21 percent of homes account for 50 percent of greenhouse gas emissions
2013-06-26
Energy conservation in a small number of households could go a long way to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, scientists are reporting. Their study, which measured differences in energy demands at the household level, appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Dominik Saner and colleagues point out that the energy people use to power their homes and to satisfy their mobility needs accounts for more than 70 percent of emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas involved in global climate change. To cope with that problem, policymakers and environmentalists ...
Impact of iPad® on radiology residents' daily clinical duties is limited, study suggests
2013-06-26
While the iPad® is being used for intraoperative procedure guidance, percutaneous procedure planning, and mobile interpretation of some imaging examinations, the majority of radiology residents are using it primarily as an educational tool, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Radiology.
"Some sectors of the medical community consider the iPad to be a revolutionary tool in health care delivery, with many use scenarios focused on medical imaging. The purpose of our study was to assess residents' use patterns and opinions of the ...
How chewing gum or a shed hair can let strangers read your 'Book of Life'
2013-06-26
Someone finds that piece of chewing gum you pitched today, uses the saliva to sequence your DNA and surreptitiously reads your book of life — including genetic secrets like your susceptibility to diseases. If that scenario, posed in an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, causes a little discomfort, consider this: That stranger also uses the DNA to reconstruct a copy of y-o-u.
Linda Wang, a senior editor of C&EN, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, focuses on an unusual art exhibition ...
New data support community-wide approach to addressing child obesity
2013-06-26
BOSTON (June 26, 2013)-- Community wide interventions hold promise as an effective approach to reducing childhood obesity rates according to new research from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and Tufts University School of Medicine. An analysis of data from the first two school years (20 calendar months) of the Shape Up Somerville: Eat Smart Play Hard™ intervention showed that schoolchildren in Somerville, Massachusetts gained less weight and were less likely to be obese or overweight than schoolchildren in two similar control communities. ...
Tired and edgy? Sleep deprivation boosts anticipatory anxiety
2013-06-26
UC Berkeley researchers have found that a lack of sleep, which is common in anxiety disorders, may play a key role in ramping up the brain regions that contribute to excessive worrying.
Neuroscientists have found that sleep deprivation amplifies anticipatory anxiety by firing up the brain's amygdala and insular cortex, regions associated with emotional processing. The resulting pattern mimics the abnormal neural activity seen in anxiety disorders. Furthermore, their research suggests that innate worriers – those who are naturally more anxious and therefore more likely ...
How does pedestrian head-loading affect the health of women and children in sub-Saharan Africa?
2013-06-26
Across sub-Saharan Africa, women and children play major roles as pedestrian load-transporters, in the widespread absence of basic sanitation services, electricity and affordable/reliable motorised transport.
Professor Kim Buton of the University of Huddersfield, has coauthored an international study to look at the health impacts that this practice can have.
The majority of loads, including water and firewood for domestic purposes, are carried on the head. Load-carrying has implications not only for school attendance and performance, women's time budgets and gender ...
Los Alamos/Tribogenics create highly portable imaging system
2013-06-26
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., and MARINA DEL REY, Calif., June 26, 2013 — Los Alamos National Laboratory and Tribogenics, the pioneer of innovative X-ray solutions, have partnered to create a unique, lightweight, compact, low-cost X-ray system that uses the MiniMAX (Miniature, Mobile, Agile, X-ray) camera to provide real-time inspection of sealed containers and facilities. The innovative technology will be featured at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) International Conference on Nuclear Security: Enhancing Global Efforts, July 1-5, in Vienna, Austria.
"Cost and portability ...
A circuitous route to therapy resistance
2013-06-26
Gliomas are malignant brain tumors that arise from glial cells called astrocytes, found in the central nervous system. "In treating malignant gliomas, we currently combine radiotherapy with the anticancer drug temozolomide. However, in some patients, tumors rapidly become resistant to both treatment methods," says neurooncologist Professor Dr. Michael Platten, who leads a cooperation unit of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) and the Department of Neurooncology of Heidelberg University Hospital. "We therefore urgently need new methods ...
Can home-culture images impair second-language skills?
2013-06-26
NEW YORK-- A newly transferred associate from the Shanghai office nails his presentation to Mr. Smith from Chicago but stumbles in his pitch to Mr. Chen from San Francisco. A visiting professor from Taiwan lectures fluently about a slide of a Grecian urn, but falters and struggles to recall the word "translucent" when discussing a Ming vase. What is it about seeing a Chinese face or even a Chinese vase that can disrupt a Chinese immigrant's fluency in English?
