VIDEO: The video as it appears on JoVE.com. Click here for more information. On May 22, JoVE will publish details of a technique to measure the health of human genetic material in relation to a patient’s age. The method is demonstrated by the laboratory of Dr. Gil Atzmon at New York’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Atzmon hopes that the dissemination of this technique will lead to the development of a “genetic thermometer” to assess a patient’s health in relation to ...

Costs to treat stroke are projected to more than double and the number of people having strokes may increase 20 percent by 2030, according to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association. In a statement published in Stroke, an American Heart Association journal, the association cites the aging U.S. population as the main reason for the increases and predicts that by 2030: Almost 4 percent of U.S. adults — nearly one in 25 — will have a stroke. This translates into an additional 3.4 million people with stroke in 2030. Costs to treat stroke may increase ...

Scientists have reversed behavioral and brain abnormalities in adult mice that resemble some features of schizophrenia by restoring normal expression to a suspect gene that is over-expressed in humans with the illness. Targeting expression of the gene Neuregulin1, which makes a protein important for brain development, may hold promise for treating at least some patients with the brain disorder, say researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. Like patients with schizophrenia, adult mice biogenetically-engineered to have higher Neuregulin 1 levels showed reduced ...

A new method of sourcing the origins of artefacts in high definition is set to improve our understanding of the past. Dr Ellery Frahm at the University of Sheffield developed the new technology to better study Mesopotamian obsidian tools unearthed in Syria, where cultural heritage is threatened by the ongoing conflict. The research brings five decades of research full circle and presents a significant advance in the field. While at the University of Sheffield from 1965 – 1972, Professor Lord Colin Renfrew developed a technique that matched stone tools made of obsidian, ...

NEW YORK, May 22, 2013. Plastic additives known as phthalates (pronounced THAL-ates) are odorless, colorless and just about everywhere: They turn up in flooring, plastic cups, beach balls, plastic wrap, intravenous tubing and—according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—the bodies of most Americans. Once perceived as harmless, phthalates have come under increasing scrutiny. A growing collection of evidence suggests dietary exposure to phthalates (which can leech from packaging and mix with food) may cause significant metabolic and hormonal abnormalities, ...

Toronto – If you're a small charity looking for some corporate largesse, pegging your ask to a big morale-boosting event planned for your community may help seal the deal, suggests a new study on corporate giving. The paper found that corporate philanthropy spikes upward during "mega-events" such as the Olympics, the Super Bowl, or even political conventions. The finding goes against previous research that says corporate giving tends to stay stable. "For non-profit managers, it suggests that one potentially reasonable strategy might be to tie some of their efforts in ...

PASADENA, Calif. – May 22, 2013 — The new 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) appears to be as safe as the previous version used prior to 2010, the 7-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7), according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in Vaccine. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved PCV13 for use beginning in 2010 after a series of trials. These trials found that PCV13, which protects against a broader range of pneumococcal types than the previously used PCV7, did not increase the risk for any serious adverse events related to the ...

The University of Gothenburg Vaccine Research Institute (GUVAX) announces successful results in a placebo controlled phase I study of an oral, inactivated Escherichia coli diarrhea vaccine. Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) bacteria are the primary cause of diarrhea in children living in low and middle income countries result in 400 million diarrheal episodes and approximately 300 000 deaths among children per year. ETEC is also the leading cause of illness among international travelers to developing countries. Among the 65 million people travelling from industrialized ...

Two new minute spider species have been discovered from the Sichuan and Chongqing, China. The tiny new spiders are both less than 2 mm in length, with Trogloneta yuensis being as little as 1.01 mm and Mysmena wawuensis measured to be the even tinier 0.75 mm, which classes it among the smallest spiders known. The two species described in the open access journal Zookeys both have a bizarre body shape with disproportionately big spherical posterior body. The family Mysmenidae to which the new species belong is composed of minute eight-eyed spiders. There are a relatively ...

The feared Legionella pneumophila bacteria is responsible for legionellosis, an infectious disease that can lead to pneumonia. In order to infect us, this pathogen has developed a complex method enabling it to camouflage itself and go unnoticed in our cells, thus avoiding these acting against the infectious bacteria. Research led by the Basque biosciences research centre, CIC bioGUNE, in which teams from the National Institute of Health (NIH) of the USA and the National Supercomputation Centre in Barcelona (BSC) have also participated, has described for the first time ...

This news release is available in German. With their SQUIDs, low-temperature specialists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have made it possible for the magnetic moments of atoms of the rare isotope 3He (helium-3) to be measured with extreme sensitivity. With the aid of these sensors, highly sensitive nuclear resonance spectrometers were developed which have now provided deep insights into the state of matter at extremely low temperatures. In concrete terms, the international research group from London, Ithaca (USA), and PTB's Berlin Institute ...

