Improving cooking fuels and kitchen ventilation is associated with better lung function and reduced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to research published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The study, led by Pixin Ran from the Guanzhou Medical University, China, followed 996 villagers from southern China for 9 years to examine the effects of cleaner fuels and better kitchen ventilation on lung function and disease. An estimated 3 billion people worldwide heat their homes and cook by burning biomass such as wood or animal dung. The resulting indoor air ...

VIDEO: This video shows the insect thorax reconstructed from tomograms and highlights the external movements of the thorax and the location of the indirect power and steering muscles. Click here for more information. Scientists have used a particle accelerator to obtain high-speed 3D X-ray visualizations of the flight muscles of flies. The team from Oxford University, Imperial College, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) developed a groundbreaking new CT scanning technique ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Millions of people worldwide – mostly women – suffer from recurrent urinary tract infections (UTIs) that seriously degrade their health and quality of life. Antibiotics treat individual infections, but preventing recurrent ones largely has been unattainable because of the way bacteria lodge in the inner layers of the bladder and quietly hide from drugs that can kill them. In new studies with mice, however, researchers led by University of Utah microbiologists have shown that when chitosan, an FDA-approved compound for pharmaceutical, agricultural and ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In life, many tasks have a context that dictates the right actions, so when people learn to do something new, they'll often infer cues of context and rules. In a new study, Brown University brain scientists took advantage of that tendency to track the emergence of such rule structures in the frontal cortex — even when such structure was not necessary or even helpful to learn — and to predict from EEG readings how people would apply them to learn new tasks speedily. Context and rule structures are everywhere. They allow an iPhone user ...

VIDEO: This is a 3D movie of a blowfly's flight muscles moving created by Oxford University and Imperial scientists using a new X-ray scanning technique. Click here for more information. The flight muscles moving inside flies have been filmed for the first time using a new 3D X-ray scanning technique. 3D movies of the muscles were created by a team from Oxford University, Imperial College London, and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), using the PSI's Swiss Light Source, ...

TORONTO, March 25, 2014--Strictly limiting the number of hours surgical residents can work has not improved patient outcomes but may have increased complications for some patients and led to higher failure rates on certification exams, a research paper concludes. Traditionally, doctors in the residency phase of their training spent very long hours in a hospital –often around-the-clock--so they could see a wide variety and high volume of patients. In the last 10 years, health authorities started limiting those hours in the hopes of improving patient safety and the education ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., March 25, 2014 — A team of scientists, led by Stuart Lipton, M.D., Ph.D., professor and director of the Neuroscience and Aging Research Center at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), recently discovered why cerebellar granule cell neurons in patients suffering from ataxia-telangiectasia (A-T) were unable to repair DNA damage and thus died. A-T is a hereditary condition that begins early in childhood, and causes a gradual loss of certain nerve cells in the cerebellum of the brain. A-T occurs in about 1 in 40,000 births, with symptoms ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered impaired neuronal activity in the parts of the brain associated with anticipatory functioning among occasional 18- to 24-year-old users of stimulant drugs, such as cocaine, amphetamines and prescription drugs such as Adderall. The brain differences, detected using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), are believed to represent an internal hard wiring that may make some people more prone to drug addiction later in life. Among the study's main implications is the possibility ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – Veterans with liver disease who live more than 100 miles from a Veterans Administration hospital that offers liver transplants are only half as likely to be placed on the liver transplant waitlist to receive a new organ compared to veterans who live closer to transplant centers, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. The findings, which are published in the March 26 issue of JAMA, also reveal that the further liver disease patients live from these five transplant centers, the more likely they are ...

Among patients with the condition known as Barrett esophagus, treatment of abnormal cells with radiofrequency ablation (use of heat applied through an endoscope to destroy cells) resulted in a reduced risk of this condition progressing to cancer, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA. In the last 3 decades, the incidence of esophageal cancer has increased more rapidly that other cancers in the Western world. This type of cancer often originates from Barrett esophagus, a condition that involves abnormal changes in the cells of the lower portion of the esophagus, ...

Among university students in New Zealand, a web-based alcohol screening and brief intervention program produced a modest reduction in the amount of alcohol consumed per drinking episode but not in the frequency of drinking, overall amount consumed, or in related academic problems, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA. Unhealthy alcohol use is common among young people, including university students. Using an internet site to screening students for unhealthy alcohol use and intervene if appropriate has been suggested as an inexpensive means of reaching large ...

Among veterans meeting eligibility for liver transplantation, greater distance from a Veterans Affairs transplant center or any transplant center was associated with lower likelihood of being put on a waitlist or receiving a transplant, and a greater likelihood of death, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA. Centralization of specialized health care services is used to control costs, concentrate expertise, and minimize regional differences in quality of care. Although efficient, centralization may offset gains in care delivery by increasing the distance ...

In a study that included nearly 300,000 adults without a known history of diabetes or cardiovascular disease (CVD), adding information about glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), a measure of longer-term blood sugar control, to conventional CVD risk factors like smoking and cholesterol was associated with little improvement in the prediction of CVD risk, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA. Because higher glucose levels have been associated with higher CVD incidence, it has been proposed that information on blood sugar control might improve doctors' ability to ...

