Humidity measurements in the atmosphere are of essential importance, since water vapour, as the most important natural greenhouse gas, has a strong influence on the Earth's atmospheric radiation balance and, thus, decisively influences our climate. In addition, water is responsible for meteorological phenomena such as the formation of clouds and precipitation. Hence, the atmospheric water content is an essential measurand in all climate models, but also when it comes to forecasting the weather; this measurand has to be determined with great accuracy if reliable predictions ...

Public reporting of how physicians and hospitals perform in quality of care measures leads to improved care for patients. A collaborative team of researchers led by Geoffrey C. Lamb, M.D., professor of internal medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, published their findings in the March 2013 edition of Health Affairs. The researchers analyzed 14 publicly reported quality of care measures from 2004 to 2009 for the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality, a voluntary consortium of physician groups, and found that physician groups in the collaborative improved ...

In this News Digest: Summary of a study being published online March 4, 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, reporting that in certain children with retinoblastoma, adjuvant chemotherapy can be avoided, without risking disease worsening or relapse. The findings will help decision-making about adjuvant treatment and therapy selection for patients with low- , intermediate-, and high-risk retinoblastoma affecting only one eye Quote for attribution to ZoAnn Eckert Dreyer, MD, American Society of Clinical Oncology Cancer Communications Committee member and pediatric ...

The brain adds new cells during puberty to help navigate the complex social world of adulthood, two Michigan State University neuroscientists report in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Scientists used to think the brain cells you're born with are all you get. After studies revealed the birth of new brain cells in adults, conventional wisdom held that such growth was limited to two brain regions associated with memory and smell. But in the past few years, researchers in MSU's neuroscience program have shown that mammalian brains ...

A study led by University of Massachusetts Medical School professor and immunologist Katherine Luzuriaga, MD, and Johns Hopkins Children's Center virologist Deborah Persaud, MD, highlights the long-term benefits of early antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiated in infants. The study, presented on March 4 at the 20th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta, shows that ART administered in early infancy can help curtail the formation of hard-to-treat viral sanctuaries — reservoirs of "sleeper" cells responsible for reigniting infection ...

Oxidative stress turns a protein that normally protects healthy cells into their executioner, according to a study released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Alvaro Estevez, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine, led the multi-university team that made the discovery, which could eventually help scientists develop new therapies to combat a host of conditions from stroke to Lou Gehrig's disease Researchers have long known that oxidative stress damages cells and results in neurodegeneration, ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (March 04, 2013) - A contact lens technique called overnight orthokeratology (OK) brings rapid improvement in vision for nearsighted patients. Now a new study shows that OK treatment works mainly by flattening the front of the cornea, reports a recent study, "Posterior Corneal Shape Changes in Myopic Overnight Orthokeratology", appearing in the March issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "This study appears ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Physicists at UC Santa Barbara are manipulating light on superconducting chips, and forging new pathways to building the quantum devices of the future –– including super-fast and powerful quantum computers. The science behind tomorrow's quantum computing and communications devices is being conducted today at UCSB in what some physicists consider to be one of the world's top laboratories in the study of quantum physics. A team in the lab of John Martinis, UCSB professor of physics, has made a discovery that provides new understanding in the quantum ...

NEW YORK (EMBARGOED UNTIL March 4, 2013, 5 PM U.S. Eastern Time) — African forest elephants are being poached out of existence. A study just published in the online journal PLOS ONE shows that across their range in central Africa, a staggering 62 percent of all forest elephants have been killed for their ivory over the past decade. "The analysis confirms what conservationists have feared: the rapid trend towards extinction – potentially within the next decade – of the forest elephant," says Dr. Samantha Strindberg of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), one of the ...

VIDEO: In FES cycling, small electrical pulses are applied to the paralyzed muscles of an individual, stimulating the muscles to cycle on a stationary recumbent bicycle. The repetitive activity simulates movement... Click here for more information. (Baltimore, MD) – A new study by Kennedy Krieger Institute's International Center for Spinal Cord Injury (Epub ahead of print) finds that long-term lower extremity functional electrical stimulation (FES) cycling, as part of a rehabilitation ...

Three antiretroviral-based strategies intended to prevent HIV infection among women did not prove effective in a major clinical trial in Africa. For reasons that are unclear, a majority of study participants—particularly young, single women—were unable to use their assigned approaches daily as directed, according to findings presented today by one of the study's co-leaders at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta. The Vaginal and Oral Interventions to Control the Epidemic (VOICE) study, or MTN 003, was designed to evaluate the ...

New York, NY, March 4, 2013 – In a new phase III trial mirabegron, a β3-adrenoceptor agonist, given once daily for 12 weeks, reduced the frequency of incontinence episodes and number of daily urinations, and improved urgency and nocturia in adults with overactive bladder (OAB) compared to those in a placebo group. The incidence of common adverse events (hypertension, urinary tract infection, headache, nasopharyngitis) was similar in the mirabegron and placebo groups in this study. Rates of dry mouth and constipation were similar in the drug and placebo groups. The ...

