A radiotherapy regime involving higher doses of radiation is a better option than having lower doses for men with localised prostate cancer, the 10-year results of the largest trial of its kind have shown. Having 37 rounds, or fractions, of radiotherapy at 74 Gray (Gy) – compared with 32 fractions at 64 Gy – controlled the disease more effectively and reduced the chance that men would need follow-up hormone-deprivation therapy, which can have long-term side-effects. The findings, published in The Lancet Oncology today (Wednesday), come from the major RT01 phase III ...

Early humans may have evolved black skin to protect against a very high risk of dying from ultraviolet light (UV)-induced skin cancer, a new analysis concludes. Skin cancer has usually been rejected as the most likely selective pressure for the development of black skin because of a belief that it is only rarely fatal at ages young enough to affect reproduction. But a new paper, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, cites evidence that black people with albinism from parts of Africa with the highest UV radiation exposure, and where humans first evolved, almost ...

Mass strandings of whales have puzzled people since Aristotle. Modern-day strandings can be investigated and their causes, often human-related, identified. Events that happened millions of years ago, however, are far harder to analyze—frequently leaving their cause a mystery. A team of Smithsonian and Chilean scientists examined a large fossil site of ancient marine mammal skeletons in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile—the first definitive example of repeated mass strandings of marine mammals in the fossil record. The site reflected four distinct strandings over time, ...

Increased brain cell activity boosts brain fluid levels of a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease, according to new research from scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Tau protein is the main component of neurofibrillary tangles, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. It has been linked to other neurodegenerative disorders, including frontotemporal dementia, supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration. "Healthy brain cells normally release tau into the cerebrospinal fluid and the interstitial fluid that surrounds them, but ...

New images from the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) telescope provide the most detailed view yet of stellar nurseries within the Snake nebula. These images offer new insights into how cosmic seeds can grow into massive stars. Stretching across almost 100 light-years of space, the Snake nebula is located about 11,700 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. In images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope it appears as a sinuous, dark tendril against the starry background. It was targeted because it shows the potential to form many massive ...

Older women who have overcome breast cancer are likely to struggle with heart disease, osteoporosis and hypertension further on in their lives. Whether these conditions occur or not is influenced by the treatment that patients received to fight cancer, their overall weight and their age. Breast cancer survivors therefore should watch their weight and get regular exercise so that they can enjoy a high quality of life. These findings, by lead author Nadia Obi of the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, who collaborated with the group of Prof. Chang-Claude from the ...

February 26, 2014 - Oakland, CA – A new study by Rhonda Patrick, PhD and Bruce Ames, PhD of Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI) demonstrates the impact that Vitamin D may have on social behavior associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Dr. Patrick and Dr. Ames show that serotonin, oxytocin, and vasopressin, three brain hormones that affect social behavior, are all activated by vitamin D hormone. Autism, which is characterized by abnormal social behavior, has previously been linked to low levels of serotonin in the brain and to low vitamin D levels, ...

Research by Beaumont Health System radiation oncologists and neurosurgeons found that symptoms of trigeminal neuralgia, or TN, a nerve disorder causing severe facial pain, were reduced in those treated with Gamma Knife stereotactic radiosurgery. The results were published in the February issue of the journal Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery. TN is a disorder of the trigeminal nerve, which is responsible for feeling in the face. In most cases, the facial pain is caused by a blood vessel pressing on the nerve. It is believed that TN is caused by deterioration of the ...

Enough women experience reproductive coercion – male behavior to control contraception and pregnancy outcomes – that a research team now recommends health care providers address the subjects with their patients and tailor family planning discussions and recommendations accordingly. Researchers from Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island were part of a team that published "Reproductive coercion and co-occurring intimate partner violence in obstetrics and gynecology patients" in a recent issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. "Reproductive coercion, ...

In the heart, as in the movies, 3D action beats the 2D experience hands down. In 3D, healthy hearts do their own version of the twist. Rather than a simple pumping action, they circulate blood as if they were wringing a towel. The bottom of the heart twists as it contracts in a counterclockwise direction while the top twists clockwise. Scientists call this the left ventricular twist—and it can be used as an indicator of heart health. The heart is not alone. The human body is replete with examples of soft muscular systems that bend, twist, extend, and flex in complex ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a "superabsorbing" design that may significantly improve the light absorption efficiency of thin film solar cells and drive down manufacturing costs. The superabsorbing design could decrease the thickness of the semiconductor materials used in thin film solar cells by more than one order of magnitude without compromising the capability of solar light absorption. "State-of-the-art thin film solar cells require an amorphous silicon layer that is about 100 nanometers (nm) thick to capture the majority of the ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Associated with unhappy visits to the dentist, "cavity" means something else in the branch of physics known as optics. Put simply, an optical cavity is an arrangement of mirrors that allows beams of light to circulate in closed paths. These cavities help us build things like lasers and optical fibers used for communications. Now, an international research team pushed the concept further by developing an optical "nanocavity" that boosts the amount of light that ultrathin semiconductors absorb. The advancement could lead to, among other things, more powerful ...

A genus of cockroach in the poorly studied family Corydiidae has been revised for the first time since 1920. The revision has resulted in the discovery and description of 39 new species of Arenivaga, a genus which previously held nine species. The Corydiidae family of roaches is found worldwide and its constituents are frequently found in harsh, dry habitats not usually associated with cockroaches. They are also often subterranean in their habits making their presence easily overlooked. The study was completed over a four-year period by Heidi Hopkins, who is a cockroach ...

