How does a doctor tackle the delicate issue of end-of-life care planning with a patient? With an aging population and people living longer with chronic illness, it is increasingly important for patients and family members to decide how they and their loved ones would like to spend their final days. And for physicians in both hospital and primary care settings, it is crucial that they know how to address this issue with sensitivity. A new "conversation guide" in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) aims to guide physicians through these sensitive discussions with ...

Hamilton, ON (July 15, 2013) - How does a doctor tackle the delicate issue of end-of-life care planning with a patient? With an aging population and people living longer with chronic illness, it is increasingly important for patients and family members to decide how they and their loved ones would like to spend their final days. And for physicians in both hospital and primary care settings, it is crucial that they know how to address this issue with sensitivity. A new "conversation guide" in Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) aims to guide physicians through ...

PHILADELPHIA — Scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) have generated a data set of cancer-specific genetic variations and are making these data available to the research community, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. This will help cancer researchers better understand drug response and resistance to cancer treatments. "To date, this is the largest database worldwide, containing 6 billion data points that connect drugs with genomic variants for the whole human genome across cell lines ...

A team of scientists, led by researchers at The Wistar Institute, has determined that it might be possible to stimulate the immune system against multiple strains of influenza virus by sequentially vaccinating individuals with distinct influenza strains isolated over the last century. Their results also suggest that world health experts might need to re-evaluate standard tests used for surveillance of novel influenza strains. Their findings are published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, available online now. According to the Wistar researchers, their analysis ...

VIDEO: Scientists at MIT and Oxford University have shown that the motility of phytoplankton also helps them determine their fate in ocean turbulence. Click here for more information. CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Tiny ocean plants, or phytoplankton, were long thought to be passive drifters in the sea — unable to defy even the weakest currents, or travel by their own volition. In recent decades, research has shown that many species of these unicellular microorganisms can swim, and do ...

As a consequence of the Affordable Care Act, between 500,000 and 900,000 Americans may choose to stop working. That possibility is predicted in a new analysis of an analogous situation in reverse: the abrupt end of Tennessee's Medicaid expansion in 2005. That year, Tennessee dropped 170,000 of its citizens from Medicaid. It was the largest Medicaid disenrollment in the history of the program. Economists from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business ...

Researchers have uncovered a previously unknown role for the acetylcholine-activated inward-rectifying potassium current (IKACh) in cardiac pacemaker activity and heart rate regulation, according to a study in The Journal of General Physiology. The heart rate increases in response to fear or exercise, when the body's sympathetic nervous system activates the "fight or flight" stress response. After sympathetic stimulation, the heart rate is brought back to normal by the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates the body at rest. Parasympathetic regulation of the ...

The number of tick-borne illnesses reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on the rise. Lyme disease leads the pack, with some 35,000 cases reported annually. In the Northeast, the black-legged ticks (Ixodes scapularis) that spread Lyme disease also infect people with other maladies, among them anaplasmosis, babesiosis, and – as a new paper in the journal Parasites and Vectors reports – Powassan encephalitis. Powassan encephalitis is caused by Powassan virus and its variant, deer tick virus. The virus is spread to people by infected ticks, and ...

VIDEO: RecBCD enzymes are unwinding DNA at different speeds. The bright ball at left is a bead, the bright strand is a stretch of DNA that shortens as it is unwound... Click here for more information. Experiments by biochemists at the University of California, Davis show for the first time that a law of physics, the ergodic theorem, can be demonstrated by a collection of individual protein molecules -- specifically, a protein that unwinds DNA. The work will be published online ...

Chemotherapy is one of the primary treatments for cancer. However, one of the most disturbing findings of recent studies of cancer survivors is the apparent prevalence of chemotherapy-associated adverse neurological effects, including vascular complications, seizures, mood disorders, cognitive dysfunctions, and peripheral neuropathies. In addition, chemotherapy triggers changes in ion channels on dorsal root ganglia and dorsal horn neurons that generate secondary changes resulting in neuropathic pains. Although a number of protective agents have been developed, their effects ...

Increasing evidence has revealed that the activation of the JNK pathway participates in apoptosis of nerve cells and neurological function recovery after traumatic brain injury. However, which genes in the JNK family are activated and their role in traumatic brain injury remain unclear. Dr. Jiang Long and colleagues from the First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, China found that JNK3 expression was downregulated at early stages of brain injury, which may be associated with apoptosis of nerve cells. Downregulation of JNK3 expression may promote the recovery ...

Microglial cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Chronic activation of microglial cells endangers neuronal survival through the release of various proinflammatory and neurotoxic factors, including tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interleukin-1beta, interleukin-6, nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species. According to a study reported in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 18, 2013), organotypic hippocampal slice cultures and primary microglial cells from rat brain were stimulated ...

A new study suggests that some very preterm babies have trouble bonding with their care-givers due to neurological impairments and not to the way their parents interact with them. University of Warwick researchers found that most very preterm and very low birthweight (VP/VLBW) infants were securely attached to their parents. But they also found that VP/VLBW infants were at higher risk for what is termed 'disorganised attachment' – when a child shows conflicting behaviour in their relationship with their parents. Healthy attachment sees a child using the parent as ...

