EAST BOOTHBAY, MAINE -- A research team led by Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences has discovered that marine microbes are adapted to very narrow and specialized niches in their environment. This may explain why so few of these microbes—usually less than 1%—can be grown for study in the laboratory. By utilizing new genetic tools, the researchers' new ability to read and interpret genetic information from the remaining 99% will be pivotal in detecting and mitigating the impact of human activities in the ocean. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the study was published ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Some open-minded people can be swayed to support government intervention on climate change – but only if they are presented with both the benefits and the costs, a new study suggests. Researchers found that those who were open-minded didn't change their view if they heard arguments for only one side of the issue. People who are relatively more closed-minded did not change their mind regardless of the messages they received, or what their original views were. There was also no evidence of open-minded people becoming less supportive of government intervention, ...

Bacterial DNA may integrate into the human genome more readily in tumors than in normal human tissue, scientists have found. The researchers, affiliated with the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences, analyzed genomic sequencing data available from the Human Genome Project, the 1,000 Genomes Project and The Cancer Genome Atlas. They considered the phenomenon of lateral gene transfer (LGT), the transmission of genetic material between organisms in a manner other than than traditional reproduction. Scientists have already shown ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Rural women with breast cancer are less likely than their urban counterparts to receive recommended radiation therapy after having a lumpectomy, a breast-sparing surgery that removes only tumors and surrounding tissue, a study by Mayo Clinic and others found. The difference is one of several rural disparities in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment the researchers discovered. The findings are being presented at the AcademyHealth Annual Research Meeting in Baltimore. "These study results are concerning," says Elizabeth Habermann, Ph.D., associate scientific ...

Several studies have shown that how much parents say to their children when they are very young is a good predictor of children's vocabulary at the point when they begin school. In turn, a child's vocabulary size at school entry strongly predicts level of success throughout schooling even into high school and college. A new study by psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania now shows that early vocabulary improvement is likely to have more to do with the "quality" of the interactions in which the words are used rather than the sheer quantity of speech directed ...

Just what size is a "small" drink—8 ounces, 12 ounces, 16 ounces? The truth is, those are all "small" sizes depending on what restaurants and fast food joints you go to. As customers, we are used to ordering food based on relative size, but according to a new study from Cornell University, these seemingly standard labels impact our entire eating experience. Dr. David R. Just and Dr. Brian Wansink of the Cornell Food & Brand Lab designed a study to understand how portion labels impact what you're willing to pay for your food as well as how much you actually eat. The researchers ...

A new study by researchers at the Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center at UC San Francisco offers encouraging findings that researchers hope may one day lead to a treatment option for people who suffer from alcohol abuse disorders and other addictions. In the study, conducted in rats, the UCSF researchers were able to identify and deactivate a brain pathway linked to the memories that cause cravings for alcohol, thus preventing the animals from seeking alcohol and drinking it, the equivalent of relapse. "One of the main causes of relapse is craving, triggered by ...

PITTSBURGH—A landmark study investigating the long-term effects of weight loss on the risks of cardiovascular disease among patients with Type 2 diabetes has now concluded, with significant results to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and at clinical facilities throughout the United States, the multicenter clinical trial investigated the effects of an intensive lifestyle intervention program, intended to achieve and maintain weight loss in overweight or obese people with Type 2 diabetes, on rates of cardiovascular ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Despite concerns to the contrary, very little of the variation in Emergency Department (ED) imaging utilization is attributable to physician experience, training or gender, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Imaging exams like X-rays and CT scans are common in the ED. In 2010, slightly more than 47 percent of all ED visits in the United States had an imaging exam associated with them. "Analyzing and understanding drivers of use of imaging in the ED is important for several reasons," said Christopher L. Sistrom, M.D., ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Moderate-intensity exercise reduces fat stored around the heart, in the liver and in the abdomen of people with type 2 diabetes mellitus, even in the absence of any changes in diet, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the body does not produce enough insulin, a hormone that regulates the movement of sugar into the cells, or when the cells resist the effects of insulin. The disease can lead to a wide range of complications, including damage to the eyes and kidneys and hardening of the arteries. Exercise ...

Athens, Greece, 25 June 2013. Drinking excessive amounts of cola and eating honey made from the pollen of Rhododendrons can cause unusual syncope (fainting) and symptoms of arrhythmia, report two case studies presented as abstracts at the EHRA EUROPACE 2013 meeting, in Athens 23 to 26 June. "Both these studies underline the importance of clinicians taking detailed medical histories for patients with unexplained arrhythmias and including questions about their dietary intakes," says Professor Andreas Goette, the EHRA Scientific Programme Committee chairperson. In the first ...

Athens-- The 2013 ESC Guidelines on Cardiac Pacing and Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy¹ developed in collaboration with the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), have created a new classification system for bradyarrhythmias according to mechanisms rather than aetiology. The guidelines, presented at the EHRA EUROPACE meeting 23-26 June in Athens, Greece, and published simultaneously in the European Heart Journal and Europace, have been redesigned to offer a more accessible format for users. Greater emphasis than ever before has been placed on a practical 'how to' approach ...

