Screening men with a family history of prostate cancer for a range of gene mutations can identify those who are at high risk of aggressive forms of the disease and in need of lifelong monitoring, a new study has shown. Scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, London, found screening of men who had multiple relatives with prostate cancer was able to pick up 14 mutations in known cancer genes that predicted the development of the disease. The research was mainly funded by Prostate Cancer UK with additional support from Cancer Research UK, and is published in the ...

Greece's health crisis is worsening as a result of continued healthcare budget cuts, says a new study published in the medical journal, The Lancet. Researchers say the harmful effects of austerity are linked to the increasing inability of patients to access the health system, large rises in the incidence of infectious disease, and a deterioration in the overall mental health of Greek people. The authors from the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine find that Greece has had the largest cutbacks to the ...

A new study has found that 42 countries or territories around the world permit the harvest of marine turtles – and estimates that more than 42,000 turtles are caught each year by these fisheries. The research, carried out by Blue Ventures Conservation and staff at the University of Exeter's Centre for Ecology and Conservation, is the first to comprehensively review the number of turtles currently taken within the law and assess how this compares to other global threats to the creatures. All seven marine turtle species are currently listed on the IUCN Red List of Threatened ...

Papillomaviruses (linked to cervical cancer when they infect the mucosal tissue in the female reproductive tract) can also infect normal skin, where they cause warts and possibly non-melanoma skin cancer, mostly in immune-suppressed organ transplant patients. An article published on February 20th in PLOS Pathogens suggests that vaccination might prevent virus-associated benign and malignant skin tumors. Transplant recipients need to take immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent rejection of the transplanted organ. Among the side effects of these ...

Washington, DC (February 20, 2014) — In addition to experiencing negative health effects from their disease, patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) are also at risk of experiencing hazardous events potentially related to medical treatments they receive. A study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN) finds that low blood sugar and high blood potassium being common complications of their medical care. Patients with CKD are susceptible to experiencing harm related to the care they receive due to their impaired kidney ...

Highlights from two studies Biopsy-detected injury in donated kidneys was modestly associated with a delay in organ function in the first week after transplantation, but only for donor kidneys already known to be at high risk. Donor kidney biopsies frequently underreported kidney injury with substantial variability. There was a large degree of overlap between the results of biopsies from kidneys that were deemed unsuitable for transplantation and kidneys that were approved for transplantation. The quality of biopsies used in acceptance decisions was low. Nearly 100,000 ...

Analysis carried out by an academic at Royal Holloway, University of London has revealed that younger people, men and those without children are more likely to stop attending clinics for HIV treatment in South Africa. Dr Michael Evangeli, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, worked alongside colleagues at the University of Southampton and the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. The academics used data collected in a study, which is published in the journal PLOS ONE, that followed the progress of 380 HIV positive people eligible for HIV treatment ...

Epidemiological studies demonstrate that diseases of the central nervous system such as Alzheimer, Parkinson and schizophrenia protect against cancer. The most remarkable example is Alzheimer's disease, which can reduce the risk of suffering from cancer by up to 50%. Various theories have been put forward in an attempt to explain this relationship between diseases at a first glance seem to be so different from the pharmacological, genetic and environmental perspectives. However, the available results were not consistent enough to confirm these models. Alfonso Valencia, ...

Researchers recently discovered that a common space weather phenomenon on the outskirts of Earth's magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere, has much larger repercussions for Venus. The giant explosions, called hot flow anomalies, can be so large at Venus that they're bigger than the entire planet and they can happen multiple times a day. "Not only are they gigantic," said Glyn Collinson, a space scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But as Venus doesn't have a magnetic field to protect itself, the hot flow anomalies happen right on top of the planet. ...

PHILADELPHIA – Two new smart phone applications may help people detect epileptic seizures and get better stroke treatment, according to two studies released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. In the first study, an epilepsy app was designed to help non-doctors determine if a person is having an epileptic seizure. "It can often be difficult to determine whether someone is having an epileptic seizure," said study author Victor Patterson, MD, a neurologist from Belfast, UK. ...

Lemurs, the most endangered mammal group on Earth, represent more than 20 per cent of the world's primates. Native only to Madagascar, more than 90 percent of the species are threatened with extinction. A Western University primatologist has teamed with 18 lemur conservationists and researchers, many of whom are from Madagascar or have been working there for decades, to devise an action plan to save Madagascar's 101 lemur species. The action plan contains strategies for 30 different priority sites for lemur conservation and aims to help raise funds for individual projects. ...

MADISON — A multi-university team of engineers has developed what could be a promising solution for charging smartphone batteries on the go — without the need for an electrical cord. Incorporated directly into a cell phone housing, the team's nanogenerator could harvest and convert vibration energy from a surface, such as the passenger seat of a moving vehicle, into power for the phone. "We believe this development could be a new solution for creating self-charged personal electronics," says Xudong Wang, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Chronic stress that produces inflammation and anxiety in mice appears to prime their immune systems for a prolonged fight, causing the animals to have an excessive reaction to a single acute stressor weeks later, new research suggests. After the mice recovered from the effects of chronic stress, a single stressful event 24 days later quickly returned them to a chronically stressed state in biological and behavioral terms. Mice that had not experienced the chronic stress were unaffected by the single acute stressor. The study further showed that immune ...