Adventitious changes in cellular DNA can endanger the whole organism, as they may lead to life-threatening illnesses like cancer. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now report how byproducts of respiration cause mispairing of subunits in the double helix. The DNA in our cells controls the form and function of every cell type in our bodies. The instructions for this are encoded in the linear sequence of the four subunits found in DNA, the bases adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). Random changes in the sequence can lead to ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating high-quality semiconductor thin films at the atomic scale – meaning the films are only one atom thick. The technique can be used to create these thin films on a large scale, sufficient to coat wafers that are two inches wide, or larger. "This could be used to scale current semiconductor technologies down to the atomic scale – lasers, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), computer chips, anything," says Dr. Linyou Cao, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at NC State ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Overexpression of a gene associated with schizophrenia causes classic symptoms of the disorder that are reversed when gene expression returns to normal, scientists report. They genetically engineered mice so they could turn up levels of neuregulin-1 to mimic high levels found in some patients then return levels to normal, said Dr. Lin Mei, Director of the Institute of Molecular Medicine and Genetics at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. They found that when elevated, mice were hyperactive, couldn't remember what they had just ...

This news release is available in German. Trace gases and aerosols are major factors influencing the climate. With the help of highly complex installations, such as MIPAS on board of the ENVISAT satellite, researchers try to better understand the processes in the upper atmosphere. Now, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology presents the most comprehensive overview of sulfur dioxide measurements in the journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (doi:10.5194/acpd-13-12389-2013). "Sulfur compounds up to 30 km altitude may have a cooling effect," Michael Höpfner, the ...

Tropical plants flower at supra-annual irregular intervals. In addition, mass flowering is typical for the tropical forests in Borneo and elsewhere, where hundreds of different plant timber species from the Dipterocarpaceae family flower synchronously. This phenomenon is all the more puzzling because both temperature and day length are relatively constant all year round due to geographical proximity to the equator. Up to now it was supposed that several weeks of drought may trigger mass flowering in Borneo's forests. However, no empirical data and genetic analyses were ...

The scientists report these findings in the current online edition of "The Lancet Neurology". This pan-European study could open up new possibilities of early diagnosis and smooth the way for treatments which tackle diseases before the patient's nervous system is irreparably damaged. "Spinocerebellar ataxias" comprise a group of genetic diseases of the cerebellum and other parts of the brain. Persons affected only have limited control of their muscles. They also suffer from balance disorders and impaired speech. The symptoms originate from mutations in the patient's ...

This news release is available in German. Moving objects attract greater attention – a fact exploited by video screens in public spaces and animated advertising banners on the Internet. For most animal species, moving objects also play a major role in the processing of sensory impressions in the brain, as they often signal the presence of a welcome prey or an imminent threat. This is also true of the zebrafish larva, which has to react to the movements of its prey. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have investigated how the ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A typical pair of running shoes generates 30 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to keeping a 100-watt light bulb on for one week, according to a new MIT-led lifecycle assessment. But what's surprising to researchers isn't the size of a shoe's carbon footprint, but where the majority of that footprint comes from. The researchers found that more than two-thirds of a running shoe's carbon impact can come from manufacturing processes, with a smaller percentage arising from acquiring or extracting raw materials. This breakdown is expected for ...

When turned on, the gene p53 turns off cancer. However, when existing drugs boost p53, only a few tumors die – the rest resist the challenge. A study published in the journal Cell Reports shows how: tumors that live even in the face of p53 reactivation create more of the protein p21 than the protein PUMA; tumors that die have more PUMA than p21. And, for the first time, the current study shows a handful of genes that control this ratio. "The gene p53 is one of the most commonly mutated cancer genes. Tumors turn it off and then they can avoid controls that should kill ...

In the long run, encouraging a baby to finish the last ounce in their bottle might be doing more harm than good. Though the calories soon burn off, a bad habit remains. Brigham Young University sociology professors Ben Gibbs and Renata Forste found that clinical obesity at 24 months of age strongly traces back to infant feeding. "If you are overweight at age two, it puts you on a trajectory where you are likely to be overweight into middle childhood and adolescence and as an adult," said Forste. "That's a big concern." The BYU researchers analyzed data from more ...

Johns Hopkins researchers have developed new guidelines — the first in more than 35 years — to govern the amount of blood ordered for surgical patients. The recommendations, based on a lengthy study of blood use at The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH), can potentially save the medical center more than $200,000 a year and improve patient safety, researchers say. A report on the research that led up to the new guidelines, published online in the journal Anesthesiology, suggests millions of dollars a year nationwide could be saved in laboratory costs and wasted blood if other ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers have developed a new drug delivery system that allows inhalation of chemotherapeutic drugs to help treat lung cancer, and in laboratory and animal tests it appears to reduce the systemic damage done to other organs while significantly improving the treatment of lung tumors. This advance in nanomedicine combines the extraordinarily small size of nanoparticles, existing cancer drugs, and small interfering RNA (siRNA) that shut down the ability of cancer cells to resist attack. The combination of these forces resulted in the virtual disappearance ...

Scientists and engineers must join together in a major new effort to educate the public and decision makers on a crisis in providing Earth's people with clean water that looms ahead in the 21st century. That's the focus of a comment article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society. Bassam Z. Shakhashiri, Ph.D., David L. Sedlak, Ph.D., and Jerald L. Schnoor, Ph.D., explain that shortages of reliable supplies of fresh water will touch the lives people everywhere. ...

This news release is available in German. Exactly 50 years after the US-American meteorologist Edward Lorenz discovered chaos (remember the "butterfly effect"?) the topic is still as fascinating as ever. A new visualization technique developed at the University of Vienna helps to make chaos visible to the naked eye. The method, which is being published in "Royal Society Interface", allows for the intuitive interpretation of chaotic or nearly chaotic phenomena, and thus makes the fascinating world of chaos theory more accessible to the scientific community. The ...