NEW YORK (October 16, 2013) -- A research team from Weill Cornell Medical College and The Rockefeller University has identified a bacterium it believes may trigger multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic, debilitating disorder that damages myelin forming cells in the brain and spinal cord. Their study, published in PLoS ONE, is the first to identify the bacterium, Clostridium (C.) perfringens type B, in humans. The scientists say their study is small and must be expanded before a definitive connection between the pathogen and MS can be made, but they also say their findings ...

Skin-related laser procedures such as hair removal remain one of the most popular elective types of laser surgery performed in the United States today. To meet demand, more non-physicians are performing these procedures than ever before. A study published online Oct. 16 in JAMA Dermatology found that lawsuits related to procedures when non-physicians are operating the laser are increasing, particularly outside of a traditional medical setting. "Procedures performed by untrained individuals, particularly in non-medical settings, are more likely to result in litigation," ...

LA JOLLA, CA----With the flick of a light switch, researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies can change the shape of a protein in the brain of a mouse, turning on the protein at the precise moment they want. This allows the scientists to observe the exact effect of the protein's activation. The new method, described in the October 16 issue of the journal Neuron, relies on specially engineered amino acids----the molecules that make up proteins----and light from an LED. Now that it has been shown to work, the technique can be adapted to give researchers control ...

Humans aren't the only species that knows how to carry on polite conversation. Marmoset monkeys, too, will engage one another for up to 30 minutes at a time in vocal turn-taking, according to evidence reported in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 17. "We were surprised by how reliably the marmoset monkeys exchanged their vocalizations in a cooperative manner, particularly since in most cases they were doing so with individuals that they were not pair-bonded with," says Asif Ghazanfar of Princeton University. "This makes what we found much more similar ...

An international team of astronomers has found the most distant gravitational lens yet — a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy. But it also poses a mystery: lenses of this kind should be exceedingly rare. Given this and other recent finds, astronomers either have been phenomenally lucky — or, more likely, they have underestimated substantially the number of small, very young ...

Modest increases in marketing and outreach to local communities can increase the amount of physical activity that occurs in parks, providing a cost-effective way to potentially improve a community's health, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The project, which examined 50 parks across Los Angeles, found that simple interventions such as increased signage boosted physical activity by 7 to 12 percent over the study period in relation to parks that did not make changes. The findings are published online by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "The study ...

A new study has discovered profound abnormalities in brain activity in a group of retired American football players. Although the former players in the study were not diagnosed with any neurological condition, brain imaging tests revealed unusual activity that correlated with how many times they had left the field with a head injury during their careers. Previous research has found that former American football players experience higher rates of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. The new findings, published in Scientific Reports, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers have connected very rare and precise duplications and deletions in the human genome to their complex disease consequences by duplicating them in zebrafish. The findings are based on detailed studies of five people missing a small fragment of their genome and suffering from a mysterious syndrome of craniofacial features, visual anomalies and developmental delays. When those patient observations were coupled to analyses of the anatomical defects in genetically altered zebrafish embryos, the researchers were able to identify the contribution ...

Between 2000 and 2010 in the United States the number of donor eggs used for in vitro fertilization increased, and outcomes for births from those donor eggs improved, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the International Federation of Fertility Societies joint annual meeting. During the past several decades, the number of live births to women in their early 40s in the United States has increased steadily. The prevalence of oocyte (egg) donation ...

A study of 69,000 Medicare patient records led by Johns Hopkins researchers shows that people with spine compression fractures who undergo operations to strengthen back bones with cement survive longer and have shorter overall hospital stays than those who stick with bed rest, pain control and physical therapy. Although so-called interventional augmentation procedures were initially more expensive than conservative medical management of the fractures, the researchers say the former were associated with lower in-hospital mortality and increased survival compared with non-operative ...

AURORA, Colo. (Oct. 17, 2013) - The results of a recent study show kids that are home-schooled are leaner than kids attending traditional schools. The results challenge the theory that children spending more time at home may be at risk for excessive weight gain. The study was published in the journal Obesity and conducted by researchers from University of Colorado's Anschutz Health and Wellness Center (AHWC) and University of Alabama at Birmingham. It looked at both home-schooled and traditionally-schooled children between the ages of seven and 12 in Birmingham. Participants ...

WASHINGTON – Americans with similar temperaments are so likely to live in the same areas that a map of the country can be divided into regions with distinct personalities, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. People in the north-central Great Plains and the South tend to be conventional and friendly, those in the Western and Eastern seaboards lean toward being mostly relaxed and creative, while New Englanders and Mid-Atlantic residents are prone to being more temperamental and uninhibited, according to a study published online ...

When financial gain depends on cooperation, we might expect that people would put aside their differences and focus on the bottom line. But new research suggests that people's racial biases make them more likely to leave money on the table when a windfall is not split evenly between groups. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "It has been suggested that race bias in economic decisions may not occur in a market where discrimination is costly, but these findings provide the first evidence that this ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. -- Video-based teaching helps teens with autism learn important social skills, and the method eventually could be used widely by schools with limited resources, a Michigan State University researcher says. The diagnosis rate for Autism Spectrum Disorder for 14- to 17-year-olds has more than doubled in the past five years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet previous research has found very few strategies for helping adolescents with autism develop skills needed to be successful, especially in group settings. "Teaching ...

