Using a simple survey tool, a team of researchers has done what complex studies have failed to do -- provide data that identifies starting points for preventing diarrheal disease outbreaks in at least one region of Africa. Diarrheal illness is a leading cause of disease and death in children under 5, and in HIV-plagued Botswana, it is a significant issue for those over 5 as well. "Yet we still know little about the dynamics of this illness and other infectious diseases," said disease ecologist Kathleen Alexander, an associate professor of wildlife in the College of ...

Should surgery be performed immediately, or is it better to first administer antibiotics and then perform surgery? A study led by Heidelberg University Hospital Department of Surgery has demonstrated that patients suffering from acute cholecystitis should be operated on immediately. There are no advantages to delaying surgery until antibiotic therapy has been administered for several weeks. After undergoing surgery performed within 24 hours of diagnosis, the patients have fewer complications, are back on their feet earlier, and can leave the hospital more quickly. "With ...

A first-ever study of air trapped in the deep snowpack of Greenland shows that atmospheric levels of carbon monoxide (CO) in the 1950s were actually slightly higher than what we have today. This is a surprise because current computer models predict much higher CO concentrations over Greenland today than in 1950. Now it appears the opposite is in fact true. In a paper recently published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Vasilii Petrenko, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences, concluded that CO levels rose slightly from 1950 until the ...

The study, led by McGill University evolutionary biologist Ben Haller in collaboration with IIASA Evolution and Ecology Program Leader Ulf Dieckmann and IIASA researcher Rupert Mazzucco, suggests that a varied environment spurs the evolution of new species and promotes biodiversity by creating places of refuge—"refugia"—for new organisms to evolve. The model represents asexual organisms that reproduce like plants. To investigate how environmental variation affects evolution, Haller modeled an environment with complex spatial structure. "We wanted to look at more realistic ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Sept. 17 2013) – Vaginal delivery presents the possibility of injury for mothers that can lead to "stress urinary incontinence" (SUI), a condition affecting from four to 35 percent of women who have had babies via vaginal delivery. Many current treatments, such as physiotherapy and surgery, are not very effective. Seeking better methods to alleviate SUI, researchers carried out a study in which female laboratory rats modeled with simulated childbirth injuries received injections of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs; multipotent cells found in connective ...

(Edmonton) Researchers at the University of Alberta have developed a synthetic peptide that could be the first in a new class of drugs to treat heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes. Researchers at the U of A found that a deficiency in the peptide apelin is associated with heart failure, pulmonary hypertension and diabetes. They also developed a synthetic version that targets pathways in the heart and promotes blood vessel growth. Lead author Gavin Oudit, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, said the synthetic form of apelin is far ...

VIDEO: The study's lead author, Mark W. Ketterer, Ph.D., a psychologist and administrator for Henry Ford Hospital, discusses the implications of the study. Click here for more information. DETROIT – Heart patients' mental state and thinking abilities may help predict whether costly and potentially dangerous early hospital readmission will follow their release after treatment, according to the results of a significant new study by Henry Ford Hospital researchers. The findings ...

According to principal investigators, Dr Matthew Struebig and Anthony Turner from the University of Kent's Durrell Institute of Conservation Ecology (DICE), these findings challenge a long-held belief that there is limited, if any, value of heavily logged forests for conservation. The research, which monitored bats as an indicator for environmental change on Borneo, is the first of its kind to have wildlife in forests logged more than two times. The findings are particularly important because across the tropics forest that has been intensively harvested is frequently ...

In many cities around the world, patrons of high-end restaurants want quality food that is flavorful and fresh. To satisfy their guests, chefs are looking closer and closer to home – to locally grown produce from neighboring farms or even from their own, restaurant-owned gardens. "You can't find fresher food anywhere," says Sam Wortman, assistant professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "Chefs are literally picking produce the same day they're cooking it in the restaurants." As the concept of local food and urban gardening gains popularity, urban agriculture, ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. Sept. 17, 2013 -- Separating target molecules in biological samples is a critical part of diagnosing and detecting diseases. Usually the target and probe molecules are mixed and then separated in batch processes that require multiple pipetting, tube washing and extraction steps that can affect accuracy. Now a team of researchers at Brown University has developed a simple new technique that is capable of separating tiny amounts of the target molecules from mixed solutions by single motion of magnet under a microchannel. Their technique may make pipettes ...

CHICAGO --- Abnormalities in the structure of the brain predispose people to develop chronic pain after a lower back injury, according to new Northwestern Medicine® research. The findings could lead to changes in the way physicians treat patients' pain. Most scientists and clinicians have assumed chronic back pain stems from the site of the original injury. "We've found the pain is triggered by these irregularities in the brain," said A. Vania Apkarian, senior author of the study and a professor of physiology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—She wasn't born this way, but even Lady Gaga experienced groin pain—typically a symptom of hip disease such as arthritis of the hip—or, in her case, a hip labral tear. Groin pain is a common health complaint. According to a literature review appearing in the September 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), one in four people develop hip arthritis—damage to the surfaces in the hip joint—before the age of 85 that contributes to groin pain. Contributing factors to the development of hip arthritis and, subsequently, ...

