The frequency and duration of patient-doctor contact during dialysis care vary appreciably across countries. More frequent and longer contact with physicians is linked to fewer deaths and hospitalizations of dialysis patients. Approximately 2 million patients in the world receive some sort of dialysis treatment. Washington, DC (July 25, 2013) — Both the frequency and duration of patient-doctor contact during dialysis care vary appreciably across countries, and facilities with more frequent and longer contact had fewer patient deaths and hospitalizations, according ...

TORONTO, Canada -- Scientists at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered a function of the tumor suppressor gene PTEN that helps explain why certain promising therapies fail in many cancer patients, a finding that could aid in delivering tailored, personalized cancer medicine based on an individual's genetics. The research, published online today in Science, "increases understanding of the molecular mechanisms of action of PTEN, which is known to be defective in as many as half of all advanced cancers" says principal investigator Vuk Stambolic, Senior Scientist ...

Researchers at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics and MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have implanted false memories into mice, potentially illuminating the mechanisms underlying the human phenomenon of "recalling" experiences that never occurred. In previous work, the researchers had detected a single memory in the brain, genetically tagged the brain cells housing that memory with a light-sensitive protein, and flickered pulses of light to "turn on" the memory at any given moment. The latest work, to be reported in the journal Science, tinkers ...

PHILADELPHIA — The taller a postmenopausal woman is, the greater her risk for developing cancer, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. Height was linked to cancers of the breast, colon, endometrium, kidney, ovary, rectum, and thyroid, as well as to multiple myeloma and melanoma, and these associations did not change even after adjusting for factors known to influence these cancers, in this study of 20,928 postmenopausal women, identified from a large cohort of 144,701 ...

Women with clot-caused strokes are less likely than men to arrive at the hospital in time to receive the best treatment, according to a European study reported in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. In the study, 11 percent of women with acute ischemic strokes were treated with the clot-dissolving medication alteplase, compared with 14 percent of men. Study participants included 5,515 patients at 12 hospitals in the Netherlands. Researchers found no gender gap when they looked only at patients who arrived at the hospital within four hours of the onset of symptoms ...

Around a quarter of all operating room errors are caused by technology/equipment problems, indicates an analysis of the available evidence, published online in BMJ Quality & Safety. Inability to use the technology/equipment, lack of availability, and faulty devices/machines made up the bulk of the problems, the analysis indicates. The researchers methodically searched for published studies on errors and problems arising in operating rooms in electronic databases. After applying a quality assessment technique, they found 28 studies out of a total of 19,362 pieces of ...

A class of drug, called ACE inhibitors, which are used to lower blood pressure, slow the rate of cognitive decline typical of dementia, suggests research published in the online journal BMJ Open. Furthermore, these drugs may even boost brain power, the research indicates. The researchers compared the rates of cognitive decline in 361 patients who had either been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, or a mix of both. Eighty five of the patients were already taking ACE inhibitors; the rest were not. The researchers also assessed the impact of ACE ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A team of scientists has obtained intriguing insights into two groups of autism candidate genes in the mammalian brain that new evidence suggests are functionally and spatially related. The newly published analysis identifies two networked groupings from 26 genes associated with autism that are overexpressed in the cerebellar cortex, in areas dominated by neurons called granule cells. The team, composed of neuroscientists and computational biologists, worked from a database providing expression levels of individual genes throughout the mouse ...

Boston, Mass., July 25, 2013 – Though existing research has shown gastric bypass surgery resolves type 2 diabetes, the reason has remained unclear. A research team, led by Nicholas Stylopoulos, MD, Boston Children's Hospital's Division of Endocrinology, has identified the small intestine—widely believed to be a passive organ—as the major contributor to the body's metabolism, based on a study in rats. The report will appear in Science on July 26, 2013. Weight loss and improved diabetes often go hand-in-hand, but type 2 diabetes often gets resolved even before weight loss ...

As the world's best athletes descend on London today to take part in the Olympic Anniversary Games, a group of researchers from Mexico has provided an insight into the physics of one of the greatest athletic performances of all time. In a new paper published today, 26 July, in IOP Publishing's European Journal of Physics, the researchers have put forward a mathematical model that accurately depicts the truly extraordinary feats of Usain Bolt during his 100 metre world record sprint at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. According to the researchers' model, Bolt's ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have devised a way to quickly and easily target and tinker with any gene in the human genome. The new tool, which builds on an RNA-guided enzyme they borrowed from bacteria, is being made freely available to researchers who may now apply it to the next round of genome discovery. The new method also has obvious utility for gene therapy and for efforts to reprogram stem or adult cells into other cell types – for example, to make new neurons from skin cells. "We have the genome sequence and we know what all the parts are, but we are ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The phenomenon of false memory has been well-documented: In many court cases, defendants have been found guilty based on testimony from witnesses and victims who were sure of their recollections, but DNA evidence later overturned the conviction. In a step toward understanding how these faulty memories arise, MIT neuroscientists have shown that they can plant false memories in the brains of mice. They also found that many of the neurological traces of these memories are identical in nature to those of authentic memories. "Whether it's a false or genuine ...

Two of literature's most famous detectives had a major influence on the development of the modern crime scene investigation, according to a historian from The University of Manchester. Dr Ian Burney's research into the history of "CSI" has revealed that two of its founding fathers – Frenchman Edmond Locard and Austrian Hans Gross – were influenced by British writers Arthur Conan Doyle and R Austen Freeman. Conan Doyle, a doctor and creator of Sherlock Holmes and Freeman, another doctor whose creation Dr John Evelyn Thorndyke is the prototype for the modern forensic ...

