OAK BROOK, Ill. – Digital tomosynthesis is an effective tool for reducing the recall rate in breast cancer screening, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. Digital mammography is the gold standard for breast cancer screening, but may yield suspicious findings that turn out not to be cancer. These false-positive findings are associated with a higher recall rate, or the rate at which women are called back for additional imaging or biopsy. Digital breast tomosynthesis has shown promise at reducing recall rates, particularly in younger women ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Mandating outpatient treatment for certain people with severe mental illness, while controversial, results in substantial cost savings by cutting hospitalizations and increasing outpatient care, according to a financial analysis led by researchers at Duke Medicine. The finding – focusing on a program in New York termed Assisted Outpatient Commitment, or "Kendra's Law" - provides a key piece of information in the ongoing policy debate about appropriate treatment approaches for people with serious mental illness. The issue has been particularly heated in ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Children with disabilities receive harsher punishment across the developing world, according to a new study based on interviews with nearly 46,000 caregivers in 17 low- to middle-income countries. The study found that disabled children were more likely to be severely punished by being hit on the head or beaten with an object such as a stick or belt, said Jennifer Lansford, a research professor with the Duke University Center for Child and Family Policy. The work appears July 30 in Child Development. Disabilities affect at least 93 million children ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Children who grow up in poverty are more likely than wealthier children to smoke cigarettes, but they are less likely to binge drink and are no more prone to use marijuana, according to researchers at Duke Medicine. The researchers also found that economic strains in early life – including family worries about paying bills or needing to sell possessions for cash – independently erode a child's self-control, regardless of strong parenting in adolescence. Lack of self-control often leads to substance use. The findings, appearing July 30, 2013, in the Journal ...

Methamphetamine use can make a person more susceptible to the lung infection cryptococcosis, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Researchers found that injected methamphetamine (METH) significantly enhanced colonization of the lungs by Cryptococcus neoformans and accelerated progression of the disease and the time to death in mouse models. C. neoformans is usually harmless to healthy individuals, but METH causes chinks in the blood-brain barrier that can permit the fungus to invade the central ...

Fewer states are holding alcohol retailers liable for harms caused by customers who were served illegally, according to a new report from researchers at Alcohol Policy Consultations and the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Published online by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the legal research study documents the gradual erosion of commercial host liability (also referred to as dram shop liability) from 1989 to 2011. Commercial host liability holds alcohol retailers liable for alcohol-attributable ...

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council -- in a UK first. The sensational finds on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, were thought to be constructed between 4000 and 3600 BC. Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building's structure above ground level -- in another UK first. The buildings, probably used by entire communities, are of unknown size, but may have been ...

Some studies of at-risk populations suggest that up to half of the people tested for HIV never return to the doctor's office to find out their test results. While many of these people may simply forget to return or deem the results unimportant, it is likely that a portion of people don't return because they don't want to know the results. In three studies, Jennifer Howell and James Shepperd of the University of Florida investigated whether prompting people to contemplate their reasons for seeking and avoiding the health information would make them more willing to receive ...

Medical noncompliance -- or failure to follow the doctor's orders -- is estimated to increase healthcare costs in the US by $100 billion per year. Patients sometimes opt not to take medicines, for instance, because the side effects are unbearable or the dosing regimens are too complicated. But medical noncompliance may also stem from sheer inertia -- the tendency to stay in the current state, even when that state is undesirable. In a series of studies, Gaurav Suri and colleagues from Stanford and Tel Aviv Universities tested whether this status-quo bias could result in ...

Just as remotely-operated vehicles help humans explore the depths of the ocean from above, NASA has begun studying how a similar approach may one day help astronauts explore other worlds. On June 17 and July 26, NASA tested the Surface Telerobotics exploration concept, in which an astronaut in an orbiting spacecraft remotely operates a robot on a planetary surface. In the future, astronauts orbiting other planetary bodies, such as Mars, asteroids or the moon, could use this approach to perform work on the surface using robotic avatars. "The initial test was notable for ...

(SALT LAKE CITY)—Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has long been considered the most effective treatment of medication-resistant or refractory depression, millions of people who might benefit don't take advantage of it because of the treatment's side effects and public misperception of the procedure. If the results of a campuswide collaboration of University of Utah researchers are borne out by larger studies and trials, patients with refractory depression might one day have an alternative that is as effective as ECT but without the side effects – the surgical ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- University of Oregon biochemists have determined how tiny synthetic molecules disrupt an important actin-related molecular machine in cells in one study and, in a second one, the crystal structure of that machine when bound to a natural inhibitor. The accomplishments -- done in the name of fundamental understanding, or basic science -- provide new windows on the complexities of cellular structure and suggest a potential future route to therapeutic targeting, said Brad J. Nolen, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the UO, who was principal investigator ...

Statins, a class of cholesterol-lowering drugs found in millions of medicine cabinets, may help treat Rett Syndrome, according to a study published today in Nature Genetics. The Rett Syndrome Research Trust (RSRT) funded this work with generous support from the Rett Syndrome Research Trust UK and Rett Syndrome Research & Treatment Foundation. Rett Syndrome is a neurological disorder that affects girls. A seemingly typical toddler begins to miss developmental milestones. A regression follows as young girls lose speech, mobility, and hand use. Many girls have seizures, ...

