Cambridge scientists have discovered a rare genetic disease which predisposes patients to severe respiratory infections and lung damage. Because the scientists also identified how the genetic mutation affects the immune system, they are hopeful that new drugs that are currently undergoing clinical trials to treat leukaemia may also be effective in helping individuals with this debilitating disease. For the study, led by the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the Babraham Institute and the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, the researchers first examined ...

MAYWOOD -- Women with common forms of urinary incontinence have various bacteria in their bladder, according to data presented today by researchers from Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Researchers also found that some of these bacteria may differ based on their incontinence type. These findings were presented at the 34th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urogynecologic Society in Las Vegas. They stem from Loyola's Urinary Research and Educational Collaboration, an institutional effort to identify and characterize urinary bacteria and how ...

The ability of invasive plants to rapidly adapt to local climates -- and potentially to climate change -- may be a key factor in how quickly they spread. According to new research published in Science by UBC evolutionary ecologist Rob Colautti, it is rapid evolution -- as much as resistance to local pests -- that has helped purple loosestrife to invade, and thrive in, northern Ontario. "The ability of invasive species to rapidly adapt to local climate has not generally been considered to be an important factor affecting spread," says Colautti, an NSERC Banting Postdoctoral ...

In two parallel projects, researchers have created new genomes inside the bacterium E. coli in ways that test the limits of genetic reprogramming and open new possibilities for increasing flexibility, productivity and safety in biotechnology. In one project, researchers created a novel genome—the first-ever entirely genomically recoded organism—by replacing all 321 instances of a specific "genetic three-letter word," called a codon, throughout the organism's entire genome with a word of supposedly identical meaning. The researchers then reintroduced a reprogramed version ...

Death from analgesic overdose, including the painkillers oxycodone and codeine, is more concentrated in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods with a prevalence of high divorce, single-parent homes than deaths from unintentional causes, according to research conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Yet, compared to heroin overdose deaths, analgesic overdoses were found to occur in higher-income neighborhoods. This study is among the first to provide a framework that helps explain the geographical distribution of analgesic overdose in urban areas. ...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should consider the unique features of probiotics — bacteria that help maintain the natural balance of organisms in the intestines — in regulating their use and marketing, says Diane Hoffmann, JD, director of the Law and Health Care Program at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and lead author of the a newly released Science article, "Probiotics: Finding the Right Regulatory Balance." "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has no definition of probiotics and regulates them based on whether they ...

Changes in gene regulation have been used to study the evolutionary chasm that exists between humans and chimpanzees despite their largely identical DNA. However, scientists from the University of Chicago have discovered that mRNA expression levels, long considered a barometer for differences in gene regulation, often do not reflect differences in protein expression—and, therefore, biological function—between humans and chimpanzees. The work was published Oct. 17 in Science. "We thought that we knew how to identify patterns of mRNA expression level differences between ...

UCLA psychologists report new insights on human brain, consciousness UCLA psychologists have used brain-imaging techniques to study what happens to the human brain when it slips into unconsciousness. Their research, published Oct. 17 in ...

Lithium-ion batteries are in our cellphones, laptops, and digital cameras. Few portable electronic devices exist that do not rely on these energy sources. Currently battery electrodes contain active materials known as intercalation compounds. These materials store charge in their chemical structure without undergoing substantial structural change. That makes these batteries comparatively long-lived and safe. However, intercalation materials have one drawback: their limited energy density, the amount of energy they can store per volume and mass. In the search for higher ...

Supermassive black holes: every large galaxy's got one. But here's a real conundrum: how did they grow so big? A paper in today's issue of Science pits the front-running ideas about the growth of supermassive black holes against observational data — a limit on the strength of gravitational waves, obtained with CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope in eastern Australia. "This is the first time we've been able to use information about gravitational waves to study another aspect of the Universe — the growth of massive black holes," co-author Dr Ramesh Bhat from the Curtin University ...

AMES, Iowa – Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star. Such tilted orbits had been found in planetary systems featuring a "hot Jupiter," a giant planet in a close orbit to its host star. But, until now, they hadn't been observed in multiplanetary systems without such a big interloping planet. The discovery is reported in a paper, "Stellar Spin-Orbit Misalignment in a Multiplanet System," published in the Oct. 18 ...

AMHERST, Mass. – In a new review of how psychology research has illuminated the causes of war and violence, three political psychologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst say this understanding can and should be used to promote peace and overturn the belief that violent conflict is inevitable. Writing in the current special "peace psychology" issue of American Psychologist, lead author Bernhard Leidner, Linda Tropp and Brian Lickel of UMass Amherst's Psychology of Peace and Violence program say that if social psychology research focuses only on how to soften ...

A good night's rest may literally clear the mind. Using mice, researchers showed for the first time that the space between brain cells may increase during sleep, allowing the brain to flush out toxins that build up during waking hours. These results suggest a new role for sleep in health and disease. The study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the NIH. "Sleep changes the cellular structure of the brain. It appears to be a completely different state," said Maiken Nedergaard, M.D., D.M.Sc., co-director of the Center ...

