New research has found a "very significant" relationship between a nation's wealth and hygiene and the Alzheimer's "burden" on its population. High-income, highly industrialised countries with large urban areas and better hygiene exhibit much higher rates of Alzheimer's. Using 'age-standardised'* data - which predict Alzheimer's rates if all countries had the same population birth rate, life expectancy and age structure -- the study found strong correlations between national sanitation levels and Alzheimer's. This latest study adds further weight to the "hygiene hypothesis" ...

A joint Australian-German research team led by Curtin University's Dr Christian Hirt has created the highest-resolution maps of Earth's gravity field to date -- showing gravitational variations up to 40 percent larger than previously assumed. Using detailed topographic information obtained from the US Space Shuttle, a specialist team including Associate Professor Michael Kuhn, Dr Sten Claessens and Moritz Rexer from Curtin's Western Australian Centre for Geodesy and Professor Roland Pail and Thomas Fecher from Technical University Munich improved the resolution of previous ...

A team of researchers in Ireland have found evidence that altering the chemistry of an electrode surface (surface engineering) can help microbial communities to connect to the electrode to produce more electricity (electron-exchange) more rapidly compared to unmodified electrodes. Electron exchange is at the heart of all redox reactions occurring in the natural world, as well as in bioengineered systems: so called 'biolectrochemical systems'. Practical applications of these systems include current generation, wastewater treatment, and biochemical and biofuel production. ...

Obesity gene testing does not put people off weight loss and may help to reduce self-blame, according to a new study by researchers from the Health Behaviour Research Centre at UCL (University College London). Previous studies have shown that genes play a role in a person's risk of becoming overweight. One gene, called FTO, has been found to have the biggest influence so far. FTO has two variants, one associated with greater risk of weight gain (A) and one associated with lower risk (T). One in two people carries at least one copy of the A variant. People who inherit ...

In 2008 the Spanish company PharmaMar, dedicated to developing marine-derived drugs against cancer, isolated a promising substance called pipecolidepsin A from the sponge Homophymia lamellosa collected off the coast of Madagascar. The Combinatorial Chemistry group at the IRB, led by Fernando Albericio, has been working alongside this company for twenty years. As part of a collaboration agreement, they worked together to reproduce pipecolidepsin A in the laboratory and have been successful in this endeavour. The journal Nature Communications now reveals the procedure after ...

Researchers at the Xiamen University in China and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have characterized a series of stable 1.5 nm metal nanoclusters containing 44 metal atoms, stabilized by 30 organic thiol molecules on the surface. Two types of clusters were synthesized, containing either 44 silver atoms or an intermetallic cluster of 12 gold and 32 silver atoms. The work in the University of Jyväskylä is funded by the Academy of Finland. The special electronic structure of the clusters leads to peaked absorption of radiation in a wide region of ultraviolet and visible ...

TORONTO, Sept. 4, 2013—Problem gamblers are a hidden population among people with mental health or substance abuse issues who often don't get the treatment they need, a new study shows. Anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent of people with substance abuse problems also have significant gambling problem, yet few programs are targeted at them and most social service agencies don't have funds to treat them, the study's main author says. Dr. Flora Matheson, a research scientist at St. Michael's Hospital's Centre for Research on Inner City Health, with colleagues from the Centre ...

Engineers working in the nanoscale will have a new tool at their disposal thanks to an international group of researchers led by Drexel University's College of Engineering. This innovative procedure could alleviate the persistent challenge of measuring key features of electron behavior while designing the ever-shrinking components that allow cell phones, laptops and tablets to get increasingly thinner and more energy efficient. "The interface between two semiconductor materials enables most of the electronic gadgets we use each day, from computers to mobile phones, ...

Our sense of touch can contribute to our ability to perceive faces, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "In daily life, we usually recognize faces through sight and almost never explore them through touch," says lead researcher Kazumichi Matsumiya of Tohoku University in Japan. "But we use information from multiple sensory modalities in order to perceive many everyday non-face objects and events, such as speech perception or object recognition – these new findings suggest that even face ...

A recent study of one of California's most devastating wildland fires by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) strongly suggests that measures for reducing structural damage and property loss from wildland urban interface (WUI)* fires are most effective when they are based on accurate assessments of exposure risks both for individual structures and the community as a whole. The report also describes how the NIST-USFS WUI Hazard Scale provides a state-of-the-art tool for making such assessments and how that data could ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- As Baby Boomers begin entering retirement, some may find themselves unprepared for the transition. New research from the University of Missouri indicates that spouses tend to have similar levels of planning for retirement. This planning can lead to more success and less stress when they leave the workforce. "The transition into retirement, in some ways, is like the transition into parenthood," said Angela Curl, an assistant professor in the MU School of Social Work. "When couples prepare to become parents, they do a lot of planning for the future. They ...

PITTSBURGH—Most parents who yell at their adolescent children wouldn't dream of physically punishing their teens. Yet their use of harsh verbal discipline—defined as shouting, cursing, or using insults—may be just as detrimental to the long-term well-being of adolescents. That's the main finding of a new study led by Ming-Te Wang, assistant professor of psychology in education in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education and of psychology in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. The results were published online today in the journal Child Development. ...

