PHILADELPHIA - Though the toll of sepsis is known to be enormous – it is estimated to cost the U.S. health care system $24.3 billion each year, and is the nation's third-leading killer, behind heart disease and cancer – the true magnitude of incidence of and death from the illness remains unknown. There is substantial variability in these numbers, depending on the method used to identify the condition in patients treated at hospital across the United States, according to a new study from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The authors say ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- A costly and widely used mammography add-on increases detection of noninvasive and early-stage invasive breast cancer but also makes more mistakes than mammography alone, researchers from UC Davis and the University of Washington have found. Published in the April 16 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, the study of women enrolled in Medicare is the largest comparison of clinical outcomes of routine screening mammography with and without computer-assisted detection (CAD) -- software developed to enhance the detection of breast cancer during ...

PHILADELPHIA - A study led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University School of Medicine has found that nearly one quarter of patients may return to the emergency department within 30 days of being discharged from a hospitalization. None of these emergency room visits that do not lead to subsequent admission are included in calculating hospital readmission rates, which are a key focus of health care cost containment and quality improvement efforts. The findings are published in Annals of Emergency Medicine. The ...

Researchers with the Institute of Urologic Oncology and the Department of Urology at UCLA have classified kidney cancer into several unique subtypes, a finding that will help physicians tailor treatment to individual patients and that moves cancer care one step closer to personalized medicine. The finding is the result of 10 years of UCLA researchers studying kidney cancers at the genetic and molecular levels, conducting chromosomal analyses in an effort to identify what mutations may be causing and affecting the behavior of the malignancies. Thousands of tumors removed ...

Charlottesville, VA (April 16, 2013). In July 2010, the Society of Neurological Surgeons initiated nationwide boot camp courses designed to teach incoming postgraduate Year 1 (PGY1) trainees fundamental skills related to the field of neurosurgery. According to a new paper in the Journal of Neurosurgery, follow-up tests and surveys returned from course attendees 6 months after completion of the courses show that the first-year residents retained the knowledge and skills they had learned and found the courses relevant and beneficial to their residency experiences and to patient ...

Boston, MA – A parasitic worm may hold the answer to keeping skin grafts firmly in place over wounds, according to a new study by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH). The study will be published in the April 16, 2013 issue of Nature Communications. The research team, led by Jeffrey Karp, PhD, BWH Division of Biomedical Engineering, Department of Medicine, senior study author, invented a microneedle inspired by Pomphorhynchus laevis, a spiny-headed worm that lives in the intestines of its hosts, in this case fish. The worm securely attaches to the host's ...

AURORA, Colo. (April 16, 2013) – A new study shows that neither criminal background checks nor pre-admission screening questions accurately predict students likely to commit crime on college campuses. "In an effort to reduce campus crime, more than half of all American colleges ask applicants about their criminal histories or require criminal background checks," said study author Carol Runyan , Ph.D., MPH, and professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health. "But there is no real evidence to show this reduces campus crime." Colleges across the U.S. ...

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has succeeded in transforming cellulose into starch, a process that has the potential to provide a previously untapped nutrient source from plants not traditionally thought of as food crops. Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, led a team of researchers in the project that could help feed a growing global population that is estimated to swell to 9 billion by 2050. Starch is one of the most important components of ...

Thinking about death can cause us to feel a sort of existential angst that isn't attributable to a specific source. Now, new research suggests that acetaminophen, an over-the-counter pain medication, may help to reduce this existential pain. The research is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. According to lead researcher Daniel Randles and colleagues at the University of British Columbia, the new findings suggest that Tylenol may have more profound psychological effects than previously thought: "Pain extends ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — April 16, 2013 — Male circumcision reduces the abundance of bacteria living on the penis and might help explain why circumcision offers men some protection against HIV, according to a study led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). Removing the foreskin caused a significant shift in the bacterial community or microbiome of the penis, according to a study published today by the online journal mBio. This international collaboration focused on 156 men in Rakai, Uganda — part of the world's largest randomized-controlled trial on male ...

People given large servings of food eat more than those given smaller servings, even after they have been taught about the impact of portion size on consumption, research from the University of New South Wales shows. Learning how to engage in mindful - rather than mindless – eating also did not decrease food intake by a significant amount in those given large servings. The study, published in the Journal of Health Psychology, highlights the need to find new ways to reduce the effect of portion size on overeating. "If no effective approaches are found, it may be necessary ...

University of British Columbia researchers have found a new potential use for the over-the-counter pain drug Tylenol. Typically known to relieve physical pain, the study suggests the drug may also reduce the psychological effects of fear and anxiety over the human condition, or existential dread. Published in the Association for Psychological Science journal Psychological Science, the study advances our understanding of how the human brain processes different kinds of pain. "Pain exists in many forms, including the distress that people feel when exposed to thoughts ...

The climate governs the seasonal activity of vegetation; humankind influences it. In the humid mid-latitudes, temperature is the largest influencing factor for plant growth. In predominantly dry areas, however, it is the availability of water and in the high latitudes incident solar radiation. Without a doubt, humankind also has a modifying impact on the ecosystem. Satellites have been recording how the vegetation on the Earth's surface is changing since the 1980s. Within the last thirty years, for instance, vegetation activity has increased in the northern hemisphere but ...

