In theory, the laws of physics are absolute. However, when it comes to the laws of thermodynamics—the science that studies how heat and temperature relate to energy—there are times where they no longer seem to apply. In a paper recently published in EPJ B, Robert Adamietz from the University of Augsburg, Germany, and colleagues have demonstrated that a theoretical model of the environment's influence on a particle does not violate the third law of thermodynamics, despite appearances to the contrary. These findings are relevant for systems at the micro or nanometer scale ...

WASHINGTON, May 20, 2014 – To keep your new car looking sleek and shiny for years, factories need to make certain that the coats of paint on it are applied properly. But ensuring that every coat of paint—whether it is on a car or anything else—is of uniform thickness and quality is not easy. Now researchers have developed a new way to measure the thickness of paint layers and the size of particles embedded inside. Unlike conventional methods, the paint remains undamaged, making the technique useful for a variety of applications from cars to artifacts, cancer detection ...

A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Current melanoma drugs targeting single proteins can initially be effective, but resistance develops relatively quickly and the disease recurs. In those instances, resistance usually develops when the cancer cell's circuitry bypasses the protein that the drug acts on, or when the cell uses other pathways to avoid the point on which the drug acts. "To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," ...

AURORA, Colo. (May 20, 2014) – School-based influenza vaccine programs have the potential to reach many children at affordable costs and with parental support, but these programs are limited by low rates of reimbursement from third-party payers, according to recently published study results by researchers from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. A school-based flu vaccine program in the Denver Public Schools was effective at reaching nearly one-third of the students, but billing and reimbursement issues posed significant problems for administrators of the program. "The ...

Researchers at Western University (London, Canada) have shown how the bacteria primarily responsible for causing strep throat can be used to fight colon cancer. By engineering a streptococcal bacterial toxin to attach itself to tumour cells, they are forcing the immune system to recognize and attack the cancer. Kelcey Patterson, a PhD Candidate at Western and the lead author on the study, showed that the engineered bacterial toxin could significantly reduce the size of human colon cancer tumours in mice, with a drastic reduction in the instances of metastasis. By using ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Parents – especially those of overweight children – give schools a failing grade for efforts to encourage healthy habits that combat childhood obesity, according to a new poll from the University of Michigan. According to the latest University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, parents with at least one overweight child (25 percent of all parents in the poll) were more likely to give schools a failing grade of D or F for obesity-related efforts than parents of normal-weight children. Parents of overweight ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- The use of simulation techniques in medical education, such as lifelike mannequins and computer systems, results in improved patient care, better outcomes and other benefits, according to a study led by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher. William C. McGaghie, PhD, and colleagues analyzed 23 medical education studies that measured the effects of simulation-based mastery learning (SBML). A qualitative synthesis of these studies found that SBML improved outcomes in four areas: the educational laboratory, patient care practices, ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The patient and caregiver-centered Aging Brain Care program, developed by researchers at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University Center for Aging Research, is attracting nationwide interest for its ability to improve health outcomes and quality of care for those with cognitive impairment while dramatically lowering costs to patients and health care systems. On May 22 and 23, a team of physicians and nurse managers from the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will visit Indianapolis and Lafayette, ...

PITTSBURGH, May 20, 2014 – Educational campaigns meant to dissuade college students from initiating hookah tobacco smoking may be more successful if they combat positive perceptions of hookah use as attractive and romantic, rather than focusing solely on the harmful components of hookah tobacco smoke, a new University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study found. The research, supported by the National Cancer Institute, examined the sequence of events around which university students first smoke tobacco from a hookah, also known as a water pipe, in an effort to determine ...

Premature ejaculation is one of the most common sexual disorders in men. But it is not just the men who suffer; it also causes increased psychological strain and stress in women, as a new survey conducted by Andrea Burri, a clinical psychologist at the University of Zurich, reveals. Around 40 percent of over 1,500 women polled from Mexico, Italy and South Korea indicated that ejaculation control is very important for satisfactory intercourse. It is not the short duration of the act of lovemaking that is primarily regarded as the main source of sexual frustration by the ...

Chicago, May 19, 2014—The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research has released the results of a major survey on long-term care in the United States. The study, the second on this topic done by AP-NORC, provides much-needed data on how Americans are, or are not, planning for long-term care as policy makers grapple with how to plan for and finance high-quality long-term care in the United States. "Families are essential to providing long-term care so we wanted to explore their role further," said Trevor Tompson, director of the AP-NORC Center. "We conducted ...

The Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study, PANIC, carried out by the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Eastern Finland shows that low levels of physical activity combined with heavy use of electronic media and sedentary behaviour are linked to an increased risk for type 2 diabetes and vascular diseases already in 6–8 year-old children. The study was published in International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, an esteemed journal in the field of exercise and nutrition. Heavy use of electronic media has adverse health effects ...

Aerothermoelasticity has become a hot research area for several years around the world. Professor YANG Chao and his group from Beihang University set out to tackle this problem. Their work, entitled "A high-efficiency aerothermoelastic analysis method", was published in Sci China-Phys Mech Astron, 2014, 57(6): 1111-1118. A hypersonic aircraft generally refers to a hypersonic flight vehicle whose flight Mach number is greater than 5.0 and which can fly in the atmosphere and across the atmosphere. Because of its outstanding performance, aerodynamic heating would clearly ...

