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 ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — As the nation's health care system prepares for uninsured Americans to gain health insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act, a question hangs over crowded hospital emergency departments: Will the newly insured make fewer ER visits than they do today? According to the results of a new University of Michigan Medical School study in teens and young adults, the answer likely reflects a balance of ER care versus clinic visits. While the number of ER visits will likely stay about the same, clinic visits will likely go up. The results, from the ...

This news release is available in German. This is the best-preserved fossil find yet from the early era of our genus. The particularly interesting aspect is that it displays a combination of features that were unknown to us before the find. The skull, found in Dmanisi by anthropologists from the University of Zurich as part of a collaboration with colleagues in Georgia funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, has the largest face, the most massively built jaw and teeth and the smallest brain within the Dmanisi group. It is the fifth skull to be discovered ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Meteorologists often use information about warm and cold fronts to determine whether a tornado will occur in a particular area. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that the temperature of the Pacific Ocean could help scientists predict the type and location of tornado activity in the U.S. Laurel McCoy, an atmospheric science graduate student at the MU School of Natural Resources, and Tony Lupo, professor and chair of atmospheric science in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, surveyed 56,457 tornado-like events from 1950 ...

Alexandria, VA - The Center for Geoscience Education and Public Understanding at the American Geosciences Institute has released a landmark report on the status of Earth Science education in U.S. middle and high schools, describing in detail significant gaps between identified priorities and lagging practice. The report, "Earth and Space Sciences Education in U.S. Secondary Schools: Key Indicators and Trends," offers baseline data on indicators of the subject's status since the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in April 2013. Establishing clear aims ...

Montreal combo plate cuts weight and health risks in obese individuals High-intensity interval training combined with Mediterranean diet counselling 'supersizes' heart health Montreal − Lifestyle programs focused on high-intensity interval ...

Overnight dialysis boosts kidney health -- while reducing risk of heart disease Treatment shows promise for improving artery function Montreal– Receiving dialysis at home while sleeping not only improves kidney health and quality of life for ...

High blood pressure during pregnancy could elevate the risk of a future stroke Women with this pregnancy complication may benefit from blood pressure monitoring to avoid longer-term risks, researchers say Montreal – High blood pressure during ...

Contact: Kim Newman sciencenews@einstein.yu.edu 718-430-3101 Albert Einstein College of Medicine Helene Guss hguss@montefiore.org 718-920-4011 Montefiore Medical Center Miscarriage perceptions vs. reality: Public understanding not in sync with facts National survey brings miscarriage misconceptions out into the open, rescue karyotyping provides critical information about causes of miscarriage NEW YORK (October 16, 2013) – The majority of Americans inaccurately believe miscarriage is rare and misunderstand its causes, creating an often isolating and guilt-ridden ...

Chicago(October 16, 2013): Traumatic injuries can be more severe for older adults, yet they often do not get the right level of care, according to a study appearing in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. Instead of going to a trauma center, many elderly patients end up in facilities without specialized expertise in trauma care that can treat all of their injuries. The top cause of traumatic injuries for elderly patients is an unintentional fall, according to the National Trauma Data Bank of the American College of Surgeons (ACS).1 Such ...

NEW YORK (October 16, 2013) -- A research team from Weill Cornell Medical College and The Rockefeller University has identified a bacterium it believes may trigger multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic, debilitating disorder that damages myelin forming cells in the brain and spinal cord. Their study, published in PLoS ONE, is the first to identify the bacterium, Clostridium (C.) perfringens type B, in humans. The scientists say their study is small and must be expanded before a definitive connection between the pathogen and MS can be made, but they also say their findings ...

Skin-related laser procedures such as hair removal remain one of the most popular elective types of laser surgery performed in the United States today. To meet demand, more non-physicians are performing these procedures than ever before. A study published online Oct. 16 in JAMA Dermatology found that lawsuits related to procedures when non-physicians are operating the laser are increasing, particularly outside of a traditional medical setting. "Procedures performed by untrained individuals, particularly in non-medical settings, are more likely to result in litigation," ...

LA JOLLA, CA----With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control ...

Humans aren't the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking, according to evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 17. "We were surprised by how reliably the marmoset monkeys exchanged their vocalizations in a cooperative manner, particularly since in most cases they were doing so with individuals that they were not pair-bonded with," says Asif Ghazanfar of Princeton University. "This makes what we found much more similar ...

An international team of astronomers has found the most distant gravitational lens yet — a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy. But it also poses a mystery: lenses of this kind should be exceedingly rare. Given this and other recent finds, astronomers either have been phenomenally lucky — or, more likely, they have underestimated substantially the number of small, very young ...

Modest increases in marketing and outreach to local communities can increase the amount of physical activity that occurs in parks, providing a cost-effective way to potentially improve a community's health, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The project, which examined 50 parks across Los Angeles, found that simple interventions such as increased signage boosted physical activity by 7 to 12 percent over the study period in relation to parks that did not make changes. The findings are published online by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "The study ...

A new study has discovered profound abnormalities in brain activity in a group of retired American football players. Although the former players in the study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers. Previous research has found that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new findings, published in Scientific Reports, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have connected very rare and precise duplications and deletions in the human genome to their complex disease consequences by duplicating them in zebrafish. The findings are based on detailed studies of five people missing a small fragment of their genome and suffering from a mysterious syndrome of craniofacial features, visual anomalies and developmental delays. When those patient observations were coupled to analyses of the anatomical defects in genetically altered zebrafish embryos, the researchers were able to identify the contribution ...