Strong new biochemical evidence exists showing that the cereal grain sorghum is a safe food for people with celiac disease, who must avoid wheat and certain other grains, scientists are reporting. Their study, which includes molecular evidence that sorghum lacks the proteins toxic to people with celiac disease, appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Paola Pontieri and colleagues explain that those gluten proteins, present in wheat and barley, trigger an immune reaction in people with celiac disease that can cause abdominal pain and discomfort, constipation, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Geoscientist Michele Cooke and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst take an uncommon, "Earth is lazy" approach to modeling fault development in the crust that is providing new insights into how faults grow. In particular, they study irregularities along strike-slip faults, the active zones where plates slip past each other such as at the San Andreas Fault of southern California. Until now there has been a great deal of uncertainty among geologists about the factors that govern how new faults grow in regions where one plate slides past ...

Using new technology and new approaches, researchers at Lund University in Sweden hope to be able to explain why people suffer vision loss in eye diseases such as retinal detachment and glaucoma. Research on diseases of the eye such as retinal detachment and glaucoma has until now focused on the biochemical process that takes place in the eye in connection with the diseases. Fredrik Ghosh and Linnéa Taylor have concentrated instead on attempting to understand what happens on a biomechanical level in the diseases and have produced results that have drawn a lot of interest ...

The Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is one of the Milky Way's closest galactic neighbors. Even though it is a small, or so-called dwarf galaxy, the SMC is so bright that it is visible to the unaided eye from the Southern Hemisphere and near the equator. Many navigators, including Ferdinand Magellan who lends his name to the SMC, used it to help find their way across the oceans. Modern astronomers are also interested in studying the SMC (and its cousin, the Large Magellanic Cloud), but for very different reasons. Because the SMC is so close and bright, it offers an opportunity ...

Mention "high costs," "financing" and "safety" in the same sentence as "commercial nuclear power plants," and most people think of the multi-billion-dollar construction or operational phase of these facilities, which provide 20 percent of the domestic electric supply. Those concerns, however, are now emerging as aging nuclear power plants reach retirement age, and electric utilities confront the task of deconstruction, or decommissioning, nuclear power stations. That's the topic of the cover story in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine ...

BOSTON (April 3, 2013) — Researchers from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine have discovered a statistical association between the injection of local dental anesthesia given to children ages two to six and evidence of missing lower wisdom teeth. The results of this epidemiological study, published in the April issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association, suggest that injecting anesthesia into the gums of young children may interrupt the development of the lower wisdom tooth. "It is intriguing to think that something as routine as local anesthesia could ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Schizophrenia patients experiencing relapse are 29 times more likely than healthy individuals to have a urinary tract infection, researchers report. Urinary tract infections, which can cause painful and frequent urination, are common but patients hospitalized for schizophrenia are even more likely to have a UTI than healthy individuals or even others whose illness is under control, said Dr. Brian J. Miller, psychiatrist and schizophrenia expert at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. The study comparing UTI rates in 57 relapsed ...

Toronto – Imagine you have a choice to make. In one scenario, you'd get $8 and somebody else -- a stranger – would get $8 too. In the other, you'd get $10; the stranger would get $12. Economists typically assume you'd go for the $10/$12 option because of the belief that people try to maximize their own gains. Choosing the other scenario would just be irrational. But new research conducted in collaboration with a professor at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management shows that if a person is feeling threatened, or concerned with their status, they are ...

Philadelphia, PA, April 3, 2013 – Depression, anxiety, and smoking are associated with lower bone mineral density (BMD) in adults, but these factors have not previously been studied during adolescence, when more than 50% of bone accrual occurs. This longitudinal preliminary study is the first to demonstrate that smoking and depressive symptoms in adolescent girls have a negative impact on adolescent bone accrual and may become a red flag for a future constrained by low bone mass or osteoporosis and higher fracture rates in postmenopausal years. The study is published in ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When a current passes between two electrodes — one thinner than the other — it creates a wind in the air between. If enough voltage is applied, the resulting wind can produce a thrust without the help of motors or fuel. This phenomenon, called electrohydrodynamic thrust — or, more colloquially, "ionic wind" — was first identified in the 1960s. Since then, ionic wind has largely been limited to science-fair projects and basement experiments; hobbyists have posted hundreds of how-to videos on building "ionocrafts" — lightweight vehicles made of balsa wood, ...

Diversity training programs lead people to believe that work environments are fair even when given evidence of hiring, promotion or salary inequities, according to new findings by psychologists at the University of Washington and other universities. The study also revealed that participants, all of whom were white, were less likely to take discrimination complaints seriously against companies who had diversity programs. Workplace diversity programs are usually developed by human resource departments to foster a more inclusive environment for employees, but aren't typically ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Long vilified, invasive species can sometimes become an ecosystem asset. New Brown University research published online in the journal Ecology reports exactly such a situation in the distressed salt marshes of Cape Cod. There, the invasive green crab Carcinus maenas is helping to restore the marsh by driving away the Sesarma reticulatum crabs that have been depleting the marsh grasses. The observations and experiments of the research show that the green crab has filled the void left by the decline of native predators of sesarma crabs, ...

