Cincinnati, OH, March 6, 2014 -- Lack of sleep and obesity have been associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases in adults and young children. However, the association is not as clear in adolescents, an age group that is known to lack adequate sleep and have an overweight and obesity prevalence rate of 30% in the US. In a new study scheduled for publication in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that cardiometabolic risk in obese adolescents may be predicted by typical sleep patterns. Heidi B. IglayReger, PhD, and colleagues from ...

After more than a decade of incremental – and paradigm shifting, advances in stem cell biology, almost anyone with a basic understanding of life sciences knows that stem cells are the basic form of cell from which all specialized cells, and eventually organs and body parts, derive. But what makes a "good" stem cell, one that can reliably be used in drug development, and for disease study? Researchers have made enormous strides in understanding the process of cellular reprogramming, and how and why stem cells commit to becoming various types of adult cells. But until now, ...

Ignaz Semmelweiss made one of the most important contributions to modern medicine when he instituted hand washing in an obstetric clinic in Austria in 1847, decreasing mortality there from more than ten percent to two percent. Unfortunately, infections can still occur in pregnancy and during delivery and can have associated mortality rates of up to 30 to 50 percent if not treated quickly and properly. Brenna Anderson, MD, director of the Women's Infectious Diseases Consultative Service at Women & Infants of Rhode Island and an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology ...

Significance: Understanding more about how the different types of cells in breast tissue develop improves our knowledge of breast cancer. TAZ represents a potential new target for drug therapies to treat aggressive types of breast cancer. Background: In cancer, normal cells can become unpredictable or aggressive and thus difficult to treat with anti-cancer drugs. This is especially true in breast cancer. By identifying the genes responsible for this change in cells from breast tissue, researchers hope to identify a way to stop or reverse it. In breast tissue, there ...

Millions of high school and college algebra students are united in a shared agony over solving for x and y, and for those to whom the answers don't come easily, it gets worse: Most preschoolers and kindergarteners can do some algebra before even entering a math class. In a recently published study in the journal Developmental Science, lead author and post-doctoral fellow Melissa Kibbe and Lisa Feigenson, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, find that most preschoolers and kindergarteners, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. –Approximately one in six veterans struggles with substance abuse, and 20 percent show signs of mental health issues or cognitive impairments, previous research has shown. These risk factors, combined with a lack of resources, could be contributing to an increase of veterans entering the criminal justice system, according to a report by the Center for Mental Health Services. Now, University of Missouri researchers have investigated ways social workers can address veterans' needs and keep them out of jail. "Social workers are equipped to provide support to ...

Making your own stuff with a 3D printer is vastly cheaper than what you'd pay for manufactured goods, even factoring in the cost of buying the plastic filament. Yet, you can drive the cost down even more by making your own filament from old milk jugs. And, while you are patting yourself on the back for saving 99 cents on the dollar, there's a bonus: you can feel warm and fuzzy about preserving the environment. A study led by Joshua Pearce of Michigan Technological University has shown that making your own plastic 3D printer filament from milk jugs uses less energy—often ...

The Galápagos Islands are home to some of the most active volcanoes in the world, with more than 50 eruptions in the last 200 years. Yet until recently, scientists knew far more about the history of finches, tortoises, and iguanas than of the volcanoes on which these unusual fauna had evolved. Now research out of the University of Rochester is providing a better picture of the subterranean plumbing system that feeds the Galápagos volcanoes, as well as a major difference with another Pacific Island chain—the Hawaiian Islands. The findings have been published in the Journal ...

(Boston)--While acknowledging the potential of genomics to prevent and treat disease, researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) believe it is long past due to use current scientific data and technical advances to reduce the burden of sickle cell disease (SCD), one of the most common serious single gene disorders. The work, reported as a Viewpoint in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), highlights the gaps in knowledge and care in terms of SCD and the need to address this issue expeditiously. ...

Doctors' unconscious biases favor whites but do not affect high blood pressure treatment for their minority patients, according to a University of Colorado Boulder study, even though a previous study by the same research group found that doctors' biases are reflected in lower ratings by African-American patients. The new research, led by Irene Blair, an associate professor in CU-Boulder's Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, is published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine. "We know that minorities have to face bias and discrimination in many different ...

Astronomers have witnessed for the first time the breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. The discovery is published online March 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. Though fragile comet nuclei have been seen falling apart as they near the sun, nothing resembling this type of breakup has been observed before in the asteroid belt. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope photographed the demolition. "Seeing this rock fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt, a professor in the UCLA Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences ...

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed the never-before-seen break-up of an asteroid, which has fragmented into as many as ten smaller pieces. Although fragile comet nuclei have been seen to fall apart as they approach the Sun, nothing like the breakup of this asteroid, P/2013 R3, has ever been observed before in the asteroid belt. "This is a rock. Seeing it fall apart before our eyes is pretty amazing," said David Jewitt of UCLA, USA, who led the astronomical forensics investigation. The crumbling asteroid, designated P/2013 R3, was first noticed as an ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Mar. 6, 2014) – When human umbilical cord blood cells were transplanted into rats that had undergone a simulated myocardial infarction (MI), researchers investigating the long term effects of the transplantation found that left ventricular (LV) heart function in the treated rats was improved over those that did not get the stem cells. The animals were maintained without immunosuppressive therapy. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct0860Chen. "Myocardial ...

