When cannibals ate brains of people who died from prion disease, many of them fell ill with the fatal neurodegenerative disease as well. Likewise, when cows were fed protein contaminated with bovine prions, many of them developed mad cow disease. On the other hand, transmission of prions between species, for example from cows, sheep, or deer to humans, is—fortunately—inefficient, and only a small proportion of exposed recipients become sick within their lifetimes. A study published on April 3rd in PLOS Pathogens takes a close look at one exception to this rule: bank ...

Washington, DC (April 3, 2014) — Kidney disease patients with poor quality of life are at increased risk of experiencing progression of their disease and of developing heart problems, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). The findings suggest that quality of life measurements may have important prognostic value in these individuals. Approximately 60 million people globally have chronic kidney disease (CKD). Quality of life has been well-studied in patients with end-stage kidney disease, but not ...

Washington, DC (April 3, 2014) — Just a modest amount of exercise may help reduce kidney disease patients' risks of developing heart disease and infections, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Heart disease and infection are major complications and the leading causes of death in patients with chronic kidney disease. It is now well established that immune system dysfunction is involved in both of these pathological processes. Specifically, impaired immune function predisposes to infection, while ...

The risk of stroke may be much higher in people with insomnia compared to those who don't have trouble sleeping, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. The risk also seems to be far greater when insomnia occurs as a young adult compared to those who are older, said researchers who reviewed the randomly-selected health records of more than 21,000 people with insomnia and 64,000 non-insomniacs in Taiwan. They found: Insomnia raised the likelihood of subsequent hospitalization for stroke by 54 percent over four years. The incidence ...

BOSTON (April 4, 2014) — Exfoliation glaucoma (EG), caused by exfoliation syndrome, a condition in which white clumps of fibrillar material form in the eye, is the most common cause of secondary open-angle glaucoma and a leading cause of blindness and visual impairment. Effective strategies for preventing this disease are lacking. Elevated homocysteine, which may enhance exfoliation material formation, is one possible risk factor that has received significant research attention. Research studies demonstrate that high intake of vitamin B6, vitamin B12 and folate ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Wearing a fitness tracker on your wrist or clipped to your belt is so 2013. Engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have demonstrated thin, soft stick-on patches that stretch and move with the skin and incorporate commercial, off-the-shelf chip-based electronics for sophisticated wireless health monitoring. The patches stick to the skin like a temporary tattoo and incorporate a unique microfluidic construction with wires folded like origami to allow the patch to bend and flex without being constrained ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – New Geology studies include a mid-Cretaceous greenhouse world; the Vredefort meteoric impact event and the Vredefort dome, South Africa; shallow creeping faults in Italy; a global sink for immense amounts of water on Mars; the Funeral Mountains, USA; insect-mediated skeletonization of fern leaves in China; first-ever tectonic geomorphology study in Bhutan; the Ethiopian Large Igneous Province; the Central Andean Plateau; the Scandinavian Ice Sheet; the India-Asia collision zone; the Snake River Plain; and northeast Brazil. Highlights are provided ...

MADISON – For Simon Gilroy, sometimes seeing is believing. In this case, it was seeing the wave of calcium sweep root-to-shoot in the plants the University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of botany is studying that made him a believer. Gilroy and colleagues, in a March 24, 2014 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed what long had been suspected but long had eluded scientists: that calcium is involved in rapid plant cell communication. It's a finding that has implications for those interested in how plants adapt to and thrive in changing ...

Cigarette smoking among obese women appears to interfere with their ability to taste fats and sweets, a new study shows. Despite craving high-fat, sugary foods, these women were less likely than others to perceive these tastes, which may drive them to consume more calories. M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Julie Mennella, PhD, a biopsychologist at the Monell Center in Philadelphia, where the research was conducted, studied four groups of women ages 21 to 41: obese smokers, obese nonsmokers, ...

Fairfax, Va., April 3, 2014—Dose-escalated intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) with use of a moderate hypofractionation regimen (72 Gy in 2.4 Gy fractions) can safely treat patients with localized prostate cancer with limited grade 2 or 3 late toxicity, according to a study published in the April 1, 2014 edition of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology · Biology · Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific journal of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Previous randomized clinical trials have shown that dose-escalated ...

NEW YORK (Embargoed – Not for release until 14:00 EST 3 April 2014) Wildlife fences are constructed for a variety of reasons including to prevent the spread of diseases, protect wildlife from poachers, and to help manage small populations of threatened species. Human–wildlife conflict is another common reason for building fences: Wildlife can damage valuable livestock, crops, or infrastructure, some species carry diseases of agricultural concern, and a few threaten human lives. At the same time, people kill wild animals for food, trade, or to defend lives or property, and ...

For years, researchers have been interested in developing quantum computers—the theoretical next generation of technology that will outperform conventional computers. Instead of holding data in bits, the digital units used by computers today, quantum computers store information in units called "qubits." One approach for computing with qubits relies on the creation of two single photons that interfere with one another in a device called a waveguide. Results from a recent applied science study at Caltech support the idea that waveguides coupled with another quantum particle—the ...

The U.S. Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has officially launched a new atomic clock, called NIST-F2, to serve as a new U.S. civilian time and frequency standard, along with the current NIST-F1 standard. NIST-F2 would neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years, making it about three times as accurate as NIST-F1, which has served as the standard since 1999. Both clocks use a "fountain" of cesium atoms to determine the exact length of a second. NIST scientists recently reported the first official performance ...

