A smartphone app can quickly screen for cognitive dysfunction often found in patients with cirrhosis, according to a new Virginia Commonwealth University study. The cognitive dysfunction, known as minimal hepatic encephalopathy (MHE), has been difficult to diagnose. Published in the September issue of the journal Hepatology, the study tested the validity of the Stroop smartphone application – called EncephalApp_Stroop – as a method to screen for MHE. Validation of the app as a health care tool opens the door for its use as a point-of-care (POC) instrument that providers ...

NASA's TRMM satellite watched Tropical Storm Humberto's rainfall pick up over two days as it re-formed, and as part of NASA's HS3 mission, two of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft have been investigating the zombie storm. The two Global Hawks also celebrated a combined 100 flights. NASA's Global Hawk 871 departed from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. today, Sept. 17, at 10 a.m. EDT from Runway 04. This marked the twenty-fifth flight for NASA 871. Meanwhile, NASA 872 was returning to home base after making its seventy-fifth flight. These flights ...

VIDEO: This 3-D flyby of Tropical Storm Ingrid's rainfall was created from TRMM satellite data for Sept. 16. Heaviest rainfall appears in red towers over the Gulf of Mexico, while moderate... Click here for more information. NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM can compile the rain in which rain is falling as it orbits from space. When it passed over Tropical Storm Ingrid on Sept. 16 TRMM gathered data and it was used to create a NASA 3-D flyby ...

Tropical Storm Manuel dropped very heavy rains that caused floods and mudslides and took lives on Mexico's Pacific coast. Manuel's rainfall was captured and tallied from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite known as TRMM. Tropical storm Manuel may have dissipated, but the storm dropped very heavy rainfall along Mexico's Pacific coast where 21 people have been reported killed due to flooding and landslides caused by extreme rainfall. At the same time, on Sept. 16, Hurricane Ingrid weakened to a tropical storm and came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico into ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – For many senior drivers, it is only a matter of time before they are forced to give up their car keys due to failing eyesight or other health issues. Now, University of Missouri researchers have studied how aging adults' driving cessation influences their work and social lives. The researchers found that seniors' loss of driving independence negatively affected their ability to work and their volunteerism; the adults' social lives were not instantly affected yet dwindled over time. "We found that seniors' productive engagement, such as paid work and formal ...

NEWPORT NEWS, VA, Sept. 17, 2013 – Researchers have made the first experimental determination of the weak charge of the proton in research carried out at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab). The results, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters, also include the determinations of the weak charge of the neutron, and of the up quark and down quark. These determinations were made by combining the new data with published data from other experiments. Although these preliminary figures are the most precise determinations ...

WASHINGTON, DC — A preclinical study led by researchers at Children's National Medical Center has found that a new oral drug shows early promise for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The results, published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, show that the drug, VBP15, decreases inflammation and protects and strengthens muscle without the harsh side effects linked to current treatments with glucocorticoids such as prednisone. Duchenne muscular dystrophy results in severe muscle degeneration and affects approximately 180,000 patients worldwide, mostly children. ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 17, 2013—Scientists seeking new ways to fight cancer often try to understand the subtle, often invisible, changes to DNA, proteins, cells, and tissue that alter the body's normal biology and cause disease. Now, to aid in that fight, a team of researchers has developed a sophisticated new optical imaging tool that enables scientists to look deep within tumors and uncover their inner workings. In experiments that will be described at Frontiers in Optics (FiO), The Optical Society's (OSA) Annual Meeting, Dai Fukumura and his colleagues will present new optical ...

Production scale, not lower labor costs, drives China's current advantage in manufacturing photovoltaic (PV) solar energy systems, according to a new report released today by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Although the prevailing belief is that low labor costs and direct government subsidies for PV manufacturing in China account for that country's dominance in PV manufacturing, the NREL/MIT study shows that a majority of the region's current competitive advantage comes from production ...

It can take up to two and a half turns to steer a modern vehicle. While turning, the driver must release the wheel in the necessary hand-over-hand movement, which is unsafe. In his upcoming HFES 2013 Annual Meeting paper, Rene Guerster, who has been concerned with steering improvement since he was a child, proposes an alternative steering device that could help to prevent hazards such as rear-end collisions and rollovers caused by panic oversteering. He will present his work on October 4 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel. Severe sudden turns are extremely difficult ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Sept. 17, 2013) –A research team in Spain has developed high-yield preparations of viable hepatocytes (liver cells) isolated for transplantation from cryopreserved (frozen), banked neonatal livers that ranged in age from one day to 23 days. The researchers also assessed cell quality and function and found that neonatal hepatocytes show better thawing recovery than hepatocytes isolated from adult livers. The study appears as an early e-publication for the journal Cell Transplantation, and is now freely available on-line at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-cog_09636897_ct1036tolosa "There ...

Traditional peer review is not enough to ensure data quality amid the recent boom in scientific research findings, according to results of a 10-year collaboration between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and five technical journals. While production of research data is growing about 7 percent annually, about one-third of papers submitted to participating journals contained erroneous or incomplete chemical property data, according to a report by 32 authors from NIST and the collaborating journals.* Poor data can lead to mistakes in equipment selection, ...

