[EMARGOED UNTIL THURSDAY, AUG. 15] Diabetic patients taking oral fluoroquinolones, a frequently prescribed class of antibiotics, were found to have a higher risk of severe blood sugar-related problems than diabetic patients taking other kinds of antibiotics, according to a recent study from Taiwan published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The increased risk was low—hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) or hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) related to the drugs occurred in fewer than one in 100 patients studied—but clinicians should consider the higher risk when treating diabetic ...

Philadelphia, August 15, 2013 – Research suggests that a patient's chronic pain affects a spouse's emotional well-being and marital satisfaction. In a novel study of behavioral health outcomes published in the journal PAIN®, researchers examined the effects of patients' daily knee osteoarthritis pain on their spouses' nightly sleep. They determined that couples who expressed a high degree of closeness in their marriage experienced a stronger association between pain levels and the spouse's ability to sleep restfully. Findings further illustrated that chronic pain may place ...

Infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a debilitating disorder in which progressive weakening of the immune system makes affected individuals more susceptible to potentially life-threatening infections and chronic diseases. Despite advances in the treatment and management of AIDS, there is no cure, and HIV infection remains a major global health problem. According to the WHO, there were an estimated 34 million infected individuals in 2011. Over the last three decades, a number of animal models have been developed ...

Adults increasingly are conveying their personal experiences with serious disease online, but do such chronicles help the authors or their audience? In the first known study of its kind, UCLA researchers discovered that creating a personal website to chronicle the cancer experience and communicate with one's social network can reduce depressive symptoms, increase positive mood and enhance appreciation for life among women diagnosed with breast cancer. The study, published online Aug. 12 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (and scheduled for print publication at ...

Energy consumption is growing rapidly in the 21st century, with rising energy costs and sustainability issues greatly impacting the quality of human life. Harvesting energy directly from sunlight to generate electricity using photovoltaic technologies is considered to be one of the most promising opportunities to produce electricity in an environmentally benign fashion. Among the various photovoltaic technologies, polymer (plastic) solar cells offer unique attractions and opportunities. These solar cells contain Earth-abundant and environmentally benign materials, can ...

The advantages of the "one-stop" shop have long been recognized in the retailing and services industries. Similar advantages would also be realized for the biofuels industry with the development of a "one-pot" processing system in which sugars could be extracted from biomass and turned into fuels in a single vat. A major step forward in this goal has now been achieved by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) who report the first demonstration of a one-pot, wash-free, process for the ionic liquid pretreatment and saccharification ...

LAGUNA HILLS, California, USA -- Researchers at MetroLaser, Inc., have developed a new design for a digital streak camera that captures full-color images of projectiles traveling up to 3350 m/s, which is 10 times the speed of sound. This system was designed to replace the outdated film-based streak cameras that are still in use at high-speed test tracks. Film-based streak photography records the motion of an object as it passes in front of a camera lens, while the film moves behind a vertical slit aperture during the exposure. The result is a long, continuous composite ...

Children born to obese mothers are more likely to die early as adults than those whose mothers were a normal weight, a study has found. The offspring of obese mothers are one-third more likely to die before the age of 55, mainly as a result of heart disease, researchers found. Children born to mothers who were overweight when they became pregnant were also 10 per cent more likely to die prematurely in later life than those born to mothers of a normal weight. The study, carried out by the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen, examined the health records of more ...

Children of obese and overweight women have a higher risk of early cardiovascular death as adults, finds a study published on bmj.com today. The findings highlight the urgent need for strategies to prevent obesity in women of childbearing age and the need to assess the offspring of obese mothers for their cardiovascular risk, say the authors. Rates of maternal obesity have risen rapidly in the past two decades. In the United States, about 64% of women of reproductive age are overweight and 35% are obese, with a similar pattern in Europe. Many studies have shown a ...

Gut microbes have recently been linked to colorectal cancer, but it has not been clear whether and how they might cause tumors to form in the first place. Two studies published by Cell Press on August 14th in the journal Cell Host & Microbe reveal how gut microbes known as fusobacteria, which are found in the mouth, stimulate bad immune responses and turn on cancer growth genes to generate colorectal tumors. The findings could lead to more effective strategies for the early diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of colorectal cancer. "Fusobacteria may provide not only ...

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine have discovered how a common oral bacterium can contribute to colorectal cancer, a finding that opens promising new research avenues for the development of approaches to prevent and treat the disease. "We found this cancer is linked to an infection from [the bacterium]," said Yiping Han, professor of periodontics at the dental school and the study's lead investigator. "This discovery creates the potential for new diagnostic tools and therapies to treat and prevent the cancer." The results of ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have shown how salmonella — a bacterial menace responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year from typhoid fever and food poisoning — manages to hide out in immune cells, altering their metabolism to its own benefit, much as someone might remodel a newly rented home to suit his own comfort. Salmonella's ability to position itself inside infected people's cells for the long haul can turn them into chronic, asymptomatic carriers who, unknown to themselves or others, spread the infectious organism ...

