The quality of acupuncture needles is high, but should still be universally improved to avoid potential problems, such as pain and skin reactions, finds research published online in Acupuncture in Medicine (AiM). Despite improvements to the manufacturing process, surface irregularities and bent tips have not been completely eliminated, say the researchers. In China, traditional Chinese medicine including acupuncture, accounts for 40% of all medical treatment, while in the West, acupuncture is one of the most frequently used complementary therapies. An estimated 1.4 ...

Tobacco companies lack strong, relevant evidence to support their claims that standardised (plain) packaging of tobacco products in the UK won't work, finds research published in the online journal BMJ Open. The aim of plain packaging, with no logos, brand imagery, symbols, or promotional text, is to restrict the already limited opportunities that transnational tobacco companies have to market their products, and deter people from starting smoking. Australia adopted plain packaging for tobacco products in 2012, the same year that the Department of Health in England ...

Hospitals don't always take into account the full costs of implementing new electronic health record systems and should be better prepared if they are to maximise the benefits, finds research published online in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA). Electronic health record (EHR) systems can improve the safety, quality, and efficiency of healthcare in hospitals, and their adoption is a priority for the UK and US governments. But despite their promise and the existence of EHRs in UK primary care for several decades, UK hospitals have been ...

New research that revises the rules allowing scientists to decipher color in dinosaurs may also provide a tool for understanding the evolutionary emergence of flight and changes in dinosaur physiology prior to its origin. In a survey comparing the hair, skin, fuzz and feathers of living terrestrial vertebrates and fossil specimens, a research team from The University of Texas at Austin, the University of Akron, the China University of Geosciences and four other Chinese institutions found evidence for evolutionary shifts in the rules that govern the relationship between ...

A Johns Hopkins study of patients with ischemic stroke suggests that many of those who receive prompt hospital treatment with "clot-busting" tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) therapy can avoid lengthy, restrictive monitoring in an intensive care unit (ICU). The study challenges the long-standing protocol that calls for intensive monitoring, mostly done in ICUs, for the first 24 hours after tPA infusion to catch bleeding in the brain, a side effect seen in 6 percent of patients treated with the medication. Results show that a relatively simple measure of stroke severity ...

High-resolution satellite images may be a useful tool for counting whale populations for conservation purposes, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 12, 2014 by Peter Fretwell from British Antarctic Survey, UK, and colleagues. In the study, the authors selected one of the largest southern right whale populations, breeding off the Argentinian coast. The population was selected, due to its large size and tendency to bask near the surface in large aggregations around sheltered coastal waters during breeding season. Scientists used this population to test ...

People who appreciate the beauty of mathematics activate the same part of their brain when they look at aesthetically pleasing formula as others do when appreciating art or music, suggesting that there is a neurobiological basis to beauty. There are many different sources of beauty - a beautiful face, a picturesque landscape, a great symphony are all examples of beauty derived from sensory experiences. But there are other, highly intellectual sources of beauty. Mathematicians often describe mathematical formulae in emotive terms and the experience of mathematical beauty ...

Timing of dart release or hand position may improve dart throwing accuracy, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 12, 2014 by Daiki Nasu from Osaka University, Japan and colleagues. Two major strategies are attributed to accurate throwing: timing the object release, and the using hand positioning at release to compensate for releasing the object at variable times. To better understand these strategies, researchers investigated whether expert dart players utilize hand movement that can compensate for the variability in their release timing. The study compared ...

Ichthyosaur fossil may show the earliest live birth from an ancient Mesozoic marine reptile, according to a study published February 12, 2014 in PLOS ONE by Ryosuke Motani from the University of California, Davis, and colleagues. Ichthyosaurs were giant marine reptiles that evolved from land reptiles and moved to the water. Scientists report a new fossil specimen that belongs to Chaohusaurus (Reptilia, Ichthyopterygia), the oldest of Mesozoic marine reptiles that lived approximately 248 million years ago. The partial skeleton was recovered in China and may show a live ...

Scientists have demonstrated how new satellite technology can be used to count whales, and ultimately estimate their population size. Using Very High Resolution (VHR) satellite imagery, alongside image processing software, they were able to automatically detect and count whales breeding in part of the Golfo Nuevo, Peninsula Valdes in Argentina. The new method, published this week in the journal PLoS ONE, could revolutionise how whale population size is estimated. Marine mammals are extremely difficult to count on a large scale and traditional methods, such as counting ...

A paper-based device that mimics the electrochemical signalling in the human brain has been created by a group of researchers from China. The thin-film transistor (TFT) has been designed to replicate the junction between two neurons, known as a biological synapse, and could become a key component in the development of artificial neural networks, which could be utilised in a range of fields from robotics to computer processing. The TFT, which has been presented today, 13 February, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology, is the latest device to be fabricated on paper, ...

A retrospective, 20-year study led by researchers at Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry shows that in up to 85 per cent of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) the underlying disease was being overlooked. Missed opportunities occur commonly in both primary and secondary care. The paper demonstrates the pointers to help GP to come to a earlier diagnosis. The findings are published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine today, Thursday 13th February 2014. The study encompassed almost 39,000 patients and showed that, in the ...

