FAIRFAX, Va., April 2, 2013—In a recent survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents conducted by the Center for Climate Change Communication (4C) at George Mason University, a majority of respondents (62 percent) said they feel America should take steps to address climate change. More than three out of four survey respondents (77 percent) said the United States should use more renewable energy sources, and of those, most believe that this change should begin immediately. The national survey, conducted in January 2013, asked more than 700 people who self-identified ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (April 2, 2013) – Persistent breast enlargement (gynecomastia) negatively affects self-esteem and other areas of mental and emotional health in in adolescent males, reports the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). Even mild gynecomastia can have adverse psychological effects in boys, according to the study by ASPS Member Surgeon Dr. Brian I. Labow and colleagues of Boston Children's Hospital. They believe their findings have important implications for early ...

ANALYTICS – Device has ORNL pedigree . . . With the introduction of Prosolia's flowprobe, researchers have an instrument that could accelerate drug discovery, aid in cancer research and improve the way scientists perform hundreds of tests. The flowprobe system, which is based on a technique invented by Gary Van Berkel of ORNL's Chemical Sciences Division, allows for efficient, automated direct sampling of surfaces while mapping the location of each chemical. Indianapolis-based Prosolia expects flowprobe to be especially useful for researchers doing clinical research or ...

Tragedies involving children, such as the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School, fuel massive outrage and calls for immediate action to prevent similar atrocities. The National Rifle Association (NRA) has put forward a National Shield School Proposal which supports the placement of armed security in all schools. A new review by Gordon and Angela Crews from Marshall University in West Virginia and Catherine Burton from The Citadel in South Carolina attempts to find a balanced and unbiased view of the facts within this heated and emotional debate. Their paper, which appears ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have learned the precise structure of the mosquito-transmitted chikungunya virus pathogen while it is bound to antibodies, showing how the infection is likely neutralized. The findings could help researchers develop effective vaccines against the infection, which causes symptoms similar to dengue fever, followed by a prolonged disease that affects the joints and causes severe arthritis. In recent outbreaks, some cases progressed to fatal encephalitis. The researchers studied "virus-like particles," or non-infectious forms of the virus. ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (April 2, 2013) – Injuries caused by needles and other sharp instruments are a major occupational hazard for surgeons—with high costs related to the risk of contracting serious infectious diseases, according to a special article in the April issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). ASPS Member Surgeon Dr. Kevin C. Chung and colleagues at The University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor, review the risks, health impact and costs of "sharps" injuries for surgeons and ...

Recent efforts by the Canadian government to curb the time allowed for environmental reviews over fears of adverse impact on economic development are misguided and unnecessary, according to research by scientists at the University of Toronto. Instead, the federal government's tinkering will only weaken environmental protection and not expedite economic growth. The researchers found that most environmental regulatory reviews were already being completed within the arbitrary timeframes laid out in the 2012 legislation restricting the reviews of new developments. "Even ...

Increases in ground-level ozone, especially in rural areas, may interfere not only with predator insects finding host plants, but also with pollinators finding flowers, according to researchers from Penn State and the University of Virginia. "Ozone pollution has great potential to perniciously alter key interactions between plants and animals," the researchers said in a recent issue of Environmental Research Letters. The animal tested in this case was the striped cucumber beetle, a predator of cucurbits -- cucumber, squash, pumpkin and melons. These insects dine on ...

Prostate cancer doesn't kill in the prostate – it's only once the disease travels to bone, lung, liver, etc. that it turns fatal. Previous studies have shown that loss of the protein E-Cadherin is essential for this metastasis. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published this week in the Journal of Biological Chemistry describes for the first time a switch that regulates the production of E-Cadherin: the transcription factor SPDEF turns on and off production, leading to metastasis or stopping it cold in models of prostate cancer. "When E-Cadherin is lost, cells ...

WASHINGTON — A survey of current and former college athletes finds depression levels significantly higher in current athletes, a result that upended the researchers' hypothesis. The finding published in Sports Health suggests the need for more research to understand depression among college athletes. "We expected to see a significant increase in depression once athletes graduated, but by comparison it appears the stress of intercollegiate athletics may be more significant than we and others anticipated," says the study's senior investigator Daniel Merenstein, MD, an associate ...

1. For Greater Weight Loss, a Group Cash Incentive Trumps Individual Rewards A group-based financial incentive leads to greater weight loss than an individual incentive for obese employees. An estimated 67 percent of employers use financial incentives to help their employees adopt healthier behaviors, with the goal of decreasing chronic disease and curbing health care costs. Researchers sought to determine the effectiveness of two financial incentive designs – group-based and individual – for obese employees trying to lose weight. One-hundred-and-four employees with a ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Do cash rewards for healthier habits work? Maybe, says a new study, if you add on one more condition – peer pressure. A growing number of companies are offering employees an opportunity to boost earning power at work via cash incentives to stay healthy. Under the Affordable Care Act, employers will soon be able to offer even larger financial incentives to prod healthy lifestyle behaviors among their workforce, such as quitting smoking and losing weight. But people who are offered money for weight loss may be much more successful when awards are ...

