Will there be rather warm or cold winters in Germany in the coming years? We may have a long way to go before reliable forecasts of this kind can be achieved. However, marine scientists, under the auspices of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, recently managed to successfully hindcast climate shifts in the Pacific. These shifts also have a profound effect on the average global surface air temperature of the Earth. The most recent shift in the 1990s is one of the reasons that the Earth's temperature has not risen further since 1998. The study, published ...

San Francisco, CA. (August 22, 2013) – A simple four-part program—including referral to a quit-smoking hotline and a free supply of nicotine patches—can increase the percentage of patients who quit smoking before undergoing surgery, reports a study in the September issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). The "easily implemented and inexpensive" program significantly improves preoperative smoking cessation rates, according to the new research by Dr Susan M. Lee of University of Western Ontario, London, ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Aug. 22, 2013) – Patients receiving cranial irradiation treatment for brain cancer may find the treatment life-saving, but often suffer progressive and debilitating cognitive detriments, including spatial learning and memory deficits. The cognitive deficits are a contributing factor to the often significant adverse impacts on the surviving patients' quality of life after radiation therapy. In an effort to improve post-irradiation cognitive impairment, scientists at the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues at Neuralstem, Inc. (Rockville, ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Working overtime may cost you your health, according to a Kansas State University doctoral researcher. Sarah Asebedo, doctoral student in personal financial planning and conflict resolution, Edina, Minn., conducted a study using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. She and her colleagues -- Sonya Britt, assistant professor of family studies and human services and director of the university's personal financial planning program, and Jamie Blue, doctoral student in personal financial planning, Tallahassee, Fla. -- found a preliminary link between ...

This news release is available in German. In the future, carbon nanomembranes are expected to be able to filter out very fine materials. These separating layers are ultrathin, consisting of just one layer of molecules. In the long term, they could allow to separate gases from one another, for example, filtering toxins from the air. At present, the basic research is concerned with the production of nanomembranes. A research team working with Professor Dr. Armin Gölzhäuser of Bielefeld University has succeeded in developing a new path to produce such membranes. The ...

A simple kitchen sink experiment helped Northwestern University researchers discover that green tea leaves not only can be used to steep a good cup of tea, but they make an excellent antibacterial coating, too. And so can red wine, dark chocolate and cacao beans, they found. It's the powerful and healthful polyphenols at work in a new way. (Polyphenols are naturally occurring molecules found in plants whose functions include structural support and defense against bacteria and oxidative damage.) Polyphenols are sticky, and the researchers exploited this useful property, ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 22, 2013—The ability of different regions of the brain to communicate gradually breaks down with aging and in Alzheimer's disease, but there are key differences between these two processes. Some of these differences are reported in a study that compared neural networks, signaling efficiency, and disruptions in connectivity in the brains of healthy elderly subjects and patients with Alzheimer's disease. The article is published in Brain Connectivity, a bimonthly peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, and is available free ...

Retirees should be masters of their own destiny, and actively manage and plan their free time to ensure a happy and fulfilling retirement. This is the advice of Wei-Ching Wang of the I-Shou University in Taiwan, leader of a study published in Springer's journal Applied Research in Quality of Life. The study found that the effective management of free time has a far greater impact on a retiree's quality of life than the amount of time the person actually has available for leisure activities. Wang and his team studied the responses of 454 Taiwanese retirees to understand ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 22, 2013 — UC Irvine infectious disease researchers have uncovered components of the SARS coronavirus – which triggered a major outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2002-03 – that allow it to take over host cells in order to replicate. This insight is critical for a full understanding of any outbreaks caused by such viruses and may prove beneficial in the development of therapies not only for human coronavirus infections but for other pathogenic illnesses as well. Study results appear online in the July/August issue of mBio. Megan Angelini, ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 22, 2013—Risk factor modification efforts could help reduce the chance of another heart attack and death among the more than 15 million Americans with coronary heart disease. Yet some patients—especially women and minorities—leave the hospital with poorly managed risk factors. An article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers, evaluates cardiac risk factors and management strategies by age, sex, and race among 2,369 patients hospitalized for acute myocardial infarction. The article is available ...

Satellite pictures of Saharan dust clouds have been in the news all summer, but to Shankar Chellam, they have just raised more questions. How much impact did the Saharan dust have on Houston's air? Is it more toxic than our home-grown dust? Chellam, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Houston's Cullen College of Engineering, is searching for answers to those and other questions. Clouds of African dust often migrate across the Atlantic Ocean during summer months, affecting Houston's air quality from mid-June through ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Aug 22 2013) – Multipotent fetal dermal cells (MFDCs) may be an ideal source for cell therapy for repairing damaged tissues and organs. Their performance is superior to that of adult dermal cells, said a research team in Italy that developed a cell isolation technique for MFDCs and subsequently published a study that appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/ct1022chinnici. "When compared to adult dermal cells, fetal cells display ...

AUSTIN, Texas — In the wake of tragedies such as the Sandy Hook school shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing and the devastating explosion in the Texas town of West, people are often left asking, "Why did this happen?" According to new research from The University of Texas at Austin, the best way to make sense of tragedy is to turn away from detailed reports in the news and social media and adopt a more simplified understanding of the event. The study, published online in Social Psychological and Personality Science, shows that in the wake of a negative event, people ...

