Philadelphia, Pa. (September 13, 2013) – Prescribing of strong opioid medications for non-cancer pain in the United States has nearly doubled over the past decade, reports a study in the October issue of Medical Care, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. At the same time, prescribing of non-opioid pain relievers has been stable or declined, according to the new research by Dr G. Caleb Alexander of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and colleagues. Dr Alexander comments, "There is an epidemic of prescription ...

Kashin-Beck disease (KBD) and Keshan disease (KD) are major endemic diseases in China. Postgraduate Xi Wang et al., under the guidance of Professor Xiong Guo from the Institute of Endemic Diseases of the Faculty of Public Health, Medicine College of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Key Laboratory of Environment and Gene Related Diseases in Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Trace Elements and Endemic Diseases of Health Ministry, set out to tackle these two endemic diseases. After several years of innovative research, they have made significant progress in determining the ...

Augusta, Ga. – Dr. David Pollock has a simple message for fellow hypertension researchers: think endothelin. In a country where better than 30 percent of adults have high blood pressure and 50-75 percent of those have salt-sensitive hypertension, he believes the powerful endothelin system, which helps the body eliminate salt, should not be essentially ignored. However, the research and clinical world focus on suppressing a better-known system, which prompts the body to hold onto salt, said Pollock, Chief of the Section of Experimental Medicine at the Medical College ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Getting treatment for a common sleep problem may do more than help you sleep better – it may help you look better over the long term, too, according to a new research study from the University of Michigan Health System and Michigan Technological University. The findings aren't just about "looking sleepy" after a late night, or being bright-eyed after a good night's rest. It's the first time researchers have shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home treatment for sleep apnea, a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions. ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study suggests that people with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are perceived to appear more alert, more youthful and more attractive after at least two months of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy. "This study showed that independent human raters – both medical personnel and members of the community – can perceive improved alertness, attractiveness, and youthfulness in the appearance of sleepy patients with obstructive sleep apnea, after they have been compliant with use of CPAP at home," said lead author and principal investigator Ronald ...

Eastern Canada is now expecting some winds and rain from Tropical Depression Gabrielle as it transfers its energy to a cold front. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Gabrielle that showed some very cold cloud top temperatures and strong thunderstorms around its center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument called AIRS that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of Tropical Depression Gabrielle on Sept. 13 at 06:29 UTC/2:29 a.m. EDT. The AIRS image showed a circular area of very high, cold cloud top temperatures surrounding ...

Fish skin is unique in that it lacks keratin, the fibrous protein found in mammalian skin that provides a barrier against the environment. Instead, the epithelial cells of fish skin are in direct contact with the immediate environment: water. Similarly, the epithelial cells that line the gastrointestinal tract are also in direct contact with their immediate milieu. "I like to think of fish as an open gut swimming," said J. Oriol Sunyer, a professor in the the Department of Pathobiology of the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine. Building on this ...

NASA and NOAA satellites have been tracking the progression of low pressure System 93L through the Caribbean Sea and into the southwestern Gulf of Mexico over a week's time, and it became Tropical Storm Ingrid mid-day on Sept. 13. NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured an image of Ingrid's center over the Bay of Campeche. NOAA's GOES-East satellite sits in a fixed orbit and covers weather over the eastern U.S. and Atlantic Ocean, providing imagery continuously. NASA's GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created an image of Tropical Storm ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Before there was life on Earth, there were molecules. A primordial soup. At some point a few specialized molecules began replicating. This self-replication, scientists agree, kick-started a biochemical process that would lead to the first organisms. But exactly how that happened — how those molecules began replicating — has been one of science's enduring mysteries. Now, research from UNC School of Medicine biochemist Charles Carter, PhD, appearing in the September 13 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, offers an intriguing new view on how ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Eden Steven, a physicist at Florida State University's MagLab facility, discovered that simple methods can result in surprising and environmentally friendly high-tech outcomes during his experiments with spider silk and carbon nanotubes, the results of which are now published in the online research journal Nature Communications. "If we understand basic science and how nature works, all we need to do is find a way to harness it," Steven said. "If we can find a smart way to harness it, then we can use it to create a new, cleaner technology." Steven ...

Friday the thirteenth is known for being unlucky and residents along Mexico's eastern and western coast are experiencing that feeling as a result of newborn Tropical Depression 13E in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and newborn Tropical Storm Ingrid in the Gulf of Mexico. Both storms formed during the morning of Sept. 13. Both storms were captured on one infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite, and both storms have the potential to drop as much as 20 inches of rain. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument called AIRS that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured ...

MADISON — In synthetic chemistry, making the best possible use of the needed ingredients is key to optimizing high-quality production at the lowest possible cost. The element rhodium is a powerful catalyst — a driver of chemical reactions — but is also one of the rarest and most expensive. In addition to its common use in vehicle catalytic converters, rhodium is also used in combination with other metals to efficiently drive a wide range of useful chemical reactions. Chemists' efforts to study the inner workings of dirhodium metal complex reactions have been hindered ...

PHILADELPHIA — The reasons behind why it often takes people several weeks to feel the effect of newly prescribed antidepressants remains somewhat of a mystery – and likely, a frustration to both patients and physicians. Julie Blendy, PhD, professor of Pharmacology, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania; Brigitta Gunderson, PhD, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Blendy lab, and colleagues, have been working to find out why and if there is anything that can be done to shorten the time in which antidepressants kick in. "Our goal is to find ways ...

