Despite having installed more than 250,000 feet of bird spikes and a million feet of netting to keep pigeons off residential and commercial buildings in and around Vancouver, pigeon patrol expert Andrew MacBain from www.pigeonpatrol.ca says the pesky birds are winning the war. "It's worse than ever," says the Surrey-based entrepreneur who has installed bird spikes and netting at BC Place, the BC Ferries terminals, BC Transit and other buildings throughout the Lower Mainland. "The pigeon population doubles every year." The mushrooming pigeon population ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– In a remote fishing community in Venezuela, a lone fisherman sits on a cliff overlooking the southern Caribbean Sea. This man –– the lookout –– is responsible for directing his comrades on the water, who are too close to their target to detect their next catch. Using abilities honed by years of scanning the water's surface, he can tell by shadows, ripples, and even the behavior of seabirds, where the fish are schooling, and what kind of fish they might be, without actually seeing the fish. This, in turn, changes where the boats go, and how the ...

New York (May 20, 2013) – In two critical reports released at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Kiruna, Sweden on May 15th, the scientific expertise of the Wildlife Conservation Society helped inform an international body of senior government officials about changing conditions in the Arctic, and potential responses to those changes. The scientific reports reviewed by the ministers are products of contributions from various experts, representing a range of knowledge and traditions—including indigenous perspectives. The first report, entitled "Arctic Biodiversity ...

Researchers from the University of Hawaii – Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) developed species distribution models of the six dominant Hawaiian coral species around the main Hawaiian Islands including two species currently under consideration as threatened or endangered. They found the order of coral abundance (from highest to lowest) around the main Hawaiian Islands to be Porites lobata, Montipora patula, Pocillopora meandrina, Montipora capitata, Porites compressa, and Montipora flabellata. Environmental factors (wave energy, shape ...

A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. The doughnut-shaped droplets, a shape known as toroidal, are formed from two dissimilar liquids using a simple rotating stage and an injection needle. About a millimeter in overall size, the droplets are produced individually, their shapes maintained by a surrounding springy material made of polymers. Droplets in this toroidal shape made of ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA – The surgical management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in U.S. hospitals varies widely depending on the race of the patient, according to a new study. "In most patients, the initial treatment for Stage I and Stage II NSCLC is surgery," said researcher Jayanth Adusumalli, MBBS, of the Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. "In our study of more than 1,200,000 patients diagnosed with NSCLC in US hospitals between the years 2000 and 2010, we found statistically significant racial disparities in the surgical management of these ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Delayed transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) in hospitalized patients significantly increases the risk of dying in the hospital, according to a new study from researchers in Chicago. "Early intervention improves outcomes for many of the conditions that are indications for inpatient transfer to the ICU. This suggests that delaying ICU transfer may increase the risk of death in these patients," said lead author Matthew Churpek, MD, MPH, of the University of Chicago Medical Center. "Using a vital sign-based early warning score, the Cardiac ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Extended use of a common antibiotic may prolong the time between hospitalizations for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a post-hoc analysis of a multicenter study which compared the hospitalization rates of patients treated with a 12-month course of azithromycin to the rates of those treated with placebo. The results of the current analysis will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference. "Preventing respiratory-related re-hospitalizations is a key component of COPD therapy, ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ The negative effects of poorly controlled asthma symptoms on sleep quality and academic performance in urban schoolchildren has been confirmed in a new study. "While it has been recognized that missed sleep and school absences are important indicators of asthma morbidity in children, our study is the first to explore the associations between asthma, sleep quality, and academic performance in real time, prospectively, using both objective and subjective measures," said principal investigator Daphne Koinis-Mitchell, PhD, Associate Professor ...

Charlottesville, VA (May 21, 2013). Physicians at Monash University and The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia describe the logistic, medical, and societal challenges faced in treating spine trauma in morbidly obese patients. Based on a case series of six patients injured in high-speed motor vehicle accidents, the authors categorize difficulties faced in the care of morbidly obese patients from on-scene immobilization and medical transport through spinal imaging, surgery, and postoperative care. Details of the six cases and a thorough discussion of challenges posed ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA – Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is primarily associated with the respiratory symptoms that are its hallmark, but in fact, patients who struggle with the disease also experience significant amounts of chronic pain. A new study conducted by researchers in Pennsylvania and New Mexico estimates the degree of pain suffered by these patients to be close to that experienced by patients with osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. The research results will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference. "Several studies have found ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Depression is common in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and has been linked with disease severity and impaired quality of life. Now, for the first time, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have linked the systemic inflammation associated with COPD with depression in these patients. "Systemic inflammation is thought to be an important mediator of comorbidities in COPD, but the relationship between inflammation and depression has not been explored," said researcher Hilary Strollo, M.S., a graduate of the ...

