Scientists have discovered that a drug which increases the risk of sudden cardiac death interacts with mistranslated protein-coding genes present in heart muscle. The cardiac drug flecainide was developed to prevent and treat serious arrhythmias in the ventricles - the main pumps of the heart. These cause very rapid heart rates which can be lethal if unchecked. However in clinical trials, flecainide, and its sister molecule encainide, were reported to more than double the risk of sudden cardiac death. Joint work by researchers in the Department of Chemistry and Warwick ...

Scientists at the University of Warwick have modelled an outbreak of the bee infection American foulbrood in Jersey, using a technique which could be applied to other honeybee diseases such as European foulbrood and the Varroa parasite. As well as modelling how bee infections spread, the method also allows scientists to simulate various disease control interventions in order to measure their efficacy. The researchers used two sets of data gathered two months apart during an outbreak of American foulbrood in Jersey in the summer of 2010. This provided two 'snapshots' ...

Why some people are troubled by cold sores while others are not has finally been explained by scientists. Cold sores affect around one in five people but, until now, no one has been sure why some are more prone to the virus that causes them. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have found that people affected by cold sores have a mutation in a gene, which means their immune system is not able to prevent them from developing. Cold sores are caused by a strain of the herpes simplex virus – herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1). Between 80 and 90 per cent of people ...

There were three tropical cyclones between the north Eastern Pacific and the North Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, Sept. 14, and NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured them in one image created by NASA. Because Mexico was being hit with Tropical Storm Ingrid and Manuel, both coasts were under Tropical Storm Warnings. The National Hurricane Center cautioned that some areas in eastern and western Mexico may receive up to two feet of rainfall from each storm! NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center uses the data gathered by NOAA's GOES series of satellites and ...

ATHENS, GA--As water use and runoff regulations become more stringent and concerns about dwindling water supplies become more of an issue, finding ways to increase the efficiency of water use for horticultural operations is crucial. A new study contains answers that can help horticultural growers address regulatory and cost concerns. Amanda Bayer, lead author of the research study, explained that most often horticultural best management practices (BMPs) are used to conserve water, but that BMPs do not account for water requirements of plants. "Soil moisture sensors can ...

BOSTON (September 16, 2013) — Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts have identified how one type of bacteria, Yersinia, immobilizes the immune system in order to grow in the organs of mice. To do so, the researchers extended the use of a technique and suggest that it could be used to study other bacteria that use the same or similar means of infection. The study is published in the September 11 issue of Cell Host & Microbe. Led by microbiologist Joan Mecsas, the research team studied a specific ...

WAREHAM, MA--Cranberries are important agricultural commodities in states such as Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon. But cranberry-growing operations are challenged by weeds, which compete for precious resources and often decrease fruit yields and revenues. Producers currently rely on weed management strategies such as flooding and sanding cranberry beds, hand-weeding, or applications of pre- and postemergence herbicides. Recent interest in reducing chemical inputs into cranberry growing systems has led researchers to evaluate alternative methods ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 16, 2013—Repeated exposure to low level blasts (LLB) can cause symptoms similar to sports concussion. Soldiers or law enforcement officers called "breachers" receive training in using low level blasts for forced entry. They may be at risk for diminished neurocognitive performance and symptoms caused by the harmful effects of blast-related pressure changes on the brain, as described in a study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of ...

This news release is available in German. Dim lighting, a jumble of conversations, and loud music: bar staff have to master numerous challenges when serving their customers. In a crowded place, they have to identify who would like to place an order and who does not. A Bielefeld research team analysed how the body language of the potential customer helps the bartenders to achieve this. The team found that real-life observations were at odds with the widespread belief that customers wave for signalling that they would like to order a drink. Analysing the real-life data ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Is your cable television on the fritz? One explanation, scientists suspect, may be the weather — the weather in space, that is. MIT researchers are investigating the effects of space weather — such as solar flares, geomagnetic storms and other forms of electromagnetic radiation — on geostationary satellites, which provide much of the world's access to cable television, Internet services and global communications. Geostationary satellites orbit at the same rate as the Earth's rotation, essentially remaining above the same location throughout their ...

NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured images as Typhoon Man-yi made landfall in southern Japan and moved across the big island. Typhoon Man-yi was approaching Japan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and captured a visible image on Sept. 15 at 0410 UTC/12:10 a.m. EDT. Man-yi weakened to a tropical storm as it quickly crossed Japan dropping heavy rainfall and causing deadly mudslides when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead on Sept. 16. Man-yi is now headed northeast into the Sea of Okhotsk. When Aqua passed overhead, a visible image was taken by the ...

VIDEO: This computer simulation spanning 2.5 billion years of Earth history is showing density difference of the mantle, compared to an oceanic reference, starting from a cooler initial state. Density is... Click here for more information. New research led by a University of Calgary geophysicist provides strong evidence against continent formation above a hot mantle plume, similar to an environment that presently exists beneath the Hawaiian Islands. The analysis, published ...