According to a new study, high long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid content in blood may lower the risk of small brain infarcts and other brain abnormalities in the elderly. The study was published in Journal of the American Heart Association. In the Cardiovascular Health Study in the USA, 3,660 people aged 65 and older underwent brain scans to detect so called silent brain infarcts, or small lesions in the brain that can cause loss of thinking skills, dementia and stroke. Scans were performed again five years later on 2,313 of the participants. Research shows ...

What do pigs, jellyfish and zebrafish have in common? It might be hard to discern the connection, but the different species are all pieces in a puzzle. A puzzle which is itself part of a larger picture of solving the riddles of diseases in humans. The pig, the jellyfish and the zebrafish are being used by scientists at Aarhus University to, among other things, gain a greater understanding of hereditary forms of diseases affecting the nervous system. This can be disorders like Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, autism, epilepsy and the motor neurone disease ALS. In ...

Alpine plants that survived the Ice Ages in different locations still show accrued differences in appearance and features. These findings were made by botanists from the University of Basel using two plant species. So far, it was only known that the glacial climate changes had left a «genetic fingerprint» in the DNA of alpine plants. During the Ice Ages the European Alps were covered by a thick layer of ice. Climate fluctuations led to great changes in the occurrences of plants: They survived the cold periods in refugia on the periphery of the Alps which they then repopulated ...

The newly discovered dragon tree species Dracaena kaweesakii from Thailand is characterized by its extensive branching. The new species reaches an impressive 12 m in both height and crown diameter, and has beautiful soft sword-shaped leaves with white edges and cream flowers with bright orange filaments, all highly distinctive features. The study describing this exciting new species was published in the open access journal Phytokeys by an international team of scientists. Dracaena kaweesakii is a relative of the beautiful Canary Island dragon tree Dracaena draco. It ...

A source of gut stem cells that can repair a type of inflammatory bowel disease when transplanted into mice has been identified by researchers at the Wellcome Trust-Medical Research Council Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge and at BRIC, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The findings pave the way for patient-specific regenerative therapies for inflammatory bowel diseases such as ulcerative colitis. All tissues in our body contain specialised stem cells, which are responsible for the lifelong maintenance of the individual tissue and organ. ...

Barcelona, 17 October 2013. A multicentre phase III study, with centers participating from 11 countries in North America, Europe and Australia, shows that the drug combination nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine is more effective in the treatment of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer than gemcitabine alone, which has been the standard treatment for these patients up until now. The clinical trial, sponsored by Celgene Corporation, involved 861 patients, half of whom were administered the nab-paclitaxel/gemcitabine combination, while the other half received gemcitabine ...

An international team of scientists has provided proof of a key feature of quantum physics – Heisenberg's error-disturbance relation - more than 80 years after it was first suggested. One of the basic concepts in the world of quantum mechanics is that it is impossible to observe physical objects without affecting them in a significant way; there can be no measurement without disturbance. In a paper in 1927, Werner Heisenberg, one of the architects of the fundamental theories of modern physics, claimed that this fact could be expressed as an uncertainty relation, describing ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 17, 2013 -- An individual's recovery months after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is difficult to predict, and some of the variability in outcomes may be due to genetic differences. Subtle variations in genes that regulate a person's inflammatory response to injury can impact clinical outcomes in TBI, according to a new study published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www.liebertpub.com/neu. In the article "Cytokine ...

Snow storms, ice and glaciers - these are the usual images we associate with the Antarctic. But at the same time it is also a region of fire: the Antarctic continent and surrounding waters are dotted with volcanoes - some of them still active and others extinct for quite some time. The Marie Byrd Seamounts in the Amundsen Sea are in the latter group. Their summit plateaus are today at depths of 2400-1600 meters. Because they are very difficult to reach with conventional research vessels, they have hardly been explored, even though the Marie Byrd Seamounts are fascinating ...

A record of Neanderthal archaeology, thought to be long lost, has been re-discovered by NERC-funded scientists working in the Channel island of Jersey. The study, published yesterday in the Journal of Quaternary Science, reveals that a key archaeological site has preserved geological deposits which were thought to have been lost through excavation 100 years ago. The discovery was made when the team undertook fieldwork to stabilise and investigate a portion of the La Cotte de St Brelade cave, on Jersey's south eastern coastline. A large portion of the site contains ...

Removing food scraps trapped between the teeth one of the most common functions of using toothpicks, thus contributing to our oral hygiene. This habit is documented in the genus Homo, as early as Homo habilis, a species that lived between 1.9 and 1.6 million years ago. A new research based on the Cova Foradà Neanderthal fossil shows that this hominid also used toothpicks to mitigate pain caused by oral diseases such as inflammation of the gums (periodontal disease). It is the oldest documented case of palliative treatment of dental disease done with this tool. It is stated ...