Archaeologists have unearthed a mysterious coffin-within-a-coffin near the final resting place of Richard III. The University of Leicester team lifted the lid of a medieval stone coffin this week – the final week of their second dig at the Grey Friars site, where the medieval king was discovered in September. This is the first fully intact stone coffin to be discovered in Leicester in controlled excavations – and is believed to contain one of the friary's founders or a medieval monk. Within the stone coffin, they found an inner lead coffin – and will need to carry ...

More than 50% of children who were given a topical analgesic had no pain during wound repair with "skin glue," according to the results of a randomized controlled trial reported in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Tissue adhesive or "skin glue" is regularly used in pediatrics to repair minor cuts but can cause pain or a burning sensation. Researchers conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine whether preapplication of lidocaine–epinephrine–tetracaine would decrease pain in children undergoing repair of minor cuts with tissue adhesive. The trial ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study suggests that the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park is beginning to bring back a key part of the diet of grizzly bears that has been missing for much of the past century – berries that help bears put on fat before going into hibernation. It's one of the first reports to identify the interactions between these large, important predators, based on complex ecological processes. It was published today by scientists from Oregon State University and Washington State University in the Journal of Animal Ecology. The researchers found ...

Albert Einstein's assertion that there's an ultimate speed limit – the speed of light – has withstood countless tests over the past 100 years, but that didn't stop University of California, Berkeley, postdoc Michael Hohensee and graduate student Nathan Leefer from checking whether some particles break this law. The team's first attempt to test this fundamental tenet of the special theory of relativity demonstrated once again that Einstein was right, but Leefer and Hohensee are improving the experiment to push the theory's limits even farther – and perhaps turn up a discrepancy ...

After a breast cancer operation, the removed tumour is always examined, as its subtype can provide an indication of how aggressive the disease is. The patient's lymph nodes are not analysed in the same way. Yet the breast tumour can sometimes appear to be of a less aggressive type while the subtype in the lymph nodes gives a different and more worrying picture. In these cases, it is the lymph nodes that provide the correct prognosis, according to new research at Lund University in Sweden. An analysis of the proliferation, hormone receptor status and HER2 status of the ...

91 percent of on average 20-year-old Swiss men drink alcohol, almost half of whom drink six beverages or more in a row and are thus at-risk consumers. 44 percent of Swiss men smoke tobacco, the majority of whom are at-risk consumers – they smoke at least once a day. 36 percent of young adults smoke cannabis, whereby over half are at-risk consumers, using the drug at least twice a week. Researchers from the University of Zurich's Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine investigated whether these young Swiss men read up on addictive substances such as alcohol, tobacco, ...

Orangutans might be the king of the swingers, but primatologists in Borneo have found that the great apes spend a surprising amount of time walking on the ground. The research, published in the American Journal of Primatology found that it is common for orangutans to come down from the trees to forage or to travel, a discovery which may have implications for conservation efforts. An expedition led by Brent Loken from Simon Fraser University and Dr. Stephanie Spehar from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, travelled to the East Kalimantan region of Borneo. The region's ...

This news release is available in German. The photo anode, which is made from the metal oxide bismuth vanadate (BiVO4) to which a small amount of tungsten atoms was added, was sprayed onto a piece of conducting glass and coated with an inexpensive cobalt phosphate catalyst. "Basically, we combined the best of both worlds," explains Prof. Dr. Roel van de Krol, head of the HZB Institute for Solar Fuels: "We start with a chemically stable, low cost metal oxide, add a really good but simple silicon-based thin film solar cell, and – voilà – we've just created a cost-effective, ...

This news release is available in German. VIDEO: How do you know that the cookies are still there although they have been placed out of your sight into the drawer? Alice Auersperg and her team from the University... Click here for more information. How do you know that the cookies are still there although they have been placed out of your sight into the drawer? How do you know ...

A mutation in a gene crucial to normal heart development could play a role in some types of congenital heart disease—the most common birth defect in the U.S. The finding, from a team in The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, could help narrow the search for genes that contribute to this defect, which affects as many as 40,000 newborns a year. The findings were published in a recent issue of in Human Mutation. Several hundred genes have been implicated in the formation of the heart, and a mutation in any of them could potentially contribute to a cardiac ...

These are some of the findings presented in the annual report on the occurrence of diseases that can be transmitted to humans from animal and food. The report is prepared by the Danish Zoonosis Centre at the National Food Institute, Technical University of Denmark in collaboration with Statens Serum Institut and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration. In 2012, 1,198 Danes were registered with a Salmonella infection, which corresponds to 21 cases per 100,000 citizens. It is a little more than the record-low incidence in 2011. Nearly half (45 percent) of all Salmonella ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- In the early days of quantum physics, in an attempt to explain the wavelike behavior of quantum particles, the French physicist Louis de Broglie proposed what he called a "pilot wave" theory. According to de Broglie, moving particles — such as electrons, or the photons in a beam of light — are borne along on waves of some type, like driftwood on a tide. Physicists' inability to detect de Broglie's posited waves led them, for the most part, to abandon pilot-wave theory. Recently, however, a real pilot-wave system has been discovered, in which a drop of ...