BOSTON – Repeating bone mineral density (BMD) tests after four years provides little clinical benefit when assessing bone fracture risk in seniors age 75 and older, according to a recent study led by researchers at the Harvard Medical School-affiliated Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife. The study appears in the Sept. 25 online issue of JAMA. BMD testing is an important tool in osteoporosis risk assessment and management, although there are no established guidelines for the appropriate time interval between tests. Medicare pays for BMD screening every two ...

New research from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) quantifies the potential impacts of increasing wind and solar power generation on the operators of fossil-fueled power plants in the West. To accommodate higher amounts of wind and solar power on the electric grid, utilities must ramp down and ramp up or stop and start conventional generators more frequently to provide reliable power for their customers – a practice called cycling. The study finds that the carbon emissions induced by more frequent cycling are negligible ( END ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory and telescopes on the ground may have found the most crowded galaxy in our part of the universe. The ultra-compact dwarf galaxy, known as M60-UCD1, may be the densest galaxy near to Earth, packed with an extraordinary number of stars. This galaxy is providing astronomers with clues to its intriguing past and its role in the galactic evolutionary chain. M60-UCD1, estimated to be about 10 billion years old, is near the massive elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, also called M60, about 54 million light ...

Imagine the distance between the sun and the star nearest to it – a star called Alpha Centauri. That's a distance of about 4 light years. Now, imagine as many as 10,000 of our suns crammed into that relatively small space. That is about the density of a galaxy that was recently discovered by an international team of astronomers led by a Michigan State University faculty member. "This galaxy is more massive than any ultra-compact drawfs of comparable size," said Jay Strader, MSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, "and is arguably the densest galaxy known in ...

PHILADELPHIA— At least 30 percent of patients in intensive care units (ICUs) suffer some form of mental dysfunction as reflected in anxiety, depression, and especially delirium. In mechanically-ventilated ICU patients, the incidence of delirium is particularly high, about 80 percent, and may be due in part to damage in the hippocampus, though how ventilation is increasing the risk of damage and mental impairment has remained elusive. Now, a new study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine from researchers at the University of Oviedo ...

AMES, Iowa – Using a new and super-sensitive instrument, researchers have discovered where a protein binds to plant cell walls, a process that loosens the cell walls and makes it possible for plants to grow. Researchers say the discovery could one day lead to bigger harvests of biomass for renewable energy. Finding that binding target has been a major challenge for structural biologists. That's because there are only tiny amounts of the protein involved in cell growth and because cell walls are very complex, said Mei Hong, one of the project's lead researchers who's ...

Infection, pneumonia, blood clots and kidney failure are all possible complications after any major surgery. A new study shows that smoking boosts the risk of such complications following some of the most common colorectal procedures, including surgery for colon cancer, diverticulitis or inflammatory bowel disease. Lighting up also increases a patient's risk of death after surgery compared with patients who have never smoked. The study, published in the Annals of Surgery, is unique because it focuses on elective, or non-emergency, surgeries. "Elective surgeries are ...

ANN ARBOR—Caregiving is always tough, but it's that much tougher when caregivers have to rely on family ties that are ambiguous, strained or virtually nonexistent, suggests a University of Michigan study. Published online this month in the Journal of Marriage and Family, the U-M study is one of the first to explore how divorce and remarriage affect wives who are caregivers. The issue affects large numbers of Americans. More than 35 million Americans are remarried, and nearly half a million adults over age 65 remarry every year. At the same time, Americans are living ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Diet can dramatically lower hypertension and improve heart function in patients with a common type of heart failure, according to research presented at today's Heart Failure Society of America meeting in Orlando, Fla. After 21 days of following a low-sodium Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) eating plan, patients saw a drop in blood pressure similar to taking anti-hypertension medicine. "Our work suggests diet could play an important role in the progression of heart failure, although patients should always talk to their doctor before ...

An intriguing study led by the University of Colorado Boulder may provide a powerful new tool in the quiver of forensic scientists attempting to determine the time of death in cases involving human corpses: a microbial clock. The clock is essentially the lock-step succession of bacterial changes that occur postmortem as bodies move through the decay process. And while the researchers used mice for the new study, previous studies on the human microbiome – the estimated 100 trillion or so microbes that live on and in each of us – indicate there is good reason to believe ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – For years, scientists have thought that a continental ice sheet formed during the Late Cretaceous Period more than 90 million years ago when the climate was much warmer than it is today. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found evidence suggesting that no ice sheet formed at this time. This finding could help environmentalists and scientists predict what the earth's climate will be as carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. "Currently, carbon dioxide levels are just above 400 parts per million (ppm), up approximately 120 ppm in the last ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Determining whether a patient's lung cancer has spread to nearby lymph nodes is critical for identifying the most effective therapy, but it usually requires surgery. A new study suggests, however, that measuring levels of a particular molecule in a sample of tumor tissue might accurately answer the question. Researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) have discovered that levels of microRNA-31 (miR-31) predict the spread of the most common ...

Australian researchers have demonstrated a strong association between the FTO (fat and obesity) gene and hip fracture in women. While the gene is already well known to affect diabetes and obesity, this is the first study to show that its high-risk variant can increase the risk of hip fracture by as much as 82%. The study, undertaken by Dr Bich Tran and Professor Tuan Nguyen from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, examined six gene variants (single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) of the FTO gene, taken from the DNA of 943 women in the Dubbo Osteoporosis ...

