With the world watching the Sochi Winter Olympics including the biathlon shooting events, now is the time for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban the use of lead shot to prevent wildlife poisoning and health threats to surface and groundwater, says a new paper co-authored this month by a University of Guelph biologist. Thousands of tons of lead shot discharged every year during training by Olympic shooters pose a threat to birds and mammals and to water resources, says Vernon Thomas, professor emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology. His paper ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report. The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels – diesel, for example – that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags. A report ...

LOS ANGELES – (Feb. 12, 2014) – A promising new therapy has – for the first time – reduced damage to the brain that can be caused by Sanfilippo B (MPS IIIB), a rare and devastating genetic disease, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) researchers will report today in a presentation at the Lysosomal Disease Network's 10th Annual WORLD Symposium™. Sanfilippo B syndrome is a lysosomal storage disease belonging to the group of mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) that is characterized by severe and rapid intellectual deterioration. LA BioMed pioneered the research ...

Extracts from algae, rosemary and monk fruit could soon replace synthetic ingredients and food additives such as Blue No. 1, BHT and aspartame that label-conscious grocery shoppers are increasingly shunning. Research is enabling this shift from artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives to naturally derived ones, and could soon yield many more natural options, reports Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Melody M. Bomgardner, senior editor at C&EN, notes that the trend has built momentum as concern over negative ...

ANN ARBOR – Poets and physicians know that a scarred heart cannot beat the way it used to, but the science of reprogramming cells offers hope--for the physical heart, at least. A team of University of Michigan biomedical engineers has turned cells common in scar tissue into colonies of beating heart cells. Their findings could advance the path toward regenerating tissue that's been damaged in a heart attack. Previous work in direct reprogramming, jumping straight from a cell type involved in scarring to heart muscle cells, has a low success rate. But Andrew Putnam, ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Feb. 12, 2014) -- Research led by a University of Oregon doctoral student in California's Santa Cruz Mountains has uncovered geologic evidence that supports historical narratives for two earthquakes in the 68 years prior to San Francisco's devastating 1906 disaster. The evidence places the two earthquakes, in 1838 and 1890, on the San Andreas Fault, as theorized by many researchers based on written accounts about damage to Spanish-built missions in the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas. These two quakes, as in 1906, were surface-rupturing events, the ...

It's not quite Star Trek communications—yet. But long-distance communications in space may be easier now that researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have designed a clever detector array that can extract more information than usual from single particles of light. Described in a new paper,* the NIST/JPL array-on-a-chip easily identifies the position of the exact detector in a multi-detector system that absorbs an incoming infrared light particle, or photon. That's the norm for digital photography cameras, ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new method for accurately measuring a key process governing a wide variety of cellular functions that may become the basis for a "health checkup" for living cells. The NIST technique measures changes in a living cell's internal redox (reduction-oxidation) potential, a chemistry concept that expresses the favorability of reactions in which molecules or atoms either gain or lose electrons. Redox reactions are important to cell chemistry because they regulate many genes and the proteins ...

Commonly used disinfectants do not kill human papillomavirus (HPV) that makes possible non-sexual transmission of the virus, thus creating a need for hospital policy changes, according to researchers from Penn State College of Medicine and Brigham Young University. "Because it is difficult to produce infectious HPV particles for research, little has been known about HPV susceptibility to disinfection," said Craig Meyers, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Penn State College of Medicine. Use of disinfectants on HPV in health care settings has been ...

When it comes to influential positions in the entertainment industry, minorities and women are represented at rates far below what would be expected given their percentage of the general population, according to a new study done at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In fact, the report shows, the proportion of female and minority actors, writers, directors and producers in films and TV ranges from just one-twelfth to one-half of their actual population percentage. "The report paints a picture of an industry that is woefully out of ...

Members of the German research network BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) are developing a model that links ecosystem changes triggered by ocean acidification and climate change with their economic and societal consequences. Workshops and interviews with stakeholders from the Norwegian fishing industry and tourism sector, the government and environmental organisations help them to identify key aspects for their assessment. During the past ten years, scientists have learned a lot about the effects of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. It has become ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The rapid conversion of natural lands to cement-dominated urban centers is causing great losses in biodiversity. Yet, according to a new study involving 147 cities worldwide, surprisingly high numbers of plant and animal species persist and even flourish in urban environments — to the tune of hundreds of bird species and thousands of plant species in a single city. Contrary to conventional wisdom that cities are a wasteland for biodiversity, the study found that while a few species — such as pigeons and annual meadow grass — are shared across ...

In 4 years of follow up of 1464 participants in the randomized controlled trial Randomised Evaluation of Normal vs. Augmented Levels of RRT (RENAL) study, Martin Gallagher (The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, Australia) and colleagues found that patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) in an intensive care unit (ICU) who require renal replacement therapy (RRT; hemodialysis combined with hemofiltration) do not benefit from higher intensity RRT. At a median of 43.9 months follow up, mortality (63% in the low intensity and 63% in the high intensity group), as well ...

