New Rochelle, NY, October 10, 2013—People who live among the destructive environmental effects of mountaintop coal mining face an increased risk of major depression. The results of a study conducted in the coal mining regions of Central Appalachia that explored the relationship between psychological health and environmental degradation are published in Ecopsychology, a peer-reviewed, online journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Ecopsychology website. Michael Hendryx (current affiliation Indian University, Bloomington) and ...

A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates drought high in the northern Colorado mountains is the primary trigger of a massive spruce beetle outbreak that is tied to long-term changes in sea-surface temperatures from the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a trend that is expected to continue for decades. The new study is important because it shows that drought is a better predictor of spruce beetle outbreaks in northern Colorado than temperature alone, said lead study author Sarah Hart, a CU-Boulder doctoral student in geography. Drought conditions appear to decrease ...

A byproduct of the manufacture of pulp using the sulfite process for making paper, sodium lignosulfonate, can be used to immobilize and soak up toxic chromium compounds from soil and water, according to research published in the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development. Konstantin Volchek and Carl Brown of Environment Canada, and Dario Velicogna of Velicogna Consultants Inc in Ottawa, have carried out two successful parallel tests of efficacy on a laboratory scale. The first involved removal of chromium ions from water using reagent binding and ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—In the United States, approximately 1.4 million people suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. Of those injuries, three out of four are minor TBI (mTBI)—a head injury that causes a temporary change in mental status including confusion, an altered level of consciousness, or perceptual or behavioral impairments. According to a literature review appearing in the October 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), falls and motor vehicle accidents are responsible for most cases of mTBI and also are a common cause ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- If you have stopped at a gas station recently, there is a good chance your auto has consumed fuel with ethanol blended into it. Yet the price of gasoline is not substantially affected by the volume of its ethanol content, according to a paper co-authored by an MIT economist. The study seeks to rebut the claim, broadly aired over the past couple of years, that widespread use of ethanol has reduced the wholesale cost of gasoline by $0.89 to $1.09 per gallon. Whatever the benefits or drawbacks of ethanol, MIT's Christopher Knittel says, price issues are ...

Just inland from the familiar salt-loving mangroves that line the Southern tip of the Florida Peninsula lie plant communities that depend on freshwater flowing south from Lake Okeechobee. These communities provide critical habitats to many wildlife species, and as salt water intrudes, it could spell problems for freshwater plants and animals alike. Satellite imagery over the southeastern Everglades confirms long-term trends of mangrove expansion and sawgrass habitat loss near the shore. The trend is related to salt water intrusion caused by sea-level rise and water management ...

HOUSTON – When The Cancer Genome Atlas launched its massively collaborative approach to organ-by-organ genomic analysis of cancers, the brain had both the benefit, and the challenge, of going first. TCGA ganged up on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and lethal of brain tumors, with more than 100 scientists from 14 institutions tracking down the genomic abnormalities that drive GBM. Five years later, older and wiser, TCGA revisited glioblastoma, producing a broader, deeper picture of the drivers – and potential therapeutic targets – of the disease published ...

For childhood cancer survivors, risk factors associated with lifestyle, particularly hypertension, dramatically increase the likelihood of developing serious heart problems as adults, according to a national study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) is one of the first to focus on how hypertension, diabetes, obesity and elevated blood lipids contribute to cardiovascular disease in childhood cancer survivors. The research concentrated on risk ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 10, 2013) –"Pouchitis" developing after surgery for ulcerative colitis (UC) is associated with changes in gene expression, which increase along with disease severity, reports a study in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, official journal of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Gene alterations in pouch inflammation and Crohn's disease overlap, suggesting that inflammatory bowel disease is a spectrum, rather than distinct diseases," according ...

(Edmonton) A new study by a University of Alberta researcher shows that children who stutter have less grey matter in key regions of the brain responsible for speech production than children who do not stutter. The findings not only improve our understanding of how the brain is built for speech production and why people stutter, but also affirm the importance of seeking treatment early, using approaches such as those pioneered by the Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the U of A, said Deryk Beal, ISTAR's executive ...

Most microbial researchers grow their cells in petri-dishes to study how they respond to stress and damaging conditions. But, with the support of funding from NASA, researchers in LSU's Department of Biological Sciences tried something almost unheard of: studying microbial survival in ice to understand how microorganisms could survive in ancient permafrost, or perhaps even buried in ice on Mars. Brent Christner, associate professor of biological sciences, and colleagues at LSU including postdoctoral researcher Markus Dieser and Mary Lou Applewhite Professor John Battista, ...

Paying extra bucks to "go green" in a hybrid car may pay off in self-esteem and image for older drivers, as well as give a healthy boost to the environment, according to a Baylor University study. The finding is significant because some segments of the older-consumer population control a considerable share of the discretionary income in the United States, and the population size of the "mature market" is growing rapidly, researchers said. The study is published in the journal Human Factors and Ergonomics in Manufacturing and Service Industries. "If I want to pay $5 for ...

Each year, the land-dwelling Christmas Island red crab takes an arduous and shockingly precise journey from its earthen burrow to the shores of the Indian Ocean where weeks of mating and egg laying await. Native to the Australian territories of Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, millions of the crabs start rolling across the island roads and landscape in crimson waves when the November rains begin. After a two-week scuttle to the sea, the male crab sets up and defends a mating burrow for himself and a female of his kind, the place where she will incubate ...