Research on how cultural knowledge operates in the mind increasingly focuses on the dynamics through which ...
Hold the medicinal lettuce
2013-06-26
In 2011 and 2012, research from China's Nanjing University made international headlines with reports that after mice ate, bits of genetic material from the plants they'd ingested could make it into their bloodstreams intact and turn the animals' own genes off. The surprising results from Chen-Yu Zhang's group led to speculation that genetic illness might one day be treated with medicinal food, but also to worry that genetically modified foods might in turn modify consumers in unanticipated ways.
Now, though, a research team at Johns Hopkins reports that Zhang's results ...
Race apparently a factor in sleep apnea, Wayne State University researcher finds
2013-06-26
DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has found that sleep apnea severity is higher among African-American men in certain age ranges, even after controlling for body mass index (BMI).
A study by James A. Rowley, M.D., professor of internal medicine in WSU's School of Medicine, showed that being an African-American man younger than 40 years old increased the apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) by 3.21 breathing pauses per hour of sleep compared to a white man in the same age range with the same BMI.
Obstructive sleep apnea affects at least 4 percent of men and 2 percent ...
1 in 5 grade 7-12 students report having a traumatic brain injury in their lifetime
2013-06-26
June 26, 2013—One in five adolescents surveyed in Ontario, Canada said they have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left them unconscious for five minutes or required them to be hospitalized overnight, a statistic researchers in Toronto say is much higher than previously thought.
Sports such as ice hockey and soccer accounted for more than half the injuries, said Dr. Gabreila Ilie, lead author of the study and a post-doctoral fellow at St. Michael's Hospital.
Traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions, were reported more often by males than females, by ...
Technique to promote nerve regeneration after spinal cord injury restores bladder function in rats
2013-06-26
Washington, DC — Using a novel technique to promote the regeneration of nerve cells across the site of severe spinal cord injury, researchers have restored bladder function in paralyzed adult rats, according to a study in the June 26 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings may guide future efforts to restore other functions lost after spinal cord injury. It also raises hope that similar strategies could one day be used to restore bladder function in people with severe spinal cord injuries.
For decades, scientists have experimented with using nerve grafts ...
Health systems should be re-organized to better help stroke patients
2013-06-26
Patients who have experienced a stroke spend a substantial amount of time and effort seeking out, processing, and reflecting on information about the management of their condition because the information provided by health services worldwide is currently inadequate, according to a study by UK and US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.
Fragmented care and poor communication between stroke patients and clinicians, as well as between health-care providers, can mean that patients are ill-equipped to organize their care and develop coping strategies, which ...
Causal relationship between adiposity and heart failure, and elevated liver enzymes
2013-06-26
New evidence supports a causal relationship between adiposity and heart failure, and between adiposity and increased liver enzymes, according to a study published this week in PLOS Medicine. The study, conducted by Inga Prokopenko, Erik Ingelsson, and colleagues from the ENGAGE (European Network for Genetic and Genomic Epidemiology) Consortium, also provides additional support for several previously shown causal associations such as those between adiposity and type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.
The authors investigated whether adiposity ...
Doubts cast on the molecular mechanism of 'read-through' drug PTC124/Ataluren
2013-06-26
A drug developed to treat genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis may need a radical rethink. In a new study published on 25 June in the open access journal PLOS Biology, researchers question the mechanistic basis of the drug called PTC124 (also known as Ataluren), casting doubt as to whether it has the molecular effects that are claimed for it. This may have implications for its effectiveness in treating genetic diseases.
An estimated 10% of all human genetic diseases are caused by nonsense mutations. These cause ribosomes to stop dead ...
Use of advanced treatment technologies for prostate cancer increases among men with low-risk disease
2013-06-26
Use of advanced treatment technologies for prostate cancer, such as intensity-modulated radiotherapy and robotic prostatectomy, has increased among men with low-risk disease, high risk of noncancer mortality, or both, a population of patients who are unlikely to benefit from these treatments, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA.
"Prostate cancer is a common and expensive disease in the United States. In part because of the untoward morbidity of traditional radiation and surgical therapies, advances in the treatment of localized disease have evolved over ...
