The average American today can look forward to over two more years of healthy life than they could just a generation ago, Harvard researchers have found. By synthesizing the data collected in multiple government-sponsored health surveys conducted over the last 3 decades, Susan Stewart, researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics and Professor in the Harvard Department of Global Health and Population, and Allison Rosen, MD and associate professor of Quantitative Health Sciences at the University ...

WORCESTER, MA – Thanks to medical advances, better treatments and new drugs not available a generation ago, the average American born today can expect to live 3.8 years longer than a person born two decades ago. Despite all these new technologies, however, is our increased life expectancy actually adding active and healthy years to our lives? That question has remained largely unanswered – until now. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have found that the average 25-year-old American today can look forward to ...

We often think of human cells as tiny computers that perform assigned tasks, where disease is a result of a malfunction. But in the current issue of Science, researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center offer a radical view of health — seeing it more as a cooperative state among cells, while they see disease as result of cells at war that fight with each other for domination. Their unique approach is backed by experimental evidence. The researchers show a network of genes in cells, which includes the powerful tumor suppressor p53, which enforce a cooperative state ...

Augusta, Ga. - Getting a second urine sample and blood pressure measure as patients head out of the doctor's office appears an efficient way to identify those whose health may be in jeopardy because their bodies hold onto too much sodium, researchers report. "We want to prove that you can easily and efficiently identify these patients," said Evan A. Mulloy, a second-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. "We want this to become a part of our routine standard of care." Using the simple method, researchers looked at 19, ...

RESTON, VIRGINIA – An article published in the September issue of BioScience highlights the challenges facing biological societies and offers insights for scientific societies to respond and adapt to the changing dynamics of 21st century science. The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) surveyed 139 biology societies to better understand the composition of the biological sciences community and how this community has changed over time. Organizational leaders were asked about the size of their organization's membership over the last fifty years. The majority ...

This news release is available in Spanish. New data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been hurtling away from the Sun since it was launched in 1977, indicates that the spacecraft has indeed left the comfort of the heliosphere—the bubble of hot, energetic charged particles surrounding the Solar System—and entered into a region of cold, dark space, known as interstellar space. Based on these new measurements, which show that plasma densities around the spacecraft are consistent with theoretical predictions of the interstellar medium, researchers suggest that ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – They call it the "white plague," and like its black counterpart from the Middle Ages, it conjures up visions of catastrophic death, with a cause that was at first uncertain even as it led to widespread destruction – on marine corals in the Caribbean Sea. Now one of the possible causes of this growing disease epidemic has been identified – a group of viruses that are known as small, circular, single-strand DNA (or SCSD) viruses. Researchers in the College of Science at Oregon State University say these SCSD viruses are associated with a dramatic increase ...

WASHINGTON -- Rates of physical and sexual abuse of children have declined over the last 20 years, but for reasons not fully understood, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Yet, reports of psychological and emotional child abuse have risen in the same period, and data vary significantly as to whether child neglect is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. However, determining the incidence of child abuse and neglect presents a number of challenges, because cases could be underreported and definitions vary among entities that collect such information. ...

Women are more likely than men to disapprove of -- and less likely to participate in -- political corruption, but only in countries where corruption is stigmatized, according to new political science research from Rice University. "'Fairer Sex' or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender and Institutional Context" finds that women are less tolerant of corrupt behavior, but only in democratic governments, where appropriating public policy for private gain is typically punished by voters and courts. "The relationship between gender and corruption appears to depend on context," ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In the wake of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma this past spring, Florida State University researchers have developed a new statistical model that will help determine whether the risk of tornadoes is increasing and whether they are getting stronger. Climatologists have been hampered in determining actual risks by what they call a population bias: That is, the fact that tornadoes have traditionally been underreported in rural areas compared to cities. Now, FSU geography Professor James B. Elsner and graduate student Laura E. Michaels have outlined a method ...

Warm ocean water, not warm air, is melting the Pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf in Antarctica and may be the culprit for increased melting of other ice shelves, according to an international team of researchers. "We've been dumping heat into the atmosphere for years and the oceans have been doing their job, taking it out of the air and into the ocean," said Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences, Penn State. "Eventually, with all that atmospheric heat, the oceans will heat up." The researchers looked at the remote Pine Island Glacier, a major outlet ...

JUPITER, FL – September 12, 2013 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a group of proteins essential to the formation of long-term memories. The study, published online ahead of print on September 12, 2013 by the journal Cell Reports, focuses on a family of proteins called Wnts. These proteins send signals from the outside to the inside of a cell, inducing a cellular response crucial for many aspects of embryonic development, including stem cell differentiation, as well as for normal functioning of the adult brain. "By ...

University of Iowa space physicist Don Gurnett says there is solid evidence that NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has become the first manmade object to reach interstellar space, more than 11 billion miles distant and 36 years after it was launched. The finding is reported in a paper published in the Sept. 12 online issue of the journal Science. "On April 9, the Voyager 1 Plasma Wave instrument, built at the UI in the mid-1970s, began detecting locally generated waves, called electron plasma oscillations, at a frequency that corresponds to an electron density about 40 times ...

