Hamilton, ON (August 27, 2013) – Although up to 500,000 people world-wide die of severe influenza each year, there has been no clear evidence about who is susceptible for influenza complications and it may not be who people think, says a study from McMaster University. This is important because issues during past influenza seasons and pandemics have included vaccine shortage; the time needed to develop vaccines for specific influenza strains and which groups are first in line for vaccination. New mothers and obese people, two groups not typically regarded as risk groups, ...

Johns Hopkins researchers say they have found a specific protein in nearly 100 percent of high-grade meningiomas -- the most common form of brain tumor -- suggesting a new target for therapies for a cancer that does not respond to current chemotherapy. Importantly, the investigators say, the protein -- NY-ESO-1 -- is already at the center of a clinical trial underway at the National Cancer Institute. That trial is designed to activate the immune systems of patients with other types of tumors that express the protein, training the body to attack the cancer and eradicate ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- In the Midwest, people have a fear of encountering snapping turtles while swimming in local ponds, lakes and rivers. Now in a new study, a University of Missouri researcher has found that snapping turtles are surviving in urban areas as their natural habitats are being polluted or developed for construction projects. One solution is for people to stop using so many chemicals that are eventually dumped into the waterways, the scientist said. "Snapping turtles are animals that can live in almost any aquatic habitat as long as their basic needs for survival ...

University of Washington researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher. Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the UW campus, causing Stocco's finger to move on a keyboard. While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have ...

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) analyzed more than 50,000 home sales near 67 wind facilities in 27 counties across nine U.S. states, yet was unable to uncover any impacts to nearby home property values. "This is the second of two major studies we have conducted on this topic [the first was published in 2009, see below], and in both studies [using two different datasets] we find no statistical evidence that operating wind turbines have had any measurable impact on home sales prices," says Ben Hoen, the lead author of the new report. Hoen is a researcher ...

NASA satellite imagery on Aug. 27 showed that wind shear was having an effect on the thunderstorms in Tropical Storm Kong-Rey's northern quadrant. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kong-Rey on Aug. 27 at 0515 UTC/1:15 a.m. EDT and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer took a visible image of the storm. The imagery showed that the northern quadrant of the storm had the weakest area of thunderstorm development as a result of northeasterly wind shear, while the southern and western quadrants had strong thunderstorms. Wind shear is expected to relax ...

Tropical moisture continued to stream over eastern Mexico on Aug. 27, from the remnants of former Tropical Storm Fernand. NASA's TRMM satellite captured the moisture-laden Tropical Storm Fernand after it made landfall and was dropping rainfall at a rate of 2 inches/50 mm per hour. On Aug. 27 at 10:32 EDT, radar data from Mexico showed rainfall streaming in from near the city of Tampico on the Gulf of Mexico, to the west and northwest. Areas including Ebano and Panuco were experiencing heavy rainfall at the time. The center of Fernand's remnants were near 20.6 north latitude ...

The fact that taller people also tend to be slightly smarter is due in roughly equal parts to two phenomena—the same genes affect both traits and taller people are more likely than average to mate with smarter people and vice versa—according to a study led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The study did not find that environmental factors contributed to the connection between being taller and being smarter, both traits that people tend to find attractive. The modest correlation between height and IQ has been documented in multiple studies stretching back to the ...

A new type of defibrillator implanted under the skin can detect dangerously abnormal heart rhythms and deliver shocks to restore a normal heartbeat without wires touching the heart, according to research in the American Heart Association journal, Circulation. The subcutaneous implantable cardiac defibrillator (S-ICD®) includes a lead placed under the skin along the left side of the breast bone. Traditional implantable cardiac defibrillators (ICDs) include electrical conducting wires inserted into blood vessels that touch the heart. ICDs can greatly reduce the risk of ...

Scientists studying the decline and recovery of seagrass beds in one of California's largest estuaries have found that recolonization of the estuary by sea otters was a crucial factor in the seagrass comeback. Led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the study will be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of August 26. Seagrass meadows, which provide coastal protection and important habitat for fish, are declining worldwide, partly because of excessive nutrients entering coastal waters in runoff from farms and ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Programs aimed at helping obese black women lose weight have not had the same success as programs for black men and white men and women. But new research from Duke University has found that a successful alternative could be a "maintain, don't gain" approach. The study, which appears in the Aug. 26 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, compared changes in weight and risk for diabetes, heart disease or stroke among 194 premenopausal black women, aged 25-44. They were recruited from Piedmont Health's six nonprofit community health centers in a multi-county area ...

Berkeley — Knocking out a single enzyme dramatically cripples the ability of aggressive cancer cells to spread and grow tumors, offering a promising new target in the development of cancer treatments, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper, to be published Monday, Aug. 26, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sheds new light on the importance of lipids, a group of molecules that includes fatty acids and cholesterol, in the development of cancer. Researchers have long known that cancer ...

PHILADELPHIA – Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania demonstrate for the first time that the immune system influences the skin microbiome. A new study found that the skin microbiome – a collection of microorganisms inhabiting the human body – is governed, at least in part, by an ancient branch of the immune system called complement. In turn, it appears microbes on the skin tweak the complement system, as well as immune surveillance of the skin. They found that complement may, in part, be responsible for maintaining a diverse ...

