NEW YORK, NY (March 18, 2014) — Vitamin D deficiency has been implicated in numerous health conditions in recent years, including depressed mood and major depressive disorder. Recent observational studies provide some support for an association of vitamin D levels with depression, but the data do not indicate whether vitamin D deficiency causes depression or vice versa. These studies also do not examine whether vitamin D supplementation improves depression. A systematic review of clinical trials that have examined the effect of vitamin D supplementation on depression ...

Cardiac conduction altered by intragenic enhancer Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have determined a surprising link between dysfunctional cardiac conduction and variants within SCN10A, which encodes nociceptor-associated sodium-gated ion channel subunit NaV1.8. Follow-up functional studies targeting NaV1.8 revealed only a minor contribution to cardiac physiology; therefore, it was unclear how SCN10A mutations promoted the development of cardiac conduction disease. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the research groups of Vincent Christoffels, ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Geology papers published 17 Mar. 2014 cover (1) modeling of seabed turbidity currents; (2) a large earthquake at Lake Vättern, Switzerland, about 11,500 years ago; (3) genesis of high-grade gold at the Porgera gold deposit, Papua New Guinea; (4) discovery of the Ediacaran guide fossil Cloudina sp. and the depositional age of the Bambuí Group; (5) earthquakes along the fossil Moho in Alpine Corsica; and (6) using LiDAR to better understand New Zealand's Alpine Fault. Highlights are provided below. Geology articles published ahead of print can be accessed ...

Scientists, using cameras aboard NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), have created the largest high resolution mosaic of our moon's north polar region. The six-and-a-half feet (two-meters)-per-pixel images cover an area equal to more than one-quarter of the United States. Web viewers can zoom in and out, and pan around an area. Constructed from 10,581 pictures, the mosaic provides enough detail to see textures and subtle shading of the lunar terrain. Consistent lighting throughout the images makes it easy to compare different regions. "This unique image is a tremendous ...

Earth dodged a huge magnetic bullet from the sun on July 23, 2012. According to University of California, Berkeley, and Chinese researchers, a rapid succession of coronal mass ejections – the most intense eruptions on the sun – sent a pulse of magnetized plasma barreling into space and through Earth's orbit. Had the eruption come nine days earlier, it would have hit Earth, potentially wreaking havoc with the electrical grid, disabling satellites and GPS, and disrupting our increasingly electronic lives. The solar bursts would have enveloped Earth in magnetic fireworks ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – The world's oceans cover more than 72 percent of the earth's surface, impact a major part of the carbon cycle, and contribute to variability in global climate and weather patterns. However, accurately predicting the condition of the ocean is limited by current methods. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have applied complex statistical models to increase the accuracy of ocean forecasting that can influence the ways in which forecasters predict long-range events such as El Nińo and the lower levels of the ocean food chain—one of the world's ...

For the most common form of childhood eye cancer, unilateral retinoblastoma, shortening the time from the first appearance of symptoms to diagnosis of disease has no bearing on survival or stage of the disease, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in partnership with the Hospital Infantil de Mexico. The results appear online in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. Because retinoblastoma is easily detectable by shining a light into a child's eye—often as a "cat's eye" reflection revealed through ...

DALLAS, March 19, 2014 — The health benefits of eating dark chocolate have been extolled for centuries, but the exact reason has remained a mystery –– until now. Researchers reported here today that certain bacteria in the stomach gobble the chocolate and ferment it into anti-inflammatory compounds that are good for the heart. Their findings were unveiled at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The meeting, attended by thousands of scientists, features more than 10,000 reports on new advances ...

DALLAS, March 18, 2014 — When a heart gets damaged, such as during a major heart attack, there's no easy fix. But scientists working on a way to repair the vital organ have now engineered tissue that closely mimics natural heart muscle that beats, not only in a lab dish but also when implanted into animals. They presented their latest results at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The talk was one of more than 10,000 being presented at the meeting, which continues here through Thursday. "Repairing ...

They may have tiny brains, but bumblebees are capable of some remarkable learning feats, especially when they might get a tasty reward, according to two studies by University of Guelph researchers. PhD student Hamida Mirwan and Prof. Peter Kevan, School of Environmental Sciences, are studying bees' ability to learn by themselves and from each other. In the first study, published in February in Animal Cognition, the researchers found bees capable of learning to solve increasingly complex problems. The researchers presented bees with a series of artificial flowers that ...

A new UBC study reveals that corporate leaders are victims of herd mentality when adopting new innovations, sometimes with deadly consequences. The paper, by Sauder School of Business Associate Professor Marc-David L. Seidel and INSEAD Professor Henrich R. Greve, shows leaders tend to pursue innovations, even as complex as airplanes, based on early adoption by competitors not close scrutiny of the technical merits. "Business leaders tend to panic when new innovations are about to hit the market. They scramble to buy an apparent early leader," says Seidel. "Sometimes ...

Neuroscientists and bioengineers at Stanford are working together to solve a mystery: how does nature construct the different types of synapses that connect neurons -- the brain cells that monitor nerve impulses, control muscles and form thoughts. In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Thomas C. Südhof, M.D., a professor of molecular and cellular physiology, and Stephen R. Quake, a professor of bioengineering, describe the diversity of the neurexin family of proteins. Neurexins help to create the synapses that connect neurons. Think ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — March 17, 2014 — Using genomic analysis to study cancer in dogs can help develop new therapies for humans with cancer, according to a proof-of-concept study led by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). Pure-breed dogs, whose genetics have been standardized by hundreds of years of human intervention, provide highly predictable genetic models useful in designing clinical trials, in which specific drugs are matched to the molecular profiles of human patients, according to the study published today in ...