The cyclic wobble of the Earth on its axis controls the production of a nutrient essential to the health of the ocean, according to a new study in the journal Nature. The discovery of factors that control this nutrient, known as "fixed" nitrogen, gives researchers insight into how the ocean regulates its own life-support system, which in turn affects the Earth's climate and the size of marine fisheries. Researchers from Princeton University and the Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) report that during the past 160,000 years nitrogen fixation rose and fell in ...

For five years, a scientific expedition tried reaching Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in a remote, wind-ridden corner of Antarctica. The obstacles to get to the ice shelf were extreme, but the science goal was simple: to measure how fast the sea was melting the 37-mile long ice tongue from underneath by drilling through the ice shelf. The international team, led by NASA's emeritus glaciologist Robert Bindschadler and funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA, had to abort their mission in 2007 due to logistical challenges after becoming the first people to ever ...

La Jolla, CA----In the past few years, as imaging tools and techniques have improved, scientists have been working tirelessly to build a detailed map of neural connections in the human brain---- with the ultimate hope of understanding how the mind works. But determining how cells in the brain are physically connected is only the first clue for decoding our perceptions and behaviors. We also need to know the precise routes that information takes in the brain in a given context. Now, publishing their results September 8 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers at ...

Dr. Jixiang Ren and team from the Affiliated Hospital to Changchun University of Chinese Medicine proposed a therapeutic principle for Poxue Huayu and Tianjing Busui (i.e., breaking blood stasis, replenishing essence). The researchers established cerebral hemorrhage rat models which were intragastrically administered 5, 10, 20 g/kg Poxue Huayu and Tianjing Busui Decoction, supplemented with Hirudo, raw rhubarb, raw Pollen Typhae, gadfly, Fructrs Trichosanthis, Radix Notoginseng, Rhizoma Acori Talarinowii, and glue of tortoise plastron, once a day, for 14 consecutive days. ...

Clinical literature and animal experiments have shown that prenatal alcohol exposure in utero, especially during the early stages of pregnancy, can cause fetal alcohol syndrome. The pharmacological and toxicological mechanisms of ethanol are considered to be related to the effects of ceramide. As an important signal transduction molecule, ceramide participates in a variety of cellular transduction pathways and can modulate cell cycle, cellular differentiation, proliferation, and apoptosis. A recent study, published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 23, 2013), ...

Autophagy is a highly conserved process through the evolution of species, from eukaryotic microorganisms to humans. Bulky cytoplasmic contents, organisms (bacteria, viruses) and soluble proteins are degraded by autophagy and reused for the synthesis of new molecules. This process is generally induced by a change of environmental conditions, such as nutrient deprivation, oxidative stress and ultraviolet radiation. However, it has also been associated with normal procedures like development, differentiation and defence against pathogens. In spite of offering protection to ...

As health care reform takes shape in the U.S., vast amounts of attention have been given to the fact that more and more people with pre-existing illnesses will have access to professional care to relieve their physical and emotional suffering. Far less public attention has been given to the nurses and physicians who provide that care, and the authors of a recent study say there is evidence that many already experience serious "moral distress" that may interfere with their own health and their efforts on behalf of seriously ill and dying patients. "Studies and case histories ...

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (13 September 2013)—In a series of papers to be presented next week, scientists offer new evidence that a potent chemical mechanism operating in the roots of a tropical grass used for livestock feed has enormous potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Referred to as "biological nitrification inhibition" or BNI, the mechanism markedly reduces the conversion of nitrogen applied to soil as fertilizer into nitrous oxide, according to papers prepared for the 22nd International Grasslands Congress. Nitrous oxide is the most powerful and aggressive greenhouse ...

Model organisms, brought into labs because they are easy to work with, adapt to the lab, often shedding characteristics that allowed them to survive in the wild. Scientists who work with model organisms rarely look at the wild strains, but when they do, they can be surprised by what they find. This is what happened with the soil-living social amoeba, Dictyostelium discoideum, or Dicty. The single-celled amoebas crawl through the soil eating bacteria until food becomes scarce. Then the amoebas gather by the tens of thousands to form a multicellular slug, which transforms ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 13, 2013 – By inserting platinum atoms into an organic semiconductor, University of Utah physicists were able to "tune" the plastic-like polymer to emit light of different colors – a step toward more efficient, less expensive and truly white organic LEDs for light bulbs of the future. "These new, platinum-rich polymers hold promise for white organic light-emitting diodes and new kinds of more efficient solar cells," says University of Utah physicist Z. Valy Vardeny, who led a study of the polymers published online Friday, Sept. 13 in the journal ...

A new special issue of NeoBiota journal has been published, following the 2012 meeting of the International Pest Risk Mapping Workgroup (IPRMW). The workshop was sponsored by the OECD's Co-operative Research Program on Biological Resource Management for Sustainable Agricultural Systems, and focused on pest risks in the foodchain. The new issue addresses the interface between pest risk science and policy in an attempt to secure adequate pest control measures against potential invasions accompanying economic globalization and the intensified movement of people and goods. With ...

As the climate changes and oceans' acidity increases, tiny plankton seem set to succeed. An international team of marine scientists has found that the smallest plankton groups thrive under elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels. This could cause an imbalance in the food web as well as decrease ocean CO2 uptake, an important regulator of global climate. The results of the study, conducted off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2010, are now compiled in a special issue published in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union. "If the tiny plankton blooms, it ...