Seeing a doctor within a month of an emergency room visit for chest pain significantly reduced the risk of heart attack or death among high risk patients, according to research published the American Heart Association journal Circulation. Chest pain is the most common reason people go to the emergency room in developed countries and accounts for more than 5 million ER visits each year in the United States. The study is the first to demonstrate the importance of follow-up care for chest pain patients after leaving the ER, researchers said. High risk patients in this study ...

Boston, MA-- Despite their well-documented benefits, statins, drugs used to lower cholesterol, are commonly discontinued in routine care. Statin discontinuation has been linked to increased risk for cardiovascular events and death in patients with coronary artery disease; nevertheless, the reasons for discontinuation are only starting to be explored. In a new study from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), researchers examined the role adverse reactions play in statin discontinuation and found that more than 90 percent of the patients who stopped taking a statin due to an ...

Washington, D.C.—A research team, led by Carnegie's Anna Michalak, has determined that the 2011 record-breaking algal bloom in Lake Erie was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with extreme precipitation, followed by weak lake circulation and warm temperatures. The team also predicts that, unless agricultural policies change, the lake will continue to experience extreme blooms. The research is published in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 1, 2013. "The perfect storm of weather events ...

ANN ARBOR—The largest harmful algae bloom in Lake Erie's recorded history was likely caused by the confluence of changing farming practices and weather conditions that are expected to become more common in the future due to climate change. Rather than an isolated, one-time occurrence, Lake Erie's monumental 2011 algae bloom was more likely a harbinger of things to come, according to University of Michigan researchers and colleagues from eight other institutions. The interdisciplinary team explored factors that may have contributed to the event and analyzed the likelihood ...

Coronary heart disease (CHD) increases with BMI, as well as with age, finds an article published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine. The research from the Million Women Study indicates that increased weight increases risk of CHD equivalent to that caused by getting older. Researchers from the University of Oxford followed the health of 1.2 million women from England and Scotland for (on average) almost a decade. Analysis of the data showed that the occurrence of CHD increases with BMI so that every 5 unit increase in BMI, calculated as weight/height2, ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Risk prediction tools that estimate future risk of heart disease and stroke may be more useful predictors of future decline in cognitive abilities, or memory and thinking, than a dementia risk score, according to a new study published in the April 2, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "This is the first study that compares these risk scores with a dementia risk score to study decline in cognitive abilities 10 years later," said Sara Kaffashian, PhD, with the French National Institute of Health and Medical ...

Boston, MA – Older adults who have higher levels of blood omega-3 levels—fatty acids found almost exclusively in fatty fish and seafood—may be able to lower their overall mortality risk by as much as 27% and their mortality risk from heart disease by about 35%, according to a new study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the University of Washington. Researchers found that older adults who had the highest blood levels of the fatty acids found in fish lived, on average, 2.2 years longer than those with lower levels. "Although eating fish has long been considered ...

Highly expressed in various cancers and known for its cytoprotective properties, TRAP1 protein has been identified as a potential target for antitumor treatments. As a result of the research conducted by Len Neckers, from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, USA, and Didier Picard, from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, this outlook is now being called into question. The researchers' findings, published in PNAS, describe how TRAP1 disrupts the metabolism of malignant cells, and shows that the quantity of this protein decreases as they progress to a more ...

HOUSTON - (April 1, 2013) – Mutations in a protein called SPOP (speckle-type POZ protein) disarm it, allowing another protein called steroid receptor coactivator-3 (SRC-3) to encourage the proliferation and spread of prostate cancer cells, said researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Normally SPOP acts as a tumor suppressor gene by marking SRC-3 for destruction, said Dr. Nicholas Mitsiades, assistant professor of medicine – hematology/oncology and molecular and cellular ...

(TORONTO, Canada – April 1, 2013) – A team of international cancer researchers led by Dr. Mathieu Lupien at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, has identified the signalling pathway that is over-activated in estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer cells that are resistant to hormone therapies such as tamoxifen, aromatase inhibitors or fulvestrant. Resistance to hormone therapy is reported in almost half of ER-positive breast cancer patients and no cure is currently available. The fact that the pathway, called Notch, is a drug target ...

A randomized controlled trial finds that 12 weeks of physical plus mental activity in inactive older adults with cognitive complaints was associated with significant improvement in cognitive function but there was no difference between intervention and control groups, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. An epidemic of dementia worldwide is anticipated during the next 40 years because of longer life expectancies and demographic changes. Behavioral interventions are a potential strategy to prevent or delay ...

The most common genetic cause of both ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and FTD (frontotemporal dementia) was recently identified as an alteration in the gene C9orf72. But how the mutation causes neurodegenerative disease appeared mysterious. Researchers at Emory University School of Medicine have demonstrated that this ALS/FTD mutation may be harmful because it creates an "RNA sponge," soaking up an important regulatory protein that binds RNA. The results were published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition. "We think ...

Irvine, Calif., April 1, 2013 — California sagebrush in the southern part of the state will adjust better to climate change than sagebrush populations in the north, according to UC Irvine researchers in the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology affiliated with the Center for Environmental Biology. The results of their study, which appears online in Global Change Biology, will assist land management and policy decisions concerning coastal sage scrub restoration. California sagebrush (Artemisia californica), also known as "cowboy cologne," is the fragrant gray-green ...