What is it about toothpaste that transforms the sweet flavor of orange juice into something so bitter? For the solution to that mysterious sensory phenomenon — in colorful, animated detail — check the latest episode of the American Chemical Society's award-winning Bytesize Science video series at http://www.BytesizeScience.com The video, from the world's largest scientific society, explains that the mainstay ingredients in toothpaste include a detergent called sodium lauryl sulfate, or SLS for short. When you brush your teeth, SLS produces the foamy suds and gives toothpaste ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – As high schoolers prepare for final exams, teens nationwide may be tempted to use a "study drug" -- a prescription stimulant or amphetamine -- to gain an academic edge. But a new University of Michigan poll shows only one in 100 parents of teens 13-17 years old believes that their teen has used a study drug. Study drugs refer to stimulant medications typically prescribed for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); commonly prescribed medicines in this category include Adderall, Concerta, Ritalin, and Vyvanse. Among parents ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Touted for safety, ease and patient convenience, peripherally inserted central catheters have become many clinicians' go-to for IV delivery of antibiotics, nutrition, chemotherapy, and other medications. But compared to other central venous catheters (CVCs), these commonly-used catheters (known as PICCs) more than double the risk of dangerous blood clots – especially among patients who are critically ill or who have cancer, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study published in The Lancet. In recent years, PICCs have become the ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA─A new study looking at sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and markers for Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and neuroimaging adds to the growing body of research linking the two. But this latest study also poses an interesting question: Could AD in its "preclinical stages" also lead to SDB and explain the increased prevalence of SDB in the elderly? The study will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference. "It's really a chicken and egg story," said Ricardo S. Osorio, MD, a research assistant professor ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA – Optimal treatment of sleep apnea in patients with prediabetes improves blood sugar (glucose) levels and thus can reduce cardiometabolic risk, according to a study to be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference in Philadelphia. "Sleep apnea, a condition associated with breathing disturbances during sleep is known to be associated with abnormalities in glucose metabolism, but whether treatment of sleep apnea has any beneficial effects on glucose metabolism is still under investigation" said lead author Sushmita Pamidi, MD, of the Department ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Researchers at the University of Wisconsin have identified a potential new risk factor for obstructive sleep apnea: asthma. Using data from the National Institutes of Health (Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute)-funded Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, which has been following approximately 1,500 people since 1988, researchers found that patients who had asthma were 1.70 times (95% CI=1.15-2.51) more likely to develop sleep apnea after eight years. "This is the first longitudinal study to suggest a causal relationship between asthma and sleep ...

ATS 2013, PHILADELPHIA ─ Gourmands and foodies everywhere have long recognized ginger as a great way to add a little peppery zing to both sweet and savory dishes; now, a study from researchers at Columbia University shows purified components of the spicy root also may have properties that help asthma patients breathe more easily. The results of the study will be presented at the ATS 2013 International Conference. Asthma is characterized by bronchoconstriction, a tightening of the bronchial tubes that carry air into and out of the lungs. Bronchodilating medications ...

Contact: Terry Collins tc@tca.tc 416-538-8712 Contact: Alma van der Veen 49-228-731846 aveen@uni-bonn.de Global Water System Project Shifts in global water systems -- markers of a new geological epoch: The Anthropocene Experts in Bonn to detail how science can help people mitigate or adapt to major global human-induced water system changes A suite of disquieting global phenomena have given rise to the "Anthropocene," a term coined for a new geologic epoch characterized by humanity's growing dominance of the Earth's environment and a planetary transformation ...

What lures a lady frog to her lover? Good looks, the sound of his voice, the size of his pad or none of the above? After weighing up their options, female strawberry poison frogs (Oophaga pumilio) bag the closest crooner they can, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers of Zoology. This seemingly short-sighted strategy turns out to be the optimal mate choice strategy for these colourful frogs. Males of the species congregate in the Costa Rican rain forest 'lek-style' to display and call together, giving females the chance to weigh up multiple ...

Researchers have engineered a strain of electricity-producing bacteria that can grow using hydrogen gas as its sole electron donor and carbon dioxide as its sole source of carbon. Researchers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst report their findings at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. "This represents the first result of current production solely on hydrogen," says Amit Kumar, a researcher on the study who, along with his co-authors are part of the Lovley Lab Group at the university. Under the leadership of Derek Lovley the ...

Scientists at the University of California, Davis have engineered a strain of photosynthetic cyanobacteria to grow without the need for light. They report their findings today at the 113th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. "In this work, we used synthetic biology approaches to probe and rewire photoautotrophic (exclusively relying on carbon dioxide and light energy for growth) cyanobacterial metabolism for the ability to grow without light energy," says Jordan McEwen, the lead researcher on the study. He is part of Shota Atsumi's lab at the university, ...

