society as a whole tends to stigmatize addicted people for lacking self-control. Slowly but steadily, scientists say, they are making important progress in changing the perception of addiction as they identify new therapeutic interventions that could render addiction into the equivalent of a manageable disease like diabetes. A group of addiction researchers, for one, recently recommended to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, part of the United Nations Office ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Staph infections that become resistant to multiple antibiotics don't happen because the bacteria themselves adapt to the drugs, but because of a kind of genetic parasite they carry called a plasmid that helps its host survive the antibiotics. Plasmids are rings of bare DNA containing a handful of genes that are essentially freeloaders, borrowing most of what they need to live from their bacterial host. The plasmids copy themselves and go along for the ride when the bacteria divide to copy themselves. A team from Duke and the University of Sydney in ...

URBANA, Ill. – Is sleep one of your most important family values? A new University of Illinois study suggests that it should be, reporting that more parental sleep is related to more child sleep, which is related to decreased child obesity. "Parents should make being well rested a family value and a priority. Sleep routines in a family affect all the members of the household, not just children; we know that parents won't get a good night's sleep unless and until their preschool children are sleeping," said Barbara H. Fiese, director of the U of I's Family Resiliency Center ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The state of Mato Grosso is the epicenter of an agricultural revolution in Brazil. During the last 15 years, expansion of agriculture in the state has helped Brazil become one of the world's top producers of soy, corn, cotton, and other staple crops. Despite the increase in production, the rate at which Amazon forestland in the state was cleared to make room for new farmland slowed significantly in the second half of the last decade. Much of the credit for slowing deforestation has been given to government policies and intervention, ...

VIDEO: UC Davis researchers found that the pattern of electrical activity in the brain immediately before making a decision can predict the choice made. This video shows how these experiments are... Click here for more information. Our ability to make choices — and sometimes mistakes — might arise from random fluctuations in the brain's background electrical noise, according to a recent study from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. "How ...

"Liking" a page on the social networking site Facebook is a new form of civic engagement and humanitarian support, so concludes research published in the International Journal of Web Based Communities. According to the paper's authors social motives and an emotional response underpinned users' inclination to like, or follow, a page, rather than their simply seeking information and news. Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Ida Maria Haugstveit of Scandinavian research organization SINTEF in Oslo, Norway, surveyed more than 400 Facebook users about their habits on the site and their ...

The days of self-assembling nanoparticles taking hours to form a film over a microscopic-sized wafer are over. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have devised a technique whereby self-assembling nanoparticle arrays can form a highly ordered thin film over macroscopic distances in one minute. Ting Xu, a polymer scientist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, led a study in which supramolecules based on block copolymers were combined with gold nanoparticles to create nanocomposites that ...

"Hello, World!" came the message from the International Space Station as NASA successfully beamed high-definition video via laser from space to ground on Thursday, June 5. The 175-megabit video transmission was the first of its kind for the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) with the goal of improving the way we receive data from orbit and beyond. In fact, this emerging technology of optical communications--or lasercomm--is likened to an upgrade from dial-up to DSL. "It's incredible to see this magnificent beam of light arriving from our tiny payload on the ...

Washington, D.C., June 9, 2014 - A research study led by cancer specialists at MedStar Washington Hospital Center found that African-American women frequently present with biologically less favorable subtypes of breast cancer. Researchers at the Hospital Center's Washington Cancer Institute analyzed the biology of breast cancer in 100 African-American women, using a method of genomic profiling. These genomic tests look at the expression of genes associated with the risk of recurrence in the population and further characterizes the biology of the tumor. The 70-gene MammaPrint ...

It's long been accepted – with little science to back it up – that people should spend roughly a third of their income on housing. As it turns out, that may be about how much a low-income family should spend to optimize children's brainpower. Johns Hopkins University researchers have explored the effects of affordable housing on the cognitive development, physical health, and emotional wellbeing of children living in poverty. How much a family spends on housing has no impact on a child's physical or social health, they found, but when it came to cognitive ability, it ...

WASHINGTON, DC (June 9, 2014) – The leading mobile health service in the nation, Text4baby, was found to significantly benefit pregnant women, according to a new study led by Milken Institute School of Public Health (Milken Institute SPH) at the George Washington University and the Madigan Army Medical Center. The pilot study examined several things including the short-term effects of Text4baby exposure four weeks post enrollment on attitudes, beliefs and behaviors targeted by the text messages. "This study provides the strongest evidence to date that Text4baby reduces ...

The combined measles–mumps–rubella–varicella (MMRV) vaccine shows a slightly increased risk of febrile seizures in children, compared with the previously separate vaccines for MMR and varicella (chickenpox) (MMR+V), according to an article in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). The MMRV vaccine was developed for young children to reduce the number of needles they receive. However, the combined vaccine has been associated with slightly higher rates of febrile seizures. Febrile seizures can accompany high fever in young children; although distressing, they are ...

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have shown that stem cell behaviour can be modified by manipulating the nanoscale properties of the material they are grown on - improving the potential of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering as a result. Stem cells are special because they are essential to the normal function of our organs and tissues. Previous research shows stem cells grown on hard substrates go on to multiply but do not differentiate: a process by which the cells specialise to perform specific functions in the body. In contrast, stem cells ...

St. Louis, Mo. (June 9, 2014) – Ischemic heart disease, a narrowing of the arteries supplying blood to the heart, is a leading cause of death throughout the world. A hybrid molecular imaging technique called positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance (PET/MR) imaging, which tells doctors vital information about cardiac and arterial function, has been found to be an effective molecular imaging tool for detecting coronary artery disease (CAD), say researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2014 Annual Meeting. Often patients suspected ...

St. Louis, Mo. (June 9, 2014) – Researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2014 Annual Meeting revealed how a protein encourages the production of stem cells that regenerate damaged tissues of the heart following an acute attack (myocardial infarction). They further assert that it has a better chance of working if provided early in treatment. This was confirmed by molecular imaging, which captured patients' improved heart health after therapy. If given after a heart attack, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) mobilizes bone marrow ...

St. Louis, Mo. (June 9, 2014) – Low back pain is not only excruciating but also debilitating for countless sufferers. Unfortunately, not everyone responds to treatment. A molecular imaging scan in addition to a conventional bone scan can provide the necessary information about the physiological health of the spine to select the most appropriate pain-killing treatment protocol, say researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2014 Annual Meeting. Conventional imaging methods including X-ray, computed tomography and even magnetic resonance imaging ...