Obese children quadruple their risk and overweight children double their risk of developing high blood pressure in adulthood, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions 2013. Researchers tracked the growth and blood pressure of 1,117 healthy adolescents from Indianapolis for 27 years, starting in 1986, and found: During childhood, 68 percent of the kids were a normal weight, 16 percent were overweight and 16 percent were obese. As adults, 119 of the participants were diagnosed with high blood pressure. Six ...

SHANGHAI, CHINA, AND LA JOLLA, CA – In a long-awaited finding, a team of Chinese and US scientists has determined the high-resolution atomic structure of a cell-surface receptor that most strains of HIV use to get into human immune cells. The researchers also showed where maraviroc, an HIV drug, attaches to cells and blocks HIV's entry. "These structural details should help us understand more precisely how HIV infects cells, and how we can do better at blocking that process with next-generation drugs," said Beili Wu, PhD, professor at the Shanghai Institute of Materia ...

Scientists have gotten the first close look at one of two co-receptors HIV uses to get its foot in the door of the immune system, a new study reports. Their insights could lead to better HIV drugs. CCR5, a receptor on the surface of human cells, is one of two main entry points the HIV virus uses to initiate its attack on the human immune system; by binding to it, an HIV protein can fuse to the cell membrane beneath, ultimately digging its way inside the cell. The other receptor that HIV uses to perform this feat is CXCR4. Both CCR5 and CXCR4 belong to a family of ...

A new study has shown that, contrary to popular belief, local domestic animals are unlikely to be the major source of antibiotic resistant Salmonella in humans. The result comes from a detailed study of DNA from more than 370 Salmonella samples collected over a 22-year period. By studying the genetic variation in the Salmonella bacteria and their drug resistance genes, researchers found that distinguishable bacterial populations exist in human and animal populations living side by side. Antibiotic resistance is considered to be one of the most important dangers to human ...

PITTSBURGH— The April 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza Factory Building in Bangladesh, in which more than 1,130 people were killed, is only the latest in a long line of events that has made plain the plight of the families whose loved ones go missing after conflict and disaster. In a new paper published in "Science," Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh ethics, policy and human rights experts argue that international structures are needed to promote more equal access to forensic identification technologies, ensure their fair and efficient use, ...

The juvenile Issus - a plant-hopping insect found in gardens across Europe - has hind-leg joints with curved cog-like strips of opposing 'teeth' that intermesh, rotating like mechanical gears to synchronise the animal's legs when it launches into a jump. The finding demonstrates that gear mechanisms previously thought to be solely man-made have an evolutionary precedent. Scientists say this is the "first observation of mechanical gearing in a biological structure". Through a combination of anatomical analysis and high-speed video capture of normal Issus movements, scientists ...

A genetic study has identified a biological process that influences whether we are right handed or left handed. Scientists at the Universities of Oxford, St Andrews, Bristol and the Max Plank Institute in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, found correlations between handedness and a network of genes involved in establishing left-right asymmetry in developing embryos. 'The genes are involved in the biological process through which an early embryo moves on from being a round ball of cells and becomes a growing organism with an established left and right side,' explains first ...

A local low-cost information campaign mainly targeted at citizens and involving doctors and pharmacists can significantly decrease total antibiotic prescribing, finds a paper published today on bmj.com. The excessive use of antibiotics is associated with resistance to these drugs and an increasing threat to global health. Antibiotics are also often unnecessarily and inappropriately prescribed. This is an issue that has been frequently addressed by health information campaigns. Campaigns can be moderately effective in restricting the excessive use of antibiotics although ...

Our current pledges to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which are projected to set the global mean temperature increase at around 3.5°C above pre-industrial levels, will expose 668 million people worldwide to new or aggravated water scarcity. This is according to a new study published today, 13 September, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters, which has calculated that a further 11 per cent of the world's population, taken from the year 2000, will live in water-scarce river basins or, for those already living in water-scarce regions, find that the ...

(Boston) -- A new study from the American Journal of Public Heath shows that U.S. states with higher estimated rates of gun ownership experience a higher number of firearms-related homicides. The study, led by a Boston University School of Public Health researcher, examines the National Rifle Association's (NRA) claim that increased gun ownership does not lead to increased gun violence. It is the largest study conducted to date into the correlation between gun ownership and firearms violence, and the first to comprehensively examine the issue since the tragic shooting ...

VIDEO: New research based at Princeton University shows that the trick to predicting when and where sea animals will relocate due to climate change is to follow the pace and direction... Click here for more information. Scientists expect climate change and warmer oceans to push the fish that people rely on for food and income into new territory. Predictions of where and when species will relocate, however, are based on broad expectations about how animals will move and have ...

Although emergence of antimicrobial resistance severely threatens our future ability to treat many infections, the UK infection-research spend targeting this important area is still unacceptably small, say a team of researchers led by Michael Head of UCL (University College London). Their study is published online today in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. This study is the first systematic analysis of research funding for infectious disease research, and for antimicrobial resistance, in the UK between 1997 and 2010. There were 6,165 studies identified that ...