Fizzy drinks, cakes, biscuits, crisps and desserts have all been identified as risk factors for bowel cancer, according to new research. The study is the first of its kind to find a positive link between the disease and a diet high in foods that contain a lot of sugar and fat. Researchers looked at risk factors including diet, levels of physical activity and smoking in a large Scottish study. A team from the University of Edinburgh examined more than 170 foods. These included fruit, vegetables, fish and meat, as well as high-energy snack foods like chocolates, ...

Physicists from the University of York have carried out new research into how the heating effect of an experimental cancer treatment works. Magnetic hyperthermia is viewed as an attractive approach for the treatment of certain cancers as it has no known side effects compared to more conventional therapies such as chemotherapy. It is particularly suitable for the treatment of prostate cancer and brain tumours. However, until now there has been no clear theoretical understanding of how it actually works. Treatment by magnetic hyperthermia involves injecting magnetic nanoparticles ...

The best way to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change is through the use of market forces, according to a new study. Researchers who monitored the effectiveness of the European Climate Exchange (ECX) - the world's biggest carbon trading platform – found it to be as efficient as Europe's two biggest exchanges, the London Stock Exchange and the Euronext Paris. Using free market platforms like the ECX to combat climate change could provide the basis for the introduction of a mandatory emissions cap and trade scheme worldwide. The report found that the ...

Parents are increasingly experiencing a 'time squeeze' as they struggle to navigate the pressures of full-time employment and the demands of caring for their children. Research in the Journal of Marriage and Family examines if flexible working schemes are helping or adding to this pressure. The authors examined how the introduction of ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) has impacted parents' perceptions of their time. Under this scheme employees are paid for results, rather than their time. The data showed that both parents saw changes in working hours such as ROWE ...

Chestnut Hill, MA (July 15, 2013) – Chemists at Boston College and Nagoya University in Japan have synthesized the first example of a new form of carbon, the team reports in the most recent online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry. The new material consists of multiple identical pieces of grossly warped graphene, each containing exactly 80 carbon atoms joined together in a network of 26 rings, with 30 hydrogen atoms decorating the rim. Because they measure slightly more than a nanometer across, these individual molecules are referred to generically as "nanocarbons," ...

If you want teams of students to stay engaged while playing educational games, you might want them to switch seats pretty often. That's one finding from a pilot study that evaluated how well middle school students were able to pay attention to game-based learning tasks. Students at a Raleigh, N.C., middle school were divided into two-person teams for the pilot study. Researchers from North Carolina State University then had each team test gaming concepts for an educational game called "Engage," which allows only one student at a time to control gameplay. The researchers ...

A few months back, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) was proud to publish an article regarding a research accomplishment by Dr. Jim Tour and his research team at Rice University. AFOSR, along with other funding agencies, supported Dr. Tour's research effort to make graphene suitable for a variety of organic chemistry applications -- especially the promise of advanced chemical sensors, nanoscale electronic circuits and metamaterials. Four years ago, Tour's research team demonstrated that they could chemically unzip cylindrical shaped carbon nanotubes ...

This news release is available in German. The light they emit is as unique as a fingerprint: random lasers are tiny devices with a light emission pattern governed by random scattering of light. Understanding the underlying details of random lasing action has only been achieved recently. Now scientists at the Vienna University of Technology have presented a method to steer the radiation emitted by a random laser into a pre-determined direction. What has started out as a curious idea now has the potential to become a useful new type of light source. Randomness instead ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The discovery of brain impairment in mice may eventually lead to better therapies for people with schizophrenia and major depression. Studying rodents that have a gene associated with mental illness, Michigan State University neuroscientist Alexander Johnson and colleagues found a link between a specific area of the prefrontal cortex, and learning and behavioral deficits. While much work needs to be done, the discovery is a major step toward better understanding mental illness. While antipsychotic drugs can treat hallucinations related to schizophrenia, ...

The sperm of obese fathers could increase the risk of both their children and their grandchildren inheriting obesity, according to new research from University of Adelaide. In laboratory studies, researchers from the University's Robinson Institute have found that molecular signals in the sperm of obese fathers can lead to obesity and diabetes-like symptoms in two generations of offspring, even though the offspring are eating healthily. The results of the research are published online in The FASEB Journal. "A father's diet changes the molecular makeup of the sperm. ...

(TORONTO, Canada – July 15, 2013) – Scientists led by Drs. Mona Gauthier and Tak Mak at The Campbell Family Institute for Breast Cancer Research at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have solved a key piece in the puzzle of how BRCA1 gene mutations specifically predispose women to breast and ovarian cancers. The answer, says Dr. Mak in research published today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, is found in the way estrogen rushes in to "rescue" cells whose healthy functioning has been altered by oxidative stress, a well-established factor in cancer development. ...

A drug originally developed to prevent the rejection of transplanted organs has now been shown to dramatically reduce seizures in patients with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) – a genetic disease characterized by benign tumors on multiple organ systems. TSC is estimated to affect more than a million individuals throughout the world. The study is the latest to demonstrate the effectiveness of everolimus for TSC patients. Previous studies conducted at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center showed that everolimus reduced tumors in the brain and the kidney. The ...