A study led by scientists from the Polytechnic University of Marche (Ancona, Italy) involving researchers from the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM, CSIC) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), has determined that fishing trawling causes intensive, long-term biological desertification of the sedimentary seabed ecosystems, diminishing their content in organic carbon and threatening their biodiversity. Trawling is the most commonly used extraction methods of sea living resources used around the world, but at the same time, it is also one of the main causes of ...

20 May 2014, Paris, France: EuroPCR 2014 delegates will get a preview of the latest 2014 European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) guidelines on myocardial revascularisation on Wednesday, 21 May at 10.30 am. The guidelines will be a new version following the first edition in 2010. The new taskforce is chaired by Prof Stephan Windecker, President-elect, European Association for Percutaneous Cardiovascular Interventions (EAPCI), and Prof Philippe Kolh, representing EACTS, who was also co-chair of the previous task ...

In an effort to better understand what persuades people to buy photovoltaic (PV) systems for their homes, researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are gathering data on consumer motivations that can feed sophisticated computer models and thus lead to greater use of solar energy. A primary goal of the project is to help increase the nation's share of solar energy in the electricity market from its current share of less than .05 percent to at least 14 percent by 2030. This is the second year of a three-year effort. "If we can develop effective and accurate predictive ...

People attempting to quit smoking without professional help are approximately 60% more likely to report succeeding if they use e-cigarettes than if they use willpower alone or over-the-counter nicotine replacement therapies such as patches or gum, finds a large UCL (University College London) survey of smokers in England. (1) The results were adjusted for a wide range of factors that might influence success at quitting, including age, nicotine dependence, previous quit attempts, and whether quitting was gradual or abrupt. The study, published in Addiction, surveyed 5,863 ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, May 20, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (NASDAQ: MYGN) today presented new data from a clinical validation study of Prolaris at the 2014 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting in Orlando, Fla. The study is the largest validation study to date of any gene-based prognostic test in patients with prostate cancer who were diagnosed by needle biopsy. A key finding was that the Prolaris test accurately differentiated newly diagnosed patients who were likely to die from prostate cancer within 10 years from those with lower-risk disease, which ...

By comparing how gut microbes from human vegetarians and grass-grazing baboons digest different diets, researchers have shown that ancestral human diets, so called "paleo" diets, did not necessarily result in better appetite suppression. The study, published in mBio® the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, reveals surprising relationships between diet and the release of hormones that suppress eating. While Western diets have changed dramatically in the last century to become high energy, low fiber, and high fat (think: cheeseburger), ...

A major new Series of papers, published today [Tuesday 20 May] in The Lancet, presents the clearest picture to date of progress and challenges in improving newborn survival around the world, and sets targets that must be achieved by 2030 in order to ensure every newborn has a healthy start. The research is led by Professor Joy Lawn, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Save the Children, UK, with Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children, Canada, and the Aga Khan University, Pakistan, in collaboration with more than 54 experts from ...

A major new Series of papers, published today [Tuesday 20 May] in The Lancet, presents the clearest picture to date of progress and challenges in improving newborn survival around the world, and sets targets that must be achieved by 2030 in order to ensure every newborn has a healthy start. The research is led by Professor Joy Lawn, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Save the Children, UK, with Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children, Canada, and the Aga Khan University, Pakistan, in collaboration with more than 54 experts from ...

A major new Series of papers, published today [Tuesday 20 May] in The Lancet, presents the clearest picture to date of progress and challenges in improving newborn survival around the world, and sets targets that must be achieved by 2030 in order to ensure every newborn has a healthy start. The research is led by Professor Joy Lawn, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Save the Children, UK, with Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children, Canada, and the Aga Khan University, Pakistan, in collaboration with more than 54 experts from ...

A major new Series of papers, published today [Tuesday 20 May] in The Lancet, presents the clearest picture to date of progress and challenges in improving newborn survival around the world, and sets targets that must be achieved by 2030 in order to ensure every newborn has a healthy start. The research is led by Professor Joy Lawn, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Save the Children, UK, with Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children, Canada, and the Aga Khan University, Pakistan, in collaboration with more than 54 experts from ...

A major new Series of papers, published today [Tuesday 20 May] in The Lancet, presents the clearest picture to date of progress and challenges in improving newborn survival around the world, and sets targets that must be achieved by 2030 in order to ensure every newborn has a healthy start. The research is led by Professor Joy Lawn, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Save the Children, UK, with Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta at the Hospital for Sick Children, Canada, and the Aga Khan University, Pakistan, in collaboration with more than 54 experts from ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 19, 2014) — Hispanics are the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, and they suffer from major health disparities, including higher rates of cancers of the cervix, stomach and liver. However, their enrollment levels in cancer clinical trials seeking to cure these problems is abysmally low: 3.9 percent. In a paper published today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, three physicians from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio analyzed Hispanic accrual rates to randomized clinical trials, and in response to the ...