The Wari, a complex civilization that preceded the Inca empire in pre-Columbia America, didn't rule solely by pillage, plunder and iron-fisted bureaucracy, a Dartmouth study finds. Instead, they started out by creating loosely administered colonies to expand trade, provide land for settlers and tap natural resources across much of the central Andes. The results, which appear in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, shed new light on how early states evolved into empires in the region that became the Inca imperial heartland. A PDF of the study is available on request. The ...

The medical, humanitarian and economical impact of viral diseases is devastating to humans and livestock. There are no adequate therapies available against most viral diseases, largely because the mechanisms by which viruses infect cells are poorly known. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Zurich headed by cell biologist Prof. Urs Greber now presents a method that can be used to display viral DNA in host cells at single-molecule resolution. The method gives unexpected insights into the distribution of viral DNA in cells, and the reaction of ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- Life-threatening blood clots can form in anyone who sits on a plane for a long time, is confined to bed while recovering from surgery, or takes certain medications. There is no fast and easy way to diagnose these clots, which often remain undetected until they break free and cause a stroke or heart attack. However, new technology from MIT may soon change that: A team of engineers has developed a way to detect blood clots using a simple urine test. The noninvasive diagnostic, described in a recent issue of the journal ACS Nano, relies on nanoparticles ...

This news release is available in German. The brain is an extremely adaptable organ – but it is also quite conservative. That's in short, what scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried and their colleagues from the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum were now able to show. The researchers found that neurons in the brain regulate their own activity in such a way that the overall activity level in the network remains as constant as possible. This remains true even in the event of major changes: After the ...

Various behavioral treatment options are helping to treat the sleeplessness experienced by one in every two American soldiers who have been deployed in recent military operations. So says Dr. Adam Bramoweth of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Pittsburgh Healthcare System, and Dr. Anne Germain of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in the US. This review of research on deployment-related insomnia among military personnel and veterans, conducted since 2010, is published in Springer's journal Current Psychiatry Reports. Insomnia is reported by up to 54 ...

Pasadena, CA—A team of researchers including Carnegie's Mansi Kasliwal and John Mulchaey used a novel astronomical survey software system—the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)—to link a new stripped-envelope supernova, named iPTF13bvn, to the star from which it exploded. The iPTF team also pinpointed the first afterglow of an explosion called a gamma-ray burst that was found by the Fermi satellite. Their work will be published by The Astrophysical Journal Letters in two papers led by Yi Cao and Leo Singer, both of the California Institute of Technology. Their ...

Montreal — Stroke patients who participate in a cardiac rehabilitation program for six months make rapid gains in how far and fast they can walk, the use of weakened limbs and their ability to sit and stand, according to a study presented today at the Canadian Stroke Congress. On average, participants saw a 21-per-cent improvement in the strength and range of motion of weakened limbs; a 19-per-cent improvement in walking speed; and a 16-per-cent improvement in the distance they could walk. "There should be a seamless referral of patients with mild to moderate effects ...

This news release is available in German. Many animals are adapting to human encroachment of their natural habitats. Carnivores in particular require territories of sufficient size and so are often forced to move between numerous small habitat patches. To date, scientists often use mathematical models to predict these important routes, but fishers fitted with GPS sensors are now showing that their calculations may be missing the mark if they ignore animal behaviour. Corridors are spaces that receive too little attention and yet are vitally important. How else would ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks ('Peak Oil"). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors. While critics of Peak Oil studies declare that the world has more than enough oil to maintain current national and global standards, these UMD-led researchers say Peak Oil is imminent, if not already ...

URBANA, Ill. – Haitian teens, especially those who live in the country's rural areas, are among the poorest persons in the Western Hemisphere, but they are rich in their family relationships and strongly rooted in their own culture, a University of Illinois study finds. "It's true that rural Haitian teens didn't directly suffer the major trauma of the 2012 earthquake, but they deal daily with the effects of poverty—not enough food, no money to go to school, a lack of electricity much of the time, little access to clinics or hospitals," said Gail M. Ferguson, a U of I ...

Counterintuitive findings from a new USC study show that the part of the brain that is associated with empathizing with the pain of others is activated more strongly by watching the suffering of hateful people as opposed to likable people. While one might assume that we would empathize more with people we like, the study may indicate that the human brain focuses more greatly on the need to monitor enemies closely, especially when they are suffering. "When you watch an action movie and the bad guy appears to be defeated, the moment of his demise draws our focus intensely," ...

A scientific study calculating Iraqi deaths for almost the complete period of the US-led war and subsequent occupation published in PLOS Medicine this week reports that close to half a million Iraqi deaths are directly or indirectly attributable to the conflict. A team of researchers from Iraq and the US led by Amy Hagopian, of the University of Washington, conducted a survey in 2000 households across Iraq and used the data to estimate death rates for the two year-period before the war began in March 2003 and the subsequent years until mid-2011. Estimates that extrapolate ...

Evaluation of diagnostic studies is often a challenge in diseases that are not defined by a specific test. Assessment of the accuracy of diagnostic tests is essential because they may be used to define who is considered to have a disease and receive treatment for it. However, measuring the accuracy of a diagnostic test requires an accurate gold standard, which defines which patients truly have and do not have the disease. Studies of diseases not defined by a specific test often rely on expert panels to establish the gold standard. In a systematic review and analysis of ...