This press release is available in German. A new study on extinction risk has shown that proportions of plant and animal species being classified as threatened on national Red Lists are more closely related to socioeconomic pressure levels from the beginning than from the end of the 20th century. Stefan Dullinger of the University of Vienna and Franz Essl from the Austrian Environment Agency together with an international group of researchers reports this new finding in the current issue of PNAS. It is well understood that the survival of a substantial and increasing ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 16, 2013 – Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths globally. Unfortunately smoking cessation is difficult, with more than 90% of attempts to quit resulting in relapse. There are a growing number of available methods that can be tried in the effort to reduce smoking, including medications, behavioral therapies, hypnosis, and even acupuncture. All attempt to alter brain function or behavior in some way. A new study published in Biological Psychiatry now reports that a single 15-minute session of high frequency transcranial ...

Plant components that bend, roll or twist in response to external stimuli such as temperature or moisture are fairly commonplace in nature and often play a role in the dispersal of seeds. Pine cones, for instance, close their scales when wet and open them again once they have dried out. André Studart, a professor of complex materials at ETH Zurich's Department of Materials, and his group have now applied the knowledge of how these movements come about to produce synthetically a composite material with comparable properties. The secret of the pine cone Studart and co-workers ...

Like birds which stop foraging too early on a berry-laden bush, a new study suggests older people struggle to recall items because they flit too often between 'patches' in their memories. The study by the University of Warwick published in the journal Developmental Psychology seeks to model the mechanisms behind memory decline in old age. Its findings indicate that specific changes in the way older people access their memories, rather than a general 'slowing down' in mental processing speed, may be to blame for some aspects of memory decline. Using what is known as an ...

The Huemul, a species of deer found only in the Latin American region of Patagonia, is bouncing back from the brink of possible extinction as a result of collaboration between conservationists and the Chilean government, says a new study. By controlling cattle farming and policing to prevent poaching in the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park – a vast "natural Eden" covering 3.5 million hectares – conservation efforts have allowed the deer to return to areas of natural habitat from which it had completely disappeared. Researchers are hailing the findings as an example of ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) have developed a new tool to help surgeons use X-rays to track devices used in "minimally invasive" surgical procedures while also limiting the patient's exposure to radiation from the X-rays. Many surgical procedures now use long, thin devices – such as "steerable needles" – that can be inserted into a patient's body through a small incision and then steered to a target location. These "minimally invasive" procedures allow doctors to perform surgeries without having ...

New research tracking the movement of dredged sediment around Liverpool Bay could save millions of pounds, according to scientists at the National Oceanography Centre in Liverpool. Each year, sediment has to be dredged from the port and deposited elsewhere to maintain access for commercial vessels. But according to the new study, the dredged material appears back in the port again within just a few weeks of its removal, carried by sea currents. "There are two competing sediments coming in; from the sea and from the river," says Dr Alex Souza of the Natural Environment ...

Spanish industry is leading the Proba-3 mission, a world first in precise formation flying. This European Space Agency (ESA) project aims to demonstrate that two satellites can move as one single object with sub-millimetre precision. This configuration will enable the creation of enormous space telescopes with the lens and detector hundreds of metres apart. "Proba-3 will be the first mission in which two spacecraft will fly through space as a single unit, pointing at selectable directions, and with sub-millimetre precision, in other words, relative position accuracy to ...

Ypsolophid moths are a peculiar group of Lepidoptera that attracts attention with their strange preference for a pose of rest. To take a break adult Ypsolophids like to go bottom up with antennae stretched forward. The larvae of these quirky species live and feed in webs they form on the leaves, buds and twigs of plants. When they are ready to pupate they produce a cocoon like cradle attached to the host plant. This bizarre group of moths is also particularly hard to catch. The standard methods for collecting adults, usually comprising of breeding them from larvae or ...

Playing simple games using words and pictures can help people to learn a new language with greater ease, researchers from The University of Nottingham have shown. Their study, published by the scientific journal PLOS ONE, revealed that using fun, informal ways of learning not only helped complete novices to acquire a new language but also made more traditional methods of language learning more effective. PhD student Marie-Josée Bisson of the University's School of Psychology, who led the study along with Drs Walter van Heuven, Kathy Conklin and Richard Tunney, said: ...

Researchers at the University of North Carolina have discovered that transcription factors regulating the levels of oxygen in the blood also play a role in the spread of the skin cancer melanoma. In research published April 8 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a research team led by William Kim, MD, member of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and graduate student and first author Sara Hanna, linked melanoma metastases to a pair of transcription factors known as HIF1 and HIF2. Researchers found that HIF1 and HIF2 are overexpressed in melanoma tumors. ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers are developing a new type of semiconductor technology for future computers and electronics based on "two-dimensional nanocrystals" layered in sheets less than a nanometer thick that could replace today's transistors. The layered structure is made of a material called molybdenum disulfide, which belongs to a new class of semiconductors - metal di-chalogenides - emerging as potential candidates to replace today's technology, complementary metal oxide semiconductors, or CMOS. New technologies will be needed to allow the semiconductor industry ...