The creation of new blood vessels in the body, called "angiogenesis," is usually discussed in connection with healing wounds and tumors. But it's also an ongoing process in the female reproductive tract, where the growth and breaking of blood vessels is a normal part of the menstrual cycle. But abnormal growth of blood vessels can have painful consequences and resultant pathologies. Now, Prof. Ruth Shalgi and research associate Dr. Dana Chuderland of Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine have found a potential treatment for this abnormal growth in a potent ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A scientist's gender can have a big impact on how other researchers perceive his or her work, according to a new study. Young scholars rated publications supposedly written by male scientists as higher quality than identical work identified with female authors. The research found that graduate students in communication -- both men and women -- showed significant bias against study abstracts they read whose authors had female names like "Brenda Collins" or "Melissa Jordan." These students gave higher ratings to the exact same abstracts when the authors ...

Cancer painfully ends more than 500,000 lives in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The scientific crusade against cancer recently achieved a victory under the leadership of University of Missouri Curators' Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne. Hawthorne's team has developed a new form of radiation therapy that successfully put cancer into remission in mice. This innovative treatment produced none of the harmful side-effects of conventional chemo and radiation cancer therapies. Clinical trials in humans could begin soon ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new study shows clean-air regulations have dramatically reduced acid rain in the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea over the past 30 years, but the opposite is true in fast-growing East Asian megacities, possibly due to lax antipollution rules or lack of enforcement. The U.S. Clean Air Act began requiring regulatory controls for vehicle emissions in the 1970s, and 1990 amendments addressed issues including acid rain. Similar steps in the European Union, Japan and South Korea over the past three decades have reduced nitrate and sulfate ...

UCLA researchers have used a brain-imaging tool and stroke risk assessment to identify signs of cognitive decline early on in individuals who don't yet show symptoms of dementia. The connection between stroke risk and cognitive decline has been well established by previous research. Individuals with higher stroke risk, as measured by factors like high blood pressure, have traditionally performed worse on tests of memory, attention and abstract reasoning. The current small study demonstrated that not only stroke risk, but also the burden of plaques and tangles, as ...

As the universe expands, it is continually subjected to energy shifts, or "quantum fluctuations," that send out little pulses of "sound" into the fabric of spacetime. In fact, the universe is thought to have sprung from just such an energy shift. A recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters reports a new mathematical tool that should allow one to use these sounds to help reveal the shape of the universe. The authors reconsider an old question in spectral geometry that asks, roughly, to what extent can the shape of a thing be known from the sound of its acoustic ...

This press release is available in French. AUDIO: Dr. Nitika Pan Pai, researcher at the RI-MUHC and professor at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) talks about HIV Self-testing as a key to control the global epidemic. Click here for more information. Montreal, April 3, 2013 – A new international study has confirmed that self-testing for HIV is effective and could be the answer to controlling the ...

What effects will the rapidly growing field of synthetic biology have on the conservation of nature? The ecological and ethical challenges stemming from this question will require a new dialogue between members of the synthetic biology and biodiversity conservation communities, say Kent Redford of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Archipelago Consulting; Bill Adams of the University of Cambridge; and Georgina Mace of University College London (UCL) in a new paper published 2 April in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The field of synthetic biology—a discipline ...

Among patients with painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, use of the anti-depressant drug duloxetine for 5 weeks resulted in a greater reduction in pain compared with placebo, according to a study in the April 3 issue of JAMA. "Approximately 20 percent to 40 percent of patients with cancer who receive neurotoxic chemotherapy (e.g., taxanes, platinums, vinca alkaloids, bortezomib) will develop painful chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy. Painful chemotherapy-induced neuropathy can persist from months to years beyond chemotherapy completion, causing ...

In an analysis that included data on more than 10 million Medicare beneficiaries admitted to acute care hospitals with a heart attack, congestive heart failure, or pneumonia between 2002 and 2010, 30-day mortality rates for those admitted to critical access hospitals (designated hospitals that provide inpatient care to individuals living in rural communities) increased during this time period compared with patients admitted to other acute care hospitals, according to a study in the April 3 issue of JAMA. "More than 60 million Americans live in rural areas and face challenges ...

With previous evidence suggesting that melatonin may have a role in glucose metabolism, researchers have found an independent association between decreased secretion of melatonin and an increased risk for the development of type 2 diabetes, according to a study in the April 3 issue of JAMA. "Melatonin receptors have been found throughout the body in many tissues including pancreatic islet cells, reflecting the widespread effects of melatonin on physiological functions such as energy metabolism and the regulation of body weight," according to background information in ...

Use of a vaccine to prevent Staphylococcus aureus infections among patients undergoing cardiothoracic surgery did not reduce the rate of serious postoperative S aureus infections compared with placebo and was associated with increased mortality among patients who developed S aureus infections, according to a study in the April 3 issue of JAMA. Infections with S aureus following median sternotomy (incision through the midline of the sternum) cause substantial illness and death. "A safe vaccine that provides protection against a majority of S aureus strains during the ...

Boston – Millions of Americans are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, yet the exact causes of diabetes still puzzle scientists. Now, new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) finds that the amount of melatonin a person secretes during sleep may predict their risk of developing type 2 diabetes. The study appears in the April 3, 2013 issue of JAMA. "This is the first time that an independent association has been established between nocturnal melatonin secretion and type 2 diabetes risk," said Dr. Ciaran McMullan, a researcher in the Renal Division and Kidney ...