Winter takes its toll on living things. To protect themselves from the elements, bears hibernate, and trees go dormant. Biologists have observed what happens when trees become dormant, but up to now, they haven't understood the underlying genetic mechanisms that enable them to start growing again. Led by molecular geneticists from Michigan Technological University a gene has been identified and characterized that tells a poplar tree when winter ends and a spring growing season begins. Victor Busov, a professor in Michigan Tech's School of Forest Resources and Environmental ...

Examining factors such as how much children gesture at an early age may make it possible to identify and intervene with very young children at risk for delays in speech and cognitive development, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Chicago. The research by leading early learning scientists looked at children from a wide variety of backgrounds, including those from advantaged and disadvantaged families, and those who had suffered brain injury. Their work was published in an article, "New Evidence About Language and Cognitive Development Based on ...

Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a nanoshell to protect foreign enzymes used to starve cancer cells as part of chemotherapy. Their work is featured on the June 2014 cover of the journal Nano Letters. Enzymes are naturally smart machines that are responsible for many complex functions and chemical reactions in biology. However, despite their huge potential, their use in medicine has been limited by the immune system, which is designed to attack foreign intruders. For example, doctors have long relied on an enzyme called asparaginase ...

Melbourne researchers have shown a type of leukaemia can be successfully 'reversed' by coaxing the cancer cells back into normal development. The discovery was made using a model of B-progenitor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer affecting children. Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute showed that switching off a gene called Pax5 could cause cancer in a model of B-ALL, while restoring its function could 'cure' the disease. Institute researchers Dr Ross Dickins and Ms Grace Liu led the study with institute colleagues and ...

E-cigarettes, also known as vaping pens or e-hookas, are commonly advertised on Twitter and the tweets often link to commercial websites promoting e-cig use, according to University of Illinois at Chicago researchers. The study, published as a special supplement in the July 2014 issue of Tobacco Control released online June 16, has implications for future FDA regulations on the marketing of e-cigarettes and related products. "There's this whole wild west of social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – and the FDA has no way to track what's happening in ...

A tax on sweetened soft drinks could be an effective weapon in the war against obesity, generating weight losses of up to 3.64 kilograms as individuals reduce their consumption. Researchers from Monash University, Imperial College London and University of York and Lancaster University, England have estimated the extent to which drinking habits would change if beverages such as carbonated non-diet soft drinks; cordials and fruit drinks were taxed. Lead author Dr Anurag Sharma, of the Centre for Health Economics at Monash University, said such a tax could have important ...

Water is thought to be embedded in the moon's rocks or, if cold enough, "stuck" on their surfaces. It's predominantly found at the poles. But scientists probably won't find it intact on the sunlit side. New research at the Georgia Institute of Technology indicates that ultraviolet photons emitted by the sun likely cause H2O molecules to either quickly desorb or break apart. The fragments of water may remain on the lunar surface, but the presence of useful amounts of water on the sunward side is not likely. The Georgia Tech team built an ultra-high vacuum system that ...

There is new hope for people suffering from depression. Researchers have identified a compound, hydroxynorketamine (HNK), that may treat symptoms of depression just as effectively and rapidly as ketamine, without the unwanted side effects associated with the psychoactive drug, according to a study in the July issue of Anesthesiology, the official medical journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists® (ASA®). Interestingly, use of HNK may also serve as a future therapeutic approach for treating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, ...

A study in the July issue of Anesthesiology revealed that patients who receive a simple, multicolor, standardized medication instruction sheet before surgery are more likely to comply with their physician's instructions and experience a significantly shorter post-op stay in recovery. These findings are important because surgical patients often fail to follow their doctor's medication instructions for preexisting conditions such as diabetes and hypertension on the day they are having surgery – a costly mistake that can lead to surgery cancellation, complications and longer ...

Los Angeles, CA (June 17, 2014) How do open access sources, tightened budgets, and competition from popular technologies affect how librarians perceive and employ reference resources? How do librarians expect to utilize reference in the future? "The State of Reference Collections," a new SAGE white paper out today, finds that though the definition of reference is changing, this is in part because reference resources now look and feel like other information sources and because other information resources perform the traditional purpose of reference – answering research ...

BOSTON (June 17, 2014, 4:00 a.m. EDT) — Autistic-like behaviors and decreased cognitive ability may be associated with disruption of the function of the Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) gene. When Tufts researchers deleted the gene from select neurons in the developing mouse brain, the mice showed reduced social behavior, increased repetitive behavior, and impaired learning and memory formation, similar to behaviors seen in individuals with autism and intellectual disabilities. This study is the first to evaluate how the loss of APC from nerve cells in the forebrain affects ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Brain iron levels offer a potential biomarker in the diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and may help physicians and parents make better informed treatment decisions, according to new research published online in the journal Radiology. ADHD is a common disorder in children and adolescents that can continue into adulthood. Symptoms include hyperactivity and difficulty staying focused, paying attention and controlling behavior. The American Psychiatric Association reports that ADHD affects 3 to 7 percent of school-age children. Psychostimulant ...