As the price for decoding a person's DNA keeps dropping, expectations for personalized medicine based on specific genetic profiling rise. But translating an individual's genetic data into finely tailored medical treatments still faces major challenges, explains a new article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly magazine of the American Chemical Society. Rick Mullin, senior editor at C&EN, notes that advances in DNA sequencing have allowed researchers to design some therapies, particularly in the cancer realm, for patients with certain genetic traits. As the ...

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have demonstrated that an abrupt weakening of the summer monsoon affected northwest India 4,100 years ago. The resulting drought coincided with the beginning of the decline of the metropolis-building Indus Civilisation, which spanned present-day Pakistan and India, suggesting that climate change could be why many of the major cities of the civilisation were abandoned. The research, reported online on 25 February, 2014, in the journal Geology, involved the collection of snail shells preserved in the sediments of an ancient lake ...

Stars, diamonds, circles. Rather than your average bowl of Lucky Charms, these are three-dimensional cell cultures generated by an exciting new digital microfluidics platform, the results of which have been published in Nature Communications this week by researchers at the University of Toronto. The tool, which can be used to study cells in cost-efficient, three-dimensional microgels, may hold the key to personalized medicine applications in the future. "We already know that the microenvironment can greatly influence cell fate," says Irwin A. Eydelnant, recent doctoral ...

A Keck Medicine of USC-led team of microbiologists has identified previously unknown interactions between critical proteins in the human immune response system, uncovering two independent regulatory mechanisms that keep the body's immune response in check. Their findings appear in the February 2014 edition of Cell Host & Microbe, the top peer-reviewed scientific journal that focuses on the study of cell-pathogen interaction. "The body's response to infection consists of a complex network of biological processes set off by the intrusion of disease-causing microbes," said ...

PORTLAND, Ore. February 26, 2014 -- Colon cancer screening rates increased by nearly 40 percent when free stool tests were mailed to patients' homes, according to results of a pilot study published today in the journal BMC Cancer. The study, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), included 869 patients who received their health care from community health centers in the Portland, Ore. metropolitan area. The clinics serve many Latino patients who live below the poverty level. About half of them have no health insurance. "We are very happy that so many of the ...

Overweight or obese women with the mentality that they are "eating for two" are more likely to experience excessive weight gain while pregnant, according to researchers at Penn State College of Medicine. Cynthia Chuang, associate professor of medicine and public health sciences, studied the attitudes and habits of women who gained appropriate weight and those who exceeded guidelines. Overweight is defined as having a body mass index of 25 to 29; obese is having a BMI greater than 29. In 2009 the Institute of Medicine recommends that women of normal weight gain 25 to ...

Suicide among young men is a major public health concern in many countries, despite great efforts to find effective prevention strategies. By interviewing close relatives and friends of apparently well-functioning young men who unexpectedly took their own life, Norwegian researchers found there had been no signs of serious mental disorder. This contradicts previous research which suggests that depression or other mental illness is an important risk factor in suicide. In Norway, there is still scant scientific evidence of effective prevention strategies, and suicide rates ...

AUDIO: Humpback whale sounds were recorded in Bering Strait in October 2012. Click here for more information. The Arctic is home to a growing number of whales and ships, and to populations of sub-Arctic whales that are expanding their territory into newly ice-free Arctic waters. A study of the narrow passage of the Bering Strait uses underwater microphones to track the whales by their sounds. Three years of recordings reveal more detections of both Arctic and sub-Arctic whales ...

Scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have produced a synthetic air reference standard which can be used to accurately measure levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere. This will greatly help scientists contribute to our understanding of climate change. A paper published in Analytical Chemistry describes how researchers at NPL have created a synthetic gas standard for the first time, which is comparable to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) scale and can be quickly produced in a laboratory and distributed, meeting growing demand. The ...

The annual ritual of visiting a doctor's office or health clinic to receive a flu shot may soon be outdated, thanks to the findings of a new study published in the journal Vaccine. The research, which involved nearly 100 people recruited in the metropolitan Atlanta area, found that test subjects could successfully apply a prototype vaccine patch to themselves. That suggests the self-administration of vaccines with microneedle patches may one day be feasible, potentially reducing administration costs and relieving an annual burden on health care professionals. The ...

The general state of a person's metabolism can be diversely illustrated with a new scientific blood analysis. With the aid of the analysis biomarkers predicting short-term mortality have now been discovered. If a person belongs to a risk group based on these biomarker concentrations, he/she has a multifold risk of dying in the next five years compared to the general population. The study is based on blood samples of over 17,000 Finnish and Estonian people. Mortality was related to four biomarkers in the blood: levels of two proteins (albumin and alpha-1 acidic glycoprotein), ...

How would you rate your own physical fitness? Is it good, satisfactory or maybe even poor? Surprisingly, your answer may reveal your future risk of getting dementia. A recent collaborative study from Finland, involving the follow-up of 3,559 adults for 30 years, has found that a simple question about self-rated physical fitness in midlife may reveal individuals who are at an increased risk of developing dementia. Those who reported poor self-rated physical fitness in midlife, at the mean age of 50 years, were four times more likely to get dementia during the next three ...