SAN FRANCISCO – A vast majority of people who see their doctors for sore throats or acute bronchitis receive antibiotics, yet only a small percentage should, according to analyses of two major national surveys being presented at IDWeek 2013™. Those illnesses usually are caused by viruses, and antibiotics – which only treat bacterial infections – do not help. Harvard University researchers analyzed the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey and determined that doctors prescribed antibiotics in 60 percent of visits ...

SAN FRANCISCO – When patients with HIV are hospitalized for other conditions, such as a heart problem, surgery or complications of diabetes, mistakes are often made involving their complicated anti-retroviral therapy (ART) regimens. But those errors are more than twice as likely to be corrected when patients are seen by an infectious diseases (ID) physician, suggests a Cleveland Clinic study being presented at IDWeek 2013™ today. Most patients with HIV are cared for by physicians with HIV expertise in the community, and when they are hospitalized for non-HIV conditions, ...

VIDEO: In this video, scientists demonstrate how to deliver drugs to the mammary gland via nipple-injection. Click here for more information. On October 4, JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, will publish a new technique for breast cancer treatment and prevention—injection of therapeutics via the nipple. The procedure, demonstrated on mice, offers direct access to the most common origin of breast cancer, the milk ducts, and could be used to offer cancer therapy ...

Portland, Ore., USA (October 4, 2013) --- Being overweight shortens a dog's life expectancy according to new research by the WALTHAM® Centre for Pet Nutrition. Data on a range of popular dog breeds from across the USA showed that dogs that are overweight in middle age have a shorter life expectancy than ideal weight dogs. Specifically, overweight dogs were found to suffer a reduction in life expectancy of up to ten months compared to ideal weight dogs. Being overweight in middle age can have potentially far-reaching consequences for a dog's life span, highlighting the importance ...

SAN FRANCISCO – An investigational vaccine appears generally well tolerated and effective against the most common strain of norovirus, reducing the main symptoms of the gastrointestinal (GI) infection, vomiting and/or diarrhea, by 52 percent, suggests research being presented at IDWeek 2013™. Currently, there is no treatment or cure for norovirus, the most common cause of severe GI infection in the United States. Norovirus is highly contagious. Significant outbreaks occur in health care facilities, childcare centers and other places where people are in close quarters, ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Although they are at higher risk for cervical cancer, girls from low-income families are less likely to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine that prevents it, and the reasons they are not fully vaccinated differ depending on whether their parents are English-speaking or Spanish-speaking, suggests research being presented at IDWeek 2013™. In the study, Spanish-speaking parents whose daughters were not fully vaccinated said their providers either did not encourage the vaccine or didn't explain that three shots were necessary for full protection. ...

University of Calgary scientists have discovered metabolic enzymes in the opium poppy that play "widespread roles" in enabling the plant to make painkilling morphine and codeine, and other important compounds. The discovery, by university researcher Peter Facchini and PhD student Scott Farrow, includes the first biochemical reaction of its kind ever reported in plants, which may also occur in garden-variety poppies and other plants. Their research, published this week as a cover story in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, sheds light on how the opium poppy – the world's ...

The mystery of why life on Earth evolved when it did has deepened with the publication of a new study in the latest edition of the journal Science. Scientists at the CRPG-CNRS University of Lorraine, The University of Manchester and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris have ruled out a theory as to why the planet was warm enough to sustain the planet's earliest life forms when the Sun's energy was roughly three-quarters the strength it is today. Life evolved on Earth during the Archean, between 3.8 and 2.4 billion years ago, but the weak Sun should have meant ...

Two French physicists, Bernard Sapoval and Marcel Filoche from École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France, suggest in a study published in EPJ E how evolution has shaped our lungs through successive optimisations of physical parameters such as conservation of energy and speed of delivery. Our respiratory system consists of a bronchial tree designed to transport air through the lungs combined with an alveolar system designed to capture the oxygen. Both are subjected to different type of optimisations. Only tree-like structures, the paper shows, are able to efficiently feed ...

It's not visible to the naked eye and you can't feel it, but up to 40 per cent of your body's energy goes into supplying the microscopic sodium-potassium pump with the energy it needs. The pump is constantly doing its job in every cell of all animals and humans. It works much like a small battery which, among other things, maintains the sodium balance which is crucial to keep muscles and nerves working. The sodium-potassium pump transports sodium out and potassium into the cell in a fixed cycle. During this process the structure of the pump changes. It is well-established ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In 2011, when an MIT senior named John Romanishin proposed a new design for modular robots to his robotics professor, Daniela Rus, she said, "That can't be done." Two years later, Rus showed her colleague Hod Lipson, a robotics researcher at Cornell University, a video of prototype robots, based on Romanishin's design, in action. "That can't be done," Lipson said. In November, Romanishin — now a research scientist in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) — Rus, and postdoc Kyle Gilpin will establish once and for all that ...

Hanover, N.H.—In a study published in published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, a Dartmouth researcher found that dying heart cells are kept alive with spikes of oxygen. During a heart attack when the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a section of the heart is interrupted, and not quickly restored, heart muscle begins dying. Deprived of oxygen and other essential nutrients, cell death continues occurring over a period of time leading to progressive loss of heart function and congestive heart failure. Current therapies are not effective at limiting cell loss—they only slow down ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein's brain were unusually well connected to each other and may have contributed to his brilliance, according to a new study conducted in part by Florida State University evolutionary anthropologist Dean Falk. "This study, more than any other to date, really gets at the 'inside' of Einstein's brain," Falk said. "It provides new information that helps make sense of what is known about the surface of Einstein's brain." The study, "The Corpus Callosum of Albert Einstein's Brain: Another Clue to His High ...

