DENVER – Adenocarcinoma histology, female sex, never-smoking status, and Asian ethnicity have been considered the most important factors associated with EGFR mutations in non-small cell lung cancer and response to EGFR inhibitors. A recent study has found that, within the Asian population, the frequency of EGFR mutations associated with other demographic and clinical characteristics is higher than previously reported, even in patients with a history of smoking, suggesting that mutation testing should be done on a broader basis among Asian patients with advanced adenocarcinoma ...

The widespread use of illegal steroids among Major League Baseball players has been fueled by an "economy of bodily management," the free agent market and exploding television revenues, a UT Arlington assistant professor argues in a newly published research paper. Sarah Rose, a labor and disability historian, says by attacking individual ballplayers' morality, commentators have obscured the more salient issue. "Baseball is representative of the fact that Americans increasingly live in an age of biotechnology in which bodily modification for profit has become the norm ...

Among the multiple factors that can cause obesity is an abnormal neurocognitive or behavioral response to food cues. The brain becomes wired to seek – and expect – greater rewards from food, which leads to unhealthful overeating. Attention modification programs, which train a person to ignore or disregard specific, problematic cues or triggers, have been used effectively to treat cases of anxiety and substance abuse. In a novel study published this week in the journal Appetite, Kerri Boutelle, PhD, professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the University of California, ...

Think of an oil spill, and images of fouled beaches and oil-soaked seabirds come to mind. But there are less visible effects as well. For instance, even low levels of oil pollution can damage the developing hearts of fish embryos and larvae, reducing the likelihood that those fish will survive. Scientists have known of this effect for some time, but the underlying mechanism has remained elusive. Recently, researchers from NOAA Fisheries partnered with a team from Stanford University to discover how oil-derived chemicals disrupt the normal functioning of the heart muscle ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Every year waste treatment facilities in the United States process more than eight million tons of semi-solid sewage called biosolids -- about half of which is recycled into fertilizer and spread on crop land. The practice helps solve storage issues and produces revenue to support the treatment plants, but what else is being spread in that sludge? As industry invents new materials and chemicals for modern products, many find their way to our skin and bloodstream and, subsequently, into our sinks and toilet bowls. More than 500 different organic chemicals ...

A region deep inside the brain controls how quickly people make decisions about love, according to new research at the University of Chicago. The finding, made in an examination of a 48-year-old man who suffered a stroke, provides the first causal clinical evidence that an area of the brain called the anterior insula "plays an instrumental role in love," said UChicago neuroscientist Stephanie Cacioppo, lead author of the study. In an earlier paper that analyzed research on the topic, Cacioppo and colleagues defined love as "an intentional state for intense [and long-term] ...

CHICAGO—The "big issues" in climate change science have shifted over the past 4 to 6 years, with several difficult problems resolved while new research challenges rose to the fore. Scientists who are leading advisors on climate change to federal and international policymakers will examine the state-of-the-science in "Research Challenges in Climate Change: What's New and Where are We Going?" on Feb. 14 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Chicago. "The session will be very forward looking. What we would like to do better ...

University of Adelaide research has shown for the first time that grape seed can aid the effectiveness of chemotherapy in killing colon cancer cells as well as reducing the chemotherapy's side effects. Published in the prestigious journal PLOS ONE, the researchers say that combining grape seed extracts with chemotherapy has potential as a new approach for bowel cancer treatment – to both reduce intestinal damage commonly caused by cancer chemotherapy and to enhance its effect. Lead author Dr Amy Cheah says there is a growing body of evidence about the antioxidant health ...

Northwestern University's Sanjay Mehrotra has developed an innovative model that could help ease kidney distribution inequities among regions in the U.S. and ultimately help save hundreds of lives. His mathematical model, which takes into account a number of different factors, simulates and optimizes donor kidney distribution. Mehrotra will discuss his research in a presentation titled "Addressing Allocation Inefficiencies and Geographic Disparities" at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Chicago. His presentation is part of ...

High quality early childhood education for disadvantaged children can simultaneously reduce inequality and boost productivity in America, contends James Heckman, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and one of the nation's leading experts on early childhood education. "With the global rise in income inequality, children born into disadvantaged environments are at much greater risk of being unskilled and facing many obstacles in life - which is bad for individuals and bad for societies," said Heckman, who delivered a talk "Giving Kids a Fair Chance Early ...

In a review article published Feb. 14 in The Lancet Oncology, Johns Hopkins experts identify three major sources of high cancer costs and argue that cancer doctors can likely reduce them without harm to patients. The cost-cutting proposals call for changes in routine clinical practice involved in end-of-life care, medical imaging and drug pricing. "We need to find the best ways to manage costs effectively while maintaining the same, if not better, quality of life among our patients," says Thomas Smith, M.D., The Harry J. Duffey Family Professor of Palliative Medicine ...

Researchers at the University of Guelph examined the energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with corn production in Ontario. Their findings are published today in the Agricultural Institute of Canada's (AIC) Canadian Journal of Soil Science. The study reports estimated county-level energy and GHG intensity of grain corn, stover and cob production in Ontario from 2006-2011. According to the paper's authors, most of the energy used during corn production comes from the use of natural gas and electricity during grain drying; the production and application ...

A large-scale survey of South African healthcare workers has revealed major gaps in workplace protection against tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis, according to a University of British Columbia health researcher. Presenting findings today at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Dr. Annalee Yassi says issues such as confidentiality, stigma, technological capacity and staff training need to be addressed while improving hospital resources and protocols. Preliminary results of the 2012 baseline survey ...