There has been a sharp decline since 2006 in the use of nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI; an imaging procedure used to determine areas of the heart with decreased blood flow), a decrease that cannot be explained by an increase in other imaging methods, according to a study in the March 26 issue of JAMA. Nuclear myocardial perfusion imaging accounted for much of the rapid growth in cardiac imaging that occurred from the 1990s through the middle 2000s. Edward J. McNulty, M.D., of Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a study ...

COLLEGE STATION – Lab tests at Texas A&M AgriLife Research have shown that treatments with peach extract inhibit breast cancer metastasis in mice. AgriLife Research scientists say that the mixture of phenolic compounds present in the peach extract are responsible for the inhibition of metastasis, according to the study, which was this month published in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry. "Cancer cells were implanted under the skin of mice with an aggressive type of breast cancer cells, the MDA-MB-435, and what we saw was an inhibition of a marker gene in the lungs ...

VIDEO: In early tests, the research team used a Kuka KR5 sixx R650 robot, seen in action here. Click here for more information. When life on Earth was first getting started, simple molecules bonded together into the precursors of modern genetic material. A catalyst would have been needed, but enzymes had not yet evolved. One theory is that the catalytic minerals on a meteorite's surface could have jump-started life's first chemical reactions. But scientists need a way to directly ...

Epigenetic alterations disrupt intestinal T cell homeostasis A precise balance between mature T cell subsets is important for intestinal homeostasis. Disruption of T cell populations underlies autoimmune colitis, including inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Specific transcriptional programs are activated to determine the differentiation fate of naïve T cells; however, the role of epigenetic regulation in T cell maturation in the intestine is unclear. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Colby Zaph and colleagues from the University of British Columbia ...

Wild salamanders living in some of North America's best salamander habitat are getting smaller as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy in a changing climate. That's the key finding of a new study, published March 25 in the journal Global Change Biology, that examined museum specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains from 1957 to 2007 and wild salamanders measured at the same sites in 2011-2012. The salamanders studied from 1980 onward were, on average, 8% smaller than their counterparts from earlier decades. The changes were most ...

AMES, Iowa – Let's say plant scientists want to develop new lines of corn that will better tolerate long stretches of hot, dry weather. How can they precisely assess the performance of those new plants in different environmental conditions? Field tests can provide some answers. Greenhouse tests can provide some more. But how can plant scientists get a true picture of a plant's growth and traits under a wide variety of controlled environmental conditions? That job has been too big and too precise for most laboratories. There are a few labs around the world that can ...

Remote acoustic monitoring among endangered whales is the subject of a major article by two doctoral students in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. Leanna Matthews and Jessica McCordic, members of the Parks Lab in the Department of Biology, have co-authored "Remote Acoustic Monitoring of North Atlantic Right Whales Reveals Seasonal and Diel Variations in Acoustic Behavior." The article appears in the current issue of PLOS ONE, an inclusive, peer-reviewed, open-access resource from the Public Library of Science in San Francisco, Calif. Susan Parks, assistant ...

BOSTON–While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released guidelines for the regulation of mobile health (mHealth) apps that act as medical devices or as accessories to medical devices, the vast majority of mHealth apps remain unregulated and unevaluated. In a Viewpoint article, "In Search of a Few Good Apps", published in JAMA on March 24, 214, co-authors, David Bates, MD and Adam Landman, MD of Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) and Adam Powell, PhD, president of Payer+Provider Syndicate, call for the creation of mHealth (mobile health) app review and certification ...

Wild salamanders living in some of North America's best salamander habitat are getting smaller as their surroundings get warmer and drier, forcing them to burn more energy in a changing climate. That's the key finding of a new study co-authored by a Clemson University biologist and published Tuesday in the journal Global Change Biology that examined museum specimens caught in the Appalachian Mountains from 1957 to 2007 and wild salamanders measured at the same sites in 2011-2012. The salamanders studied from 1980 onward were, on average, eight percent smaller than their ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Nanotechnology is advancing tools likened to Star Trek's "tricorder" that perform on-the-spot chemical analysis for a range of applications including medical testing, explosives detection and food safety. Researchers found that when paper used to collect a sample was coated with carbon nanotubes, the voltage required was 1,000 times reduced, the signal was sharpened and the equipment was able to capture far more delicate molecules. A team of researchers from Purdue University and the Indian Institute of Technology Madras performed the study, which ...

A mathematical model created by Penn State researchers can predict with more than 90 percent accuracy the blood glucose levels of individuals with type 1 diabetes up to 30 minutes in advance of imminent changes in their levels -- plenty of time to take preventative action. "Many people with type 1 diabetes use continuous glucose monitors, which examine the fluid underneath the skin," said Peter Molenaar, Distinguished Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and of psychology. "But the glucose levels under the skin trail blood glucose levels from anywhere between ...

A visible image from NASA's Aqua satellite provides a clear picture that wind shear is responsible for weakening the once mighty Tropical Cyclone Gillian from hurricane to tropical storm strength. When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Gillian on March 25 at 06:30 UTC/2:30 a.m. EDT, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument took a visible picture of the storm. That image showed that wind shear has pushed clouds and showers away from the center as the storm weakened to a tropical storm. In the MODIS image, the center of Gillian's circulation ...