Breast cancer patients receiving radiotherapy showed decreased fatigue as a result of cognitive behavioral therapy plus hypnosis (CBTH), according to a study recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The study, titled, "Randomized Controlled Trial of a Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy Plus Hypnosis Intervention to Control Fatigue in Patients Undergoing Radiotherapy for Breast Cancer," was led by Guy Montgomery, PhD, Associate Professor and Director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program in the Department of Oncological Sciences, Icahn School of Medicine ...

Forty African countries showed reductions in malaria transmission between 2000-2010, but despite this progress, more than half (57 per cent) of the population in countries endemic for malaria continue to live in areas of moderate to intense transmission, with infection rates over 10 per cent. The findings are based on a series of prevalence maps for malaria published this week in the Lancet. A team led by Dr Abdisalan Noor and Professor Robert Snow of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme produced the maps by geocoding data from surveys in 44 African countries and ...

The synthetic chemicals used in the packaging, storage, and processing of foodstuffs might be harmful to human health over the long term, warn environmental scientists in a commentary in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. This is because most of these substances are not inert and can leach into the foods we eat, they say. Despite the fact that some of these chemicals are regulated, people who eat packaged or processed foods are likely to be chronically exposed to low levels of these substances throughout their lives, say the authors. And far too little ...

The restricted availability of defibrillators, and poor understanding of how to use them, are helping to boost the number of deaths from heart attacks occurring outside hospitals, suggests a study of one English county, published online in the journal Heart. This is despite several campaigns to increase the numbers of these life-saving devices in public places, and the acknowledgement of the importance of their role in the English government's Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy, published last March, say the authors. Every minute of delay in administering resuscitation ...

The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational musical conversation showed robust activation of brain areas traditionally associated with spoken language and syntax, which are used to interpret the structure of phrases and sentences. But this musical conversation shut down brain areas linked to semantics — those that process the meaning of spoken language, according to results of a study by Johns Hopkins researchers. The study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to track the brain activity of jazz musicians in the act of "trading ...

Have you ever noticed that your best friends speak the same way? A new University of British Columbia study finds we prefer voices that are similar to our own because they convey a soothing sense of community and social belongingness. While previous research has suggested that we prefer voices that sound like they are coming from smaller women or bigger men, the new study – published today in the journal PLOS ONE – identifies a variety of other acoustic signals that we find appealing. [NB: Article available at: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0088616] "The ...

National Institutes of Health researchers have identified gene variants that cause a rare syndrome of sporadic fevers, skin rashes and recurring strokes, beginning early in childhood. The team's discovery coincides with findings by an Israeli research group that identified an overlapping set of variants of the same gene in patients with a similar type of blood vessel inflammation. The NIH group first encountered a patient with the syndrome approximately 10 years ago. The patient, then 3 years old, experienced fevers, skin rash and strokes that left her severely disabled. ...

Research published today from Queen Mary University of London reveals less than 1 in 3 women have taken folic acid supplements before pregnancy to prevent spina bifida and other birth defects of the brain, spine, or spinal cord (neural tube defects). This is despite research from 1991 showing that such conditions could be prevented in most cases by increasing the intake of the B-vitamin folic acid before pregnancy. The study, carried out by Queen Mary's Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine and published in the journal PLOS ONE, questioned nearly half a million women ...

Scientists at Imperial College London have discovered that iron deficiency may increase stroke risk by making the blood more sticky. The findings, published in the journal PLOS ONE, could ultimately help with stroke prevention. Every year, 15 million people worldwide suffer a stroke. Nearly six million die and another five million are left permanently disabled. The most common type, ischaemic stroke, occurs because the blood supply to the brain is interrupted by small clots. In the last few years, several studies have shown that iron deficiency, which affects around ...

When facing a flood, ants build rafts and use both the buoyancy of the brood and the recovery ability of workers to minimize injury or death, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 19, 2014 by Jessica Purcell from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. Furthermore, the queen ant is placed in the middle and protected on all sides by the rafting ants. When put in harm's way, social animals are often able to work together to enhance the survival and welfare of the group. Ants living on flood plains are known to link to together to create rafts ...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant adult brain tumor and, despite treatment advances in recent years, the average survival of patients enrolled in clinical trials is less than 16 months with few patients living beyond five years. GBM tumors are characterized by angiogenesis — the formation of new blood vessels that support tumor growth stimulated by the GBM-produced vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets VEGF-A production to block the growth of tumor-derived blood vessels. "Clinical trials evaluating ...

HOUSTON — The angiogenesis inhibitor bevacizumab (Avastin) failed to increase overall survival (OS) or statistically significant progression-free survival (PFS) for glioblastoma patients in the frontline setting, according to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, and was first presented on the plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2013 Annual Meeting by Mark Gilbert, M.D., professor in MD Anderson's Department of Neuro-Oncology. Glioblastoma is ...