Fecal microbiota transplantation --- the process of delivering stool bacteria from a healthy donor to a patient suffering from intestinal infection with the bacterium Clostridium difficile --- works by restoring healthy bacteria and functioning to the recipient's gut, according to a study published this week in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The study provides insight into the structural and potential metabolic changes that occur following fecal transplant, says senior author Vincent B. Young, MD, PhD, an associate professor ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Combining two smoking cessation therapies is more effective than using just one for male and highly nicotine-dependent smokers who weren't initially helped by the nicotine patch, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The findings, published online June 17, 2014, in the American Journal of Psychiatry, also support using an adaptive treatment model to determine which smokers are likely to succeed in quitting with nicotine replacement alone before trying additional therapies. "The findings offer a potential practical treatment approach that can identify ...

Exposure to information that diminishes free will, including brain-based accounts of behavior, seems to decrease people's support for retributive punishment, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People who learned about neuroscientific research, either by reading a magazine article or through undergraduate coursework, proposed less severe punishment for a hypothetical criminal than did their peers. The findings suggest that they did so because they saw the criminal as less blameworthy. "There ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have completed the first comprehensive survey of e-cigarettes for sale online and the results, they believe, underscore the complexity in regulating the rapidly growing market for the electronic nicotine delivery devices. The survey, published in a June 16 special supplement of the journal Tobacco Control, found that 10 new e-cigarette brands entered the Internet marketplace every month, on average, from 2012 to 2014, and that there are currently 466 e-cigarette brands online, offering more than ...

Boston, MA – Most Europeans who have tried electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are young, current smokers, or those who recently tried quitting regular cigarettes, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). Nearly 30 million Europeans have tried the battery-operated cigarettes, in spite of the fact that not much is known about their potential risks to health or whether they help smokers trying to quit. The study will appear online on June 16, 2014 in Tobacco Control. It is the largest study to date on e-cigarette use in the European Union. "As ...

How much commuting can you tolerate? A new study by MIT researchers shows that across countries, people assess their commutes by the time it takes them to complete the trip, generally independent of the distance they have to travel — as long as they have a variety of commuting options to chose from. The study, which compares commuting practices in five locations on four continents, also demonstrates the methodological validity of using mobile phone data to create an accurate empirical picture of commuting. "Every country has had its own different way of doing things ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- The Great White Shark is not endangered in the Eastern North Pacific, and, in fact, is doing well enough that its numbers likely are growing, according to an international research team led by a University of Florida researcher. George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, said the wide-ranging study is good news for shark conservation. The study, to be published June 16 in the journal PLOS ONE, indicates measures in place to protect the ocean's apex predator are working. Scientists reanalyzed 3-year-old research that indicated ...

Boston, MA — A new poll by The Boston Globe and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) finds, eight years into the state's universal health insurance legislation enacted in 2006, 63% of Massachusetts residents support the law and 18% oppose it, while 7% are not sure, and 12% have not heard or read about the law. The percentage of residents supporting the law remains unchanged since a 2011 Boston Globe/HSPH poll. Support for the law varies by party affiliation, with 77% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 49% of Republicans saying they support the legislation. The poll ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 16, 2014 – For decades, common medical wisdom has been "the lower the better" in treating the approximately one in three people in this country who have high blood pressure. But does that approach result in reduced risk for dangerous heart events? In a study published in the June 16 online edition of JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that lowering systolic blood pressure below 120 does not appear to provide additional benefit for patients. Systolic pressure is the top number in a standard blood pressure ...

Bottom Line: Use of beta (β)-blockers in patients who have not had a recent heart attack but were undergoing nonemergency coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) surgery was not associated with better outcomes. Author: William Brinkman, M.D., of the Cardiopulmonary Research Science and Technology Institute, Dallas, and colleagues. Background: The use of preoperative β-blockers has been associated with a reduction in perioperative mortality for patients undergoing CABG surgery in previous observational studies. Preoperative β-blocker therapy is a national ...

Bottom Line: A multipart intervention increased adherence rates of annual fecal occult blood testing (FOBT) for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in vulnerable populations. Author: David W. Baker, M.D., M.P.H., of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University, Chicago, and colleagues. Background: The vast majority of CRC screening in the U.S. is by colonoscopy, although studies suggest that FOBT can achieve similar reductions in CRC mortality. Colorectal cancer screening rates are lower among Latinos and people living in poverty. Expanded use of FOBT ...

Bottom Line: Breastfeeding by mothers treated with antiepileptic drug (AED) therapy was not associated with adverse effects on cognitive function in children at 6 years. Author: Kimford J. Meador, M.D., of Stanford University, California, and colleagues for the Neurodevelopmental Effects of Antiepileptic Drugs (NEAD) Study Group. Background: Some concern has been raised that breastfeeding by mothers being treated with AED therapy may be harmful to the child because some AEDs can cause neuronal apoptosis (cell death) in immature animal brains. How the Study Was ...

WASHINGTON — One of the most comprehensive looks at the use of hormone therapy in women over 65 with non-metastatic breast cancer found some welcome news. Except for frail patients, most participants in the large study complied with their oncologists' recommendations to treat their estrogen-positive breast cancer with hormone therapy — either an aromatase inhibitor or tamoxifen. These drugs prevent tumors from using estrogen to fuel growth. But the study, reported online June 16th in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, also found that non-white women were much more likely ...