April 8, 2014 CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Researchers at UNC School of Medicine have pinpointed a viral protein that plays a major role in making respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) the most common cause of hospitalization in children under one year of age. The discovery, published April 8 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, is the first step toward identifying better diagnostics and potential treatments for an infection that strikes nearly all children before they reach the age of three and causing severe disease in 3 percent of infected children. RSV infection leads to ...

PHILADELPHIA (April 8, 2014) – The cartoon character Homer J. Simpson once said "Alcohol: The source of, and solution to, all of life's problems." The sage of the ubiquitous and fictional town of Springfield may have hit the nail on the head when it comes to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) counseling and prevention. The more you drink and/or the more sex partners you have, the less likely you are to engage in HIV-prevention programs. This rather grim assessment came about from the study, "Barriers to accessing HIV-prevention ...

Humans are unique in their ability to acquire language. But how? A new study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences shows that we are in fact born with the basic fundamental knowledge of language, thus shedding light on the age-old linguistic "nature vs. nurture" debate. THE STUDY While languages differ from each other in many ways, certain aspects appear to be shared across languages. These aspects might stem from linguistic principles that are active in all human brains. A natural question then arises: are infants born with knowledge of how ...

Most drivers have experienced a traffic signal that turns yellow just as they approach an intersection, which makes it difficult for them to decide whether to stop or proceed through it. The wrong choice in this situation, known as the "dilemma zone," may lead to crashes, especially at high-speed intersections. A major factor making driving difficult is hazards that are sudden and hard to predict. Roadside and in-vehicle display warning systems may help drivers handle these hazards by predicting their occurrence and providing advanced warning to the driver, according ...

In a groundbreaking York University study, researchers have found that abnormal levels of lipid molecules in the brain can affect the interaction between two key neural pathways in early prenatal brain development, which can trigger autism. And, environmental causes such as exposure to chemicals in some cosmetics and common over-the-counter medication can affect the levels of these lipids, according to the researchers. "We have found that the abnormal level of a lipid molecule called Prostaglandin E2 in the brain can affect the function of Wnt proteins. It is important ...

VIDEO: Kinesin-5 plays a crucial role in cell division by allow microfilaments to slide past each other. The kinesin-5 structure shows a central rod connecting two motor units that walk along... Click here for more information. The structure of a key part of the machinery that allows cells to divide has been identified by researchers at the University of California, Davis -- opening new possibilities for throwing a wrench in the machine and blocking runaway cell division in cancer. "The ...

Work at the University of Colorado Cancer Center led to phase II trial of efatutazone with erlotinib in patients with refractory non-small cell lung cancer. Results are reported today at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2014. While efatutazone did not improve the efficacy of erlotinib in this trial, researchers hope lessons from the trial will allow them to make better future use of the drug or other drugs in its class. "In oncology and especially in lung cancer, everything is personalized. We're exploring different molecular markers ...

Glucosamine has been freely available in drugstores for many decades. It is widely used to treat arthritis and to prevent joint degeneration. Moreover, glucosamine is known to delay cancer growth. In addition, glucosamine reduces metabolism of nutritive sugars, as was already shown some 50 years ago. In 2007, Michael Ristow showed that too much nutritive sugar shortens the lifespan of roundworms, a widely studied model organism in ageing research. Conversely, impairing carbohydrate metabolism in these worms was capable of extending lifespan [reference 1]. Unfortunately, ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 8, 2014 -- If a research team in Japan gets its wish, "normally off" computers may one day soon be replacing present computers in a move that would both eliminate volatile memory, which requires power to maintain stored data, and reduce the gigantic energy losses associated with it. Most parts of present computers are made with volatile devices such as transistors and dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which loses information when powered off. So computers are designed on the premise that power is "normally on." Back in 2000, the concept of ...

WASHINGTON D.C., April 8, 2014 -- Some 90 years ago, British polymath J.B.S. Haldane proposed that for every animal there is an optimal size -- one which allows it to make best use of its environment and the physical laws that govern its activities, whether hiding, hunting, hoofing or hibernating. Today, three researchers are asking whether there is a "right" size for another type of huge beast: the U.S. power grid. David Newman, a physicist at the University of Alaska, believes that smaller grids would reduce the likelihood of severe outages, such as the 2003 Northeast ...

HOUSTON – (April 8, 2014) – Creativity and innovation are not sufficiently integrated in either the business world or academic research, according to a new study by Rice University, the University of Edinburgh and Brunel University. The findings are the result of the authors' review of the rapidly growing body of research into creativity and innovation in the workplace, with particular attention to the period from 2002 to 2013. "There are many of us who study employee creativity and many of us who study innovation and idea implementation, but we don't talk to each ...

Montreal, April 8, 2014 — People who check whether their hands are clean or imagine their house might be on fire are not alone. New research from Concordia University and 15 other universities worldwide shows that 94 per cent of people experience unwanted, intrusive thoughts, images and/or impulses. The international study, which was co-authored by Concordia psychology professor Adam Radomsky and published in the Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, examined people on six continents. Radomsky and his colleagues found that the thoughts, images and ...