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and Green Bank Telescope (GBT) spotted the faint radio glow from NASA's famed Voyager 1 spacecraft -- the most distant man-made object. According to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the VLBA imaged the signal from Voyager 1's main transmitter after the spacecraft had already passed beyond the edge of the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles from the Sun that surrounds our Solar System. Using NASA's Deep Space Network, JPL continually tracks Voyager and calculates ...

Microbes that live in rice paddies, northern peat bogs and other previously unexpected environments are among the bacteria that can generate highly toxic methylmercury, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center have learned. This finding, published in Environmental Science and Technology, explains why deadly methylated mercury is produced in areas where the neurotoxin's presence has puzzled researchers for decades. Methylmercury — the most dangerous form of mercury — damages the brain and immune system and is especially ...

Alexandria, VA – One tornado can be damaging enough; severe weather systems that spawn hundreds of deadly tornadoes in super-outbreaks pose special challenges to the scientific and emergency management communities. Now, scientists have identified certain conditions in the Pacific Ocean that may lead to super-outbreaks over the U.S.' tornado alley. Researchers are trying to determine if Trans-Niño years, which mark the onset or ebbing of El Niño and La Niña, are the main culprits behind the deadly super-outbreaks. According to the study, fueled by a powerfully interconnected ...

How social media users create and monitor their online personas may hint at their feelings of self-esteem and self-determination, according to an international team of researchers. "The types of actions users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook walls and profiles are a refection of their identities," said S. Shyam Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory, Penn State. "You are your Facebook, basically, and despite all its socialness, Facebook is a deeply personal medium." People ...

When it comes to nursery habitat, scientists have long known that blue crabs prefer seagrass beds compared to open areas in the same neighborhood. A new study by researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science refines that knowledge, showing that it's not just the presence of a seagrass bed that matters to young crabs, but also its quality—with denser beds holding exponentially more crabs per square meter than more open beds where plants are separated by small patches of mud or sand. The study, led by VIMS graduate student Gina Ralph, appeared recently ...

NIMH grantees have demonstrated that a form of behavioral therapy can augment antidepressant treatment of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) better than an antipsychotic. The researchers recommend that this specific form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) – exposure and ritual prevention – be offered to OCD patients who don't respond adequately to treatment with an antidepressant alone, which is often the case. Current guidelines favor augmentation with antipsychotics. In the controlled trial with 100 antidepressant-refractory OCD patients, 80 percent of those who ...

Safety measures intended to improve bariatric surgery outcomes may impede obese minorities' access to care. This is according to a new research letter published online in the September 12 issue of JAMA which compares rates of bariatric (weight-loss) surgery for minority Medicare vs. non-Medicare patients before and after implementation of a Medicare coverage policy. The policy limits Medicare patients seeking bariatric surgery to high-volume hospitals designated as centers of excellence. Led by faculty from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the researchers ...

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 12, 2013 – A revised Medicaid sterilization policy that removes logistical barriers, including a mandatory 30-day waiting period, could potentially honor women's reproductive decisions, reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and save $215 million in public health costs each year, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings, published today in the journal Contraception, support growing evidence for the need to revisit a national policy that disproportionately affects low-income and minority women at high ...

The MODIS instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Hurricane Humberto that showed it's eye was cloud-filled. Humberto was moving away from the Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. On Thursday, Sept. 12 at 11 a.m. EDT/1500 UTC, Hurricane Humberto has maximum near 85 mph/140 kph, and the National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects gradual weakening later in the day. The center of Hurricane Humberto was located near latitude 21.8 north and longitude 29.0 west, about 515 miles/830 km northwest of the Cape Verde Islands. Humberto is moving toward ...

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Does gum disease indicate future joint problems? Although researchers and clinicians have long known about an association between two prevalent chronic inflammatory diseases - periodontal disease and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) - the microbiological mechanisms have remained unclear. In an article published today in PLOS Pathogens, University of Louisville School of Dentistry Oral Health and Systemic Diseases group researcher Jan Potempa, PhD, DSc, and an international team of scientists from the European Union's Gums and Joints project have uncovered how ...

TheSkyNet is celebrating its two year anniversary today with the official launch of a new research project, as well as a range of improvements and new features to make contributing to astronomical research at home more enjoyable, and even easier. Launched on September 13th 2011, theSkyNet is a community computing project dedicated to astronomy, initiated by the International Centre of Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Perth, Western Australia. By using the idle processing power of thousands of computers connected to the Internet, theSkyNet simulates a powerful single ...

Sexually transmitted infection researchers potentially have reached a milestone in vaccine treatment for genital herpes, according to a report to be presented at the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Denver, Colo., on today, Sept. 12. Kenneth H. Fife, M.D., is the principal investigator for the IU School of Medicine clinical study of the vaccine for herpes simplex virus type 2 called GEN-003. According to an interim analysis, the experimental protein subunit vaccine made by Genocea Biosciences of Cambridge, Mass., effectively reduces ...