In a new article published online today in the journal Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, Professor David Haig argues that infants that wake frequently at night to breastfeed are delaying the resumption of the mother's ovulation and therefore preventing the birth of a sibling with whom they would have to compete. It has already been documented that smaller gaps between the births of siblings are associated with increased mortality of infants and toddlers, especially in environments where resources are scarce and where infectious disease rates are high, and Professor ...

The reconstruction of an extinct meat-eating marsupial's skull, Nimbacinus dicksoni, suggests that it may have had the ability to hunt vertebrate prey exceeding its own body size, according to results published April 9, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marie Attard from the University of New England together with colleagues from the University of New South Wales. Nimbacinus dicksoni is a member of an extinct family of Australian and New Guinean marsupial carnivores, Thylacinidae. Aside from one recently extinct species, the majority of information known about ...

VIDEO: This is a spinning animation of fossil of male pupa and its position within the nest cell. Click here for more information. LOS ANGELES — The La Brea Tar Pits, the world's richest and most important Ice Age fossil locality, is most celebrated for it collection of saber-toothed cats and mammoths. The site's lesser known, but equally vast insect collection, is also of great significance. Recent examination of fossil leafcutter bee nest cells containing pupae, led by Anna R. ...

Boston, MA – Findings from the Treatment of Preserved Cardiac Function Heart Failure with an Aldosterone Antagonist (TOPCAT) trial, have revealed that adding the medication known as spironolactone (Aldactone) to existing therapy did not significantly reduce the composite time to either death from cardiovascular causes, surviving a cardiac arrest, or hospitaliization to manage heart failure in patients with heart failure and a preserved ejection fraction in a study funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health. The study will be ...

A meta-analysis of studies that investigated measures designed to improve health professionals' interactions with patients confirms that such efforts can produce health effects just as beneficial as taking a daily aspirin to prevent heart attack. In contrast to previous such reviews, the current report from the Empathy and Relational Science Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) only included randomized, controlled trials with more reliable results than those included in earlier studies. While it has long been believed that a good patient-clinician relationship ...

Foreign species that are devastating water ecosystems could be "hitchhiking" around Britain on canoeists' and anglers' kit, according to a new study. Invaders like the killer shrimp, zebra mussel and American signal crayfish have already caused extensive environmental damage and millions of pounds of economic costs. The new research, led by the University of Leeds and the Centre for Environment Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), found that the cleaning habits of anglers and canoeists could be a key part of the problem. The study, based on a survey of more ...

Parasitic butterfly larvae may mimic ants' acoustic signals to aid in the infiltration of their host colonies, according to results published April 9, 2014, in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Marco Sala from University of Turin, Italy, and colleagues. Ants aggressively defend their colonies and nests, so successfully that these locations make a perfect shelter for another similar species to live in. However, ants have evolved a complex set of signals that allow colony members to distinguish between residents and intruders. The social parasitic Maculinea butterfly uses ...

Because international boundaries can be focal points for trade, illegal activity and development, national parks in their vicinity can be vulnerable to pollution, erosion and hunting as well as smuggling of people and drugs. There is an increasing trend towards the erection of barriers to counter this illegal activity, which may reduce environmental impacts too. However barriers may restrict native species' territory, causing an environmental impact of their own. Bristol PhD student, Jamie McCallum, now of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), and colleagues from ...

WHAT: A National Institutes of Health (NIH) study reports that a rare genetic disease, while depleting patients of infection-fighting antibodies, may actually protect them from certain severe or recurrent viral infections. Researchers found that HIV and influenza viruses replicate in the cells of people with congenital disorder of glycosylation type IIb (CDG-IIb) at a much lower rate than in healthy donor cells, creating fewer and less infectious viruses. The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Sergio Rosenzweig, M.D., Ph.D., director of ...

High total and saturated fat intake were associated with greater risk of estrogen receptor- and progesterone receptor-positive (ER+PR+) breast cancer (BC), and human epidermal growth factor 2 receptor-negative (HER2-) disease, according to a new study published April 9 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Published data from epidemiological and case-control studies on the association between high fat intake and BC risk have been conflicting, which may be attributable to difficulties obtaining accurate information on fat intake and because of limited heterogeneity ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Older people who are starting to have memory and thinking problems, but do not yet have dementia may have a lower risk of dying from cancer than people who have no memory and thinking problems, according to a study published in the April 9, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Studies have shown that people with Alzheimer's disease are less likely to develop cancer, but we don't know the reason for that link," said study author Julián Benito-León, MD, PhD, of University Hospital 12 of October in Madrid, ...

PASADENA, Calif., April 9, 2014 — Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who participated in any level of moderate to vigorous physical activity had a lower risk of hospital readmission within 30 days compared to those who were inactive, according to a study published today in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. Researchers examined the electronic health records of 6,042 Kaiser Permanente patients in Southern California who were 40 years or older and who were hospitalized with COPD between Jan. 1, 2011 and Dec. 31, 2012. As part of Kaiser ...

Bottom Line: Most colorectal cancer surgeries are performed on patients older than 65 years, and older patients have worse outcomes than younger patients, although the total number of colon cancer operations has decreased in the past decade. Author: Mehraneh D. Jafari, M.D., and colleagues from the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine, Orange. Background: Gastrointestinal cancers are common in the elderly with peak occurrences in the sixth and seventh decades of life. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of death and surgery remains the curative ...

