While there have been substantial improvements in mortality rates and an increase in access to reproductive health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the global health community is neglecting prevention, screening, and treatment for cervical cancer in LMICs. These are the conclusions of a new article in PLOS Medicine this week by Ruby Singhrao and colleagues from the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco. Using a framework including equity and socio-economic, gender, public health, and health services dimensions, the authors propose ...

STANFORD, Calif. —The steady accumulation of a protein in healthy, aging brains may explain seniors' vulnerability to neurodegenerative disorders, a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine reports. The study's unexpected findings could fundamentally change the way scientists think about neurodegenerative disease. The pharmaceutical industry has spent billions of dollars on futile clinical trials directed at treating Alzheimer's disease by ridding brains of a substance called amyloid plaque. But the new findings have identified another ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation who are otherwise healthy should have mitral valve repair surgery sooner rather than later, even if they feel no symptoms, a Mayo Clinic-led study by U.S. and European researchers found. The results challenge the long-held belief that it is safer to "watch and wait" until a patient has symptoms, such as shortness of breath. This is the largest study to show that patients who undergo surgery early after diagnosis have improved long-term survival and lower risk of heart failure. The findings will be published ...

In a large population of Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure who underwent implantation of a cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillator, patients who had the cardiac characteristics of left bundle-branch block and longer QRS duration had the lowest risks of death and all-cause, cardiovascular, and heart failure readmission, according to a study in the August 14 issue of JAMA. "Clinical trials have shown that cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) improves symptoms and reduces mortality and readmission among selected patients with heart failure and left ventricular ...

In a study that included patients with mitral valve regurgitation due to a condition known as flail mitral valve leaflets, performance of early surgical correction compared with initial medical management was associated with greater long-term survival and lower risk of heart failure, according to a study in the August 14 issue of JAMA. "Degenerative mitral regurgitation [backflow of blood from the left ventricle to the left atrium due to mitral valve insufficiency] is common and can be surgically repaired in the vast majority of patients, improving symptoms and restoring ...

"Although screening programs prior to participation in sports have been used for many years for young competitive athletes, it has been suggested that screening programs might also be worthwhile in the general population. Description of the incidence of sports-related sudden death by specific sports as well as by sex and age may help inform the debate," write Eloi Marijon, M.D., of the Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, and colleagues. As reported in a Research Letter, the study was performed in France between 2005 and 2010, and overall, 60 of 96 ...

The study's findings are surprising as much research so far suggests that the survivors of mass extinctions are often presented with new ecological opportunities because the loss of many species in their communities allows them to evolve new lifestyles and new anatomical features as they fill the roles vacated by the victims. However, it turns out that not all survivors respond in the same way, and some may not be able to exploit fully the new opportunities arising after a mass extinction. Dr Marcello Ruta of the University of Lincoln, with colleagues from the Field ...

Frontiers in Psychology People who often recall their dreams respond more strongly to their name Dreaming remains one of the great mysteries of human cognition. It is still not fully known when dreams occur, and which mechanisms in the brain produce them. A major difficulty for studying dreams is that they leave only a fleeting memory upon awakening. Perrine Ruby and colleagues from the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center chose a new approach to investigate dreaming. They recorded brain activity of two groups of participants: high dream recallers who recall dreams ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- About 10 percent of the U.S. population suffers from dyslexia, a condition that makes learning to read difficult. Dyslexia is usually diagnosed around second grade, but the results of a new study from MIT could help identify those children before they even begin reading, so they can be given extra help earlier. The study, done with researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, found a correlation between poor pre-reading skills in kindergartners and the size of a brain structure that connects two language-processing areas. Previous studies have shown that ...

A radical shortening of their bony tails over 100 million years ago enabled the earliest birds to develop versatile legs that gave them an evolutionary edge, a new study shows. A team led by Oxford University scientists examined fossils of the earliest birds from the Cretaceous Period, 145-66 million years ago, when early birds, such as Confuciusornis, Eoenantiornis, and Hongshanornis, lived alongside their dinosaur kin. At this point birds had already evolved powered flight, necessitating changes to their forelimbs, and the team investigated how this new lifestyle related ...

Black patients preoccupied with racial concerns have higher blood pressure than those who aren't, according to results of new Johns Hopkins-led research. The findings suggest that heightened race consciousness could at least in part account for the disproportionately high rate of hypertension in black Americans — the highest prevalence of any group in the United States and one of the highest rates in the world. "A preoccupation with race among blacks leads to hyper-vigilance, a heightened awareness of their stigmatized status in society and a feeling that they need to ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL. (Aug. 13, 2013) – The number of children being diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder (ADHD), allergy and asthma is increasing in the United States. And according to a new study, there might be a link between the growth of these three conditions. The study, published in the August issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), found there is an increased risk of ADHD in boys that have a history of allergy or asthma. "ADHD, a chronic mental health disorder, ...