A new study shows that although certain bumble bees are at risk, other bee species in the northeastern United States persisted across a 140-year period despite expanding human populations and changing land use. Led by Rutgers University and based extensively on historical specimens from the American Museum of Natural History and nine other bee collections, the study informs conservation efforts aimed at protecting native bee species and the important pollinator services they provide. The results are published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Eighty-seven ...

Reducing fear and stress following a traumatic event could be as simple as providing a protein synthesis blocker to the brain, report a team of researchers from McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School, McGill University, and Massachusetts General Hospital in a paper published in the March 4 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This is an important basic neuroscience finding that has the potential to have clinical implications for the way individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder are treated," said Vadim Bolshakov, PhD, director of the Cellular ...

Women who receive strong social support from their families during pregnancy appear to be protected from sharp increases in a particular stress hormone, making them less likely to develop postpartum depression, according to a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "Now we have some clue as to how support might 'get under the skin' in pregnancy, dampening down a mother's stress hormone, and thereby helping to reduce her risk for postpartum depression," said Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, a UCLA National Institute ...

New research from the University of Adelaide has discovered a high prevalence of vitamin B12 deficiency among refugees, prompting calls for refugees to be routinely screened for the problem soon after they arrive. Vitamin B12 deficiency is a sign of severe malnourishment and can result in permanent damage to the nervous system. For women of child-bearing age, vitamin B12 deficiency can lead to developmental defects in their unborn children. If left untreated, the deficiency could be fatal. In the first study of its kind in the world, researchers from the University ...

Dining on field grasses would be ruinous to human teeth, but mammals such as horses, rhinos and gazelles evolved long, strong teeth that are up to the task. New research led by the University of Washington challenges the 140-year-old assumption that finding fossilized remains of prehistoric animals with such teeth meant the animals were living in grasslands and savannas. Instead it appears certain South American mammals evolved the teeth in response to the gritty dust and volcanic ash they encountered while feeding in an ancient tropical forest. The new work was conducted ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Bringing the concept of an "artificial leaf" closer to reality, a team of researchers at MIT has published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system. The new analysis lays out a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of these systems, and could quickly lead to the production of a practical, inexpensive and commercially viable prototype. Such a system would use sunlight to produce a storable fuel, such as hydrogen, instead of electricity for immediate use. This fuel could then be used on demand ...

Human activities are not the primary cause of arsenic found in groundwater in Bangladesh. Instead, a team of researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Barnard College, Columbia University, University of Dhaka, Desert Research Institute and University of Tennessee found that the arsenic in groundwater in the region is part of a natural process that predates any recent human interaction, such as intensive pumping. The results appear in the March 4 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Millions of people in Bangladesh and neighboring ...

(Boston) – Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and VA Boston Healthcare System (VA BHS) have found that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help relieve pain for people with painful diabetic neuropathies. The study, which is the first of its kind to examine this treatment for people with type II diabetes mellitus, is published in the March issue of the Journal of Pain. Type II diabetes mellitus is the most common form of the disease and affects more than 20 million Americans. The onset of type II diabetes mellitus is often gradual, occurring ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Since the mid-1800s, doctors have used drugs to induce general anesthesia in patients undergoing surgery. Despite their widespread use, little is known about how these drugs create such a profound loss of consciousness. In a new study that tracked brain activity in human volunteers over a two-hour period as they lost and regained consciousness, researchers from MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have identified distinctive brain patterns associated with different stages of general anesthesia. The findings shed light on how one commonly used ...

VIDEO: NASA scientists at the Goddard Cosmic Ice Lab are studying a kind of chemistry almost never found on Earth. The extreme cold, hard vacuum, and high radiation environment of space... Click here for more information. Behind locked doors, in a lab built like a bomb shelter, Perry Gerakines makes something ordinary yet truly alien: ice. This isn't the ice of snowflakes or ice cubes. No, this ice needs such intense cold and low pressure to form that the right conditions ...

Back in 2010, the ideas behind a squid's sticky tendrils and Spiderman's super-strong webbing were combined to create a prototype for the first remote device able to stop vehicles in their tracks: the Safe, Quick, Undercarriage Immobilization Device (SQUID). At the push of a button, spiked arms shot out and entangled in a car's axles—bringing a racing vehicle to a screeching halt.* The need to stop vehicles remotely was identified by the law enforcement community. With funding from Homeland Security's Science & Technology Directorate, and the expertise of the engineers ...

SEATTLE—Researchers used electronic health records to identify Group Health patients who weren't screened regularly for cancer of the colon and rectum—and to encourage them to be screened. This centralized, automated approach doubled these patients' rates of on-time screening—and saved health costs—over two years. The March 5 Annals of Internal Medicine published the randomized controlled trial. "Screening for colorectal cancer can save lives, by finding cancer early—and even by detecting polyps before cancer starts," said study leader Beverly B. Green, MD, MPH. "But ...

Studied for decades for their essential role in making proteins within cells, several amino acids known as tRNA synthetases were recently found to have an unexpected – and critical – additional role in cancer metastasis in a study conducted collaboratively in the labs of Karen Lounsbury, Ph.D., University of Vermont professor of pharmacology, and Christopher Francklyn, Ph.D., UVM professor of biochemistry. The group determined that threonyl tRNA synthetase (TARS) leads a "double life," functioning as a critical factor regulating a pathway used by invasive cancers to induce ...