The proclivity of Spaniards to bask in regions like the Costa del Sol while their northern European counterparts must stay under cover to protect their paler skin or risk skin cancer is due in large part to the pigment producing qualities of the MC1R gene locus. The MC1R gene, expressed in skin and hair follicle cells, is more diverse in Eurasian populations compared to African populations. Now, a team of researchers led by Santos Alonso, et. al., have examined the evolutionary selective pressure for MC1R among a large population of Spaniards in comparison to their Northern ...

Diversity of microbial growth strategies in a limited nutrient world The budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is a prime organism for studying fundamental cellular processes, with the functions of many proteins important in the cell cycle and signaling networks found in human biology having first been discovered in yeast. Now, scientists from New York University have now developed a sophisticated assay to track cell growth at very low nutrient concentrations. The assay uses time-lapse microscopy to monitor individual yeast cells undergoing a small number of divisions ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Children with a genetic disorder called 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, who frequently are believed to also have autism, often may be misidentified because the social impairments associated with their developmental delay may mimic the features of autism, a study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute suggests. The study is the first to examine autism in children with chromosome 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, in whom the prevalence of autism has been reported at between 20 and 50 percent, using rigorous gold-standard diagnostic criteria. The research ...

Pregnant women with a body mass index (BMI) that is too high or too low are more likely to have maternal complications, require additional hospital care and incur higher medical costs, according to a new study published today (18 September) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The study was carried out in collaboration between researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, and the Information Services Division of NHS Scotland. It used routine obstetric records in Scotland, between 2003-2010, to investigate the impact of pregnant ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Explorers need good maps, which they often end up drawing themselves. Pursuing their interests in using the brains of birds as a model for the human brain, an international team of researchers led by Duke neuroscientist Erich Jarvis and his collaborators Chun-Chun Chen and Kazuhiro Wada have just completed a mapping of the bird brain based on a 10-year exploration of the tiny cerebrums of eight species of birds. In a special issue appearing online in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, two papers from the Jarvis group propose a dramatic redrawing ...

Your smartphone now can see what the naked eye cannot: A single virus and bits of material less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair. Aydogan Ozcan, a professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his team have created a portable smartphone attachment that can be used to perform sophisticated field testing to detect viruses and bacteria without the need for bulky and expensive microscopes and lab equipment. The device weighs less than half a pound. "This cellphone-based ...

Despite higher rates of diabetes in black and Hispanic women, the rate at which women die of diabetes-related diseases such as cardiovascular disease and cancer is the same for all postmenopausal women, regardless of race or ethnicity, according to a new UMass Medical School study. Lead author Yunsheng Ma, MD, PhD, MPH, associate professor of medicine, concludes that the way to reduce high diabetes-related death rates among all postmenopausal women—including black and Hispanic women—is through prevention of diabetes. This is particularly important, since much remains unknown ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In an analysis of 446 compounds for their the ability to boost the innate immune system in humans, researchers in the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University discovered just two that stood out from the crowd – the resveratrol found in red grapes and a compound called pterostilbene from blueberries. Both of these compounds, which are called stilbenoids, worked in synergy with vitamin D and had a significant impact in raising the expression of the human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, or CAMP gene, that is involved in immune function. The ...

HEIDELBERG, 17 September 2013 – Scientists have succeeded in growing stem cells that have the ability to develop into two different types of cells that make up a healthy pancreas. The research team led by Dr. Hans Clevers of the Hubrecht Institute, The Netherlands, have isolated and grown stem cells from the pancreases of mice using a 3-D culture system previously developed by the scientists. The results, which are reported in The EMBO Journal, could eventually lead to ways to repair damaged insulin-producing beta cells or pancreatic duct cells. Cell signalling molecules ...

On Tuesday, September 17, JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, will publish a novel technique for imaging muscle function while in motion. Research in this area could uncover the root of musculoskeletal disorders, such as the development of osteoarthritis following ACL surgery. "The technique uses ultrasound waves to detect the motion of muscles using the Doppler principle," said the lab's principal investigator Dr. Siddhartha Sikdar, "We use a stereo method, where ultrasound waves from multiple directions are combined ... with a number of other biomechanical ...

The structure of the brain may predict whether a person will suffer chronic low back pain, according to researchers who used brain scans. The results, published in the journal Pain, support the growing idea that the brain plays a critical role in chronic pain, a concept that may lead to changes in the way doctors treat patients. The research was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health. "We may have found an anatomical marker for chronic pain in the brain," said Vania Apkarian, Ph.D., ...

Raleigh-Durham, NC. -- A new meta-analysis of 29 randomized studies involving more than 4,500 patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) found that intra-articular hyaluronic acid (HA) injections provided significant improvement in pain and function compared to saline injections. The study, "US-Approved Intra-Articular Hyaluronic Acid Injections are Safe and Effective in Patients with Knee Osteoarthritis: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized, Saline-Controlled Trials," was published online this month in Clinical Medicine Insights: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal ...

Bethesda, MD -- Carbonation, an essential component of popular soft drinks, alters the brain's perception of sweetness and makes it difficult for the brain to determine the difference between sugar and artificial sweeteners, according to a new article in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "This study proves that the right combination of carbonation and artificial sweeteners can leave the sweet taste of diet drinks indistinguishable from normal drinks," said study author, Rosario Cuomo, associate professor, gastroenterology, ...