Wildfires continue to be a problem in Canada. Currently in the central region, including the Northern Territories, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba, numerous fires were spotted by the Aqua satellite on this image captured on August 12, 2013. In the past week, 508 new fires started in Canada, burning over half a million acres (208,308 ha). Most of the past week's fires occurred from Manitoba westward, particularly in British Columbia, while Saskatchewan accounted for roughly half of the area burned. Seasonal fire occurrence remains below average, but the area burned ...

Worcester, Mass. – Targeting serious and sometimes deadly fungal infections, a team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) has discovered a chemical compound that prevents fungal cells from adhering to surfaces, which, typically, is the first step of the infection process used by the human pathogen Candida albicans (C. albicans). After screening 30,000 chemical compounds in a series of tests with live C. albicans, the team found one molecule that prevented the yeast from adhering to human cells ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A high-angle helix helps microorganisms like sperm and bacteria swim through mucus and other viscoelastic fluids, according to a new study by researchers from Brown University and the University of Wisconsin. The findings help clear up some seemingly conflicting findings about how microorganisms swim using flagella, helical appendages that provide propulsion as they rotate. Simple as single-celled creatures may be, understanding how they get around requires some complex science. The physics of helical swimming turns out to be "a really ...

Communities in nature are likely to be a lot more sensitive to change than previously thought, according to a new study at Rice University. The study, which appears this week in Nature Communications, shows that scientists concerned about human influence on the biosphere need to take a deeper look at how altering the dynamics of a population -- for example, by removing large members of a species through overfishing -- can have measurable consequences, said Rice ecologist Volker Rudolf. "Natural communities are increasingly altered through human impact, and ecologists ...

New research shows that a class of materials being eyed for the next generation of computers behaves asymmetrically at the sub-atomic level. This research is a key step toward understanding the topological insulators that may have the potential to be the building blocks of a super-fast quantum computer that could run on almost no electricity. Scientists from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory contributed first-principles calculations and co-authored the paper "Mapping the Orbital Wavefunction of the Surface States in 3-D Topological Insulators," ...

It's a common driving predicament: As you approach the intersection, the light is yellow. Do you hit the brakes or face a red light camera fine? Some municipalities engineer their traffic signals to force drivers into this situation in an effort to generate revenue from the cameras. Professors at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have analyzed this issue to determine if traffic control measures intended to boost red light revenue—such as shortening yellow light time or increasing the speed limit on a street—compromise safety. The study by professors Lee Han, ...

The following highlights summarize research papers that have been recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth (JGR-B) and Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR-D). In this release: 1. An earthquake in Japan caused large waves in Norwegian fjords 2. Disposal of Marcellus Shale fracking waste caused earthquakes in Ohio 3. The Arctic is especially sensitive to black carbon emissions from within the region 4. A new metric to help understand Amazon rainforest precipitation 5. Detailed analysis shows ...

Women are less likely to take part in corporate crime and fraud even though more women now work in corporations and serve at higher levels of those organizations, according to a team of sociologists. The researchers examined a database of recent corporate frauds and found that women typically were not part of the conspiracy. When women did play a role, it was rarely a significant one. "There has been this view for awhile that women are no more moral than men and that once there was more gender equality in the workforce, there would be more females involved in corporate ...

Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, are applying artificial intelligence to the analysis of professional soccer and, in one application of the automated technique, have discovered a strategic error often made by coaches of visiting teams. The common wisdom that teams should "win at home and draw away" has encouraged coaches to play less aggressively when their teams are on the road, said Patrick Lucey, a Disney researcher who specializes in automatically measuring human behavior. Yet the computer analysis suggests that it is this defensive-oriented strategy, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – In two recently published peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst describes how regulators came to adopt the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, which was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk assessment. He also offers further evidence to support his earlier assertions that two geneticists deliberately suppressed evidence to prevent the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) from considering an alternative, threshold model, for ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2013—Light traveling in a vacuum is the Universe's ultimate speed demon, racing along at approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Now scientists have found an effective new way to put a speed bump in light's path. Reported today in The Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, researchers from France and China embedded dye molecules in a liquid crystal matrix to throttle the group velocity of light back to less than one billionth of its top speed. The team says the ability to slow light in this manner may one day lead to new technologies ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Aug. 13, 2013 – Better batteries, catalysts, electronic information storage and processing devices are among potential benefits of an unexpected discovery made by Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists using samples isolated from the atmosphere. Researchers at the Department of Energy lab learned that key surface properties of complex oxide films are unaffected by reduced levels of oxygen during fabrication – an unanticipated finding with possible implications for the design of functional complex oxides used in a variety of consumer products, said ...

URBANA, Ill. – With little research on how nutrition affects reproductive performance in dairy cows, it is generally believed that a cow needs a higher energy intake before calving. Research by University of Illinois scientists challenges this accepted wisdom. Animal sciences researcher Phil Cardoso said that this line of research was the result of an "accident." Students in animal sciences professor James Drackley's group compared cows fed before calving with diets containing the recommended energy levels to cows fed reduced energy diets. They found that the cows fed ...