New research led by Marco Prado, PhD, of Western University has identified a pathway used by the brain to try to protect itself from toxicity that occurs with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Prado and his colleagues at the Robarts Research Institute and at the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in Brazil have done extensive work on the role of prion protein. They found that toxicity of amyloid-β peptides, one of the major culprits in AD, can be decreased by preventing it from interacting with the prion protein. When a protein called stress-inducible phosphoprotein 1 (STI1) interacts ...

Vitelliform macular dystrophy, also known as Best disease, is one of a group of vision-robbing conditions called bestrophinopathies that affect children and young adults. Caused by inherited mutations in the BEST1 gene, these diseases cause severe declines in central vision as patients age. With a new study, University of Pennsylvania researchers report "encouraging" findings that mark the first clear step in developing a gene therapy that could prevent vision loss or event restore vision in individuals suffering from these conditions. The research, conducted in dogs, ...

"No organization recommends prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening in men older than 75 years. Nevertheless, testing rates remain high," write Elizabeth Jaramillo, M.D., of the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, and colleagues in a Research Letter appearing in the October 16 issue of JAMA. The authors examined whether PSA screening rates would vary substantially among primary care physicians (PCPs) and if the variance would depend on which PCP patients used. Using complete Medicare Part A and B data for Texas, the researchers selected PCPs whose patient ...

For patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease in more than one artery, treatment with coronary artery bypass graft surgery provided slightly better health status and quality of life between 6 months and 2 years than procedures using drug-eluting stents, although beyond 2 years the difference disappeared, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. Although previous studies have demonstrated that coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery is generally preferred over percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; procedures such as balloon angioplasty or ...

In an analysis that included more than 40,000 women exposed to the nausea medication metoclopramide in pregnancy, use of this drug was not associated with significantly increased risk of major congenital malformations overall, spontaneous abortion, and stillbirth, according to a study in the October 16 issue of JAMA. More than 50 percent of pregnant women experience nausea and vomiting, typically early in their pregnancy. The care of most women is managed conservatively, but 10 percent to 15 percent of those with nausea and vomiting will eventually receive drug treatment. ...

The survey provides the most robust prevalence measure to date - and identifies abnormal prion protein across a wider age group than found previously and in all genotypes. An accompanying editorial says that although the disease remains rare, "infection" may be relatively common and doctors need to understand the public health measures that are in place to protect patients. Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) is a degenerative brain disease – often called the human form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or "mad cow disease." It emerged after widespread ...

During the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq from 2003 to 2011, for every three people killed by violence, two died as a result of the collapse of the infrustructure that supports health care, clean water, nutrition, and transportation, according to new estimates in a study from the University of Washington Department of Global Health published Oct. 15 in the open access journal PLOS Medicine. All told, the researchers estimate nearly a half million people died from causes that could be attributed to the war. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser ...

The authors recommend closer monitoring for kidney problems in patients with 3% or more of their body surface area affected to help detect and treat signs early and suggest careful consideration of medications which may cause kidney disease in this at risk patient population. Psoriasis is a common, chronic inflammatory disease of the skin and joints that affects 2-4% of the general population. Increasing evidence suggests that psoriasis is associated with diabetes and heart disease independent of traditional risk factors. Some doctors think psoriasis may also be associated ...

Professor Clare Bambra and Dr Alison Copeland from Durham University argue that "the more affluent, healthier south east will benefit most and the poorer, less healthy north will lose out substantially." And they urge worried BMJ readers to respond to the consultation. NHS funding is allocated to areas on the principle of providing "equal opportunity of access for equal need," they explain. To help achieve this, the current NHS allocation formula incorporates a deprivation related measure, known as the "health inequality weighting." But the relative roles of deprivation ...

An ambitious new study describes the full chain of events by which ocean biogeochemical changes triggered by manmade greenhouse gas emissions may cascade through marine habitats and organisms, penetrating to the deep ocean and eventually influencing humans. Previous analyses have focused mainly on ocean warming and acidification, considerably underestimating the biological and social consequences of climate change. Factoring in predictable synergistic changes such as the depletion of dissolved oxygen in seawater and a decline in productivity of ocean ecosystems, the ...

An article by researchers at the University of Exeter has shed light on the link between depression and poor parenting. The article identifies the symptoms of depression that are likely to cause difficulties with parenting. The findings could lead to more effective interventions to prevent depression and other psychological disorders from being passed from parent to child. Although the link between depression and poor parenting has previously been identified, this is the first time that researchers have brought together multiple studies in order to identify the reasons ...

A class of molecules called microRNAs may offer cancer patients two ways to combat their disease. Researchers at Princeton University have found that microRNAs — small bits of genetic material capable of repressing the expression of certain genes — may serve as both therapeutic targets and predictors of metastasis, or a cancer's spread from its initial site to other parts of the body. The research was published in the journal Cancer Cell. MicroRNAs are specifically useful for tackling bone metastasis, which occurs in about 70 percent of patients with late-stage cancer, ...