COLUMBUS, Ohio -- College biology textbooks cater to the needs of pre-med majors and not those of the majority of students who take introductory science classes, a new study reveals. A text analysis of eight commonly used biology textbooks found that all of them closely follow the curriculum suggested for pre-med students by the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT). That means the texts put a heavy emphasis on molecular and cellular biology, while giving less attention to the big issues that have more relevance to students who don't plan on being medical doctors, ...

University of Utah bioengineers discovered our understanding of language may depend more heavily on vision than previously thought: under the right conditions, what you see can override what you hear. These findings suggest artificial hearing devices and speech-recognition software could benefit from a camera, not just a microphone. "For the first time, we were able to link the auditory signal in the brain to what a person said they heard when what they actually heard was something different. We found vision is influencing the hearing part of the brain to change your ...

Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are the only primates known to hibernate, and new research suggests their sleep patterns during hibernation are markedly different from those of ground squirrels, which also hibernate at similar temperatures. The results are published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Andrew Krystal and colleagues from Duke University School of Medicine and the Duke Lemur Center. During hibernation, dwarf lemurs experience periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep at relatively high ambient temperatures, but no non-REM sleep. Ground squirrels, ...

Signs banning smoking may not have as much of an impact on secondhand smoke concentrations as the presence of ashtrays or ashtray equivalents, according to research published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Constantine Vardavas from the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues from other institutions. The authors measured the success of a non-enforced, nationwide smoke-free legislation in Greece by testing levels of secondhand smoke before the ban and for two years afterward. Following the 2010 legislation, secondhand smoke concentrations dropped ...

Forests in the northeastern US have been radically transformed over the last four centuries by human activity, and their relationship with climate factors like rainfall weakened, according to research published September 4 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jonathan Thompson and colleagues from the Smithsonian Institution. Though the land use history of the northeastern United States is well documented, its ecological consequences remain poorly understood. Based on more than 300,000 references to individual trees within colonial-era property records, the researchers ...

A new, international study from the Chronic Kidney Disease Prognosis Consortium found that use of blood levels of cystatin C to estimate kidney function—alone or in combination with creatinine—strengthens the association between kidney function and risks of death and end-stage renal disease. The findings, reported in the September 5 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, suggest that the use of cystatin C as a measurement of kidney function could lead to better staging and risk classification of chronic kidney disease. They also suggest that the measurement ...

Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the National Institutes of Health have identified a compound that dramatically bolsters learning and memory when given to mice with a Down syndrome-like condition on the day of birth. As they report in the Sept. 4 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the single-dose treatment appears to enable the cerebellum of the rodents' brains to grow to a normal size. The scientists caution that use of the compound, a small molecule known as a sonic hedgehog pathway agonist, has not been proven safe to try in people with Down syndrome, but say ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A new laser-based technology may make brain tumor surgery much more accurate, allowing surgeons to tell cancer tissue from normal brain at the microscopic level while they are operating, and avoid leaving behind cells that could spawn a new tumor. In a new paper, featured on the cover of the journal Science Translational Medicine, a team of University of Michigan Medical School and Harvard University researchers describes how the technique allows them to "see" the tiniest areas of tumor cells in brain tissue. They used this technique to distinguish ...

Scientists at UC San Francisco are reporting that they have found a way to reverse some of the negative effects of aging on the brain, using a video game designed to improve cognitive control. The findings, published this week in Nature, show how a specially designed 3-D video game can improve cognitive performance in healthy older adults. The researchers said it provides a measure of scientific support to the burgeoning field of brain fitness, which has been criticized for lacking evidence that such training can induce lasting and meaningful changes. In the ...

Back of pack picture or text warnings depicting the dangers of smoking, make little impact on teen smokers, particularly those who smoke regularly, suggests research published online in Tobacco Control. Pictorial warnings work better than text alone, but if positioned on the back of the pack are less visible and less effective, say the researchers. In 2008 the UK became the third European Union country to require pictorial health warnings to be carried on the back of cigarette packs. In only five out of the 60 countries worldwide that have introduced this policy do ...

Becoming infected with chlamydia or gonorrhoea in the lead-up to, or during, pregnancy, increases the risk of complications, such as stillbirth or unplanned premature birth, indicates research published online in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. The researchers analysed the birth records of more than 350,000 women who had had their first baby between 1999 and 2008 in New South Wales, Australia's most heavily populated state. The researchers wanted to find out if infection with either chlamydia or gonorrhoea in the lead-up to, or during, pregnancy, had any ...

The evolution of similar traits in different species, a process known as convergent evolution, is widespread not only at the physical level, but also at the genetic level, according to new research led by scientists at Queen Mary University of London and published in Nature this week. The scientists investigated the genomic basis for echolocation, one of the most well-known examples of convergent evolution to examine the frequency of the process at a genomic level. Echolocation is a complex physical trait that involves the production, reception and auditory processing ...

The amount of ozone created from aircraft pollution is highest from flights leaving and entering Australia and New Zealand, a new study has shown. The findings, which have been published today, Thursday 5 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, could have wide-reaching implications for aviation policy as ozone is a potent greenhouse gas with comparable short-term effects to those of carbon dioxide (CO2). The researchers, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, used a global chemistry-transport model to investigate which parts of the ...