PHILADELPHIA - Perelman School of Medicine researchers at the University of Pennsylvania report the first biomarker results reported from the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), showing that a comprehensive test of protein biomarkers in spinal fluid have prognostic and diagnostic value in early stages of Parkinson's disease. The study is reported in JAMA Neurology. Compared to healthy adults, the study found that people with early Parkinson's had lower levels of amyloid beta, tau and alpha synuclein in their spinal fluid. In addition, those with lower ...

When ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS, a preinvasive malignancy of the breast) is described as a high-risk condition rather than cancer, more women report that they would opt for nonsurgical treatments, according to a research letter by Zehra B. Omer, B.A., of Massachusetts General Hospital—Institute for Technology Assessment, Boston, and colleagues. A total of 394 healthy women without a history of breast cancer participated in the study and were presented with three scenarios that described a diagnosis of DCIS as noninvasive breast cancer, breast lesion, or abnormal cells. ...

An intervention not focused on weight loss was effective for weight gain prevention among socioeconomically disadvantaged black women, according to a report published by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Promoting clinically meaningful weight loss among black women has been a challenge. Compared to white women, "black women have higher rates of body weight satisfaction, fewer social pressures to lose weight, and sociocultural norms that tolerate heavier body weights," according to the study background. "New weight management strategies are necessary ...

Thyroid ultrasound imaging could be used to identify patients who have a low risk of cancer for whom biopsy could be postponed, according to a study by Rebecca Smith-Bindman, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues. The retrospective case-control study of 8,806 patients who underwent 11,618 thyroid ultrasound imaging examinations from January 2000 through March 2005 included 105 patients diagnosed as having thyroid cancer. Thyroid nodules were common in patients diagnosed as having cancer (96.9 percent) and patients not diagnosed as having ...

A meta-analysis of previously reported studies by Gregory P. Moore, M.D., F.R.C.P.C., of The Ottawa Hospital, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues examined the rate of moderate to severe and severe neurodevelopmental impairment by gestational age in extremely preterm survivors followed up between ages 4 and 8 years, and determined whether there is a significant difference in impairment rates between the successive weeks of gestation of survivors. The search of English-language publications found nine studies that met inclusion criteria of being published after 2004, a prospective ...

Clinicians use the do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order not only as a guide for therapeutic decisions during a cardiopulmonary arrest but also as a surrogate for broader treatment directives, according to a study by Amy Sanderson M.D., of Boston Children's Hospital, M.A., and colleagues. A total of 107 physicians and 159 nurses responded to a survey regarding their attitudes and behaviors about DNR orders for pediatric patients. There was substantial variability in the interpretation of the DNR order. Most clinicians (66.9 percent) reported that they considered that a DNR order ...

Runs of homozygosity (ROHs, regions of the genome where the copies inherited from parents are identical) may contribute to the etiology (origin) of Alzheimer disease (AD), according to a study by Mahdi Ghani, Ph.D., of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues. Caribbean Hispanics are known to have an elevated risk for AD and tend to have large families with evidence of inbreeding, according to the study background. A Caribbean Hispanic data set of 547 unrelated cases (48.8 percent with familial AD) and 542 controls collected from a population known ...

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of tau proteins, ɑ-synuclein, and β-amyloid 1-42 (Αβ1-42) appear to be associated with early stage Parkinson disease (PD) in a group of untreated patients compared with healthy patients, according to a study by Ju-Hee Kang, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues. The study included the initial 102 research volunteers (63 patients with PD and 39 healthy control patients) of the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study. Results indicate that slightly, but significantly, lower levels of ...

A team led by UC San Francisco researchers has called for simplified guidelines on when to biopsy thyroid nodules for cancer, which they say would result in fewer unnecessary biopsies. Their recommendation, based on a retrospective study published online on August 26, 2013 in JAMA Internal Medicine, is to biopsy patients only when imaging reveals a thyroid nodule with microcalcifications – tiny flecks of calcium – or one that is over two centimeters in diameter and completely solid. Any other findings represent too low a risk to require biopsy or continued surveillance ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The brain's tactile and motor neurons, which perceive touch and control movement, may also respond to visual cues, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The study in monkeys, which appears online Aug. 26, 2013, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides new information on how different areas of the brain may work together in continuously shaping the brain's internal image of the body, also known as the body schema. The findings have implications for paralyzed individuals using neuroprosthetic limbs, since they suggest ...

Even mild stress can thwart therapeutic measures to control emotions, a team of neuroscientists at New York University has found. Their findings, which appear in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, point to the limits of clinical techniques while also shedding new light on the barriers that must be overcome in addressing afflictions such as fear or anxiety. "We have long suspected that stress can impair our ability to control our emotions, but this is the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – August 26, 2013 – The same compound in a common household clothes detergent shows promise as a treatment to preserve muscle tissue after severe injury. Researchers at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine hope the oxygen-generating compound could one day aid in saving and repairing limbs and tissue. The research in rats, published online ahead of print in PLOS ONE, found that injections of the compound sodium percarbonate (SPO) can produce enough oxygen to help preserve muscle tissue when blood flow is disrupted. "Some ...