West Orange, NJ. March 18, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers have demonstrated for the first time ever that body temperature is elevated endogenously in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS) and linked to worse fatigue. The article was published ahead of print on Feb. 21, 2014 in Archives of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation. Sumowski J, Leavitt V: Body temperature is elevated and linked to fatigue in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis, even without heat exposure. doi:10.1016/j.apmr.2014.02.004. Researchers measured body temperature in 50 patients with ...

The view back in time—way back to the origins of the universe—just got clearer. Much clearer. A team of U.S. cosmologists using the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole announced this week that they have discovered the first direct evidence of the rapid inflation of the universe at the dawn of time, thanks in part to technology developed and built by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The BICEP2 camera relies, in part, on the extraordinary signal amplification made possible by NIST's superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs). The ...

Dr. Jason Jolliff is an oceanographer with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). "The emphasis here," he says, "is on developing models of the ocean environment to help the naval warfighter." His most recent paper, published in Ocean Modeling (March 2014), shows NRL can also forecast where oil will go following a major spill. "If you're going to do forecasting," he says, "you have to get the ocean circulation correct. It's fundamental to all else." Jolliff plugged the distribution of surface oil following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill—when it was still well ...

A recent study by a University of Northern British Columbia-based scientist associated with the UBC Faculty of Medicine and UNBC's Northern Medical Program demonstrates that Canada's drinking-age laws have a significant effect on youth mortality. The study was published yesterday in the international journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. In it, Dr. Russell Callaghan writes that when compared to Canadian males slightly younger than the minimum legal drinking age, young men who are just older than the drinking age have significant and abrupt increases in mortality, especially ...

Trading food involves the trade of virtually embedded water used for production, and the amount of that water depends heavily on the climatic conditions in the production region: It takes, for instance, 2.700 liters of water to produce 1 kilo of cereals in Morocco, while the same kilo produced in Germany uses up only 520 liters. Analyzing the impact of trade on local water scarcity, our scientists found that it is not the amount of water used that counts most, but the origin of the water. While parts of India or the Middle East alleviate their water scarcity through importing ...

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University and colleagues used "big data" analytics to predict if a patient is suffering from aggressive triple-negative breast cancer, slower-moving cancers or non-cancerous lesions with 95 percent accuracy. If the tiny patterns they found in magnetic resonance images prove consistent in further studies, the technique may enable doctors to use an MRI scan to diagnose more aggressive cancers earlier and fast track these patients for therapy. Their work is published online in the journal Radiology at http://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.14131384. ...

BUFFALO. N.Y. — Cognitive scientists may have produced the strongest evidence yet that humans have separate and distinct cognitive systems with which they can categorize, classify, and conceptualize their worlds. "Our finding that there are distinct, discrete systems has implications for the fields of child development and cognitive aging," says lead researcher, cognitive psychologist J. David Smith, PhD, of the University at Buffalo. "These distinct systems may have different developmental courses as the cortex matures," he says, "meaning that children may categorize ...

The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) already assessed the added benefit of ipilimumab in advanced melanoma in 2012. A considerable added benefit was found for patients who had already received previous treatment. In the new dossier compiled by the drug manufacturer, the drug was now compared with the appropriate comparator therapy dacarbazine specified by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) also for non-pretreated patients. Again, the manufacturer claimed a noticeable gain in survival time and thus an added benefit. This time, IQWiG did ...

DURHAM, NH –– In a paper published today in Nature Communications, an international team of scientists, including three from the University of New Hampshire's Space Science Center, uncovers the origin and cause of an extreme space weather event that occurred on July 22, 2012 at the sun and generated the fastest solar wind speed ever recorded directly by a solar wind instrument. The formation of the rare, powerful storm showed striking, novel features that were detected by a UNH-built instrument on board NASA's twin-satellite Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) ...

GPS technology has broadly advanced science and society's ability to pinpoint precise information, from driving directions to tracking ground motions during earthquakes. A new technique led by a researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego stands to improve weather models and hurricane forecasting by detecting precise conditions in the atmosphere through a new GPS system aboard airplanes. The first demonstration of the technique, detailed in the journal Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), is pushing the project's leaders toward a goal of broadly implementing ...

PITTSBURGH, Mar.14, 2014 – A structured, standardized approach to diagnose and treat sepsis in its early stages did not change survival chances for people who develop this deadly condition, according to a national, randomized clinical trial led by experts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings, available online and published in the May 1 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, could change the way sepsis is diagnosed and treated. Each year, sepsis, the body's response to severe infections, kills more people than breast cancer, prostate ...

It takes only a fraction of a second to hit the retweet button on Twitter. But if thousands of people all retweet at once, a piece of information 140 characters long can go viral almost instantly in today's Internet landscape. If that information is incorrect, especially in a crisis, it's hard for the social media community to gain control and push out accurate information, new research shows. University of Washington researchers have found that misinformation spread widely on Twitter after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing despite efforts by users to correct rumors ...