While most Americans could be a bit more knowledgeable in the ways of science, a majority are interested in hearing about the latest scientific breakthroughs and think highly of scientists. This is according to a survey of more than 2,200 people conducted by the National Science Foundation, one that is conducted every two years and is part of a report – Science and Engineering Indicators – that the National Science Board provides to the president and Congress. A Michigan State University faculty member served as lead author for the chapter in the report that covers ...

Women who drink alcohol at moderate or heavy levels in the early stages of their pregnancy might damage the growth and function of their placenta – the organ responsible for supplying everything that a developing infant needs until birth - research at The University of Manchester shows. Placentas studied in a laboratory environment showed that drinking alcohol at moderate (2/3 standard drinks) to high (4-6 standard drinks) rates reduced the cell growth in a woman's placenta. The research, published in the journal PLoS One and funded by the British Medical Association, ...

Children exposed to cigarette smoke at home have lower levels of an enzyme that helps them respond to asthma treatment, a study has found. Passive smoking is known to worsen asthma symptoms in children and impair their response to inhaled steroid treatment, but how this effect occurs was not known. Researchers at Imperial College London found that children with severe asthma with a parent who smokes at home have lower levels of the enzyme HDAC2 compared with those whose parents don't smoke. HDAC2 is required for steroids to exert their beneficial anti-inflammatory effects ...

A new breed of ultra thin super-material has the potential to cause a technological revolution. "Artificial graphene" should lead to faster, smaller and lighter electronic and optical devices of all kinds, including higher performance photovoltaic cells, lasers or LED lighting. For the first time, scientists are able to produce and have analysed artificial graphene from traditional semiconductor materials. Such is the scientific importance of this breakthrough these findings were published recently in one of the world's leading physics journals, Physical Review X. A researcher ...

PHILADELPHIA – Heavy drinking is common in the United States and takes a personal and societal toll, with an annual estimated cost of $223.5 billion due to losses in workplace productivity, health care and criminal justice expenses. Data shows that 23 percent of individuals age 12 or older reported drinking five or more drinks on one occasion in the previous month, and almost seven percent reported doing so on at least five days per month. Despite this, few heavy drinkers seek out treatment—especially those who do not meet the clinical criteria for an alcohol use disorder, ...

On a pound-per-pound basis, carbon nanotube-based fibers invented at Rice University have greater capacity to carry electrical current than copper cables of the same mass, according to new research. While individual nanotubes are capable of transmitting nearly 1,000 times more current than copper, the same tubes coalesced into a fiber using other technologies fail long before reaching that capacity. But a series of tests at Rice showed the wet-spun carbon nanotube fiber still handily beat copper, carrying up to four times as much current as a copper wire of the same ...

A research team investigating tinnitus, from the University of Leicester, has revealed new insights into the link between the exposure to loud sounds and hearing loss. Their study, published this week in Neuroscience, helps to understand how damage to myelin – a protection sheet around cells - alters the transmission of auditory signals occurring during hearing loss. The three-year study was derived from a PhD studentship funded by Action on Hearing Loss. It was led by Dr Martine Hamann, Lecturer in Neurosciences at the University's Department of Cell Physiology and ...

The world's biggest study offering healthy eating and exercise advice to pregnant women who are overweight or obese has shown a significant reduction in the number of babies born over 4kg (8.8 pounds) in weight. The LIMIT Study, led by researchers from the University of Adelaide's Robinson Institute and the Women's and Children's Hospital, involved more than 2200 pregnant women from 2008-2011. In the first major results from the LIMIT Study, published this week in the British Medical Journal, the researchers say that providing advice and assistance to adopt a healthy ...

Americans don't like to talk about social class. But new research from Northwestern and Stanford universities suggests that, at least in college and university settings, they should do just that. An upcoming article in "Psychological Science" describes a novel one-hour intervention that closed by 63 percent the persistent academic achievement gap between first-generation college students and continuing-generation students. (Continuing-generation students are defined as those with at least one parent with a four-year college degree.) The key to the one-time intervention's ...

BOSTON – Dr. Raquell Holmes, an assistant research professor at Boston University's Center for Computational Science, will be a featured presenter at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, February 15, 2014. Dr. Holmes will participate in a panel session titled, "Improvisation for Scientists: Making a Human Connection" on February 16, 2014 at 9:15 am. Efforts to "communicate science" have been a rallying cry from governmental agencies, elected officials and citizens in need of accurate and accessible information ...

February 14, 2014 - Knowledge is power, yet new research suggests that a person's appearance alone can trump knowledge. First impressions are so powerful that they can override what we are told about people. A new study found that even when told whether a person was gay or straight, participants generally identified the person's sexual orientation based on how they looked – even if it contradicted the facts presented to them. "We judge books by their covers, and we can't help but do it," says Nicholas Rule of the University of Toronto. "With effort, we can overcome this ...

ATLANTA – February 14, 2014—While new and better treatments have improved the odds of survival for patients diagnosed late stage colorectal cancer, that progress has been largely confined to non-Hispanic whites and Asians and those under age 65, according to a new study. American Cancer Society researchers led by Helmneh Sineshaw, M.D., MPH, find there have been no significant increases in survival rates for Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks with metastatic colon cancer. The study, appearing in the January issue of Cancer Causes and Control, concludes that the findings ...