A group of Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers and collaborators at MIT and MGH have found a way to use stem cells as drug delivery vehicles. The researchers inserted modified strands of messenger RNA into connective tissue stem cells—called mesenchymal stem cells—which stimulated the cells to produce adhesive surface proteins and secrete interleukin-10, an anti-inflammatory molecule. When injected into the bloodstream of a mouse, these modified human stem cells were able to target and stick to sites of inflammation and release biological ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 4, 2013 -- When you heat a tiny droplet of liquid tin with a laser, plasma forms on the surface of the droplet and produces extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light, which has a higher frequency and greater energy than normal ultraviolet. Now, for the first time, researchers have mapped this EUV emission and developed a theoretical model that explains how the emission depends on the three-dimensional shape of the plasma. In doing so, they found a previously untapped source of EUV light, which could be useful for various applications including semiconductor ...

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has been awarded a $12-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to deploy Comet, a new petascale supercomputer designed to transform advanced scientific computing by expanding access and capacity among traditional as well as non-traditional research domains. Comet will be capable of an overall peak performance of nearly two petaflops, or two quadrillion operations per second. "Supercomputers such as Comet and our data-intensive Gordon system are helping to fulfill the ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Researchers at MIT, working with partners at NASA, have developed a new concept for a microscope that would use neutrons — subatomic particles with no electrical charge — instead of beams of light or electrons to create high-resolution images. Among other features, neutron-based instruments have the ability to probe inside metal objects — such as fuel cells, batteries, and engines, even when in use — to learn details of their internal structure. Neutron instruments are also uniquely sensitive to magnetic properties and to lighter elements that are important ...

NEW YORK (October 3, 2013)—Heated debates about the quantifiable value of arts and literature are a common feature of American social discourse. Now, two researchers from The New School for Social Research have published a paper in Science demonstrating that reading literary fiction enhances a set of skills and thought processes fundamental to complex social relationships—and functional societies. Ph.D. candidate David Comer Kidd and his advisor, professor of psychology Emanuele Castano performed five experiments to measure the effect of reading literary fiction on participants' ...

A massive data analysis of natural genetic variants in humans and variants in cancer tumors has implicated dozens of mutations in the development of breast and prostate cancer, a Yale-led team has found. The newly discovered mutations are in regions of DNA that do not code for proteins but instead influence activity of other genes. These areas represent an unexplored world that will allow researchers and doctors to gain new insight into the causes and treatment of cancer, said the scientists. "This allows us to take a systematic approach to cancer genomics," said Mark ...

This news release is available in German. Most molecules occur in several shapes, which may behave very differently. Using a sorting machine for molecules, a German–Swiss research team can now for the first time directly measure the various reaction rates of different forms of the same compound. The team, led by DESY scientist Prof. Jochen Küpper from the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science CFEL and Prof. Stefan Willitsch from the University of Basel, presents its work in the US journal "Science". CFEL is a collaboration of DESY, the University of Hamburg ...

BOULDER, Colo -- Extending evidence of quantum behavior farther into the large-scale world of everyday life, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have "entangled"—linked the properties of—a microscopic mechanical drum with electrical signals. The results confirm that NIST's micro-drum could be used as a quantum memory in future quantum computers, which would harness the rules of quantum physics to solve important problems that are intractable today. The work also marks the first-ever entanglement of a macroscopic oscillator, expanding ...

Researchers from The Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR), University of Manchester have made an important step forward in finding a potential treatment for an infection that affects over a billion people worldwide. Gastrointestinal parasitic infections, which are worm infections in the intestine, affect nearly one quarter of the world population and have been heavily linked with poverty in poorer regions. They normally result in a chronic, long-lived infection associated with poor quality of life and health problems. A team led by Dr Mark ...

WATERLOO, Ont. (Thursday, October 3, 2013) -- Facebook and Twitter could provide vital clues to control infectious diseases by using mathematical models to understand how we respond socially to biological contagions. Cold and flu season prompts society to find ways to prevent the spread of disease though measures like vaccination all the way through to covering our mouths when we cough and staying in bed. These social responses are much more difficult to predict than the way biological contagion will evolve, but new methods are being developed to do just that. Published ...

(Boston)--In a commentary in this week's issue of Lancet, pediatricians from Boston Medical Center (BMC) call the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly the Food Stamp Program), one of America's most cost-effective and successful public health programs in the country. According to the authors, not only does it make life much better for children and families, it also saves society money. Unfortunately they also point out that despite convincing evidence of the beneficial effects of SNAP on child health, legislators have targeted SNAP for cuts as they struggle ...

The biggest threat to the contribution that childhood vaccines make to societal well-being doesn't come from deficits in public comprehension, distrust of science, or misinformation campaigns, but rather from the failure of governmental and other institutions to use evidence-based strategies to anticipate and avoid recurring threats to the science communication environment—the myriad everyday channels through which the public becomes apprised of decision-relevant science. This is the thesis of an article published this week in Science magazine by Dan M. Kahan, Elizabeth ...