It is a common notion that type 2 diabetes is precipitated by substantial progressive weight gain, but a study published this week in PLOS Medicine suggests that this might not be true. Dorte Vistisen and Kristine Færch, from the Steno Diabetes Center in Gentofte, Denmark, and colleagues analyzed data from participants of the Whitehall II cohort, a group of London-based civil servants who have been followed for more than a decade, to see what changes in body weight and other parameters had occurred in people in the years before they were diagnosed with diabetes. 6,705 ...

Prions can be notoriously destructive, spurring proteins to misfold and interfere with cellular function as they spread without control. New research, publishingin the open access journal PLOS Biology on February 11 2014, from scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research reveals that certain prion-like proteins, however, can be precisely controlled so that they are generated only in a specific time and place. These prion-like proteins are not involved in disease processes; rather, they are essential for creating and maintaining long-term memories. "This protein ...

WASHINGTON — A panel of 55 genes, almost all of which are impacted by the loss of a particular protein, appears to predict if breast cancer will become invasive, leading to poorer survival, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center report in PLOS ONE. The panel represents loss of a powerful tumor suppressor gene, SYK, as well as genetic alterations in 51 other genes that are directly affected by the loss of a copy of the SYK gene and the absence of its protein. "Without SYK, the protein it makes, and genetic disruption in a set of genes thought ...

The risk of a kidney donor developing kidney failure in the remaining organ is much lower than in the population at large, even when compared with people who have two kidneys, according to results of new Johns Hopkins research. The results, published in the Feb. 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, describes what is believed to be the largest study ever conducted of kidney disease risk in living kidney donors, encompassing all such donors in the United States over a 17-year period. The same researchers reporting in the same journal also showed ...

An analysis of nearly 100,000 kidney donors finds that there is a small increased lifetime risk of developing end-stage renal disease following donation compared with healthy nondonors, although the risk is still much lower than that in the general population, according to a study in the February 12 issue of JAMA. Every year in the United States, approximately 6,000 healthy adults accept the risks of kidney donation to help family members, friends, or even strangers. "It is imperative that the transplant community, in due diligence to donors, understands the risk of ...

Researchers have found that preterm infants are more likely to have elevated insulin levels at birth and in early childhood compared to full-term infants, findings that provide additional evidence that preterm birth may be a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, according to a study in the February 12 issue of JAMA. In the United States, 1 in 9 live births are preterm, and l in 5 live births among African Americans are preterm. "There is growing evidence that fetal and early life events may result in permanent metabolic alterations, such as type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome ...

Although maximum reduction in the risk of genital warts (condylomata) was seen after 3 doses of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, receipt of 2 vaccine doses was associated with considerable reduction in risk, particularly among women who were younger than 17 years at first vaccination, according to a study in the February 12 issue of JAMA. HPV infection causes genital warts and cervical cancer, and HPV vaccine prevents both. The typical dose schedule requires 3 doses of vaccine, but small clinical trials have reported measures of vaccine efficacy with fewer than 3 ...

Among rehabilitation facilities providing services to Medicare fee-for-service patients, 30-day hospital readmission rates vary, from about 6 percent for patients with lower extremity joint replacement to nearly 20 percent for patients with debility (weakness or feebleness), according to a study in the February 12 issue of JAMA. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently identified 30-day hospital readmission as a national quality indicator for inpatient rehabilitation facilities; reporting will be required in 2014 by the CMS, according to background ...

From 2009-2012, 36 bills introduced in 18 states sought to modify school immunization mandates, with the majority seeking to expand exemptions although none of the bills passed, according to a study in the February 12 issue of JAMA. "School immunization mandates, implemented through state-level legislation, have played an important role in maintaining high immunization coverage in the United States," according to background information in the article. Immunization mandates permit exemptions that vary from state to state in terms of type of exemption (e.g., religious, ...

Washington, DC — Moderate aerobic exercise helps to preserve the structure and function of nerve cells in the retina after damage, according to an animal study appearing February 12 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings suggest exercise may be able to slow the progression of retinal degenerative diseases. Age-related macular degeneration, one of the leading causes of blindness in the elderly, is caused by the death of light-sensing nerve cells in the retina called photoreceptors. Although several studies in animals and humans point to the protective effects ...

Women who carry a mutation on the BRCA breast cancer gene - and are diagnosed with early stage breast cancer - are significantly less likely to die if they undergo a double mastectomy than those who have only one breast removed, suggests a paper published on bmj.com today. The authors say double mastectomy should be discussed as an option for young women with a BRCA mutation and early onset breast cancer. However, given the small number of women in this group, further research is required to confirm the findings. Women who carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation face a ...

Annual screening in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care, concludes a 25-year study from Canada published on bmj.com today. Furthermore, the study shows that 22% of screen detected breast cancers were over-diagnosed, representing one over-diagnosed breast cancer for every 424 women who received screening in the trial. Over-diagnosis refers to the detection of harmless cancers that will not cause symptoms or death during a patient's lifetime. Regular mammography screening is done to reduce ...