Children in afterschool programs who have a sense of connectedness with their peers are less likely to report emotional problems, according to Penn State researchers. Children exhibited fewer behavior problems if they perceived their peers were willing to encourage them to behave well. "Encouraging your friends to do something positive or to not misbehave may start from selfishness because you want your group to earn a certain activity or privilege, but it turns into working together as a team," said Emilie Phillips Smith, professor of human development and family studies. She ...

VIDEO: This animation describes the paths of traveling performed by an OCD patient who is about to leave his apartment (left) and by a co-morbid OCD and schizophrenia patient performing the... Click here for more information. Because animals can't talk, researchers need to study their behavior patterns to make sense of their activities. Now researchers at Tel Aviv University are using these zoological methods to study people with serious mental disorders. Prof. David Eilam of ...

Scientists have developed an influenza vaccine delivered via microneedle patch that provided 100 percent protection against a lethal influenza virus in mice more than one year after vaccination. They report their findings in the September 2013 issue of the journal Clinical and Vaccine Immunology. Microneedles are a medium for delivery of influenza vaccine that avoids the pain associated with ordinary hypodermic needles. They are a mere seven tenths of a millimeter in length, and the volume of vaccine—a major contributor to pain—is minuscule. Instead of a liquid containing ...

A person's ability to delay gratification—forgoing a smaller reward now for a larger reward in the future—may depend on how trustworthy the person perceives the reward-giver to be, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. A body of research that stretches back more than a half-century has shown that the ability to delay gratification is linked to a number of better life outcomes. On average, people who were able to delay gratification as children go on to have higher SAT scores, for example. They also tend to be more socially conscious ...

A comprehensive new review of food waste in the People's Republic of China has concluded that about 19 of every 100 pounds of grain produced in the country go to waste, with related losses of water for irrigation and farmland productivity. The report appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. Junguo Liu and colleagues point out that food waste is a global problem with an estimated one-third to one-half of food produced worldwide being lost or wasted from farm to fork. Estimates suggest that the United States wastes about 40 percent of food crops. The ...

Scientists are reporting development of a new form of aspirin — taken daily by about 60 million people in the United States alone to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke — that could extend aspirin's benefits to people who may not respond to the drug. Their advance toward coping with "aspirin resistance" appears in the journal ACS Nano. Shiqi Peng, Ming Zhao and colleagues note that aspirin lowers cardiovascular disease risk by keeping blood cells called platelets from clumping and forming clots. But some experts believe that aspirin doesn't work for millions of ...

NOTE: ALL NEWS REPORTS ARE EMBARGOED UNTIL DATE AND TIME OF PRESENTATION TUESDAY, September 10, 2013 Keynote Lecture: Rethinking Disease The reductionist attitude of classic antibacterial therapy, crystallized in the dominant "culture of monotherapy" has contributed to perversely fix the old perception of "one disease-one pathogen-one drug". Bacterial diseases are always the result of a complex array of pathogenic factors. This session will address the multifaceted and integrated ...

JUPITER, FL, September 4, 2013 – A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that a protein once thought to inhibit the growth of tumors is instead required for initial tumor growth. The findings could point to a new approach to cancer treatment. The study was published this week as the cover article of the journal Science Signaling. The focus of the study was angiomotin, a protein that coordinates cell migration, especially during the start of new blood vessel growth and proliferation of other cell types. "We were the first to ...

New technology for discovering antibiotics, anti-cancer drugs and other medicines inside soil microbes and other natural sources is reviving a treasure hunt that already has given humanity more than 50 percent of today's prescription drugs. This new era in "bioprospecting" is the topic of the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Lisa M. Jarvis, C&EN senior editor, points out that natural products are the source of about half of the modern drugs approved in the U.S. But the search for new products slowed ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 4, 2013) – Scientists at Rice University have trapped bismuth in a nanotube cage to tag stem cells for X-ray tracking. Bismuth is probably best known as the active element in a popular stomach-settling elixir and is also used in cosmetics and medical applications. Rice chemist Lon Wilson and his colleagues are inserting bismuth compounds into single-walled carbon nanotubes to make a more effective contrast agent for computed tomography (CT) scanners. Details of the work by Wilson's Rice team and collaborators at the University of Houston, St. Luke's ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- In all the centuries that humans have studied chemical reactions, just 36 basic types of reactions have been found. Now, thanks to the work of researchers at MIT and the University of Minnesota, a 37th type of reaction can be added to the list. The newly explained reaction — whose basic outlines had been known for three decades, but whose workings had never been understood in detail — is an important part of atmospheric reactions that lead to the formation of climate-affecting aerosols; biochemical reactions that may be important for human physiology; ...

Reston, Va. (September 4, 2013) – For patients with degenerative cervical myelopathy, imaging with 18F-FDG positron emission tomography (PET) could act as a marker for a potentially reversible phase of the disease in which substantial clinical improvement can be achieved. According to research published in the September issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, patients who exhibited hypermetabolism at the point of compression in their spine experienced improved outcomes after undergoing decompressive surgery. Cervical spinal stenosis is a condition in which the spinal ...

A new systematic review published in the British Journal of Nutrition*, is one of the first to focus on patterns of vitamin D status worldwide and in key population subgroups, using continuous values for 25(OH)D to improve comparisons. Principal investigator, Dr. Kristina Hoffmann of the Mannheim Institute of Public Health (MIPH), Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University stated, "The strength of our study is that we used strict inclusion criteria to filter and compare data, using consistent values for 25(OH)D. Although we found a high degree of variability between ...