Charlottesville, VA (May 21, 2013). Surgeons investigated sexual function in 62 patients, 50 years and older, who had received extensive spinal–pelvic instrumentation for spinal deformity at the University of Virginia Health Center. Based on their results, the surgeons found that it is very possible for older people to achieve satisfactory sexual function despite having extensive spinal–pelvic instrumentation. Details of this study are disclosed in "Sexual function in older adults following thoracolumbar to pelvic instrumentation for spinal deformity. Clinical article," ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Clinical measurement of physical activity appears to be an independent predictor of whether or not patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) will end up being hospitalized, according to a new study conducted by researchers in Connecticut. The study also corroborates an earlier investigation that linked higher levels of inactivity with an increased incidence of hospitalizations among patients with COPD. The results of the study will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference. "Physical inactivity is common in ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ A novel approach to obstructing the runaway inflammatory response implicated in some types of asthma has shown promise in a Phase IIa clinical trial, according to U. S. researchers. Their research will be presented at the American Thoracic Society 2013 International Conference and published simultaneously online in the New England Journal of Medicine. The randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial tested the efficacy and safety of the monoclonal antibody, dupilumab, in patients with "persistent, moderate-to-severe asthma" and elevated ...

Youth who had a schoolmate die by suicide are significantly more likely to consider or attempt suicide, according to a study in published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). This effect can last 2 years or more, which has implications for strategies following schoolmate suicides. "We found that exposure to suicide predicts suicidality," writes senior author Dr. Ian Colman, Canada Research Chair in Mental Health Epidemiology and Assistant Professor, University of Ottawa, with lead author Sonja Swanson, from Harvard School of Public Health, Boston. "This was ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA─Treatment with an Alpha-1 proteinase inhibitor (A1-PI), a naturally occurring protein that protects lung tissue from breakdown and protects the lung's elasticity, is effective in slowing the progression of emphysema in patients with Alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD), a life-threatening genetic disorder, according to a new study presented at the 2013 American Thoracic Society International Conference. The study showed the efficacy of A1-PIin preventing the loss of lung tissue as measured by computed tomography (CT) scan lung density at ...

Durham, NC — Biologists have known for a long time that some creatures evolve more quickly than others. Exactly why isn't well understood, particularly for plants. But it may be that height plays a role, says Robert Lanfear of Australian National University and the U. S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. In a study to be published 21 May in the journal Nature Communications, Lanfear and colleagues report that shorter plants have faster-changing genomes. Drawing from a database of global patterns in plant height for more than 20,000 species, the researchers estimated ...

The epigenetic modifications, which alter the way genes function without changing the underlying DNA sequence, can apparently be detected in the blood of pregnant women during any trimester, potentially providing a simple way to foretell depression in the weeks after giving birth, and an opportunity to intervene before symptoms become debilitating. The findings of the small study involving 52 pregnant women are described online in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. "Postpartum depression can be harmful to both mother and child," says study leader Zachary Kaminsky, Ph.D., ...

Children who have suffered maltreatment are 36% more likely to be obese in adulthood compared to non-maltreated children, according to a new study by King's College London. The authors estimate that the prevention or effective treatment of 7 cases of child maltreatment could avoid 1 case of adult obesity. The findings come from the combined analysis of data from 190,285 individuals from 41 studies worldwide, published this week in Molecular Psychiatry. Severe childhood maltreatment (physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect) affects approximately 1 in 5 children ...

Rapid climate change during the Middle Stone Age, between 80,000 and 40,000 years ago, during the Middle Stone Age, sparked surges in cultural innovation in early modern human populations, according to new research. The research, published this month in Nature Communications, was conducted by a team of scientists from Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, the Natural History Museum in London and the University of Barcelona. The scientists studied a marine sediment core off the coast of South Africa and reconstructed terrestrial climate variability ...

VIDEO: Dr. William Jacobs, Jr. has determined that vitamin C kills drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in laboratory culture. The paper was published online May 21, 2013 in Nature Communications. Dr. Jacobs... Click here for more information. May 21, 2013 — (Bronx, NY) — In a striking, unexpected discovery, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have determined that vitamin C kills drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) bacteria in laboratory ...

Nowadays, the most diverse species of crocodile are found in northern South America and Southeast Asia: As many as six species of alligator and four true crocodiles exist, although no more than two or three ever live alongside one another at the same time. It was a different story nine to about five million years ago, however, when a total of 14 different crocodile species existed and at least seven of them occupied the same area at the same time, as an international team headed by paleontologists Marcelo Sánchez and Torsten Scheyer from the University of Zurich is now ...

Australian scientists have charted the path of insulin action in cells in precise detail like never before. This provides a comprehensive blueprint for understanding what goes wrong in diabetes. The breakthrough study, conducted by Sean Humphrey and Professor David James from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, is now published in the early online edition of the prestigious journal Cell Metabolism. First discovered in 1921, the insulin hormone plays a very important role in the body because it helps us lower blood sugar after a meal, by enabling the movement ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (May 21, 2013) – Arachnoid cysts are a common type of brain lesion that is usually harmless, but with a risk of rupture or bleeding. A new study identifies risk factors for rupture or bleeding in children with "incidentally" detected arachnoid cysts, reports the May issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Risk is higher for children with larger cysts and a recent history of even mild head trauma, according to the report ...