Prosthetic valve endocarditis (inflammation and infection involving the heart valves and lining of the heart chambers) remains associated with a high one-year mortality rate and early valve replacement does not appear to be associated with lower mortality compared with medical therapy according to a study by Tahaniyat Lalani, M.D., M.H.S., of the Naval Medical Center, Portsmouth, Virginia, and colleagues. PVE occurs in approximately 3 percent to 6 percent of patients within five years of valve implantation and is associated with significant morbidity and mortality, according ...

ANN ARBOR – Use of electronic health records can reduce the costs of outpatient care by roughly 3 percent, compared to relying on traditional paper records. That's according to a new study from the University of Michigan that examined more than four years of healthcare cost data in nine communities. The "outpatient care" category in the study included the costs of doctor's visits as well as services typically ordered during those visits in laboratory, pharmacy and radiology. The study is groundbreaking in its breadth. It compares the healthcare costs of 179,000 patients ...

Individual ethnic groups use psychiatric and mental health services in Scotland very differently, a study suggests. Researchers have found that there is a significant difference in the rates of hospitalisations for mental health problems according to ethnic group. The study also revealed that there are widely differing patterns of hospitalisation for mental health problems among non-White groups. It is the first study of its kind to be carried out in Scotland. Researchers say that psychiatric and mental health services should be reviewed and monitored to ensure ...

VIDEO: When choosing a potential mate, female túngara frogs listen to the sounds of the male calls, which are based on a pattern of "whines " and "chucks. " If visible, the sight... Click here for more information. With the help of a robotic frog, biologists at The University of Texas at Austin and Salisbury University have discovered that two wrong mating calls can make a right for female túngara frogs. The "rather bizarre" result may be evidence ...

A little bit of learned fear is a good thing, keeping us from making risky, stupid decisions or falling over and over again into the same trap. But new research from neuroscientists and molecular biologists at USC shows that a missing brain protein may be the culprit in cases of severe over-worry, where the fear perseveres even when there's nothing of which to be afraid. In a study appearing the week of July 15 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers examined mice without the enzymes monoamine oxidase A and B (MAO A/B), which sit next to ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 15, 2013 -- In a study released last week, education researchers found that personifying energy allowed students to grapple with difficult ideas about how energy works. Contrasted with more traditional lectures and graphs, this innovative instructional technique may be useful for teaching about other ideas in physical science, which commonly deals with things that change form over time. Energy is a very important concept across many fields of science, and is a key focus of the new national science standards. Energy is also a central player in several ...

Newly published findings by medical researchers at the University of Alberta provide more evidence that music decreases children's perceived sense of pain. Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry researcher Lisa Hartling led the research team that involved her colleagues from the Department of Pediatrics, as well as fellow researchers from the University of Manitoba and the United States. Their findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Pediatrics today. The team conducted a clinical research trial of 42 children between the ages of 3 and 11 who came to the pediatric ...

DAVIE, Fla.-- Threatened loggerhead sea turtles in the northern Gulf of Mexico can travel distances up to several hundred miles and visit offshore habitats between nesting events in a single season, taking them through waters impacted by oil and fishing industries. Evidence from a U.S. Geological Survey study challenges the widely-held view that sea turtles remain near one beach throughout the nesting season and suggests the threatened species may require broader habitat protection to recover. The findings also cast new uncertainties on current estimates of the size of ...

Much of biomedical science – both mystifying and awe-inspiring to the lay public – depends on an unwavering focus on things that can't be easily seen, like the inner-workings of cells, in order to determine how and why disease develops. New research authored by Thomas Sladewski, a University of Vermont graduate student working in the laboratory of Kathleen Trybus, Ph.D., and colleagues, provides a rare "picture" of the activity taking place at the single molecular level: visual evidence of the mechanisms involved when a cell transports mRNA (or messenger RNA) to where a ...

The University of Colorado Cancer Center along with Yale University and the Denver Crime Lab report in the journal PLOS ONE the first proof of cancer's ability to fuse with blood cells in a way that gives cancer the ability to travel, allowing previously stationary cancer cells to enter the bloodstream and seed sites of metastasis around the body. The work used DNA fingerprinting of a bone marrow transplant patient with cancer, along with DNA fingerprinting of the patient's bone marrow donor, to show that subsequent metastatic cancer cells in the patient's body carried ...

A drug targeting a protein complex containing two different types of opioid receptors may be an effective alternative to morphine and other opioid pain medications, without any of the side effects or risk of dependence, according to research led by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The findings are published in July in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Morphine is still the most widely-used pain reliever, or analgesic, in people with severe pain, but chronic use can lead to addiction and negative side effects such as respiratory issues, ...

Plant-based diets are healthy. Plants are high in flavonoids. So flavonoids are healthy. At least that's the reasoning of many manufacturers of flavonoid-based nutritional supplements. But a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the journal Hormones & Cancer shows that may not be the case. Flavonoids tested in the study affected the endocrine system in ways that in one case promoted cancer and in another repressed it. "Even outside these specific findings with cancer, what we're saying is that flavonoids are active and not always in good or ...

Parents may not be very savvy with social media, but new research shows they shouldn't shy away from sending their teen a friend request on Facebook or engaging them on Twitter, Instagram and other social platforms. Brigham Young University professors Sarah Coyne and Laura Padilla-Walker found that teenagers who are connected to their parents on social media feel closer to their parents in real life. The study of nearly 500 families also found that teens that interact with their parents on social media have higher rates of "pro-social" behavior – meaning that they are ...

