In December 2013, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first high-throughput DNA sequencer (also known commonly as a "gene sequencer"), an instrument that allows laboratories to quickly and efficiently sequence a person's DNA for genetic testing, medical diagnoses and perhaps one day, customized drug therapies. Helping get the new device approved was another first: the initial use of a reference set of standard genotypes, or "coded blueprints" of a person's genetic traits. The standard genotypes were created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology ...

Redevelopment of the London King's Cross station and the nearby neighborhood was announced in 2005 and completed with a grand opening in 2012. The internationally well-recognized engineering services firm Arup, famous among other things for their work on the Opera House in Sydney, Australia, and the Allianz Arena in Munich, worked on this 400 million pound construction project. In the process, the area to the north of the station including 50 new buildings, 2,000 new apartments, 20 new streets and ten new public squares was being renewed. Thus, a great challenge was to ...

February 25, 2014 -- From 1971-1982, Air Force reservists, who flew in 34 dioxin-contaminated aircraft used to spray Agent Orange and returned to the U.S. following discontinuation of the herbicide spraying operations in the Vietnam War, were exposed to greater levels of dioxin than previously acknowledged, according to a study published today in Environmental Research by senior author Jeanne Mager Stellman, PhD, professor emerita at the Mailman School of Public Health's Department of Health Policy and Management. "These findings are important because they describe ...

Organ transplant patients routinely receive drugs that stop their immune systems from attacking newly implanted hearts, livers, kidneys or lungs, which the body sees as foreign. But new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that broadly dampening the immune response, long considered crucial to transplant success, may encourage lung transplant rejection. In a surprising discovery, the researchers found that newly transplanted lungs in mice were more likely to be rejected if key immune cells were missing, a situation that simulates ...

Eggs from head lice, also called nits, are incredibly difficult to remove. Female lice lay eggs directly onto strands of hair, and they cement them in place with a glue-like substance, making them hard to get rid of. In fact, the eggs are glued down so strongly that they will stay in place even after hair has been treated with pediculicides -- substances used to kill lice. Some shampoos and conditioners that contain chemicals or special oils are marketed as nit-removal products. However, new research just published in the Journal of Medical Entomology shows that ordinary ...

February 25, 2014 -- Late adolescence is a period when many youth become involved in high-risk behaviors with adverse consequences. Researchers at the Mailman School of Public Health with colleagues at Johns Hopkins University studied the degree to which two such behaviors, adolescent sexual behaviors and gambling, affected African American youth in nine primary schools in Baltimore, MD. In data collected from a cohort study, they assessed whether certain adolescent sexual behaviors linked with unintended consequences such as adolescent pregnancy and sexually transmitted ...

Temperature, not snowfall, has been driving the fluctuating size of Peru's Quelccaya Ice Cap, whose dramatic shrinkage in recent decades has made it a symbol for global climate change, a Dartmouth-led study shows. The findings support many scientists' suspicions that tropical glaciers are rapidly shrinking because of a warming climate, and will help scientists to better understand the natural variability of past and modern climate and to refine models that predict tropical glaciers' response to future climate change. The study appears in the journal Geology. A PDF ...

Washington, DC—Overweight children who were exposed to higher levels of perfluorinated chemicals tended to show early signs of developing the metabolic syndrome, according to a new study published in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism. The term metabolic syndrome describes a cluster of risk factors that increase the chances of developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes. The study is the first to find changing metabolic markers in children were associated with exposure to perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs), common industrial chemicals ...

Washington, DC—Older individuals who are vitamin D deficient also tend to have compromised immune function, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Vitamin D plays an important role in helping the body absorb calcium needed for healthy bones. The skin naturally produces vitamin D when it is exposed to sunlight. People also obtain smaller amounts of the vitamin through foods, such as milk fortified with vitamin D. More than 1 billion people worldwide are estimated to have deficient ...

Washington, DC—Patients were twice as likely to have a diabetic foot ulcer heal within eight weeks when they were treated with a tissue repair drug versus a placebo, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Foot ulcers are a common complication from diabetes than can lead to hospitalization and lower limb amputation. In 2006, about 65,700 non-traumatic lower-limb amputations were performed in people with diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Up ...

Philadelphia, PA, February 25, 2014 – As heart disease continues to be one of the leading causes of death in the United States, practitioners and patients alike are looking for ways to cut risk factors and identify new clues to assist with early detection. New research published in the March issue of The American Journal of Medicine suggests that there is an association between a difference in interarm systolic blood pressure and a significant increased risk for future cardiovascular events, leading researchers to recommend expanded clinical use of interarm blood pressure ...

It has long been known that, in the form of free ions, silver particles can be highly toxic to aquatic organisms. Yet to this day, there is a lack of detailed knowledge about the doses required to trigger a response and how the organisms deal with this kind of stress. To learn more about the cellular processes that occur in the cells, scientists from the Aquatic Research Institute, Eawag, subjected algae to a range of silver concentrations. In the past, silver mostly found its way into the environment in the vicinity of silver mines or via wastewater emanating from the ...