In the already complicated science of what creates – and causes constant change in – two giant doughnuts of radiation surrounding Earth, researchers have added a new piece of information: some of the electrons reach such enormous energies that they are driven by an entirely different set of physical processes. These results were published in a paper in Nature Physics on Sept. 22, 2013. Understanding the nature of these radiation belts and how they swell and shrink over time is an integral part of interpreting, and perhaps someday predicting, the space weather that surrounds ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Abiraterone acetate, a recently FDA-approved drug used to treat men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, significantly delays progression of pain and quality of life deterioration when taken in conjunction with prednisone. The study, published Sept. 24 in Lancet Oncology, was led by Ethan Basch, MD, director of the Cancer Outcomes Research Program at the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Researchers measured the pain and quality of life impact of abiraterone acetate, an orally prescribed treatment ...

"You are not just a ball of cells," says Clifford Tabin, George Jacob and Jacqueline Hazel Leder Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School (HMS). The way cells organize within the human body allows us all to function the way we do, but a couple of Harvard professors are concerned as much with that developmental process as with the end result. Tabin shares a common perspective with L. Mahadevan, the Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), professor of organismic and evolutionary biology, ...

LEMONT, Ill. – Scientists broke new ground in the study of deep earthquakes, a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs where the oceanic lithosphere, driven by tectonics, plunges under continental plates – examples are off the coasts of the western United States, Russia and Japan. This research is a large step toward replicating the full power of these earthquakes to learn what sets them off and how they unleash their violence. It was made possible only by the construction of a one-of-a-kind X-ray facility that can replicate high-pressure and high-temperature while allowing ...

Patients suffering from early symptoms of Alzheimer's disease who were diagnosed sooner than usual using a brain imaging test received Alzheimer-specific medications earlier than those who did not have the brain imaging results available to their doctors or themselves. These patients also had significantly better clinical outcomes during the subsequent years they were clinically monitored, UCLA researchers have found for the first time. The Metabolic Cerebral Imaging in Incipient Dementia study is an ongoing national clinical trial sponsored by the Centers for Medicare ...

A team from The University of Texas at Arlington has used mathematical modeling to develop a computer simulation they hope will one day improve the treatment of dangerous reactions to medical implants such as stents, catheters and artificial joints. The work resulted from a National Institutes of Health-funded collaboration by research groups headed by Liping Tang, professor of bioengineering in the UT Arlington College of Engineering, and Jianzhong Su, chairman and professor in the UT Arlington College of Science's mathematics department. Results from their computational ...

Adopting proven sustainable land management practices could raise world crop supplies by an estimated 2.3 billion tonnes, worth $1.4 trillion, experts say in a study being released at a major global desertification conference. Conducted by the international Economics of Land Degradation initiative, the scientific interim report says land's economic value "is chronically undervalued and commonly determined by immediate agricultural or forestry market values." "This focus on short-term gain motivates the highest extraction rates possible from land, leading to unsustainable ...

Hereditary spastic paraplegia development associated with changes in endoplasmic reticulum Hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSP) are a group of hereditary diseases that result in progressive loss of motor function in the lower limbs, and mutations in many different genes have been implicated in disease progression. One common feature of HSP is the progressive degradation of the axons of cortical motor neurons; however, it is not fully understood how mutations in is so many different genes result in axonal degradation. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, ...

Hereditary spastic paraplegias (HSP) are a group of hereditary diseases that result in progressive loss of motor function in the lower limbs, and mutations in many different genes have been implicated in disease progression. One common feature of HSP is the progressive degradation of the axons of cortical motor neurons; however, it is not fully understood how mutations in is so many different genes result in axonal degradation. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Christian Hübner and colleagues at Jena University develop a mouse model of HSP by introducing ...

Distal renal tubular acidosis (dRTA) develops in response to the loss of acid secretion by α-intercalated cells in the kidney. The inability to remove acid from the body results in low blood potassium levels (hypokalemia), dehydration, and excess calcium in the urine (hypercalcemia), which leads to urinary stone formation. Recently, patients with dRTA have been identified with genetic mutations that lead to the inactivation of proton pumps found in β-intercalated cells, which have been thought to be responsible for base-secretion in the kidney. In this issue ...

Common variable immune deficiency (CVID) is a genetic disease associated with enhanced susceptibility to infection, autoimmunity, and decreased antibody production. Mutations in the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily member TACI, are associated with CVID and autoimmunity development. Interestingly, autoimmunity develops in CVID patients with only one mutated copy of TACI, and CVID patients with two mutated TACI alleles do not develop autoimmunity. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Eric Meffre and colleagues at Yale University evaluated B ...

Individuals with a mutation in the gene encoding a zinc transporter, SLC30A8 have an elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Insulin granules that are released from pancreatic β cells contain high levels of zinc; however, it is not clear why individuals with mutations in the SLC30A8 zinc transporter gene are predisposed to type 2 diabetes. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Yoshio Fujitani and colleagues at Juntendo University investigated the role of zinc transport by SLC30A8 in β cells. They found that this zinc transporter is required ...