University of Colorado Boulder scientists have found a creative way to radically improve thermoelectric materials, a finding that could one day lead to the development of improved solar panels, more energy-efficient cooling equipment, and even the creation of new devices that could turn the vast amounts of heat wasted at power plants into more electricity. The technique—building an array of tiny pillars on top of a sheet of thermoelectric material—represents an entirely new way of attacking a century-old problem, said Mahmoud Hussein, an assistant professor of aerospace ...

(Garrison, NY) Chronic illness, already a major and expensive problem in developed countries, is rapidly increasing in developing countries, adding to the longstanding burden caused by high rates of infectious diseases. However, poor countries will not be able to afford the costly medical technologies that wealthy countries use to treat chronic conditions, including heart disease, stroke, cancer, pulmonary disease, and diabetes, writes Daniel Callahan, cofounder of The Hastings Center. Callahan examines this trend and concludes that it calls for a new, more economically ...

SAN FRANCISCO – Feb. 20, 2014 – Long-term daily multivitamin supplement use may lower cataract risk in men, according to a study of nearly 15,000 male physicians published this month in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Past observational studies have indicated a relationship between nutritional supplement use and eye health. However, randomized trial data on the effects of long-term multivitamin supplement use and risk of eye diseases are limited and, in some cases, non-existent. To address this, researchers based at Brigham and Women's ...

As climate change is progressing, the temperature of our planet increases. This is particularly important for the large group of animals that are cold-blooded (ectothermic), including insects. Their body temperature is ultimately determined by the ambient temperature, and the same therefore applies to the speed and efficiency of their vital biological processes. But is it changes in average temperature or frequency of extreme temperature conditions that have the greatest impact on species distribution? This was the questions that a group of Danish and Australian researchers ...

An international team led by The University of Texas at Dallas has discovered that ordinary fishing line and sewing thread can be cheaply converted to powerful artificial muscles. The new muscles can lift a hundred times more weight and generate a hundred times higher mechanical power than the same length and weight of human muscle. Per weight, they can generate 7.1 horsepower per kilogram, about the same mechanical power as a jet engine. In a paper published Feb. 21 in the journal Science, researchers explain that the powerful muscles are produced by twisting and ...

When we are wounded, our bodies naturally begin a process of repair of the damaged tissue. This process is mediated by biological molecules called growth factors, which are proteins that occur naturally in our cells and guide processes ranging from embryonic development to healing. Given their regenerative role in the body, growth factors have been investigated for use in drugs but with limited success. Publishing in Science, an EPFL group has used bioengineering to significantly improve the efficacy of clinical growth factors in the context of soft tissue and bone repair, ...

New research, published this week in Science, suggests that the largest single contributor to global sea level rise, a glacier of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, may continue thinning for decades to come. Geologists from the UK, USA and Germany found that Pine Island Glacier (PIG), which is rapidly accelerating, thinning and retreating, has thinned rapidly before. The team say their findings demonstrate the potential for current ice loss to continue for several decades yet. Their findings reveal that 8000 years ago the glacier thinned as fast as it has in recent decades, ...

Researchers are using fibres from fishing line and sewing thread to create inexpensive artificial muscles that could be used in medical devices, humanoid robots, prosthetic limbs, or woven into fabrics. In a study published today in Science, international researchers, including University of British Columbia Electrical and Computer Engineering professor John Madden and PhD candidate Seyed Mohammad Mirvakili, detail how they created inexpensive artificial muscles that generate far more force and power than human or animal muscles of the same size. "In terms of the strength ...

Today, deep waters formed in the northern North Atlantic fill approximately half of the deep ocean globally. In the process, this impacts on the circum-Atlantic climate, regional sea level, and soak up much of the excess atmospheric carbon dioxide from industrialisation — helping to moderate the effects of global warming. Changes in this circulation mode are considered a potential tipping point in future climate change that could have widespread and long-lasting impacts including on regional sea level, the intensity and pacing of Sahel droughts, and the pattern and rate ...

Advances in DNA sequencing technologies have enormous potential for the plant sciences. With genome-scale data sets obtained from these new technologies, researchers are able to greatly improve our understanding of evolutionary relationships, which are key to applications including plant breeding and physiology. Studies of evolutionary (or phylogenetic) relationships among different plant species have traditionally relied on analyses of a limited number of genes, mostly from the chloroplast genome. Such studies often fail to fully or accurately resolve phylogenetic ...

Research led by a team at Women & Infants Hospital of Rhode Island and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University has been published in the February 10, 2014 online edition of Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics. The research indicates that premature babies benefit from being exposed to adult talk as early as possible. The research, entitled "Adult Talk in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) with Preterm Infants and Developmental Outcomes," was led by Betty Vohr, MD, director of Women & Infants' Neonatal Follow-Up Program ...

WASHINGTON (Feb. 20, 2014) — After a heart attack, there is often permanent damage to a portion of the heart. This happens, in part, because cardiac muscle cells are terminally differentiated and cannot proliferate after blood flow is blocked off to the heart. This partial healing can be attributed to heart disease being one of the leading causes of death. What if the cells could be stimulated to divide and the heart could be induced to repair itself? This was the question posed by George Washington University (GW) researcher Scott Shapiro, M.D., Ph.D., and his co-authors, ...