A good night's sleep is important to our children's development. But with the first day of school just passed, many children are at increased risk for sleep breathing disorders that can impair their mental and physical development and hurt their academic performance. A study conducted in North America in 2011 showed that the frequency of sleep-disordered breathing increases in the winter and spring. Until now, researchers believed asthma, allergies, and viral respiratory infections like the flu contributed to disorders that affect children's breathing during sleep. Now, ...

It's less costly to get electricity from wind turbines and solar panels than coal-fired power plants when climate change costs and other health impacts are factored in, according to a new study published in Springer's Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. In fact—using the official U.S. government estimates of health and environmental costs from burning fossil fuels—the study shows it's cheaper to replace a typical existing coal-fired power plant with a wind turbine than to keep the old plant running. And new electricity generation from wind could be more economically ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Sept. 17, 2013 -- In the long sprint to find new sources of clean, low-cost power, slow and steady might win the race -- the slow-moving water of currents and tides, that is. Just as wind turbines tap into the energy of flowing air to generate electricity, hydrokinetic devices produce power from moving masses of water. In a paper appearing in AIP Publishing's Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, Ramon Fernandez-Feria, a professor of fluid mechanics at Universidad de Málaga in Spain, and his colleagues Joaquin Ortega-Casanova and Daniel Cebrián ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 17, 2013—Using a new in silico method called OptSwap scientists can predict how to engineer microorganisms to increase the yield of high-value biobased chemicals produced by industrial-scale cell factories. This example of how advanced computational tools are being applied to genome-scale metabolic modeling in microbes illustrates the important contributions from the field of Systems Biology, as highlighted in a special research section in Industrial Biotechnology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert Inc., publisher. The articles are ...

Arden Pope's students know him as an excellent economics teacher, but some would be surprised to learn that, thanks to him, the air they breathe today is cleaner than the first breath they ever took. In fact, a new study by this BYU professor concludes that improvements in U.S. air quality since 1990 have sparked a 35 percent reduction in deaths and disability specifically attributable to air pollution. Pope was a member of a large research team who co-authored the study for the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Some of the best news relative to the air ...

Tissue-conserving cancer surgery is a highly skilled procedure which involves time-consuming tissue preparation to detect the margins of cancerous tissue. The goal is to remove as much of the tumour as possible while sparing healthy tissue. With funding from the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), experts at The University of Nottingham have developed a highly accurate prototype technique which can produce a detailed 'spectroscopic fingerprint' of each tissue layer removed during surgery. This technique — which can produce detailed maps of the tissue rich ...

URBANA, Ill. – Removing nitrogen from the environment "the natural way" by creating a wetland is a long-term, nutrient-removal solution, more cost effective than upgrading a wastewater treatment plant, but it isn't necessarily socially beneficial to offer landowners multiple payments for the environmental services that flow from such wetlands, according to a study conducted at the University of Illinois. "In the areas we studied in Bureau County with small wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), it was much cheaper to do pollution control by installing just a few wetlands ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Employees who have a sense of unjustified entitlement are more likely to say that their bosses are abusive and mistreat them than their less entitlement-minded coworkers, according to new research from the University of New Hampshire. The research was conducted by Paul Harvey, associate professor of organizational behavior at UNH, and his research colleagues Kenneth Harris from Indiana University Southeast, William Gillis from the University of South Alabama, and Mark Martinko from the University of Queensland. It is presented in The Leadership Quarterly ...

17 September 2013 – Neither the total nor the core diameters of laser fibers correspond to the advertised laser fiber diameter, revealed a new study investigating lasers used for urological surgery. Furthermore, there are serious differences between manufacturers of fibers with a supposedly equal diameter. The new study, conducted by Dr. Peter Kronenberg of Hospital Fernando Fonseca in Amadora, Portugal, and Prof. Olivier Traxer of the Hôpital Tenon in Paris, France, aimed to objectively confirm the diameter between laser fibers of supposed equal thickness by different ...

New Rochelle, NY—Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers has introduced a preview issue of MOOCs Forum, a new publication dedicated to the development and sustainability of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The burgeoning coverage of MOOCs in the press extols their potential. But within the communities of education, industrial learning, developers, investors and broad student demographics, the credibility, standards, protocols, utility and value of MOOCs are being questioned, researched and developed. MOOCs Forum is committed to providing and promoting dialogue, debate ...

Each cell in an organism has a sensor that measures the health of its "internal" environment. This "alarm" is found in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which is able to sense cellular stress and trigger either rescue responses or the death of the cell. A team from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), in Barcelona, has discovered that the protein Mitofusin 2 (Mfn2) plays a crucial role in correctly measuring stress levels, and also makes sure the pathways of cell repair or cell death are effective. The researchers reveal some of the molecular mechanisms that ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, 17 September 2013 — Can world-saving claims like "not tested on animals" and "phosphate free," help sell bottles of shampoo and bars of soap? A new study from Concordia University's John Molson School of Business proves such statements can make consumers more likely to buy, especially when one's sense of touch is appealed to alongside one's sense of social justice. In a paper recently published in the Journal of Business Ethics, Concordia University marketing professor Onur Bodur shows that for ethical claims to ...

Human influences have directly impacted the latitude/altitude pattern of atmospheric temperature. That is the conclusion of a new report by scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and six other scientific institutions. The research compares multiple satellite records of atmospheric temperature change with results from a large, multi-model archive of simulations. "Human activity has very different effects on the temperature of the upper and lower atmosphere, and a very different fingerprint from purely natural influences," said Benjamin Santer, the lead ...