Overfishing has reduced fish populations and biodiversity across much of the world's oceans. In response, fisheries are increasingly reliant on a handful of highly valuable shellfish. However, new research by the University of York shows this approach to be extremely risky. The research, published today in the journal Fish and Fisheries, shows that traditional fisheries targeting large predators such as cod and haddock, have declined over the past hundred years. In their place, catches of shellfish such as prawns, scallops and lobsters have rocketed as they begin to thrive ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed a promising method to distinguish between pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis — two disorders that are difficult to tell apart. A molecular marker obtained from pancreatic "juices" can identify almost all cases of pancreatic cancer, their study shows. The findings were being presented at Digestive Disease Week 2013 in Orlando, Fla. "Many researchers have been working on such a diagnostic test for a long time — for me, it has been 20 years," says lead investigator Massimo Raimondo, M.D., a gastroenterologist ...

A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth. Because electron transfer, the moving of an electron from one chemical species to another, is involved in many biological processes – including photosynthesis, respiration and the reduction of RNA to DNA – the study's findings suggest that complex biochemical transformations may have been possible when ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 19, 2013) — In their quest to learn more about the variability of cells between and within tissues, biomedical scientists have devised tools capable of simultaneously measuring dozens of characteristics of individual cells. These technologies have led to new challenges, however, as scientists now struggle with how to make sense of the resulting trove of data. Now a solution may be at hand. Researchers at Columbia University and Stanford University have developed a computational method that enables scientists to visualize and interpret "high-dimensional" ...

Scientists look at past climates to learn about climate change and the ability to simulate it with computer models. One region that has received a great deal of attention is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, the vast pool of warm water stretching along the equator from Africa to the western Pacific Ocean. In a new study, Pedro DiNezio of the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa, and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution investigated preserved geological clues (called "proxies") of rainfall patterns during the last ice age when ...

Genomic analyses suggest that patterns of genetic diversity which indicate population movement may not be as ancient as previously believed, but may be attributable to recent events. This study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Investigative Genetics, based in the Netherlands, is able to genetically characterize geographically separated subpopulations within the country and map them to population movement within the last 2000 years. Looking at more than 400,000 SNPs (genetic variations) of almost 1000 people across the Netherlands, this study found that ...

Residents of Manhattan will not just sweat harder from rising temperatures in the future, says a new study; many may die. Researchers say deaths linked to warming climate may rise some 20 percent by the 2020s, and, in some worst-case scenarios, 90 percent or more by the 2080s. Higher winter temperatures may partially offset heat-related deaths by cutting cold-related mortality—but even so, annual net temperature-related deaths might go up a third. The study, published this week in the journal Nature Climate Change, was done by a team at Columbia University's Earth Institute ...

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have turned their view of osteoarthritis (OA) inside out. Literally. Instead of seeing the painful degenerative disease as a problem primarily of the cartilage that cushions joints, they now have evidence that the bone underneath the cartilage is also a key player and exacerbates the damage. In a proof-of-concept experiment, they found that blocking the action of a critical bone regulation protein in mice halts progression of the disease. The prevailing theory on the development of OA focuses on joint cartilage, suggesting that unstable mechanical ...

How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter, but the models don't always agree on where rainfall patterns will shift in particular regions within the tropics. A new study, published online May 19 in the journal Nature Geoscience, looks to the past to learn about the future of tropical climate change, and our ability to simulate it with numerical models. Pedro DiNezio of the University of Hawaii and Jessica Tierney of Woods Hole ...

One of the basic principles of nanotechnology is that when you make things extremely small—one nanometer is about five atoms wide, 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair—they are going to become more perfect. "Perfect in the sense that their arrangement of atoms in the real world will become more like an idealized model," says University of Vermont engineer Frederic Sansoz, "with smaller crystals—in for example, gold or copper—it's easier to have fewer defects in them." And eliminating the defects at the interface separating two crystals, or grains, ...

OAKLAND, Calif., May 20, 2013 — Whole-cell pertussis vaccines were more effective at protecting against pertussis than acellular pertussis vaccines during a large recent outbreak, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study published in Pediatrics. Whole-cell pertussis vaccines, also called DTwP, were available from the 1940s to 1990s, but were associated with safety concerns that ultimately led to the development of acellular pertussis vaccines, which are also called DTaP. By the late 1990s, the United States had switched from whole-cell to acellular vaccines for all ...

A novel study reports that white men and women of European descent inherit common foot disorders, such as bunions (hallux valgus) and lesser toe deformities, including hammer or claw toe. Findings from the Framingham Foot Study—the first to estimate the heritability of foot disorders in humans—appear in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Previous studies show that as many as 60% of older adults have foot disorders which may limit mobility and reduce their quality of life. In fact, bunions affect ...

A new measure of the heterogeneity – the variety of genetic mutations – of cells within a tumor appears to predict treatment outcomes of patients with the most common type of head and neck cancer. In the May 20 issue of the journal Cancer, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary describe how their measure was a better predictor of survival than most traditional risk factors in a small group of patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. "Our findings will eventually allow better matching of treatments ...

WASHINGTON —Emergency physicians are key decisionmakers for nearly half of all hospital admissions, highlighting a critical role they can play in reducing health care costs, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation. Hospital admissions from the ER increased by 17 percent over seven years, accounting for nearly all the growth in hospital admissions between 2003 and 2009. Hospital inpatient care is a key driver of health care costs, accounting for 31 percent of the nation's health care expenses. "This report tells policymakers and hospital administrators ...