(TORONTO, Canada – Feb. 12, 2014) – Cancer researchers led by stem cell scientist Dr. John Dick have discovered a pre-leukemic stem cell that may be the first step in initiating disease and also the culprit that evades therapy and triggers relapse in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The research, published online today in Nature is a significant leap in understanding the steps that a normal cell has to go through as it turns into AML, says Dr. Dick, and sets the stage to advance personalized cancer medicine by potentially identifying individuals who might benefit ...

A team of French and Swedish researchers have presented new fossil evidence for the origin of one of the most important and emotionally significant parts of our anatomy: the face. Using micron resolution X-ray imaging, they show how a series of fossils, with a 410 million year old armoured fish called Romundina at its centre, documents the step-by-step assembly of the face during the evolutionary transition from jawless to jawed vertebrates. The research is published in Nature on 12 February 2014. Vertebrates, or backboned animals, come in two basic models: jawless and ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Ribosomes, the cellular machines that build proteins, are themselves made up of dozens of proteins and a few looping strands of RNA. A new study, reported in the journal Nature, offers new clues about how the ribosome, the master assembler of proteins, also assembles itself. "The ribosome has more than 50 different parts – it has the complexity of a sewing machine in terms of the number of parts," said University of Illinois physics professor Taekjip Ha, who led the research with U. of I. chemistry professor Zaida Luthey-Schulten and Johns Hopkins University ...

PHILADELPHIA - A new Penn Medicine study shows that remote consultations from dermatologists using a secure smart phone app are reliable at prioritizing care for hospitalized patients with skin conditions. Researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania report in JAMA Dermatology that this teledermatology process is reliable and can help deliver care more efficiently in busy academic hospitals and potentially in community hospital settings. A national shortage and uneven distribution of dermatologists in the United States has caused scheduling ...

VIDEO: This is an animation showing a laser beam stirring a ring shaped quantum gas. Click here for more information. Atomtronics is an emerging technology whereby physicists use ensembles of atoms to build analogs to electronic circuit elements. Modern electronics relies on utilizing the charge properties of the electron. Using lasers and magnetic fields, atomic systems can be engineered to have behavior analogous to that of electrons, making them an exciting platform for studying ...

Recently derived equations that describe development patterns in modern urban areas appear to work equally well to describe ancient cities settled thousands of years ago, according to a new study led by a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder. "This study suggests that there is a level at which every human society is actually very similar," said Scott Ortman, assistant professor of anthropology at CU-Boulder and lead author of the study published in the journal PLOS ONE. "This awareness helps break down the barriers between the past and present and allows us ...

They lived in America about 13,000 years ago where they hunted mammoth, mastodons and giant bison with big spears. The Clovis people were not the first humans in America, but they represent the first humans with a wide expansion on the North American continent – until the culture mysteriously disappeared only a few hundred years after its origin. Who the Clovis people were and which present day humans they are related to has been discussed intensely and the issue has a key role in the discussion about how the Americas were peopled. Today there exists only one human skeleton ...

Researchers at King's College London have identified a new gene (PIM1), which could be an effective target for innovative treatments and therapies for the human autoimmune disease, psoriasis. Psoriasis affects around 2 per cent of people in the UK and causes dry, red lesions on the skin which can become sore or itchy and can have significant impact on the sufferer's quality of life. It is thought that psoriasis is caused by a problem with the body's immune system in which new skin cells are created too rapidly, causing a build up of flaky patches on the skin's surface. ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People who are dementia-free but have two parents with Alzheimer's disease may show signs of the disease on brain scans decades before symptoms appear, according to a new study published in the February 12, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Studies show that by the time people come in for a diagnosis, there may be a large amount of irreversible brain damage already present," said study author Lisa Mosconi, PhD, with the New York University School of Medicine in New York. "This is why it is ideal ...

For four decades, waste from nearby manufacturing plants flowed into the waters of New Bedford Harbor—an 18,000-acre estuary and busy seaport. The harbor, which is contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and heavy metals, is one of the EPA's largest Superfund cleanup sites. It's also the site of an evolutionary puzzle that researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and their colleagues have been working to solve. Atlantic killifish—common estuarine fishes about three inches long—are not only tolerating the toxic conditions in the harbor, they ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Ignition – the process of releasing fusion energy equal to or greater than the amount of energy used to confine the fuel – has long been considered the "holy grail" of inertial confinement fusion science. A key step along the path to ignition is to have "fuel gains" greater than unity, where the energy generated through fusion reactions exceeds the amount of energy deposited into the fusion fuel. Though ignition remains the ultimate goal, the milestone of achieving fuel gains greater than 1 has been reached for the first time ever on any facility. ...

CHICAGO (February 12, 2014) – New research shows that well-child doctor appointments for annual exams and vaccinations are associated with an increased risk of flu-like illnesses in children and family members within two weeks of the visit. This risk translates to more than 700,000 potentially avoidable illnesses each year, costing more than $490 million annually. The study was published in the March issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. "Well child visits are critically important. However, ...

The promise of personalized medicine, says University of Vermont (UVM) molecular pathologist Debra Leonard, M.D., Ph.D., is the ability to tailor therapy based on markers in the patient's genome and, in the case of cancer, in the cancer's genome. Making this determination depends on not one, but several genetic tests, but the system guiding the development of those tests is complex, and plagued with challenges. In a February 12, 2014 Online First Journal of the American Medical Association "Viewpoint" article, Leonard and colleagues address this issue in conjunction ...