This news release is available in French. Vancouver, BC – A Terry Fox Research Institute(TFRI)-led study has developed a new clinical risk calculator software that accurately classifies, nine out of ten times, which spots or lesions (nodules) are benign and malignant on an initial lung computed tomography (CT) scan among individuals at high risk for lung cancer. The findings are expected to have immediate clinical impact worldwide among health professionals who currently diagnose and treat individuals at risk for or who are diagnosed with lung cancer, and provide ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Heart attack deaths have remained the same, even as hospital teams have gotten faster at treating heart attack patients with emergency angioplasty, according to a study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. Hospitals across the country have successfully raced to reduce so-called door-to-balloon time, the time it takes patients arriving at hospitals suffering from a heart attack to be treated with angioplasty, to 90 minutes or less in the belief that it would save heart muscle and lives. In an analysis led by the University of Michigan ...

A new study of the megabladder mouse model suggests that tracking changes in the expression of key genes involved in kidney disease could help physicians predict the severity of urinary tract obstruction in pediatric patients, which could help identify children at the greatest risk of chronic kidney disease and permanent organ damage. The work was led by a team that includes Brian Becknell, MD, PhD, a clinician and assistant professor in the Division of Nephrology at Nationwide Children's Hospital. The research, which tracked the expression of a number of genes related ...

A protein at the center of Parkinson’s disease research now also has been found to play a key role in causing the destruction of bacteria that cause tuberculosis, according to scientists led by UC San Francisco microbiologist and tuberculosis expert Jeffery Cox, PhD. The protein, named Parkin, already is the focus of intense investigation in Parkinson’s disease, in which its malfunction is associated with a loss of nerve cells. Cox and colleagues now report that Parkin also acts on tuberculosis, triggering destruction of the bacteria by immune cells known as macrophages. ...

NEW YORK, September 4, 2013 — Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center study shows that the use of MRI before or immediately after surgery in women with DCIS was not associated with reduced local recurrence or contralateral breast cancer rates. The findings are being presented on Saturday, September 7, 2013, at the 2013 Breast Cancer Symposium. While no clinical practice guidelines exist for the use of MRI around the time of surgery, some surgeons use the screening tool to obtain a clearer picture of the cancer before surgery is performed or immediately after surgery to ...

In the battle against brain cancer, doctors now have a new weapon -- a new imaging technology that will make brain surgery dramatically more accurate by allowing surgeons to distinguish -- at a microscopic level -- between brain tissue and tumors. Called SRS microscopy -- short for stimulated Raman scattering -- a team of researchers that included Xiaoliang Sunney Xie, the Mallinckrodt Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Minbiao Ji, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology, were able to "see" the tiniest areas of tumor cells in brain tissue, ...

Case Western Reserve researchers have identified a genetic factor that blocks the blood vessel inflammation that can lead to heart attacks, strokes and other potentially life-threatening events. The breakthrough involving Kruppel-like factor (KLF) 15 is the latest in a string of discoveries from the laboratory of professor of medicine Mukesh K. Jain that involves a remarkable genetic family. Kruppel-like factors appear to play prominent roles in everything from cardiac health and obesity to metabolism and childhood muscular dystrophy. School of Medicine instructor ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The results of research conducted by professors at UC Santa Barbara and colleagues mark the beginning of a new paradigm for our understanding of the history of Earth's great global ice sheets. The research shows that, contrary to the popularly held scientific view, an ice sheet on West Antarctica existed 20 million years earlier than previously thought. The findings indicate that ice sheets first grew on the West Antarctic subcontinent at the start of a global transition from warm greenhouse conditions to a cool icehouse climate 34 million years ...

URBANA, Ill. – Farmers who grow corn and soybeans can take advantage of government price support programs and crop insurance, but similar programs are not available for those who grow biomass crops such as Miscanthus. A University of Illinois study recommends a framework for contracts between growers and biorefineries to help spell out expectations for sustainability practices and designate who will assume the risks and costs associated with these new perennial energy crops. "The current biomass market operates more along the lines of a take-it-or-leave-it contract, ...

Tropical Storm Toraji passed over Kyushu and transitioned into an extra-tropical storm while bringing heavy rainfall over the big island of Japan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on Sept. 4. The extra-tropical storm is now a cold-core system being carried by a frontal system. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured infrared data of Extra-Tropical Storm Toraji as it continued tracking through southern Japan on Sept.4 at 0429 UTC/12:29 a.m. EDT. AIRS showed that the coldest cloud top temperatures and strongest thunderstorms with heaviest rainfall ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers in the College of Engineering at Oregon State University have made a significant advance in the function of metal-insulator-metal, or MIM diodes, a technology premised on the assumption that the speed of electrons moving through silicon is simply too slow. For the extraordinary speed envisioned in some future electronics applications, these innovative diodes solve problems that would not be possible with silicon-based materials as a limiting factor. The new diodes consist of a "sandwich" of two metals, with two insulators in between, to ...

DENVER – Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death in Ontario. Screening for lung cancer using low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) has been the subject of many research studies since the 1990s. The National Lung Screening Trial compared LDCT with chest radiograph in high-risk populations and found a 20 percent reduction in lung cancer mortality at 6 years with LDCT after an initial scan and two annual rounds of screening. While there are still gaps regarding the use of CT-screening, researchers in Ontario developed evidence-based recommendations for screening ...