Gene mutation may have effect on benefit of aspirin use for colorectal cancer
2013-06-26
In 2 large studies, the association between aspirin use and risk of colorectal cancer was affected by mutation of the gene BRAF, with regular aspirin use associated with a lower risk of BRAF-wild-type colorectal cancer but not with risk of BRAF-mutated cancer, findings that suggest that BRAF-mutant colon tumor cells may be less sensitive to the effect of aspirin, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA.
Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. Randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that aspirin use reduces the risk of colorectal ...
Study examines prevalence, characteristics of traumatic brain injuries among adolescents
2013-06-26
"Traumatic brain injury (TBI) among adolescents has been identified as an important health priority. However, studies of TBI among adolescents in large representative samples are lacking. This information is important to the planning and evaluation of injury prevention efforts, particularly because even minor TBI may have important adverse consequences," write Gabriela Ilie, Ph.D., of St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, Canada, and colleagues, who examined the prevalence of TBI, mechanisms of injury, and adverse correlates in a large representative sample of adolescents living ...
Researchers strike gold with nanotech vaccine
2013-06-26
Scientists in the US have developed a novel vaccination method that uses tiny gold particles to mimic a virus and carry specific proteins to the body's specialist immune cells.
The technique differs from the traditional approach of using dead or inactive viruses as a vaccine and was demonstrated in the lab using a specific protein that sits on the surface of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).
The results have been published today, 26 June, in IOP Publishing's journal Nanotechnology by a team of researchers from Vanderbilt University.
RSV is the leading viral cause ...
Death rates from heart disease continue to decline in most of the EU
2013-06-26
Death rates from heart disease in the European Union have more than halved in many countries since the early 1980s, according to new research published online today (Wednesday) in the European Heart Journal [1]. In the majority of countries, there have been ongoing steady reductions in heart disease death rates in both sexes and most age groups, including among younger people, despite increases in obesity and diabetes during this time. However, heart disease remains a leading cause of death in Europe.
The authors of the study say their analysis shows little evidence ...
Study ranks social contacts by job and social group in bid to fight infectious diseases
2013-06-26
In the light of Novel Corona Virus, concerns over H7N9 Influenza in S.E. Asia, and more familiar infections such as measles and seasonal influenza, it is as important as ever to be able to predict and understand how infections transmit through the UK population.
Researchers at the University of Warwick and University of Liverpool have mapped the daily contact networks of thousands of individuals to shed light on which groups may be at highest risk of contracting and spreading respiratory diseases.
These scientists used an anonymous web and postal survey of 5,027 UK residents ...
Overweight causes heart failure -- large study with new method clarifies the association
2013-06-26
An international research team led by Swedish scientists has used a new method to investigate obesity and overweight as a cause of cardiovascular disease. Strong association have been found previously, but it has not been clear whether it was overweight as such that was the cause, or if the overweight was just a marker of another underlying cause, as clinical trials with long-term follow-ups are difficult to implement.
A total of nearly 200,000 subjects were included in the researchers' study of the causality between obesity/overweight and diseases related to cardiovascular ...
Cutlery: Do size, weight, shape and color matter?
2013-06-26
The appearance of cutlery can affect perception of a food's taste, reports BioMed Central's open access journal Flavour. Food tastes saltier when eaten from a knife, and denser and more expensive from a light plastic spoon. Taste was also affected by the color of the cutlery.
The crockery we use has been shown to alter our perception of food and drink. Beverages in cold colored glasses were rated more refreshing and the weight and color of a plate can alter how dense, salty or sweet food tastes. In this study, researchers from the University of Oxford demonstrated that ...
Study shows heart failure survivors at greater risk for cancer
2013-06-26
WASHINGTON (June 25, 2013) — Heart failure patients are surviving more often with the heart condition but they are increasingly more likely to be diagnosed with cancer, a trend that could be attributed to increased surveillance, side effects of treatments, or other causes, according to a study published online today in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
"Heart failure patients are not only at an increased risk for developing cancer, but the occurrence of cancer increases mortality in these patients," explained Dr. Veronique Roger, MD, director of the Mayo ...
[1] ... [4061]
[4062]
[4063]
[4064]
[4065]
[4066]
[4067]
[4068]
4069
[4070]
[4071]
[4072]
[4073]
[4074]
[4075]
[4076]
[4077]
... [8380]
Press-News.org - Free Press Release Distribution service.