MADISON, Wis. — As one of the most widely consumed and commercially important beverages on the planet, one would expect the experts to know everything there is to know about lager beer. But it was just a few years ago that scientists identified the South American yeast that, hundreds of years ago, somehow hitched a ride to Bavaria and combined with the domesticated Old World yeast used for millennia to make ale and bread to form the hybrid that makes lager or cold stored beer. The mystery of the cold-adapted yeast that blended with a distant cousin to make the lager-churning ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Statistics show that the amount of older adults in the criminal justice system has quadrupled in the past 15 years. Many of the adults have histories of mental health problems and are being placed in court-based treatment programs, where government officials and social workers tend to think that they are more likely to experience success compared to their younger counterparts. However, new research by Kelli Canada, assistant professor in the University of Missouri School of Social Work, shows that although mental health court participants older than 50 adhere ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — April 9, 2014 — Two cell surface receptors might be responsible for the most common form of lung cancer spreading to other parts of the body, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). The hepatocyte growth factor receptor (HGFR/MET) and fibroblast growth factor-inducible 14 (FN14) are proteins associated with the potential spread of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), according to the TGen study published online April 8 by the scientific journal Clinical & Experimental Metastasis. NSCLC represents more than 85 ...

Coral Gables, FL (April 9, 2014) -- Approximately 26 percent of the U.S. population has impaired fasting glucose, which is a predisposition for developing type 2 diabetes, and chromium supplementation has been suggested as a method that may help control and prevent the disease. A new study by a University of Miami (UM) researcher analyses nearly three decades of data on the effect of chromium supplementation on blood sugar and concludes that chromium supplements are not effective at lowering fasting blood sugar in healthy individuals, or diabetics. Chromium is a mineral ...

An international team of scientists has reported the first experimental observation of the quantum critical point (QCP) in the extensively studied "unconventional superconductor" TiSe2, finding that it does not reside as predicted within the superconducting dome of the phase diagram, but rather at a full GPa higher in pressure. The surprising result, reported in Nature Physics, suggests that the emergence of superconductivity in TiSe2 isn't associated with the melting of a charge density wave (CDW), as prevailing theory holds; in fact the CDW's amplitude decreases under ...

By attaching short sequences of single-stranded DNA to nanoscale building blocks, researchers can design structures that can effectively build themselves. The building blocks that are meant to connect have complementary DNA sequences on their surfaces, ensuring only the correct pieces bind together as they jostle into one another while suspended in a test tube. Now, a University of Pennsylvania team has made a discovery with implications for all such self-assembled structures. Earlier work assumed that the liquid medium in which these DNA-coated pieces float ...

Drastically improved efforts to provide modern energy access to the poor opens up a new approach to development efforts and action on climate change, an international group of energy and environment scholars say in a new report, Our High-Energy Planet. The report is the first of three in the Climate Pragmatism project, a partnership of Arizona State University's Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes (CSPO) and The Breakthrough Institute. "Climate change can't be solved on the backs of the world's poorest people," said Daniel Sarewitz, a report coauthor and co-director ...

Rochester, Minn. — Rheumatoid arthritis patients are likelier than the average person to develop chronic kidney disease, and more severe inflammation in the first year of rheumatoid arthritis, corticosteroid use, high blood pressure and obesity are among the risk factors, new Mayo Clinic research shows. Physicians should test rheumatoid arthritis patients periodically for signs of kidney problems, and patients should work to keep blood pressure under control, avoid a high-salt diet, and eliminate or scale back medications damaging to the kidneys, says senior author Eric ...

VIDEO: Professor Kevin Du and his team at Syracuse University have identified apps that could cause problems for smartphone users, allowing hackers easy access to sensitive information. Click here for more information. Professor Kevin Du and a team of researchers from the College of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University have recently discovered that some of the most common activities among smartphone users—scanning 2D barcodes, finding free Wi-Fi access points, ...

Growing agave and other carefully chosen plants amid photovoltaic panels could allow solar farms not only to collect sunlight for electricity but also to produce crops for biofuels, according to new computer models by Stanford scientists. This co-location approach could prove especially useful in sunny, arid regions such as the southwestern United States where water is scarce, said Sujith Ravi, who is conducting postdoctoral research with professors David Lobell and Chris Field, both on faculty in environmental Earth system science and senior fellows at the Stanford Woods ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Low-risk Medicare patients entering home health care who received medication therapy management by phone were three times less likely to be hospitalized within the next two months, while those at greater risk saw no benefit, according to a study led by Purdue University. The study helped determine which patients benefit most from medication therapy management by phone and a way to identify them through a standardized risk score, said Alan Zillich, associate professor of pharmacy practice at Purdue, who led the research. "Hopefully, this study ...

According to a clinical trial led by University of Cincinnati researchers, a snack food ingredient called olestra has been found to speed up the removal of toxins in the body. Results are reported in the April edition of the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. The trial demonstrated that olestra—a zero-calorie fat substitute found in low-calorie snack foods such as Pringles—could reduce the levels of serum polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in people who had been exposed to PCBs. High levels of PCBs in the body are associated with an increase in hypertension and diabetes. ...