Barcelona, Spain: Virtual observation of patients taking their prescribed TB medication, could prove an effective technique for ensuring patients effectively complete their course of treatment. The research will be presented today (8 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress. The new study suggests an alternative method to directly observed treatment (DOT), which is recommended by the World Health Organization. Directly observing treatments is often time consuming for a patient and is resource intensive for outreach projects, which seek ...

Barcelona, Spain: Living close to a busy road is associated with a higher risk of death in people with bronchiectasis. A new study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (8 September 2013), has added to the growing body of evidence demonstrating the damaging effects of road-side pollution. Bronchiectasis is a condition in which the airways of the lungs become abnormally widened, leading to a build-up of excess mucus. It can be caused by cystic fibrosis (CF), and experts usually categorise the condition as cases either ...

Barcelona, Spain: First trial to compare e-cigarettes with nicotine patches shows comparable success in helping smokers to quit. The first ever trial to compare e-cigarettes with nicotine patches has found that both methods result in comparable success in quitting, with roughly similar proportions of smokers who used either method remaining abstinent from smoking for six months after a 13 week course of patches or e-cigarettes. The study, presented today (8 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona, Spain and published in ...

Barcelona, Spain: Results of a new study suggest that three new diagnostic tests could each be used to successfully diagnose drug resistance in tuberculosis (TB) patients in a quarter of the time taken by the current method. The research, presented today (8 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society's Annual Congress in Barcelona, has provided evidence that each test could be used as an effective alternative to standard testing, increasing the possibilities open to clinicians. Drug susceptibility tests are carried out in people with active TB in order to ...

'Eat less salt' is a mantra of our health-conscious times and is seen as an important step in reducing heart disease and hypertension. Too much salt in the diet – and specifically sodium – is widely acknowledged as a major risk factor for high blood pressure however, scientists have found that salt's other oft-overlooked constituent chloride might also play an important role. A study by researchers at the University of Glasgow has revealed that low chloride levels in the blood is an independent indicator of mortality risk in people with hypertension. The role of chloride ...

DNA is the blueprint for life. Could it also become the template for making a new generation of computer chips based not on silicon, but on an experimental material known as graphene? That's the theory behind a process that Stanford chemical engineering professor Zhenan Bao reveals in Nature Communications. Bao and her co-authors, former post-doctoral fellows Anatoliy Sokolov and Fung Ling Yap, hope to solve a problem clouding the future of electronics: consumers expect silicon chips to continue getting smaller, faster and cheaper, but engineers fear that this virtuous ...

Two NASA satellites and one of NASA's Global Hawk aircraft got good looks at Gabrielle when it weakened from a tropical storm to a depression. Although Gabrielle is now a remnant low pressure area, there are a couple of other developing low pressure areas in the Atlantic Ocean basin to keep an eye on. As part of NASA's Hurricane Severe Storms Sentinel mission known as HS3, two of NASA's Global Hawks have been investigating Gabrielle and are gathering data over its remnants. Global Hawk 871 and 872 have been gathering data on Gabrielle this week and are expected to fly ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The future of satellite technology is getting small — about the size of a shoebox, to be exact. These so-called "CubeSats," and other small satellites, are making space exploration cheaper and more accessible: The minuscule probes can be launched into orbit at a fraction of the weight and cost of traditional satellites. But with such small packages come big limitations — namely, a satellite's communication range. Large, far-ranging radio dishes are impossible to store in a CubeSat's tight quarters. Instead, the satellites are equipped with smaller, less ...

The eighth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico at 2 p.m. EDT on Sept. 6, and NOAA's GOES-East satellite captured a visible image of the storm. NOAA's GOES-East satellite image showed a large circulation associated with Tropical Depression 8 or TD8 after it was officially designated a depression by the National Hurricane Center. The image was created by NASA's GOES Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The center of TD8 formed right along the eastern coast of Mexico near Tampico ...

An assistant professor with the Virginia Tech - Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering has developed a flexible microneedle patch that allows drugs to be delivered directly and fully through the skin. The new patch can quicken drug delivery time while cutting waste, and can likely minimize side-effects in some cases, notable in vaccinations and cancer therapy. News of the delivery technology was published in a recent issue of the scientific journal, Advanced Materials. Leading development of the flexible patch was Lissett Bickford, now an assistant professor and ...

SAN FRANSISCO, CA – Five additional studies of note are among those that will be presented at the 2013 Breast Cancer Symposium, taking place September 7-9, 2013 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis in San Francisco, California. Two studies examine cognitive function in women who undergo treatment for early-stage breast cancer; a third evaluates impact of tumor genotyping on clinical trial enrollment; and the final two evaluate the outcomes of different treatment approaches. Saturday, September 7 Presentations Abstract #48: Receptor status change from primary to residual ...

Data from the dropsondes that are dispersed from one of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft assisted forecasters at the National Hurricane Center when analyzing the environment of newborn Tropical Storm Gabrielle at 11 p.m. EDT on Sept. 4. One of two of NASA's Global Hawks flew over Tropical Depression Seven on Sept. 4, which organized into Tropical Storm Gabrielle. "During this flight, the National Hurricane Center upgraded the tropical system to Tropical Storm Gabrielle and acknowledged the data that they are getting real time from our aircraft on their website," ...

