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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Long-term follow-up of diabetes prevention program shows continued reduction in diabetes development

June 16, 2014 (San Francisco) – Treatments used to decrease the development of type 2 diabetes continue to be effective an average of 15 years later, according to the latest findings of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study, a landmark study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The results, presented at the American Diabetes Association's 74th Scientific Sessions®, come more than a decade after the Diabetes Prevention Program, or DPP, reported its original findings. In 2001, after an average of three years of study, the DPP announced that the study's ...

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Social Science16 Jun 2014

Many overestimate exercise intensity: York University study

TORONTO, June 16, 2014 — Do you work out for health benefits and feel you are exercising more than enough? You might be among the many Canadians who overrate how hard they work out or underestimate what moderate intensity exercise means, according to a recent study out of York University's Faculty of Health. "Our study findings suggest that the majority of young and middle-aged to old adults underestimate the intensity of physical activity that is required to achieve health benefits," says Professor Jennifer Kuk, School of Kinesiology and Health Science. "This is worrisome ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

UGA researchers discover new method to reduce disease-causing inflammation

Athens, Ga. – Researchers at the University of Georgia report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry that an enzyme known as Tumor Progression Locus 2, or Tpl2, plays a key role in directing and regulating several important components of the body's immune system. Their discovery may one day lead to new treatments for many common autoimmune diseases. "We know that immune dysfunction plays a serious role in a number of conditions, and we need better methods for controlling chronic inflammation," said Wendy Watford, assistant professor of infectious diseases in UGA's College ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Common blood pressure medication may pose risk to older adults

Dallas – June 12, 2014 – Adults over 65 who have recently begun thiazide diuretics are at a greater risk for developing metabolic-related adverse events, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. More than two-thirds of older adults have high blood pressure in the United States and thiazide diuretics are often recommended as the initial medication for these hypertensive patients. Thiazide diuretics primarily inhibit sodium transport in the kidney, leading to urinary loss of sodium and water, which decreases blood pressure. While the risks of this medication ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

High-altitude weight loss may have an evolutionary advantage

Weight loss at high altitudes—something universally experienced by climbers and people who move to higher terrain—may not be a detrimental effect, but rather is likely an evolutionarily-programmed adaptation, according to a new article in BioEssays. Researchers explain that low oxygen causes fat and protein to be broken down, leading to the release of ketones and amino acids, which act as metabolic fuels. Also, ketones enhance the efficiency of oxygen use by the body whilst both ketones and certain amino acids protect cellular components from the detrimental effects of ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

International study yields important clues to the genetics of epilepsy

This news release is available in French. An international team of researchers has discovered a significant genetic component of Idiopathic Generalized Epilepsy (IGE), the most common form of epilepsy. Epilepsy is a neurological disorder characterized by sudden, uncontrolled electrical discharges in the brain expressed as a seizure. The new research, published in this week's issue of EMBO Reports, implicates a mutation in the gene for a protein, known as cotransporter KCC2. KCC2 maintains the correct levels of chloride ions in neurons, playing a major part in regulating ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Gluten-free diet relieves 'brain fog' in patients with Celiac disease

Individuals with celiac disease often experience 'brain fog' in addition to intestinal problems, but a new study shows that adhering to a gluten-free diet can lead to improvements in cognition that correlate with the extent of intestinal healing. The Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics findings indicate that ridding the diet of gluten may help address problems that celiac disease patients can experience related to attention, memory, and other mental tasks. "The study outcomes highlight the importance for individuals with celiac disease of maintaining a gluten-free ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Signaling pathway may explain the body clock's link to mental illness

Alterations in a cellular signaling pathway called cAMP–CREB may help explain why the body clocks of people with bipolar disease are out of sync, according to a new European Journal of Neuroscience study. Researchers established a novel viral method to make a surprising observation: the amplitude of cAMP–CREB signaling in cells from human skin biopsies predicted the way that the circadian hormone melatonin responds to light in healthy individuals, and it was much higher in cells from bipolar patients. "Our study suggests that variation in the activity of a very common ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Most prostate cancer specialists don't recommend active surveillance for low-risk patients