Scientists know that tapping into local expertise is key to conservation efforts aimed at protecting biodiversity – but researchers rarely give credit to these local experts. Now some scientists are saying that's a problem, both for the local experts and for the science itself. To address the problem, a group of scientists is calling for conservation researchers to do a better job of publicly acknowledging the role of local experts and other non-scientists in conservation biology. "For example, in the rainforests of the Yucatán, scientists couldn't even begin to do ...

DALLAS – April 8, 2014 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have demonstrated in both cancer cell lines and in mice that blocking critical DNA repair mechanisms could improve the effectiveness of radiation therapy for highly fatal brain tumors called glioblastomas. Radiation therapy causes double-strand breaks in DNA that must be repaired for tumors to keep growing. Scientists have long theorized that if they could find a way to block repairs from being made, they could prevent tumors from growing or at least slow down the growth, thereby extending patients' survival. ...

This news release is available in French. When you throw a wild pitch or sing a flat note, it could be that your basal ganglia made you do it. This area in the middle of the brain is involved in motor control and learning. And one reason for that errant toss or off-key note may be that your brain prompted you to vary your behavior to help you learn, from trial-and-error, to perform better. But how does the brain do this, how does it cause you to vary your behavior? Along with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, Indian Institute of Science ...

As Tropical Depression Peipah continues moving toward the central Philippines, NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and took an infrared look at the cloud top temperatures for clues about its strength. On April 8 at 05:11 UTC/1:11 a.m. EDT/11 p.m. Manila local time, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument known as AIRS gathered infrared data on Tropical Depression Peipah. AIRS is one of the instruments that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. The AIRS data showed thunderstorms with very cold cloud-top temperatures surrounded the center of the low-level circulation ...

A research team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai published the first controlled evidence showing that an intranasal ketamine spray conferred an unusually rapid antidepressant effect –within 24 hours—and was well tolerated in patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. This is the first study to show benefits with an intranasal formulation of ketamine. Results from the study were published online in the peer-reviewed journal Biological Psychiatry on April 2, 2014. Of 18 patients completing two treatment days with ketamine or saline, eight ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have confirmed suspicions that DNA modifications found in the blood of mice exposed to high levels of stress hormone — and showing signs of anxiety — are directly related to changes found in their brain tissues. The proof-of-concept study, reported online ahead of print in the June issue of Psychoneuroendocrinology, offers what the research team calls the first evidence that epigenetic changes that alter the way genes function without changing their underlying DNA sequence — and are detectable in blood — mirror alterations in brain tissue ...

This knowledge is of particular interest for producers, since changes in the grape directly affect the chemical composition of the must. The thesis entitled "Estudios avanzados de la fisiología de levadura en condiciones de vinificación. Bases para el desarrollo de un modelo predictivo" [Advanced studies into yeast physiology in vinification conditions. Bases for developing a forecasting model] is part of the Demeter project. This project seeks to study and find out the effects of climate change on viticultural and oenological activities, and to come up with new strategies ...

Boston - April 8, 2014 - Babies and young children make giant developmental leaps all of the time. Sometimes, it seems, even overnight they figure out how to recognize certain shapes or what the word "no" means no matter who says it. It turns out that making those leaps could be a nap away: New research finds that infants who nap are better able to apply lessons learned to new skills, while preschoolers are better able to retain learned knowledge after napping. "Sleep plays a crucial role in learning from early in development," says Rebecca Gómez of the University of ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Studies have shown that a new patient and caregiver centered model of innovative, coordinated brain care for older adults improves health outcomes and quality of care for those with cognitive impairment. A new study from the Regenstrief Institute, Eskenazi Health and Indiana University Center for Aging Research implementation scientists who developed the Healthy Aging Brain Center care model shows that such care also produces impressive cost savings. The Healthy Aging Brain Center care model generated an annual net cost savings of up to $2,856 per patient ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The difference between merely throwing around buzzwords like "personalized medicine" and "big data" and delivering on their medical promise is in the details of developing methods for analyzing and interpreting genomic data. In a pair of new papers, Brown University epidemiologist Yen-Tsung Huang and colleagues show how integrating different kinds of genomic data could improve studies of the association between genes and disease. The kinds of data Huang integrates are single-nucleotide differences in DNA, called SNPs, data on gene ...

A unique population of microbes in the female breast may lay the groundwork for understanding how this bacterial community contributes to health and disease, according to a new study out of Western University (London, Canada). The study titled "Microbiota of human breast tissue," is now published online, in advance of the May issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology. The human body is home to a large and diverse population of bacteria with properties that are both harmful and beneficial to our health. Studies are revealing the presence of bacteria in unexpected ...

Materials scientists have long known that introducing defects into three-dimensional materials can improve their mechanical and electronic properties. Now a new Northwestern study finds how defects affect two-dimensional crystalline structures, and the results hold information for designing new materials. In packed, two-dimensional crystalline systems, such as in photonic two-dimensional crystals, the particles are organized in hexagonal lattices. One particle is in the center of the hexagon with six neighboring particles around it. A defective lattice is when the center ...

This news release is available in German. They discovered that the so-called HOPE method allows tissue samples to be treated such that they do not only meet the requirements of clinical histology, but can still be characterised later on by modern methods of proteomics, a technique analysing all proteins at once. This is successful, since the structure of the tissue is "fixed" in a way that the protein molecules remain accessible for systematic analysis. This technique therefore meets current requirements in terms of a more personalised medicine and thus opens up ...