BALTIMORE – February 19, 2014. Adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard chemotherapy and radiation treatment does not improve survival for patients newly diagnosed with the often deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, researchers report in the Feb. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "We didn't see an improvement in overall survival or a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival, as defined in the context of this trial," says the study's senior author, Minesh P. Mehta, M.B., Ch.B., Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Maryland ...

Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have developed software that greatly expands the types of multi-scale QM/MM (mixed quantum and molecular mechanical) simulations of complex chemical systems that scientists can use to design new drugs, better chemicals, or improved enzymes for biofuels production. A paper outlining the research, titled 'An Extensible Interface for QM/MM Molecular Dynamics Simulations with AMBER' and conducted by members of the Walker Molecular Dynamics Lab (WMD) at SDSC, was featured on the cover ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 19, 2014 -- Life can be messy at all scales, requiring different organizational strategies -- from cleaning the house, to removing damaged or expired cells from the body to avoid cancer progression. In a messy house, people use computers to manage paper and photo clutter; companies use computer systems to track their inventory. Now a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., is taking a similar approach to cell-molecular inventory control for cancer. They have created computer models, using their programming framework (PySB), ...

PHILADELPHIA – A new study provides evidence for what many people who experience headache have long suspected—having more stress in your life leads to more headaches. The study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. For the study, 5,159 people age 21 to 71 in the general population were surveyed about their stress levels and headaches four times a year for two years. Participants stated how many headaches they had per month and rated their stress level on a scale of zero to ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Emergency rooms are less likely to transfer critically injured patients to trauma centers if they have health insurance, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The counterintuitive finding suggests that insured patients are more at risk for receiving sub-optimal trauma care than uninsured patients are. Although a majority of severely injured trauma patients are initially taken to trauma centers, at least one-third are taken to non-trauma centers. In these cases, emergency room doctors must assess the ...

A reduced risk of cervical lesions among Danish girls and women at the population level is associated with use of a quadrivalent HPV vaccine after only six years, according to a new study published February 19 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Two HPV vaccines are currently available and have proven to be highly effective against HPV16/18-associated cervical cancer. One of these vaccines, a quadrivalent vaccine, was licensed in Denmark in 2006, and it was subsequently incorporated into general childhood vaccination programs for girls free of charge and ...

Although the time and cost of sequencing an entire human genome has plummeted, analyzing the resulting three billion base pairs of genetic information from a single genome can take many months. In the journal Bioinformatics, however, a University of Chicago-based team—working with Beagle, one of the world's fastest supercomputers devoted to life sciences—reports that genome analysis can be radically accelerated. This computer, based at Argonne National Laboratory, is able to analyze 240 full genomes in about two days. "This is a resource that can change patient management ...

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. – February 19, 2014 – New research shows that the addition of confocal laser endomicroscopy to high-definition white-light endoscopy enables improved real-time endoscopic diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus dysplasia (neoplastic tissue) by using targeted biopsies of abnormal mucosa to reduce unnecessary mucosal biopsies and potentially reduce costs. It may also positively influence patient care by changing the plan for immediate endoscopic management. The study appears in the February issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific ...

VIDEO: Zoom into the cloudy heart of an active galaxy. This animation shows an artist's rendition of the cloudy structure revealed by a study of data from NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing... Click here for more information. Picture a single cloud large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto's orbit. Now imagine many such clouds orbiting in a vast ring at the heart of a distant galaxy, occasionally dimming the X-ray light produced by the galaxy's monster black ...

For the first time, an international team of astrophysicists, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, have unraveled how stars blow up in supernova explosions. Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) – a high-energy X-ray observatory - the international collaboration created the first-ever map of radioactive material in a supernova remnant, named Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short. The findings reveal how shock waves likely rip apart massive dying stars, and ultimately end their lives. A supernova is the cataclysmic death of a ...

The final results from an international clinical trial involving nearly 2,000 patients with Crohn's disease support the use of a new management strategy referred to as accelerated step-care as a best practice for the care of active Crohn's disease. The REACT (Randomized Evaluation of an Algorithm for Crohn's Treatment) study, led by Robarts Clinical Trials at Western University (London, Canada) provides valuable new insights for community gastroenterologists which should benefit patients. The results of the study will be presented at the European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 19, 2014 -- Using a new microscopy method, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory can image and measure electrochemical processes in batteries in real time and at nanoscale resolution. Scientists at ORNL used a miniature electrochemical liquid cell that is placed in a transmission electron microscope to study an enigmatic phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries called the solid electrolyte interphase, or SEI, as described in a study published in Chemical Communications. The SEI is a nanometer-scale film that forms ...

HOUSTON – (Feb. 19, 2014) – Many Texans were struggling to pay for basic health services on the eve of the launch of the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplace, according to a report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation. The report also found that even those with health insurance reported dissatisfaction with the cost and availability of services. Most Texans expect more of the same in 2014. The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS)-Texas report is based on the HRMS, a national project that ...