June 16, 2014 – Specialists who treat prostate cancer agree that active surveillance is an effective option—yet most don't recommend it when appropriate for their own patients, according to a study in the July issue of Medical Care . The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins , a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Rather, urologists are more likely to recommend surgery and radiation oncologists are more likely to recommend radiation therapy—the treatments provided by their own specialties. "Given the growing concerns about the overtreatment of prostate ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Cryoprobes better than traditional forceps for obtaining certain lung biopsies

A randomized controlled trial has found that cryoprobes, which are tools that apply extreme cold to tissues, are better than conventional forceps for performing so-called transbronchial lung biopsies in patients who are being assessed for certain lung conditions. Cryoprobes allowed for improved diagnosis of interstitial lung diseases because they collected larger sized samples that were of higher quality. "These positive results are very promising although larger multicenter randomized trials are required to confirm the benefits and safety profile for this technique," ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Market crashes are anomalous features in the financial data fractal landscape

Due to their previously discovered fractal nature, financial data patterns are self-similar when scaling up. New research shows that the most extreme events in financial data dynamics—reflected in very large price moves—are incompatible with multi-fractal scaling. These findings have been published in EPJ B by physicist Elena Green from the National University of Ireland in Maynooth and colleagues. Understanding the multi-fractal structure of financially sound markets could, ultimately, help in identifying structural signs of impending extreme events. The concept of multi-fractality—referring ...

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Environment16 Jun 2014

US housing policies increase carbon output, Georgia State University research finds

Land use policies and preferential tax treatment for housing – in the form of federal income tax deductions for mortgage interest and property taxes – have increased carbon emissions in the United States by about 2.7 percent, almost 6 percent annually in new home construction, according to a new Georgia State University study. Economist Kyle Mangum, an assistant professor in the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, measures the effect of various housing policies on energy use and carbon output in "The Global Effects of Housing Policy," which he recently presented at ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

New advance allows gels to wiggle through water

Using a worm's contracting and expanding motion, researchers have designed a way for gels to swim in water. The advance, which is described in a Journal of Applied Polymer Science paper, involves the use of a hand-held laser to shrink and swell polymer gels comprised mostly of water. "This new method of mobility may allow such hydrogels to be used as environmental and biotechnological tools by allowing them to explore surface waters to combat toxic elements or travel within cavities inside the human body," said co-author Dr. Lilit Yeghiazarian. INFORMATION: ...

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Environment16 Jun 2014

A satellite view: Former Hurricane Cristina now a ghost of its former self

An infrared image from NOAA's GOES-West satellite showed what appeared to be a ghostly ring of clouds and no convection in former Hurricane Cristina on Monday, June 16 as the system weakened to a remnant low pressure area. Convection is rising air that forms the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone and when there is none, there are no thunderstorms to keep it going. That's exactly what happened to Cristina in the Eastern Pacific Ocean on Sunday, June 15. At 11 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. PDT) on Sunday, June 15, Cristina had weakened to a tropical depression near latitude ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Trapping light: A long lifetime in a very small place

Physicists at the University of Rochester have created a silicon nanocavity that allows light to be trapped longer than in other similarly-sized optical cavities. An innovative design approach, which mimics evolutionary biology, allowed them to achieve a 10-fold improvement on the performance of previous nanocavities. In a paper published in Applied Physics Letters today and featured on the cover, the scientists demonstrate they have confined light in a nanocavity – a nanostructured region of a silicon wafer – for nanoseconds. Typically light would travel several meters ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Broccoli sprout drink enhances detoxification of air pollutants in clinical trial in China

A clinical trial involving nearly 300 Chinese men and women residing in one of China's most polluted regions found that daily consumption of a half cup of broccoli sprout beverage produced rapid, significant and sustained higher levels of excretion of benzene, a known human carcinogen, and acrolein, a lung irritant. Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, working with colleagues at several U.S. and Chinese institutions, used the broccoli sprout beverage to provide sulforaphane, a plant compound already demonstrated to have cancer preventive ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Genetic influence on pulmonary function: Six further genes identified

In their investigations or so-called genome-wide association studies, the team of researchers compared the genetic profile of study participants to the forced vital capacity (FVC), a volume parameter of lung function. Six gene loci here displayed a clear association with the FVC values. Involvement in lung development or certain pulmonary diseases is furthermore suspected for these genes. Better understanding of the association between genes, lung function and lung diseases The identified genes open up new molecular biological approaches for a better understanding of ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Children in low-income homes do better in kindergarten if moms work when they are babies