Colchicine, a drug that's used to treat gout, has the beneficial side effect of lowering the risk of heart attack in patients taking it. Conversely, taxol, a drug for treating cancer, has the opposite effect; raising the risk of heart failure. What both these drugs have in common is that they act on microtubules – a network of fibers inside heart cells that provide internal structural support. Previous studies, including evidence from human patients and experimental models of heart failure, have suggested a link between heart failure and increased density of microtubules, ...

INDIANAPOLIS— A study conducted by local high school students and faculty from the Department of Computer and Information Science in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis reveals new information about the motor circuits of the brain that may one day help those developing therapies to treat conditions such as stroke, schizophrenia, spinal cord injury or Alzheimer's disease. "MRI and CAT scans of the human brain can tell us many things about the structure of this most complicated of organs, formed of trillions of neurons and the synapses ...

The presence – or absence – of complications following surgery is a strong indicator of which patients are likely to be readmitted to the hospital in the 30 days following their procedure, according to a study published today in JAMA Surgery. Predicting which patients are most likely to experience complications using a simple online tool may allow healthcare professionals to flag patients at high risk of readmission in real time and alter care to reduce expensive trips back to the hospital. The study examined more than 142,000 patients who had non-cardiac surgery using ...

Just as she was about to retire, Lily Ledbetter, a production supervisor at an Alabama tire plant, learned that her employers had financially discriminated against her throughout her career. She filed suit for pay discrimination, losing due to a statute of limitations on equal-pay suits. As a result, President Barack Obama signed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law in 2009, drawing attention to the effects of pay secrecy on the workplace. Now Prof. Peter Bamberger of Tel Aviv University's Recanati School of Business and Dr. Elena Belogolovsky of Cornell University's ...

The strength of the team — not the promise of a close contest — is the biggest draw to crowds in international cricket, new research has found. The findings from the study, published in the journal Applied Economics, appear to contradict previous research which suggested that attendance is largely determined by how closely matched the two teams are during a game. Economists Dr Abhinav Sacheti and Professor David Paton from Nottingham University Business School, in collaboration with Dr Ian Gregory-Smith from the University of Sheffield, analysed the number of spectators ...

Future lunar missions may be fueled by gas stations in space, according to MIT engineers: A spacecraft might dock at a propellant depot, somewhere between the Earth and the moon, and pick up extra rocket fuel before making its way to the lunar surface. Orbiting way stations could reduce the fuel a spacecraft needs to carry from Earth — and with less fuel onboard, a rocket could launch heavier payloads, such as large scientific experiments. Over the last few decades, scientists have proposed various designs, such as building a fuel-manufacturing station on the moon ...

DALLAS – March 4, 2014 – Scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified an important step toward potentially shutting down the growth of prostate cancer cells. Dr. Ralf Kittler, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology, studies ERG, a protein that facilitates the transformation of normal prostate cells into cancer cells. His lab found that an enzyme called USP9X protects ERG from degradation and subsequently found that a molecule called WP1130 can block USP9X and lead to the destruction of ERG. "We now have a target that we could potentially exploit to develop ...

Thirty percent of adults with Attention Deficit Disorder or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) report they were physically abused before they turned 18. This compares to seven per cent of those without ADD/ADHD who were physically abused before 18. The results were in a study published in this week's online Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment, and Trauma. "This strong association between abuse and ADD/ADHD was not explained by differences in demographic characteristics or other early adversities experienced by those who had been abused," says lead author ...

WASHINGTON, DC (March 6, 2014)— Drug companies spent $97.5 million marketing pharmaceuticals in the District of Columbia in 2012, with $30.5 million (31.3%) of that spending taking the form of payments and gifts to physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers, according to a report by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS). These expenditures represent the first year-on-year spending increase by drug companies since 2007. Between 2007 and 2011, spending declined each year to a low of $84 million in ...

This news release is available in German. Taking photos with a wink, checking one's calendar with a glance of the right eye, reading text messages — the multinational cooperation Google wants to make it possible with Google Glass. But what IT experts celebrate as a new milestone makes privacy groups skeptical. So far, few people have access to the prototype to test how it can be used in daily life. "Thanks to the Max Planck Institute for Informatics we are one of the few universities in Germany that can do research with Google Glass", says Dominique Schröder, assistant ...

VIDEO: This video shows: "Efficacy of the Responsive Classroom Approach: Results from a Three Year, Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Trial. " Published Online First in: American Educational Research Journal March 6, 2014 Authors: Sarah Rimm-Kaufman, Ross A. Larsen, Alison... Click here for more information. WASHINGTON, D.C., March 6, 2014 ─ Classroom programs designed to improve elementary school students' social and emotional skills can also ...

In 2011, one in three pregnant women in the U.S. delivered babies by cesarean delivery. While cesarean delivery may be life-saving for the mother, the baby or both, the rapid increase in cesarean birth rates since 1996 without clear indication raises concerns that this type of delivery may be overused. Dwight J. Rouse, MD, MSPH, a specialist in the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, has co-authored the first in a new, joint ...