TORONTO, Sept. 13, 2013—People with diabetes have a 30 per cent less chance of dying if they undergo coronary artery bypass surgery rather than opening the artery through angioplasty and inserting a stent, a new study has found. The findings are significant and have public health implications because of the sheer size of the difference in outcomes, according to the researchers at St. Michael's Hospital. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of people with diabetes, and diabetics represent one-quarter of all patients who undergo coronary artery procedures. The number of people ...

An expedition of international scientists to the far reaches of Antarctica's remote Pine Island Glacier has yielded exact measurements of an undersea process glaciologists have long called the "biggest source of uncertainty in global sea level projections." The research, which appears in the latest issue of Science magazine, was conducted by scientists at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in Monterey, Calif., the University of Alaska, Pennsylvania State University, NASA, and the British Antarctic Survey. ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – The body's immune system is set up much like a home security system; it has sensors on the outside of cells that act like motion detectors — floodlights — that click on when there's an intruder rustling in the bushes, bacteria that seem suspect. For over a decade researchers have known about one group of external sensors called Toll-like receptors that detect when bacteria are nearby. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have identified a sensor pathway inside cells. These internal sensors are like motion detectors ...

The average American today can look forward to over two more years of healthy life than they could just a generation ago, Harvard researchers have found. By synthesizing the data collected in multiple government-sponsored health surveys conducted over the last 3 decades, Susan Stewart, researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research, David Cutler, the Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics and Professor in the Harvard Department of Global Health and Population, and Allison Rosen, MD and associate professor of Quantitative Health Sciences at the University ...

WORCESTER, MA – Thanks to medical advances, better treatments and new drugs not available a generation ago, the average American born today can expect to live 3.8 years longer than a person born two decades ago. Despite all these new technologies, however, is our increased life expectancy actually adding active and healthy years to our lives? That question has remained largely unanswered – until now. In a first-of-its-kind study, researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have found that the average 25-year-old American today can look forward to ...

We often think of human cells as tiny computers that perform assigned tasks, where disease is a result of a malfunction. But in the current issue of Science, researchers at The Mount Sinai Medical Center offer a radical view of health — seeing it more as a cooperative state among cells, while they see disease as result of cells at war that fight with each other for domination. Their unique approach is backed by experimental evidence. The researchers show a network of genes in cells, which includes the powerful tumor suppressor p53, which enforce a cooperative state ...

Augusta, Ga. - Getting a second urine sample and blood pressure measure as patients head out of the doctor's office appears an efficient way to identify those whose health may be in jeopardy because their bodies hold onto too much sodium, researchers report. "We want to prove that you can easily and efficiently identify these patients," said Evan A. Mulloy, a second-year medical student at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. "We want this to become a part of our routine standard of care." Using the simple method, researchers looked at 19, ...

RESTON, VIRGINIA – An article published in the September issue of BioScience highlights the challenges facing biological societies and offers insights for scientific societies to respond and adapt to the changing dynamics of 21st century science. The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) surveyed 139 biology societies to better understand the composition of the biological sciences community and how this community has changed over time. Organizational leaders were asked about the size of their organization's membership over the last fifty years. The majority ...

This news release is available in Spanish. New data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, which has been hurtling away from the Sun since it was launched in 1977, indicates that the spacecraft has indeed left the comfort of the heliosphere—the bubble of hot, energetic charged particles surrounding the Solar System—and entered into a region of cold, dark space, known as interstellar space. Based on these new measurements, which show that plasma densities around the spacecraft are consistent with theoretical predictions of the interstellar medium, researchers suggest that ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – They call it the "white plague," and like its black counterpart from the Middle Ages, it conjures up visions of catastrophic death, with a cause that was at first uncertain even as it led to widespread destruction – on marine corals in the Caribbean Sea. Now one of the possible causes of this growing disease epidemic has been identified – a group of viruses that are known as small, circular, single-strand DNA (or SCSD) viruses. Researchers in the College of Science at Oregon State University say these SCSD viruses are associated with a dramatic increase ...

WASHINGTON -- Rates of physical and sexual abuse of children have declined over the last 20 years, but for reasons not fully understood, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Yet, reports of psychological and emotional child abuse have risen in the same period, and data vary significantly as to whether child neglect is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. However, determining the incidence of child abuse and neglect presents a number of challenges, because cases could be underreported and definitions vary among entities that collect such information. ...

Women are more likely than men to disapprove of -- and less likely to participate in -- political corruption, but only in countries where corruption is stigmatized, according to new political science research from Rice University. "'Fairer Sex' or Purity Myth? Corruption, Gender and Institutional Context" finds that women are less tolerant of corrupt behavior, but only in democratic governments, where appropriating public policy for private gain is typically punished by voters and courts. "The relationship between gender and corruption appears to depend on context," ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — In the wake of deadly tornadoes in Oklahoma this past spring, Florida State University researchers have developed a new statistical model that will help determine whether the risk of tornadoes is increasing and whether they are getting stronger. Climatologists have been hampered in determining actual risks by what they call a population bias: That is, the fact that tornadoes have traditionally been underreported in rural areas compared to cities. Now, FSU geography Professor James B. Elsner and graduate student Laura E. Michaels have outlined a method ...