WASHINGTON - Kindergarteners from lower-income families who were babies when their mothers went to work outside the home fare as well as or even better than children who had stay-at-home moms, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. This finding, in a study published in APA's journal Developmental Psychology, is contrary to the findings of previous studies of children born two to three decades ago. Family income is apparently a key factor, with the new research finding children from low-income families had slightly higher cognitive ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

E-cigarettes far less harmful than cigarettes, says Lancet researcher at INFORMS Conference

A London School of Economics researcher examining the public and private dangers of drugs argues against demonizing e-cigarettes in a presentation being given at a conference of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS). He also calls on public officials to recognize that alcohol causes greater harm than other recreational drugs and more public attention should be paid to controlling its harmful effects. Lawrence D. Phillips, an emeritus professor at the London School of Economics, will present his research group's findings about the relative ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Lipids help to fight leukemia

T cells use a novel mechanism to fight leukemia. They may recognize unique lipids produced by cancer cells and kill tumor cells expressing these lipid molecules. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Basel shows that a tumor-associated lipid stimulates specific T cells, which efficiently kill leukemia cells both in vitro and in animal models. The results have been published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. Leukemias are cancer diseases affecting blood cells . Acute leukemias prevent development of normal bold cells and thereby are severe life-threatening ...

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Medicine16 Jun 2014

Cellular force that drives allergy and asthma can be blocked by interferon

DALLAS – June 16, 2014 – A mechanism that could underlie the development of cells that drive asthma and allergies has been uncovered by immunology researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Asthma and allergies are both driven by an inappropriate activation of the immune system, primarily a subtype of white blood cells known as T helper 2 cells, or Th2 cells. These cells are normally responsible for defense against parasites, but are also the main culprits behind the symptoms of asthma and allergies. Dr. David Farrar, Associate Professor of Immunology and Molecular ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

Studies in family planning publishes special issue on unmet need

NEW YORK, NY (16 June 2014) — Studies in Family Planning, a leading journal published by the Population Council, released "Unmet Need for Family Planning"—a special issue featuring ten articles, including a comprehensive introduction to the topic of unmet need. Distinguished researchers explore trends related to unmet need for contraception, and many articles point to practical strategies for increasing contraceptive knowledge and uptake, and for overcoming barriers that prevent women from practicing contraception. "Unmet need has been an important indicator for measuring ...

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Space16 Jun 2014

NASA catches short-lived tropical cyclone Hagibis landfalling in China

Tropical storm Hagibis only lived through 6 bulletins issued by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center in its short lifetime in the northwestern Pacific Ocean. The final bulletin was issued on June 15 at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT) after Hagibis made landfall in China. Hagibis was born in the South China Sea on June 14 at 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) near 20.7 north latitude and 117.0 east longitude, about 183 nautical miles east-southeast of Hong Kong when a low pressure system quickly consolidated and maximum sustained winds jumped to 35 knots (40 mph/62 kph). Hagibis is the seventh ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

How sperm get into the zona

Before it can fertilize an egg, a sperm has to bind to and bore through an outer egg layer known as the zona pellucida. Despite decades of research, some of the biological mechanisms behind this process remain unclear. A study in The Journal of Cell Biology now identifies the protein in the zona pellucida that sperm latch onto. The zona pellucida protects the egg and the early embryo before implantation. Its structure seems simple—in humans it contains four kinds of glycoproteins, and in mice it only contains three. But researchers haven't been able to identify the sperm's ...

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Science16 Jun 2014

High number of fatalities despite unchanged level of armed conflicts

At 33, conflicts in the world last year increased by one compared to 2012. This is reported by peace researchers at Uppsala University's Conflict Data Program. The number has remained stable over the past decade. 2012 saw an increase in the number of battle-related deaths with the number of casualties in Syria completely overshadowing any other ongoing conflict. In 2012, two out of five people dying in battles, died in Syria. The new dataset is described by peace researchers at Uppsala University's Conflict Data Program (UCDP) in an article which will soon be published ...

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