Like the wind adjusting course in the middle of a storm, scientists have discovered that the particles streaming into the solar system from interstellar space have most likely changed direction over the last 40 years. Such information can help us map out our place within the galaxy surrounding us, and help us understand our place in space. The results, based on data spanning four decades from 11 different spacecraft, were published in Science on Sept. 5, 2013. Vestiges of the interstellar wind flowing into what's called the heliosphere -- the vast bubble filled by the ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Alzheimer's disease affects more than 26 million people worldwide. It is predicted to skyrocket as boomers age—nearly 106 million people are projected to have the disease by 2050. Fortunately, scientists are making progress towards therapies. A collaboration among several research entities, including the Salk Institute and the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, has defined a key mechanism behind the disease's progress, giving hope that a newly modified Alzheimer's drug will be effective. In a previous study in 2009, Stephen F. Heinemann, a professor ...

HOUSTON, Sept. 5, 2013 – Physicists at the University of Houston's physics department and the Texas Center for Superconductivity are working on an innovation that could boost vehicle mileage by 5 percent and power plant and industrial processing performance as much as 10 percent. Their research uses non-toxic materials – tin telluride, with the addition of the chemical element indium – for waste heat recovery. Telluride has been studied for years, said Zhifeng Ren, M.D. Anderson Chair professor of physics at UH and lead author of a paper describing the ...

Synthetic antidepressants present a narrow spectrum and side effects following long-term application. Recently, medical practitioners have shown interest in the use of Chinese medicines for the treatment of diseases and in the adjustment of the human response to stress. Liping Chen and colleagues from Hainan Branch of Chinese PLA General Hospital have found in their preliminary studies that the Chinese herb Shuyusan, whose main constituent is jasminoidin, has been shown to protect SH-SY5Y cells against corticosterone-induced damage. A recent study reported in the Neural ...

A UCLA study published Sept. 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine demonstrates that an approach that combines behavioral science with social media and online communities can lead to improved health behaviors among men at risk of HIV infection. The evidence-based approach not only led to increased HIV testing and encouraged significant behavioral change among high-risk groups but also proved to be one of the best HIV-prevention and testing approaches on the Internet, according to the study's lead investigator, Sean D. Young, an assistant professor ...

In the central nervous system, nerve cells adhere to the extracellular matrix. Type I collagen is the major class of insoluble fibrous proteins in the extracellular matrix. A previous study has shown that neural stem and progenitor cells, cultured on collagen matrices, are able to expand actively and generate neurons. Collagens can be classified into hydrolyzed and non-hydrolyzed collagens, or two-dimensional and three-dimensional collagens. Which form of collagen is suitable for nerve cell culture? Dr. Mohsen Fathi Najafi and colleagues from Mashhad University of Medical ...

In current studies, the degeneration and protection measures in the distal end of the injured spinal cord and target organ muscle effector have scarcely been investigated. The distal end of the spinal cord and neuromuscular junction may develop secondary degenera-tion and damage following spinal cord injury because of the loss of neural connections. The effect of basic fibroblast growth factor on motor neurons in the anterior horn of the injured spinal cord, and on the number of neuromuscular junctions in target organs, remains elusive. Jianlong Wang and team from Third ...

By blending their expertise, two materials science engineers at Washington University in St. Louis changed the electronic properties of new class of materials — just by exposing it to light. With funding from the Washington University International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES), Parag Banerjee, PhD, and Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, and both assistant professors of materials science, brought together their respective areas of research. Singamaneni's area of expertise is in making tiny, pebble-like nanoparticles, particularly gold nanorods. ...

Washington, DC (September 3, 2013) – Pornography has long held a controversial place in society, and its relationship with a number of behaviors and attitudes has been highly debated. But the concern remains: How does viewing pornography affect our attitudes towards women? A recent paper published in the Journal of Communication found that exposure to pornography was related to and increased sexist attitudes, but only among a subgroup of users. Gert Martin Hald, Theis Lange, University of Copenhagen, and Neil Malamuth, University of California, Los Angeles, asked 200 ...

Scientific research doesn't often start from outreach projects. Yet, Ryuho Kataoka from the National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo, Japan, came up with an idea for a new method to measure the height of aurora borealis after working on a 3D movie for a planetarium. Kataoka and collaborators used two digital single-lens reflex (SLR) cameras set 8 km apart to capture 3D images of Northern Lights and determine the altitude where electrons in the atmosphere emit the light that produces aurora. The results are published today in Annales Geophysicae, a journal of the European ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (September 6, 2013) – Patients undergoing spinal fusion surgery with bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) appear to be at increased risk of benign tumors—but not cancers, reports a study in the September 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. Other papers in the September Neurosurgery report on a stent-assisted approach for difficult-to-treat brain aneurysms and a new software program to help in identifying and protecting ...

North Carolina State University researchers have come up with a new technique for improving the connections between stacked solar cells, which should improve the overall efficiency of solar energy devices and reduce the cost of solar energy production. The new connections can allow these cells to operate at solar concentrations of 70,000 suns worth of energy without losing much voltage as "wasted energy" or heat. Stacked solar cells consist of several solar cells that are stacked on top of one another. Stacked cells are currently the most efficient cells on the market, ...

Since its discovery in the early 1990s, the protein STAT1 (Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 1) has been found to be central in passing signals across immune cells, ensuring that our bodies react quickly and appropriately to threats from viruses or other pathogens. Animals without STAT1 are also prone to develop cancer, suggesting that STAT1 is somehow involved in protection against malignant cells. The STAT1 protein is known to be phosphorylated on at least two positions: phosphorylation of a particular tyrosine (tyr-701) is required for the protein to enter ...