MINNEAPOLIS –Stroke treatments and prevention to improve quality of life for people who experience a stroke is poorer than researchers hoped, with stroke still taking nearly three out of five quality years off a person's life, according to a new study published in the October 9, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers say the findings leave considerable room for improvement in stroke treatment. Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability and the fourth-leading cause of death in the United States. ...

BOSTON (Wednesday, October 9, 2013, 5:00 pm ET) — Researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences have identified a possible topical treatment for age-related macular degeneration (AMD) in a study of mice that shows promise for clinical use. The research findings, published today in PLOS ONE, are the first to report successful topical use of a compound capable of inhibiting symptoms associated with both dry AMD (the earlier form) and wet AMD (the rarer, later form) and could represent a breakthrough for treatment ...

Forest cover around the world will continue a slow shrinking before stabilizing at a lower level, according to a new study from the University of Guelph. Researchers analyzed forest trends from around the world and developed a mathematical model to show future land use changes. They found the most likely model shows forests will decline from 30 per cent of Earth's land mass today to 22 per cent within the next two centuries. The model discusses different scenarios, such as global forest growth reversing deforestation, or reforestation cut short by renewed losses. ...

A panel of 15 medical experts from the fields of radiology, obstetrics-gynecology and emergency medicine, convened by the Society of Radiologists in Ultrasound (SRU), has recommended new criteria for use of ultrasonography in determining when a first trimester pregnancy is nonviable (has no chance of progressing and resulting in a live-born baby). These new diagnostic thresholds, published Oct. 10 in the New England Journal of Medicine, would help to avoid the possibility of physicians causing inadvertent harm to a potentially normal pregnancy. "When a doctor tells a ...

An individual’s race or ethnic background could be a determining factor when it comes to risk of atrial fibrillation, the most frequently diagnosed type of irregular heart rhythm, according to researchers at UC San Francisco. In a study to be published online October 8 and in the November 12 issue of Circulation, researchers discovered that self-described non-Hispanic whites are more likely to develop atrial fibrillation than people from other race or ethnic groups. “We found that consistently, every other race had a statistically significant lower risk of atrial ...

A research team, headed by Theodore Friedmann, MD, professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, says a gene mutation that causes a rare but devastating neurological disorder known as Lesch-Nyhan syndrome appears to offer clues to the developmental and neuronal defects found in other, diverse neurological disorders like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases. The findings, published in the October 9, 2013 issue of the journal PLOS ONE, provide the first experimental picture of how gene expression errors impair the ...

Using the Food and Drug Administration's Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), a hospital electronic health records database, and an animal model, a team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report that by adding a second drug to the diabetes drug rosiglitazone, adverse events dropped enormously. That suggests that drugs could be repurposed to improve drug safety, including lowering the risk of heart attacks. The research is published online Oct. 9 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The approach is part of an emerging strategy ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Video ratings data of surgeons' operating skills successfully predicted whether patients would suffer complications after they leave the operating room, according to a University of Michigan Health System study. The study assessed the relationship between the technical skill of 20 bariatric surgeons and post-surgery complications in 10,343 patients undergoing common, but complex laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery. High skill surgeons, as rated by their peers, had significantly fewer post-surgery complications such as bleeding or infections, according ...

Some breast cancer drugs can penetrate the blood-brain barrier (BBB), but they have not been very effective against brain metastases, whereas other, more effective anti-breast cancer drugs cannot penetrate the BBB at all. In a study published October 9 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, researchers used a new approach to selectively permeabilize the BBB at sites of brain metastases, even those 200 times smaller than currently detectable in the clinic. To facilitate drug delivery to brain metastases, John Connell of the CRUK/MRC Gray Institute for Radiation ...

LA JOLLA, CA—October 9, 2013—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have identified a set of compounds that may be used to treat multiple sclerosis (MS) in a new way. Unlike existing MS therapies that suppress the immune system, the compounds boost a population of progenitor cells that can in turn repair MS-damaged nerve fibers. One of the newly identified compounds, a Parkinson's disease drug called benztropine, was highly effective in treating a standard model of MS in mice, both alone and in combination with existing MS therapies. "We're excited about ...

Ecological and societal disruptions by modern climate change are critically determined by the time frame over which climates shift. Camilo Mora and colleagues in the College of Social Sciences' Department of Geography at the University of Hawaii, Manoa have developed one such time frame. The study, entitled "The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability," will be published in the October 10 issue of Nature and provides an index of the year when the mean climate of any given location on Earth will shift continuously outside the most extreme records experienced ...

Researchers have come one step closer to understanding unstable atomic nuclei. A team of researchers from RIKEN, the University of Tokyo and other institutions in Japan and Italy has provided evidence for a new nuclear magic number in the unstable, radioactive calcium isotope 54Ca. In a study published today in the journal Nature, they show that 54Ca is the first known nucleus with 34 neutrons (N) where N = 34 is a magic number. The protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus exhibit shell structures in a manner similar to electrons in an atom. For naturally stable ...