Findings from a University of Alberta researcher shed new light on what may be stopping people from recycling more. Jennifer Argo, a marketing professor in the U of A's Alberta School of Business, says that people are psychologically hard-wired to believe that products that are damaged or that aren't whole—such as small or ripped paper or dented cans—are useless, and this leads users to trash them rather than recycle them. To circumvent overcrowding landfills and environmental problems, Argo says consumers and manufacturers can take steps to override the urge to toss ...

PHILADELPHIA (August 21, 2013) -- New research from the Monell Center reveals that bubbles are not necessary to experience the unique 'bite' of carbonated beverages. Bubbles do, however, enhance carbonation's bite through the light feel of the bubbles picked up by our sense of touch. The refreshing bite of carbonation is an integral part of beverages consumed around the globe. Carbonated beverages are produced when carbon dioxide is dissolved in a liquid, typically under high pressure. This can happen naturally in certain spring waters or in fermented beverages like ...

Plant residues in cooking pots reveal the use of spices in prehistoric cuisine in northern Europe, according to research published August 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Hayley Saul and colleagues from the University of York. Blackened deposits inside the pottery shards studied contained residues of microscopic plant silica bodies, called phytoliths, which resemble those found in modern-day garlic mustard seeds, a peppery mustard-flavored spice. Garlic mustard has little nutritional value, and the shards also contained residues of fats from a range of marine ...

Smokers with more severe nicotine dependence are more likely to gain weight when they try to quit, according to research published August 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Koji Hasegawa and colleagues from Kyoto Medical Center, Japan. Even with nicotine replacement therapy, individuals can gain substantial amounts of weight when they quit smoking. Here, researchers studied weight gain patterns in individuals who successfully abstained from smoking after nicotine replacement therapy at a clinic. They found that higher scores on the Fagerström Test for Nicotine ...

Native Brazilian fruits grown in arid climates and poor soil have similar antioxidant activity to conventionally grown Red Delicious apples, according to research published August 21 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Sandra Fernandes Arruda from the University of Brazil and colleagues from other institutions. Twelve fruit species grown on the Cerrado, a savanna with acidic soils, were compared to conventional Red Delicious apples purchased at local markets; the researchers found that several of these native species had higher proportions of bioactive compounds and ...

In the summer of 2010, the eastern Panamanian province of Darien experienced a phenomenon that had never been seen before in Latin America: a human outbreak of eastern equine encephalitis. The mosquito-borne virus that causes the disease is found all over the Americas, and infects horses throughout its range. Human infections are diagnosed every year in North America and are taken quite seriously; they carry a 50 percent chance of mortality, and can result in lifelong neurological damage. But 2010 marked a dramatic change in the way the virus behaved in Latin America. "Until ...

Vedolizumab, a new intravenous antibody medication, has shown positive results for treating both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, according to researchers at the University of California San Diego, School of Medicine. The findings, published in two papers, will appear in the August 22 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). William Sandborn, MD, principal investigator of the Crohn's disease study, said the results offer new hope to the more than one million Americans who suffer from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and do not respond to treatment. ...

Scientists have successfully treated the deadly Ebola virus in infected animals following onset of disease symptoms, according to a report published online today in Science Translational Medicine. The results show promise for developing therapies against the virus, which causes hemorrhagic fever with human case fatality rates as high as 90 percent. According to first author James Pettitt of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), the research team previously demonstrated that the treatment—known as MB-003—protected 100 percent of non-human ...

There are many causes of ageing, a process that is determined by an accumulation of various kinds of cell damage that impair the function of bodily organs. Of particular importance to ageing, however, seems to be the damage that occurs in the cell's power plant – the mitochondrion. "The mitochondrion contains its own DNA, which changes more than the DNA in the nucleus, and this has a significant impact on the ageing process," says Nils-Göran Larsson, professor at Karolinska Institutet and principal investigator at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Aging, and leader ...

Boston, Mass., Aug. 21, 2013—The pain of invasive skin infections caused by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, and possibly other serious, painful infections, appear to be induced by the invading bacteria themselves, and not by the body's immune response as previously thought, report scientists at Boston Children's Hospital. What's more, their research demonstrates that once the pain neurons "sense" the bacteria, they suppress the immune system, potentially helping the bacteria become more virulent. The study, conducted in a mouse model and published online ...

PHILADELPHIA — Poor oral health, including gum disease and dental problems, was found to be associated with oral human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, which causes about 40 percent to 80 percent of oropharyngeal cancers, according to a study published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Poor oral health is a new independent risk factor for oral HPV infection and, to our knowledge, this is the first study to examine this association," said Thanh Cong Bui, Dr.P.H., postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Public ...

Half of all UK seven year olds are sedentary for six to seven hours every day, and only half clock up the recommended daily minimum of moderate to vigorous physical activity, indicates research published in the online journal BMJ Open. Girls, children of Indian ethnic origin, and those living in Northern Ireland are the least physically active of all seven year olds, the findings show. The authors base their findings on a representative population sample of almost 7000 UK primary school children who were all part of the Millennium Cohort Study. This is tracking the ...