Heavy use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be leading to unnecessary breast removal in older women with breast cancer, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers in the current issue of Breast Cancer Research and Treatment. "These data are concerning because the long-term benefits associated with bilateral mastectomy for older women with breast cancer are unclear," said the study's lead author Cary Gross. M.D., associate professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine and director of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness ...

Barcelona, Spain – August 14, 2013 – A study published today reported the identification of what may be the earliest known biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest. "If our initial findings can be replicated by other laboratories, the results will change the way we currently think about the causes of Alzheimer's disease," said Dr. Ramon Trullas, research professor at the CSIC Institute of ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A team at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering has developed a novel way to build what many see as the next generation memory storage devices for portable electronic devices including smart phones, tablets, laptops and digital cameras. The device is based on the principles of resistive memory, which can be used to create memory cells that are smaller, operate at a higher speed and offer more storage capacity than flash memory cells, the current industry standard. Terabytes, not gigbytes, will be the norm with resistive ...

Children who suffer from intestinal failure, most often caused by a shortened or dysfunctional bowel, are unable to consume food orally. Instead, a nutritional cocktail of sugar, protein and fat made from soybean oil is injected through a small tube in their vein. For these children, the intravenous nutrition serves as a bridge to bowel adaptation, a process by which the intestine recovers and improves its capacity to absorb nutrition. But the soybean oil, which provides essential fatty acids and calories, has been associated with a potentially lethal complication known ...

Human farming and the introduction of domestic dogs are posing a threat to the ability of Burmese long-tailed macaques to use stone tools. This was found in a study led by Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU) carried out at Thailand's Laem Son National Park. The research team has advised Thailand's authorities that in the management of their marine national parks they should pay closer attention to macaques' use of stones as tools. Burmese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis aurea) are a rare variety of the common long-tailed macaques of Southeast ...

National and international organizations are ill-prepared to exploit e-health systems in the event of the emergence of a major pandemic disease, according to a research paper to be published in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology. E-health systems and associated information technology could radically alter the course of a pandemic disease, such as a major outbreak of influenza internationally. It could provide healthcare workers, emergency services, patients and those at-risk with access to much-needed data on how disease is spreading and ...

The occurrence of post-stroke depression results from the effects of biological, psychological, and social factors, likely involving neurotransmitters, neuroendocrine effects, nerve anatomy, neurotrophic factors, neural regeneration, inflammatory reactions, and social psyche factors. Synaptotagmin promotes neurotransmitter release, regulates the transfer of synaptic vesicle to synaptic active zones, and is a key factor in information transfer among neurons. The Xingnao Jieyu capsule has been shown to effectively relieve neurologic impairments and lessen depression. It remains ...

Research at the University of Sheffield, published in the latest issue of Water Science and Technology: Water Supply, points the way to more sophisticated and targeted methods of ensuring our drinking water remains safe to drink, while still reducing the need for chemical treatments and identifying potential hazards more quickly. The research team, from the University of Sheffield's Faculty of Engineering, studied four bacteria found in the city's drinking water to see which combinations were more likely to produce a 'biofilm'. Biofilms are layers of bacteria which form ...

Previous studies have suggested that the incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder in earthquake rescue workers is relatively high. Risk factors for this disorder include demographic characteristics, earthquake-related high-risk factors, risk factors in the rescue process, personality, social support and coping style. A recent study published in the Neural Regeneration Research (Vol. 8, No. 20, 2013) examined the current status of a unit of 1 040 rescue workers who participated in earthquake relief for the Wenchuan earthquake that occurred on May 12th, 2008. According ...

Good metal-based systems for hydrogen storage cannot be developed without knowing how this element permeates through metals. Researchers at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw managed to apply a user-friendly electrochemical method to study hydrogen diffusion in highly reactive metals. Hydrogen is seen as a versatile energy carrier for the future. Unfortunately, the element practically does not occur in the free state on Earth. Therefore, it must be first generated (e.g., by electrolysis of water), then stored, to be finally ...

Peripheral nerve defects are very common in clinical surgery. For repair of short-segment nerve defects, freeing nerve, nerve diversions or joint flexion can be used to directly connect the two stumps of nerves by using microsurgical techniques; while for long-segment nerve defects, we require a bridging material to bridge defected nerves. Nerve allograft is the most similar to autologous nerve in structure with rich sources. Antigenicity-free nerve allografts which retain the natural three-dimensional structure will become ideal scaffold materials for tissue-engineered ...

Computer science researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to determine which strategies give players an edge at winning in multi-player (action) real-time strategy (ARTS) games, such as Defense of the Ancients (DotA), Warcraft III and Starcraft II. The technique offers extremely precise information about how a player's actions affect a team's chances of winning, and could be used to develop technology for use by players and developers to improve gameplay experiences. Researchers used the technique, which makes use of various analytic ...

Memory devices like disk drives, flash drives and RAM play an important role in our lives. They are an essential component of our computers, phones, electronic appliances and cars. Yet current memory devices have significant drawbacks: dynamic RAM memory has to be refreshed periodically, static RAM data is lost when the power is off, flash memory lacks speed, and all existing memory technologies are challenged when it comes to miniaturization. Increasingly, memory devices are a bottleneck limiting performance. In order to achieve a substantial improvement in computation ...