Scientists have discovered a new molecule that prevents cancer cells from responding and surviving when starved of oxygen and which could be developed into new treatments for the disease, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society* today (Friday). Cancer Research UK scientists at the University of Southampton found that this molecule targets the master switch -- HIF-1 -- that cancer cells use to adapt to low oxygen levels, a common feature in the disease. The researchers uncovered a way to stop cancer cells using this switch ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. – Scientists can learn a tremendous amount about neutron stars and quark stars without understanding their internal structure in detail, according to two Montana State University scientists who published their findings in the July 26 issue of "Science." "The stars could be the softest or the hardest in their kind, and it wouldn't matter," said Nicolas Yunes, assistant professor in MSU's Department of Physics. The reason – discovered by Yunes and postdoctoral scholar Kent Yagi -- is almost universal relations among three intrinsic properties of these ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 25, 2013 — Researchers believe they have solved a lingering mystery about how electrons within Earth's radiation belt can suddenly become energetic enough to kill orbiting satellites. Thanks to data gathered from an intrepid pair of NASA probes roaming the harsh space environment within the Van Allen radiation belts, scientists have identified an internal electron accelerator operating within the belts. "For years we thought the Van Allen belts were pretty well behaved and changed slowly," said Geoffrey Reeves of Los Alamos National Laboratory's ...

This news release is available in German. The findings are reported in the current issue of the "Journal of Clinical Investigation" (published online on July 25, 2013). The body's repair mechanisms begin to fail with increasing age. As a result, signs of wear and tear appear and the risk for many diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, diabetes, cardiovascular disorders and cancer, increases. "Current efforts to develop therapies against age-related diseases target these disorders one by one," says Dr. Dan Ehninger, research group leader at the DZNE site in Bonn. ...

LA JOLLA, CA----More than 11,000 Americans suffer spinal cord injuries each year, and since over a quarter of those injuries are due to falls, the number is likely to rise as the population ages. The reason so many of those injuries are permanently disabling is that the human body lacks the capacity to regenerate nerve fibers. The best our bodies can do is route the surviving tissue around the injury site. "It's like a detour after an earthquake," says Kuo-Fen Lee, the Salk Institute's Helen McLoraine Chair in Molecular Neurobiology. "If the freeway is down, but you can ...

WASHINGTON, July 25, 2013 —Developing ways to treat cancer patients with drugs that kill only cancer cells and that have fewer side effects is one of the topics in the premiere segment of the 2013 season of a popular video series from the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. The videos are available at http://www.acs.org/PrizedScience and on DVD. Titled Prized Science: Peter Stang on Building Molecules, the first episode of the 2013 series features the research of Peter J. Stang, Ph.D., winner of the 2013 ACS Priestley Medal. He is ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Color in living organisms can be formed two ways: pigmentation or anatomical structure. Structural colors arise from the physical interaction of light with biological nanostructures. A wide range of organisms possess this ability, but the biological mechanisms underlying the process have been poorly understood. Two years ago, an interdisciplinary team from UC Santa Barbara discovered the mechanism by which a neurotransmitter dramatically changes color in the common market squid, Doryteuthis opalescens. That neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, sets ...

Northern Australia's bushfire season was well underway by the beginning of July, 2013. On July 23 the Aqua satellite flew over the region, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument flying aboard to capture this true-color image of the winter's fires. Most of the hotspots, especially the large ones, are found in the Northern Territory, where long plumes of gray smoke are blown strongly to the northwest by heavy winds. The northern tip of Western Australia is also speckled with red hotspots and some thinner plumes of smoke. The red spots ...

The newest tropical storm to form in the Atlantic was put in NASA's "infrared spotlight." NASA's AIRS instrument uses infrared imaging to analyze tropical cyclones and captured an image of newborn Tropical Storm Dorian. NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument also known as AIRS, flies aboard the Aqua satellite. AIRS uses infrared light and shined that light on Tropical Storm Dorian on July 25 at 03:29 UTC (11:29 p.m. EDT, July 24). Infrared data helps determine temperature, such as the cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS data revealed that Dorian's strongest ...

Tropical Storm Flossie formed in the Eastern Pacific Ocean and strengthened quickly on July 25. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Flossie and captured an infrared look at the storm and saw a large area of powerful thunderstorms around its center and south of the center. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. AIRS captured an infrared image of Tropical Storm Flossie on July 25 at 10:05 UTC (6:05 a.m. EDT). Infrared data helps determine temperature, such as the cloud top and sea surface temperatures. AIRS data revealed that ...

University of Notre Dame researchers have developed a computer-aided method that uses electronic medical records to offer the promise of rapid advances toward personalized health care, disease management and wellness. Notre Dame computer science professor Nitesh V. Chawla and his doctoral student, Darcy A. Davis, developed the system called Collaborative Assessment and Recommendation Engine (CARE) for personalized disease risk predictions and wellbeing. "The potential for 'personalizing' health care from a disease prevention, disease management and therapeutics perspective ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- A superfluid moves like a completely frictionless liquid, seemingly able to propel itself without any hindrance from gravity or surface tension. The physics underlying these materials — which appear to defy the conventional laws of physics — has fascinated scientists for decades. Think of the assassin T-1000 in the movie "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" — a robotic shape-shifter made of liquid metal. Or better yet, consider a real-world example: liquid helium. When cooled to extremely low temperatures, helium exhibits behavior that is otherwise impossible ...