In recent years, studies have reported inconsistent findings regarding whether calcium supplements used to prevent fractures increase the risk of heart attack. Now, in an assessment of the scientific literature, reported as a perspective piece in the October 17, 2013 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, a UC San Francisco researcher says patients and health care practitioners should focus on getting calcium from the diet, rather than supplements, when possible. "Osteoporosis may result from inadequate calcium intake and it's quite common for certain segments ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—A 30-year-old woman with a history of upper respiratory infections had no idea she carried an immunodeficiency disorder – until her 6-year-old son was diagnosed with the same illness. After learning she has common variable immunodeficiency (CVID), a disorder characterized by recurrent infections, such as pneumonia, and decreased antibodies, the woman, her husband, their three children and parents joined a multidisciplinary University of Utah study and researchers identified a novel gene mutation that caused the disease in the mom and two of her children. ...

A team of researchers has identified a novel mutation in the hepatitis B virus (HBV) in Korea that appears only in men and could help explain why HBV-infected men are roughly five times more likely than HBV-infected women to develop liver cancer. Although some women do progress to cirrhosis and liver cancer, the mutation is absent in HBV in women. The research is published ahead of print in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology. "This is the first mutation found that can explain the gender disparity in incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma," says Bum-Joon Kim of Seoul ...

WASHINGTON, DC (October 17, 2013)—The District of Columbia Department of Health (DOH) has released a study by the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) investigating prescribing of antipsychotics to District seniors. The study combines pharmaceutical marketing data collected by the District with publicly available data on nursing home quality and Medicare drug claims. "The good news is that nursing homes in the District of Columbia generally are not prescribing antipsychotic medication at rates higher than the rest of the country," ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. – Almost a year after Hurricane Sandy, parts of New York and New Jersey are still recovering from billions of dollars in flood damage. Tufts University geologist Andrew Kemp sees the possibility of damage from storms smaller than Sandy in the future. "Rising sea levels exacerbate flooding," says Kemp. "As sea level rises, smaller and weaker storms will cause flood damage." An assistant professor in Tufts' Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Kemp co-authored a study on sea-level change close to New York that was published recently in the Journal ...

Lebanon, N.H. (October 15, 2013) – A new report from the Dartmouth Atlas Project shows that the use of both effective and risky drug therapies by Medicare patients varies widely across U.S. regions, offering further evidence that location is a key determinant in the quality and cost of the medical care that patients receive. In their first look at prescription drug use, Dartmouth researchers also find that the health status of a region's Medicare population accounts for less than a third of the variation in total prescription drug use, and that higher spending is not ...

A simple, color-coded system for labeling food items in a hospital cafeteria appears to have increased customer's attention to the healthiness of their food choices, along with encouraging purchases of the most healthy items. In their report in the October issue of Preventive Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators describe customer responses to surveys taken before and after the 2010 implementation of a system using green, yellow or red "traffic light" labels to reflect the nutritional quality of items. "Several small, experimental studies have ...

Tropical Depression 15-E formed on Oct. 12 at 11 p.m. EDT and strengthened into Tropical Storm Octave. Four days later NASA's Terra satellite saw the weakened storm headed for landfall in western Mexico. TD15-E formed about 470 miles/755 km south of the southern tip of Baja California, near 16.1 north and 110.2 west. By 5 a.m. EDT on Oct. 13, TD15-E became Tropical Storm Octave. Octave's maximum sustained winds peaked at 65 mph/100 kph at 11 p.m. EDT on Oct. 13 when it was about 215 miles/345 km northwest of Socorro Island, near 20.6 north and 113.7 west. The Moderate ...

Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers are part of a national study that has cracked how jellyfish move with the lowest cost of transport of any animal. The findings will be used as researchers continue to design bio-inspired jellyfish for the U.S. Navy. Published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of National Academy of the Sciences, the study highlights jellyfish as one of the most energetically efficient natural propulsors on the planet. Researchers found that rather than moving continuously through water while swimming, jellyfish use a critical pause between ...

Tropical Storm Priscilla lived just 3 days in the eastern Pacific Ocean making for one of the shortest-lived tropical storms of the season. Priscilla skipped the depression phase and went from a low pressure area to a full-blown tropical storm at 5 a.m. EDT/0900 UTC on Oct. 14. Priscilla formed near 14.3 north and 115.7 west, about 705 miles/1,135 km southwest of the southern tip of Baja California. Priscilla moved north-northeast and had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph/65 kph at birth. On Oct. 15 Priscilla had already weakened to a depression because of wind shear ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Francisco on Oct. 17 after it had passed the eastern side of Guam and started to head on a track that would take it past the western side of Guam. Tropical Storm Warnings are in effect for Guam on Oct. 17 and 18 (local time). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of Typhoon Francisco on Oct. 17 at 04:05 UTC in the Pacific Ocean as it started turning to the northwest after passing the eastern side Guam. The MODIS image clearly showed Francisco's eye, indicating ...

Statin, osteoporosis drug combo may help treat parasitic infections Athens, Ga. – Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that a combination of two commonly prescribed drugs used to treat high cholesterol and osteoporosis may serve as the foundation of a new treatment ...