Imagine a user who intends to send $2 to a friend through PayPal. Embedded malware in the user's laptop, however, converts the $2 transaction into a $2,000 transfer to the account of the malware author instead. Researchers at Georgia Tech have created a prototype software, Gyrus, that takes extra steps to prevent malware from sending spam emails and instant messages, and blocking unauthorized commands such as money transfers. Current protection programs might recognize the original user's intent to send email, transfer money or engage in other transactions, but cannot ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Using the surface forces apparatus and an atomic force microscope, researchers at UC Santa Barbara have taken a molecular approach to myelin membrane interactions, leading to insights into demyelinating diseases, such as multiple sclerosis. Their research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences. For a healthy nervous system, axons — the long projections of our nerve cells that run throughout our bodies — must be properly insulated. Much like conventional power cords need electrical insulators around the conducting ...

Adult stem cells and cancer cells have many things in common, including an ability to migrate through tiny gaps in tissue. Both types of cells also experience a trade-off when it comes to this ability; having a flexible nucleus makes migration easier but is worse at protecting the nucleus' DNA compared to a stiffer nucleus. Nuclear proteins that regulate nuclear stiffness are therefore thought to control processes as diverse as tissue repair and tumor growth. In a study published in the Journal of Cell Biology, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shown ...

Despite international agreements on climate protection and political declarations of intent, global greenhouse gas emissions have not decreased. On the contrary, they continue to increase. With a growing world population and significant industrialization in emerging markets such as India and China the emission trend reversal necessary to limit global warming seems to be unlikely. Therefore, large-scale methods to artificially slow down global warming are increasingly being discussed. They include proposals to fertilize the oceans, so that stimulated plankton can remove ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study comparing siblings who were fed differently during infancy suggests that breast-feeding might be no more beneficial than bottle-feeding for 10 of 11 long-term health and well-being outcomes in children age 4 to 14. The outlier was asthma, which was associated more with breast-feeding than with bottle-feeding. The study also included an analysis of outcomes across families of different races and socioeconomic circumstances for comparison purposes, and those results matched other studies suggesting that breast-feeding's benefits to children ...

Many U.S. counties have incorporated electronic voting technology, largely in response to well-publicized challenges related to older mechanical and punch-card models. Although these updated systems have solved some usability problems, they present a new set of issues for voters unfamiliar with the technology. A new study published in Human Factors examines how smartphone-based voting systems can be incorporated into the current large-scale election process. "Current electronic voting systems have numerous issues - from usability and accessibility to security to the ...

Every second, your computer must process billions of computational steps to produce even the simplest outputs. Imagine if every one of those steps could be made just a tiny bit more efficient. "It would save precious nanoseconds," explained Northeastern University assistant professor of physics Swastik Kar. Kar and his colleague Yung Joon Jung, an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, have developed a series of novel devices that do just that. Their work was published recently in the journal Nature Photonics. Last year, the ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – The Geological Society of America's top journal, Geology, displays its multidisciplinary best in this latest posting. Earth science disciplines covered include geoarchaeology, climatology, invertebrate paleontology, sedimentology, geomorphology, seismology, planetary geology, geochemistry, glaciology, plate tectonics, mineralogy, and environmental and medical geology. Locations include Mars; Earth's moon; India; the Tibetan Plateau; the Saskatchewan River; L'Aquila, Italy; the Antarctic; Australia; the Andes; the San Andreas fault system; and Kume ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 25, 2014 -- A Chinese-U.S. research team is exploring the use of metamaterials -- artificial materials engineered to have exotic properties not found in nature -- to create devices that manipulate sound in versatile and unprecedented ways. In the journal Applied Physics Letters, the team reports a simple design for a device, called an acoustic field rotator, which can twist wavefronts inside it so that they appear to be propagating from another direction. "Numerous research efforts have centered on metamaterial-based devices with fascinating wave-control ...

We live surrounded by polymers and today, rather than come up with new polymers, there is a tendency to modify them in order to obtain new applications. Carbon nanotubes have excellent mechanical properties, are very tough, very rigid, and what is more, they conduct electricity. "The problem with them is that they get dispersed, in other words, it's very difficult to get them to blend with polymers," explained Iñaki Eguiazabal, a member of the Polymer Technology Group. That is why it is essential to come up with methods that will enablethe carbon nanotubes to have a ...

MADISON, Wis. – Cleaning up oil spills and metal contaminates in a low-impact, sustainable and inexpensive manner remains a challenge for companies and governments globally. But a group of researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is examining alternative materials that can be modified to absorb oil and chemicals without absorbing water. If further developed, the technology may offer a cheaper and "greener" method to absorb oil and heavy metals from water and other surfaces. Shaoqin "Sarah" Gong, a researcher at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) ...

Phase 2 trial results published in the March issue of Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, suggests the potential for Glycerol Phenylbutyrate (GPB) to reduce hepatic encephalopathy episodes in patients with cirrhosis, with a safety profile similar to placebo. Patients with hepatic encephalopathy experience neuropsychiatric symptoms that may range from mild confusion to coma. There is conflicting evidence on the link between elevated blood ammonia and hepatic encephalopathy. Poorly-absorbable disaccharides and antibiotics ...

COLLEGE PARK, MD--Wireless sensor-based irrigation systems can offer significant benefits to greenhouse operators. Advances in sensor technology and increased understanding of plant physiology have made it possible for greenhouse growers to use water content sensors to accurately determine irrigation timing and application rates in soilless substrates. The wireless sensor systems provide more accurate measurements of substrate moisture than qualitative methods, and can save irrigation water, labor, energy, and fertilizer. The authors of a report published in HortTechnology ...