September 16, 2013 --The cost of a medical school education in the United States has been on the rise over the past 10 years. However, given racial and ethnic inequalities in access to financial resources, increases in the student debt burden may not be assumed equally. To evaluate the issue, researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health analyzed data from a sample of over 2% of the U.S. medical students enrolled at 111 accredited American medical schools. In the sample of 2,355 medical students in 2010-2011, 62.1% of the medical students overall ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- A new understanding of the essential role of gut microbes in the immune system may hold the key to dealing with some of the more significant health problems facing people in the world today, Oregon State University researchers say in a new analysis. Problems ranging from autoimmune disease to clinical depression and simple obesity may in fact be linked to immune dysfunction that begins with a "failure to communicate" in the human gut, the scientists say. Health care of the future may include personalized diagnosis of an individual's "microbiome" to ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For many years, studies have shown that American students score significantly lower than students worldwide in mathematics achievement, ranking 25th among 34 countries. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri have found high school students in the United States achieve higher scores on a standardized mathematics test if they study from a curriculum known as integrated mathematics. James Tarr, a professor in the MU College of Education, and Doug Grouws, a professor emeritus from MU, studied more than 3,000 high school students around the country ...

NEW YORK -- Using data from the world's ecosystems and predictions of how climate change will impact them, scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the University of Queensland, and Stanford University have produced a roadmap that identifies the world's most vulnerable and least vulnerable areas in the Age of Climate Change. The authors say the vulnerability map will help governments, environmental agencies, and donors identify areas where to best invest in protected area establishment, restoration efforts, and other conservation activities so as to have the ...

Spare a thought for American doctors and their partners: because of long working hours and dedication to their work, they seem to have more squabbles over home and family responsibilities than people in most other professions. This constant struggle to balance work and home life are felt especially by those whose life partners also work, or by female physicians, younger doctors and physicians at academic medical centers. It manifests as burnout, depression and lower levels of satisfaction about their quality of life. This is according to Liselotte Dyrbye of the Mayo Clinic ...

(Boston) -- Antihistamines are a group of medications that are used to treat various conditions, including allergies and nausea and vomiting. Some antihistamines require a prescription, but most are available over-the-counter (OTC), and both prescription and OTC antihistamines are often used by women during pregnancy. Until recently, little information was available to women and their health care providers on the possible risks and relative safety of these medications in pregnancy, particularly when it came to specific birth defects. A new study from Boston University's ...

Tropical Storm Manuel was soaking southwestern Mexico while Tropical Storm Ingrid was soaking eastern Mexico on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Manuel and the AIRS instrument captured infrared data that showed powerful thunderstorms were dropping heavy rainfall. However, Manuel's interaction with land caused the storm to dissipate on Sept. 16. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Manuel on Sept. 16 at 0841 UTC/4:41 a.m. EDT and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument looked at the storm in infrared light. That data was used to create ...

Despite fractional openings in North Korea, such as the reopening of the Kaesong industrial zone on Monday, there is little chance of any improvement in the "catastrophic human rights situation" under the head of state, Kim Jong-un, according to scholarly valuation. "Unnoticed by the regime, information from abroad contradicting the state propaganda is in fact presently leaking into the country via mobile phones, radios and DVDs, and the joint North and South Korean industrial park at Kaesong will also mean more outside contact. But this will not improve the human rights ...

NAIVASHA, KENYA (16 SEPTEMBER 2013)—Kenyan farmers and agriculture officials need to prepare for a possible geographic shift in maize production as climate change threatens to make some areas of the country much less productive for cultivation while simultaneously making others more maize-friendly, according to a new report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA). The report, released today by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture ...

The stage is now set for superconductivity to branch out and meet some of the biggest challenges facing humanity today. This is according to a topical review `Superconductivity and the environment: a Roadmap', published today, 16 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Superconductor Science and Technology, which explains how superconducting technologies can move out of laboratories and hospitals and address wider issues such as water purification, earthquake monitoring and the reduction of greenhouse gases. Lance Cooley, a guest editor of the article who is based at ...

Scientists have discovered a 'cosmic factory' for producing the building blocks of life, amino acids, in research published today in the journal Nature Geoscience. The team from Imperial College London, the University of Kent and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have discovered that when icy comets collide into a planet, amino acids can be produced. These essential building blocks are also produced if a rocky meteorite crashes into a planet with an icy surface. The researchers suggest that this process provides another piece to the puzzle of how life was kick-started ...

New research has revealed that more ice leaves Antarctica by melting from the underside of submerged ice shelves than was previously thought, accounting for as much as 90 per cent of ice loss in some areas. Iceberg production and melting causes 2,800 cubic kilometres of ice to leave the Antarctic ice sheet every year. Most of this is replaced by snowfall but any imbalance contributes to a change in global sea level. For many decades, experts have believed that the most important process responsible for this huge loss was iceberg calving - the breaking off of chunks ...

European scientists, led by researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE)'s Faculty of Medicine in the context of the GEUVADIS project, today present a map that points to the genetic causes of differences between people. The study, published in Nature and Nature Biotechnology, offers the largest-ever dataset linking human genomes to gene activity at the level of RNA. Understanding how each person's unique genome makes them more or less susceptible to disease is one of the biggest challenges in science today. Geneticists study how different genetic profiles affect ...