People with epilepsy could be helped by new research into the way a key molecule controls brain activity during a seizure. Researchers have identified the role played by of a protein – called BDNF – and say the discovery could lead to new drugs that calm the symptoms of epileptic seizures. Scientists analysed the way cells communicate when the brain is most active – such as in epileptic seizures – when electrical signalling by the brain's neurons is increased. They found that the BDNF molecule – which is known to be released in the brain during seizures – blocks a ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- For most animals, scent is the instant messenger of choice for quickly exchanging personal profiles. Scientists, however, have long dismissed birds as odor-eschewing luddites that don't take advantage of scent-based communications. In a first-of-its-kind study, however, a Michigan State University researcher has demonstrated that birds do indeed communicate via scents, and that odor reliably predicts their reproductive success. The study appears in the current issue of Animal Behaviour and focuses on volatile compounds in avian preen secretions. Birds' ...

The hepatitis C virus hijacks the body's immune system, leaving T cells unable to function. A new study in animal models suggests that blocking a protein that helps the virus thrive could restore immune function, allowing the body to fight infection. The work, led by teams at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital and Emory University, was published online Aug. 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previous studies show that antibody treatments that inhibit the protein, called programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), can shrink tumors in ...

For many firms, losing significant revenue and profit to employee theft has been a cost of doing business. But a new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that information technology monitoring is strikingly effective in reducing theft and fraud, especially in the restaurant industry. "Cleaning House: The Impact of Information Technology Monitoring on Employee Theft and Productivity," by Lamar Pierce, PhD, associate professor of strategy at Olin Business School, finds that mining sales data of employees increased restaurant revenue about 7 percent. The ...

If you're poor and aging in America, the golden years may not be pretty, especially if you are black. University of Central Florida assistant professor Latarsha Chisholm and colleagues conducted a study, which found that nursing homes that serve predominantly black residents tend to struggle financially and provide lower quality care than nursing homes with no black residents. Results were recently published in the Health Services Research journal. "There is no simple fix," Chisholm said. "It is a complex issue, but we need to address it because disparities are everyone's ...

Despite widespread adoption by hospitals of surgical robot technology over the past decade, a "slapdash" system of reporting complications paints an unclear picture of its safety, according to Johns Hopkins researchers. In a report published online in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, the Johns Hopkins team says that of the 1 million or so robotic surgeries performed since 2000, only 245 complications -- including 71 deaths -- were reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. When an adverse event or device malfunction occurs, hospitals are required to report ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Women are two to eight times more likely than men to suffer a debilitating tear of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in the knee and a new study suggests that a combination of body type and landing techniques may be to blame. In two new studies published online this week in the Journal of Athletic Training, lead author Marc Norcross of Oregon State University documents how women who were asked to undergo a series of jumping exercises landed more often than men in a way associated with elevated risk of ACL injuries. Both men and women tended to ...

New findings from an archaeological excavation led this winter by Dr. Erez Ben-Yosef of Tel Aviv University's Jacob M. Alkow Department of Archaeology and Near Eastern Cultures prove that copper mines in Israel thought to have been built by the ancient Egyptians in the 13th century BCE actually originated three centuries later, during the reign of the legendary King Solomon. Based on the radiocarbon dating of material unearthed at a new site in Timna Valley in Israel's Aravah Desert, the findings overturn the archaeological consensus of the last several decades. Scholarly ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 3, 2013—A new recombinant antibody can detect and isolate mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), a nonembryonic source of stem cells with promising applications in tissue engineering, blood stem cell transplantation, and treatments for immune-mediated disorders. The antibody recognizes an i blood group antigen present on MSCs in umbilical cord blood, as described in a study published in BioResearch Open Access, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the BioResearch Open Access website. Tia ...

1. Facebook intervention leads to increased HIV testing among high-risk men Peer-led Facebook groups are an acceptable and effective tool for increasing home-based HIV testing among at-risk populations. HIV infection is a major health concern for men who have sex with men (MSM), especially among African Americans and Latinos who have high rates of incident cases and new diagnoses. Online social networking has grown exponentially in this population, suggesting that social media platforms could be used to relay HIV prevention messages. This is important because those who ...

Krasiejów, Poland was a vastly different place 230 million years ago during the Triassic Period. It was part of a giant continent called Pangea, had a warm climate throughout the year, and was populated by giant amphibians that weighed half a ton and were 10 feet long. Metoposaurus diagnosticus was one of these giant amphibians, and its environment had only two seasons: wet and dry. Like modern amphibians, Metoposaurus needed water for its lifestyle, but the extremely long dry season in Triassic Krasiejów drove this species to burrow underground and go dormant when water ...

Boston –Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have developed a risk score calculation that can help predict which patients with rhabdomyolysis (a condition that occurs due to muscle damage) may be at risk for the severe complication of kidney failure or death. This research will publish online September 2, 2013 in JAMA Internal Medicine. Rhabdomyolysis occurs when muscles are crushed and rupture, leaking toxic compounds into the circulation and can be caused by any condition that damages skeletal muscle and causes injury. Risk factors include crush injuries, ...