Drought resistance is the key to large-scale production of Jatropha, a potential biofuel plant -- and an international group of scientists has identified the first step toward engineering a hardier variety. Jatropha has seeds with high oil content. But the oil's potential as a biofuel is limited because, for large-scale production, this shrub-like plant needs the same amount of care and resources as crop plants. "It is thought that Jatropha's future lies in further improvement of Jatropha for large-scale production on marginal, non-food croplands through breeding and/or ...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon orbiting the distant blue-green planet Neptune, the 14th known to be circling the giant planet. The moon, designated S/2004 N 1, is estimated to be no more than 12 miles across, making it the smallest known moon in the Neptunian system. It is so small and dim that it is roughly 100 million times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the naked eye. It even escaped detection by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past Neptune in 1989 and surveyed the planet's system of moons and rings. Mark Showalter ...

SAN DIEGO (July 15, 2013) — A new study evaluating surgical outcomes at California hospitals enrolled in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP®) found surgical patients at ACS NSQIP hospitals had significantly reduced mortality rates compared with non-ACS NSQIP hospitals. These findings were presented Sunday, July 14, 2013 at the ACS NSQIP National Conference, taking place July 13-16 in San Diego, Calif. Researchers analyzed data from 1,184,895 patients at 227 hospitals from 1995 to 2009 to identify whether surgical ...

Typhoon Soulik still maintained an eye just before making landfall in southeastern China on July 13, and NASA's Terra satellite captured the eye in an image. Soulik's heavy rainfall in southern China is responsible for hundreds missing or dead. On July 11, when Typhoon Soulik was approaching Taiwan, NASA and the Japanese Space Agency's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM passed overhead in space. TRMM's Precipitation Radar instrument captured data on rainfall rates, and that data was used to create a 3-D view of the typhoon looking from the northwest. ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study estimates that global sea levels will rise about 2.3 meters, or more than seven feet, over the next several thousand years for every degree (Celsius) the planet warms. This international study is one of the first to combine analyses of four major contributors to potential sea level rise into a collective estimate, and compare it with evidence of past sea-level responses to global temperature changes. Results of the study, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, are being ...

A pair of studies by a team of University of Notre Dame researchers led by Crislyn D'Souza-Schorey, professor of biological sciences, sheds light on a biological process which is activated across a vast range of malignancies. Wnt proteins are a large family of proteins that active signaling pathways (a set of biological reactions in a cell) to control several vital steps in embryonic development. In adults, Wnt-mediated functions are frequently altered in many types of cancers and, specifically, within cell subpopulations that possess stem cell-like properties. In ...

Two NASA spacecraft have provided the most comprehensive movie ever of a mysterious process at the heart of all explosions on the sun: magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection happens when magnetic field lines come together, break apart and then exchange partners, snapping into new positions and releasing a jolt of magnetic energy. This process lies at the heart of giant explosions on the sun, such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can fling radiation and particles across the solar system. Scientists want to better understand this process so they ...

Researchers at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital have found that more than 25 percent of children with cerebral palsy seen by physicians have moderate to severe chronic pain, limiting their activity. Findings indicate that pediatricians should be aware of chronic pain in this group and try to identify and treat its underlying causes. The study, led by Dr. Darcy Fehlings, Physician Director of the Child Development Program at Holland Bloorview and Clinician Senior Scientist at the Bloorview Research Institute, was published today in top health journal Pediatrics. ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Excess fat around the belly has recently been identified as a risk factor for bone loss. Now, a new study has determined that excess liver and muscle fat also may be detrimental to bone. The study, published online in the journal Radiology, found that obese people with higher levels of fat in their liver, muscle tissue and blood also have higher amounts of fat in their bone marrow, putting them at risk for osteoporosis. "Obesity was once thought to be protective against bone loss," said study lead author Miriam A. Bredella, M.D., a radiologist at ...

Some strains of the avian H7N9 influenza that emerged in China this year have developed resistance to the only antiviral drugs available to treat the infection, but testing for antiviral resistance can give misleading results, helping hasten the spread of resistant strains. The authors of a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, characterized viruses taken from the first person known to be stricken with H7N9 influenza and found that 35% of those viruses are resistant to oseltamivir (commercially known as Tamiflu) ...

Standard toxicity testing is inadequate to assess the safety of a new technology with potential for creating pesticides and genetically modifying crops, according to a Forum article published in the August issue of BioScience. The authors of the article, Jonathan G. Lundgren and Jian J. Duan of the USDA Agricultural Research Service, argue that pesticides and insect-resistant crops based on RNA interference, now in exploratory development, may have to be tested under elaborate procedures that assess effects on animals' whole life cycles, rather than by methods that look ...

Whether you're reading the paper or thinking through your schedule for the day, chances are that you're hearing yourself speak even if you're not saying words out loud. This internal speech — the monologue you "hear" inside your head — is a ubiquitous but largely unexamined phenomenon. A new study looks at a possible brain mechanism that could explain how we hear this inner voice in the absence of actual sound. In two experiments, researcher Mark Scott of the University of British Columbia found evidence that a brain signal called corollary discharge — a signal that helps ...