A new palm-sized microarray that holds 1,200 individual cultures of fungi or bacteria could enable faster, more efficient drug discovery, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Scientists at the University of Texas at San Antonio and the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research at Fort Sam Houston have developed a microarray platform for culturing fungal biofilms, and validated one potential application of the technology to identify new drugs effective against Candida albicans biofilms. The nano-scale ...

HUNTSVILLE (6/25/13) -- Gun possession arrests made by a concentrated, proactive patrol unit in the Houston Police Department were linked to significant reductions in subsequent crimes involving firearms, a study by Sam Houston State University found. "These findings add to the growing evidence that supports the use of directed patrols to target illegal gun possession in high crime locations," wrote Dr. William Wells, who co-authored the study with Yan Zhang and Jihong Zhao at SHSU's College of Criminal Justice. "An interesting phenomenon observed in Houston and in other ...

Jerusalem, June 23, 2013 –Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and in California have achieved a breakthrough in understanding how and why a promising anti-cancer therapy has failed to achieve hoped-for success in killing tumor cells. Their work could lead to new insights into overcoming this impasse. The problematic therapy investigated involves suppression of the protein mTOR (mammalian target Of Rapamycin). MTOR plays an important role in regulating how cells process molecular signals from their environment, and it is observed as strongly activated in ...

New research shows that to prevent starvation at night, plants perform accurate arithmetic division. The calculation allows them to use up their starch reserves at a constant rate so that they run out almost precisely at dawn. "This is the first concrete example in a fundamental biological process of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation," said mathematical modeller Professor Martin Howard from the John Innes Centre. Plants feed themselves during the day by using energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and starch. Once the sun has set, they must ...

Cholera remains common in non-industrialized parts of the world today. It persists in part because V. cholera, the bacteria that causes the disease, is able to survive in diverse environments ranging from the intestinal lumen, to fresh water, to estuaries, to the sea. A study in The Journal of General Physiology provides new insights about the membrane components of V. cholera that enable it to withstand otherwise deadly increases in osmotic pressure resulting from changes in its surrounding environment. Like other bacteria, V. cholera utilizes mechanosensitive channels ...

A prenatal trigger for postnatal obesity During pregnancy, the health of the mother and the intrauterine environment can have dramatic and lasting effects on the child. Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a liver disease that affects 0.5-2% of pregnant women and is characterized by increased bile acid levels in the maternal serum. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Catherine Williamson and colleagues at Imperial College London studied the long term impact of ICP in a cohort of Finnish families. They found that as teenagers, individuals ...

During pregnancy, the health of the mother and the intrauterine environment can have dramatic and lasting effects on the child. Intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP) is a liver disease that affects 0.5-2% of pregnant women and is characterized by increased bile acid levels in the maternal serum. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Catherine Williamson and colleagues at Imperial College London studied the long term impact of ICP in a cohort of Finnish families. They found that as teenagers, individuals born to women with ICP had altered metabolic ...

In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Scott Pruitt at Duke University and Merck Research Laboratories report on a human clinical trial in which modified dendritic cells, a component of the immune system, were tested in patients with melanoma. All cells express a complex known as the proteasome, which acts as the garbage disposal for the cell. There are two types of proteasomes: constitutive proteasomes (cPs), which are found in normal tissues, and immunoproteasomes (iPs), which are found in stressed or damaged cells. In a damaged cell, ...

OAKLAND, Calif., June 24, 2013 – Patients are not at increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the six-week period after vaccination with any vaccine, including influenza, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The retrospective study by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center spanned 13 years and was controlled for seasonality. "If there is a risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome following any vaccine, including influenza vaccines, it is extremely low," said Roger Baxter, MD, co-director of the Kaiser Permanente ...

Myelin, the fatty coating that protects neurons in the brain and spinal cord, is destroyed in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Researchers have been striving to determine whether oligodendrocytes, the cells that produce myelin, can be stimulated to make new myelin. Using live imaging in zebrafish to track oligodendrocytes in real time, researchers reporting in the June 24 issue of the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell discovered that individual oligodendrocytes coat neurons with myelin for only five hours after they are born. If the findings hold true in humans, ...

Athens, Greece, 24 June 2013. Moderation seems to be key when it comes to eating fish to prevent atrial fibrillation (AF) according to an observational study presented at the EHRA EUROPACE congress held 23 to 26 June in Athens, Greece. The study found a U-shaped association between consumption of marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) and the risk of developing AF, with people who have both low and high intakes found to suffer more from AF than those with median intakes. The lowest risk of AF was found in those who consumed around 0.63 g marine n-3 PUFA per ...

A five-year programme that mobilised communities to improve the quality of care for mothers and newborns reduced newborn mortality by 30 percent and saved at least 1,000 newborn lives in rural Malawi. The study, carried out in three rural districts in Malawi with a combined population of more than two million, was designed to test whether a combined effort to increase both community awareness and strategies for perinatal care and to improve the quality of healthcare would be more effective than either one alone. The study showed that the combination worked best. "The ...

In an analysis that included a sample of patients in the top portion of Medicare spending, only a small percentage of their costs appeared to be related to preventable emergency department visits and hospitalizations, limiting the ability to lower costs for these patients through better outpatient care, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA. The study is being released early to coincide with its presentation at the AcademyHealth annual research meeting. "High and increasing health care costs are arguably the single biggest threat to the long-term fiscal solvency ...