For the first time, a dramatic global climate shift has been linked to the impact in Quebec of an asteroid or comet, Dartmouth researchers and their colleagues report in a new study. The cataclysmic event wiped out many of the planet's large mammals and may have prompted humans to start gathering and growing some of their food rather than solely hunting big game. The findings appear next week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A preprint of the article is available to journalists starting Wednesday, Aug. 28, at http://www.eurekalert.org/account.php. The ...

Sydney, Australia: The amount of raw materials needed to sustain the economies of developed countries is significantly greater than presently used indicators suggest, a new Australian study has revealed. Using a new modelling tool and more comprehensive indicators, researchers were able to map the flow of raw materials across the world economy with unprecedented accuracy to determine the true "material footprint" of 186 countries over a two-decade period (from 1990 to 2008). The study, involving researchers from the University of New South Wales, CSIRO, the University ...

The idea that men and women are fundamentally different from each other is widely accepted. And throughout the world, this has created distinct ideas about which social and physical characteristics are necessary in each gender to maintain healthy human development. However, social revolutions throughout the last century have challenged traditional ideas about not only which traits are normal and necessary for survival, but also how humans acquire them. Thanks to a new study from researchers at Case Western Reserve University, science is continuing the charge. By studying ...

ANN ARBOR—Darwin referred to the origin of species as "that mystery of mysteries," and even today, more than 150 years later, evolutionary biologists cannot fully explain how new animals and plants arise. For decades, nearly all research in the field has been based on the assumption that the main cause of the emergence of new species, a process called speciation, is the formation of barriers to reproduction between populations. Those barriers can be geographic—such as a new mountain, river or glacier that physically separates two populations of animals or plants—or ...

Gardiner's frogs from the Seychelles islands, one of the smallest frogs in the world, do not possess a middle ear with an eardrum yet can croak themselves, and hear other frogs. An international team of scientists using X-rays has now solved this mystery and established that these frogs are using their mouth cavity and tissue to transmit sound to their inner ears. The results are published in PNAS on September 2, 2013. The team led by Renaud Boistel from CNRS and University of Poitiers, comprised also scientists from Institut Langevin of ESPCI ParisTech, the Laboratoire ...

Candida albicans is a common fungus found living in, and on, many parts of the human body. Usually this species causes no harm to humans unless it can breach the body's immune defences, where can lead to serious illness or death. It is known as an opportunistic pathogen that can colonise and infect individuals with a compromised immune system. New research, presented today at the Society for General Microbiology's Autumn Conference, gives us a greater understanding of how mucosal surfaces in the body respond to C. albicans to prevent damage being done during infection. Researchers ...

A new species of fungus that eats amphibians' skin has ravaged the fire salamander population in the Netherlands, bringing it close to regional extinction. Fire salamanders, recognisable by their distinctive yellow and black skin patterns, have been found dead in the country's forests since 2010. The population has fallen to around 10 individuals, less than four per cent of its original level, but what has been killing them has been a mystery until now. Scientists from Ghent University, Imperial College London, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Dutch conservation group ...

If your attendance at too many rock concerts has impaired your hearing, listen up. University of Iowa researchers say that the common fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is an ideal model to study hearing loss in humans caused by loud noise. The reason: The molecular underpinnings to its hearing are roughly the same as with people. As a result, scientists may choose to use the fruit fly to quicken the pace of research into the cause of noise-induced hearing loss and potential treatment for the condition, according to a paper published this week in the online Early Edition ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Human infants' responses to the vocalizations of non-human primates shed light on the developmental origin of a crucial link between human language and core cognitive capacities, a new study reports. Previous studies have shown that even in infants too young to speak, listening to human speech supports core cognitive processes, including the formation of object categories. Alissa Ferry, lead author and currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Language, Cognition and Development Lab at the Scuola Internationale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in Trieste, ...

A study estimates that total annual costs for five major health care-associated infections (HAIs) were $9.8 billion, with surgical site infections contributing the most to overall costs, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. HAIs are associated with high costs and better evaluation of the cost of these infections could help providers and payers justify investing in prevention, according to background information in the study by Eyal Zimlichman, M.D., M.Sc., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School, ...

A gap in earnings between male and female U.S. physicians has persisted over the last 20 years, according to a research letter by Seth A. Seabury, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and colleagues. Using nationally representative data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) from 1987 to 2010, the researchers estimated trends in the male-female earnings gap among physicians, other health care workers, and workers overall. The sample included 1,334,894 individuals, including 6,258 physicians and 31,857 other health care professionals, and ...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in mothers appears to be associated with an increased risk for child maltreatment beyond that associated with maternal depression, according to a study published by JAMA Pediatrics, a JAMA Network publication. The psychopathology of a caregiver is understood to be an important risk factor for child maltreatment and maternal depression is associated with an increased use of corporal punishment and physical abuse of children. Until recently, research on maternal depression and maltreatment risk has largely ignored the high rate of comorbidity ...

Adhering to a Mediterranean-type diet (MedDi) does not appear associated with the time to clinical onset of Huntington disease (phenoconversion), according to a study by Karen Marder, M.D., M.P.H., of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, N.Y., and colleagues. The Mediterranean diet, a diet high in plant foods (e.g. fruits, nuts, legumes, and cereals) and fish, with olive oil as the primary source of monounsaturated fat (MUSF) and low to moderate intake of wine, as well as low intake of red meat, poultry, and dairy products, is known to be ...