The scientific world is one step closer to understanding how nature uses carbon-capture to tame poisons, thanks to a recent discovery of cyanoformate by researchers at Saint Mary's University (Halifax, Canada) and the University of Jyväskylä (Finland). This simple ion — which is formed when cyanide bonds to carbon dioxide — is a by-product of the fruit-ripening process that has evaded detection for decades. Chemists have long understood the roles presence of cyanide (CN−) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in fruit ripening, but have always observed them independently. This ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Scientists have shown that temperature differences deep within Earth's mantle control the elevation and volcanic activity along mid-ocean ridges, the colossal mountain ranges that line the ocean floor. The findings, published April 4 in the journal Science, shed new light on how temperature in the depths of the mantle influences the contours of the Earth's crust. Mid-ocean ridges form at the boundaries between tectonic plates, circling the globe like seams on a baseball. As the plates move apart, magma from deep within the Earth rises ...

WHAT:Last year, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, held a scientific meeting to examine why certain investigational HIV vaccines may have increased susceptibility to HIV infection. In a new perspectives article appearing in the journal Science, HIV research leaders from NIAID (Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., and Carl W. Dieffenbach, Ph.D.) and its grantees at Emory University (Eric Hunter, Ph.D.) and the University of California, San Francisco (Susan Buchbinder, M.D.), summarize the findings and considerations ...

The use of fenced areas to protect threatened species in the wild should be a last resort, argue scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In an article published in the journal Science, the authors state that there is a need to review the use of fencing as the conservation community develops a clearer understanding of the ecological changes caused when an area is fenced. Fencing can have a disruptive impact on predator-prey dynamics, with species such as the African wild dog learning to chase prey into fences. ...

Researchers have genetically engineered trees that will be easier to break down to produce paper and biofuel, a breakthrough that will mean using fewer chemicals, less energy and creating fewer environmental pollutants. "One of the largest impediments for the pulp and paper industry as well as the emerging biofuel industry is a polymer found in wood known as lignin," says Shawn Mansfield, a professor of Wood Science at the University of British Columbia. Lignin makes up a substantial portion of the cell wall of most plants and is a processing impediment for pulp, ...

Enceladus—one of Saturn's smaller satellites—has joined the ranks of Titan and Europa as a moon that appears to have liquid water splashing around inside of it, researchers say. New gravity data from the Cassini spacecraft, which has been exploring the planet's moons for 10 years, reveal that Enceladus harbors an ocean of water beneath 18 to 24 miles (30 to 40 kilometers) of ice at its surface. A team of Italian and American scientists led by Luciano Iess at Sapienza Università di Roma in Rome, Italy investigated the moon's gravity field and the notable asymmetry it ...

In 2005, NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent pictures back to Earth depicting an icy Saturnian moon spewing water vapor and ice from fractures, known as "tiger stripes," in its frozen surface. It was big news that tiny Enceladus—a mere 500 kilometers in diameter—was such an active place. Since then, scientists have hypothesized that a large reservoir of water lies beneath that icy surface, possibly fueling the plumes. Now, using gravity measurements collected by Cassini, scientists have confirmed that Enceladus does in fact harbor a large subsurface ocean near its south pole, ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — What began 20 years ago as an innovation to improve paper industry processes and dairy forage digestibility may now open the door to a much more energy- and cost-efficient way to convert biomass into fuel. The research, which appears in the current issue of Science, focuses on enhancing poplar trees so they can break down easier and thus improving their viability as a biofuel. The long-term efforts and teamwork involved to find this solution can be described as a rare, top-down approach to engineering plants for digestibility, said Curtis Wilkerson, ...

BOSTON – Much has been reported about the potential for increased risk of alcohol misuse after weight loss surgery (WLS), with most theories pointing to lower alcohol tolerance and a longer time to return to a sober state after surgery, but a new study from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center suggests that upwards of half of high-risk drinkers are actually less likely to report high-risk drinking behavior after weight loss surgery. The results appear in the journal, Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. "This is the first study to show that high-risk drinking ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – As more baby boomers reach retirement age, state governments face the likelihood of higher workforce turnover. For example, in the state of Missouri, more than 25 percent of all active state employees will be eligible to retire by 2016. Such large numbers of retirees threaten the continuity, membership and institutional histories of the state government workforce, according to Angela Curl, assistant professor in the University of Missouri School of Social Work. In a case study of the state of Missouri's Deferred Retirement Option Provision (BackDROP), Curl ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Crops that produce more while using less water seem like a dream for a world with a burgeoning population and already strained food and water resources. This dream is coming closer to reality for University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers who have developed a new computer model that can help plant scientists breed better soybean crops. Under current climate conditions, the model predicts a design for a soybean crop with 8.5 percent more productivity, but using 13 percent less water, and reflecting 34 percent more radiation back into space, ...

New Rochelle, NY, April 3, 2014–In many recent incidents of premeditated mass shooting the perpetrators have been male and dressed in black, and may share other characteristics that could be used to identify potential shooters before they commit acts of mass violence. Risk factors related to the antihero, dark-knight persona adopted by these individuals are explored in an article in Violence and Gender, a new peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Violence and Gender website at http://www.liebertpub.com/vio. In ...