Bacteria of the genus Legionella have evolved a sophisticated system to replicate in the phagocytic cells of their hosts. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have now identified a novel component of this system. In humans, Legionella is responsible for the so-called Legionnaires' disease, a form of bacterial pneumonia that is often lethal. The bacteria can also cause Pontiac fever, a flu-like condition characterized by coughing and vomiting. Most Legionella-associated illnesses in humans are caused by Legionella pneumophila. These microorganisms ...

Beetles with unusual "green thumbs" for growing fungi are threatening avocado crops and could transform into a more destructive pest, according to an international team of researchers. Ambrosia beetles are insects that bore into trees and cultivate fungi to use as a food source for their young. The fungi -- species of Fusarium -- carried by types of the Ambrosia beetle can damage or even kill trees, making the beetle and its fungi a threat to avocado production in the U.S. and Israel, according to Matthew Kasson, who recently received his doctorate in forest pathology ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (July 18, 2013) - For patients with cancer, "prehabilitation"— interventions given between the time of diagnosis and the start of treatment—has the potential to reduce complications from treatments and improve physical and mental health outcomes, according to a report in the August American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (AJPM&R). AJPM&R, the official journal of the Association of Academic Physiatrists, published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "A growing body of evidence supports preparing newly diagnosed ...

Stanford University scientists have created the thinnest, most efficient absorber of visible light on record. The nanosize structure, thousands of times thinner than an ordinary sheet of paper, could lower the cost and improve the efficiency of solar cells, according to the scientists. Their results are published in the current online edition of the journal Nano Letters. "Achieving complete absorption of visible light with a minimal amount of material is highly desirable for many applications, including solar energy conversion to fuel and electricity," said Stacey Bent, ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (July 18, 2013) – Most professional athletes are able to return to competition within a year after vertebral fusion surgery on the upper (cervical) spine, reports a study in the July issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. Another study in the July Neurosurgery finds variations in treatment for patients with minor head injuries seen in the emergency department (ED) versus the doctor's office. A third paper discusses the ...

BOSTON -- Investigators at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and Harvard Medical School have published the most thorough description of gene expression in the human retina reported to date. In a study published today in the journal BMC Genomics, Drs. Michael Farkas, Eric Pierce and colleagues in the Ocular Genomics Institute (OGI) at Mass. Eye and Ear reported a complete catalog of the genes expressed in the retina. The retina is the neural tissue in the back of the eye that initiates vision. It is responsible to receiving light signals, converting them into neurologic signals ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- The sounds of success are ringing at Kansas State University through a research project that has potential to treat human deafness and loss of balance. Philine Wangemann, university distinguished professor of anatomy and physiology in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and her international team have published the results of their study in the July issue of the journal PLOS Genetics: "SLC26A4Targeted to the Endolymphatic Sac Rescues Hearing and Balance in SLC26A4 Mutant Mice." "When the SLC26A4 gene is mutated, it leads to a loss of pendrin expression, ...

Evolutionary changes induced by fisheries may benefit the fishers, according to a new study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. But if fisheries are not well-managed, this potential benefit turns into economic losses, as stocks decline from overfishing and further suffer from evolution. The bad news is that today very few fisheries are managed in a way that will lead to yield increases in the long term. While these fisheries may not be in danger of collapsing, IIASA Evolution and Ecology Program Leader Ulf Dieckmann says, "There ...

A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified a mechanism that can prevent the normal prion protein from changing its molecular shape into the abnormal form responsible for neurodegenerative diseases. This finding, published in the July 18 issue of Cell Reports, offers new hope in the battle against a foe that until now has always proved fatal. Prion diseases include Creuzfeldt-Jakob disease and fatal familial insomnia. Unlike other transmissible diseases, the infectious agent is not a virus or bacteria, but an abnormally ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., July 18, 2013 -- Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have developed a new way to measure the cumulative effect of impacts to the head incurred by football players. The metric, called Risk Weighted Cumulative Exposure (RWE), can capture players' exposure to the risk of concussion over the course of a football season by measuring the frequency and magnitude of all impacts, said senior author of the study Joel Stitzel, Ph.D., chair of biomedical engineering at Wake Forest Baptist and associate head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University ...

Boston, MA – Computerized cognitive testing is increasingly playing a key role in therapy development for dementia and Alzheimer's disease. This week at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference, Keith Wesnes Ph.D., Practice Leader of Bracket and founder of the CDR System™, discussed new data for novel therapies at two poster presentations at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference. Poster Title: Cognitive evidence in Alzheimer's disease patients that compromised hippocampal neurogenesis is related both to APOE4 status and CSF Abeta42 This presentation ...

Bethesda, MD (July 18, 2013) — A new drug, teduglutide, offers significant relief for patients with short-bowel syndrome intestinal failure who are reliant on intravenous nutrition, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Patients with this relatively rare condition experience massive bowel loss and are unable to absorb nutrients, vitamins and water from digested foods. They rely on parenteral nutrition, or intravenous feeding, to deliver their daily nutrients. "Short-bowel ...

Registration is now open for the Mushrooms and Health Summit held at the Mayflower Renaissance hotel in Washington D.C. on September 9-10, 2013. The meeting is of interest to scientists, writers and researchers looking to learn and discuss the unique and comprehensive examination of the global research that links mushrooms to today's and future health issues. A world-class scientific event Learn from the world's top scientists, researchers and nutrition experts who will provide a broad range of perspectives and facilitate discussions around mushrooms from spore to spoon. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- TCP, the transmission control protocol, is one of the core protocols governing the Internet: If counted as a computer program, it's the most widely used program in the world. One of TCP's main functions is to prevent network congestion by regulating the rate at which computers send data. In the last 25 years, engineers have made steady improvements to TCP's congestion-control algorithms, resulting in several competing versions of the protocol: Many Windows computers, for instance, run a version called Compound TCP, while Linux machines run a version called ...

Sophia Antipolis, 18 July 2013: A joint consensus statement on the treatment of paediatric arrhythmias has been released by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and the Association for European Paediatric and Congenital Cardiology (AEPC). "Pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapy for arrhythmias in the paediatric population" was published in EP-Europace.1 Consensus statements have been published on arrhythmias in adults but this is the first European statement concerning the diagnosis and management of paediatric ...

Using an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to automate the immunization data shared between health providers and public health agencies enables physicians to assist individual patients faster and more effectively, while also providing more immediate, cohesive community data to the agencies tasked with promoting public health. Those are the findings of a new study conducted by researchers from Columbia University School of Nursing and partner institutions. The researchers also found that automated reporting reduced the lag time historically associated with data submitted ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - A study led by a Loyola University Medical Center ENT physician provides a case study of a simple action that can reduce healthcare costs without compromising care. Matthew Kircher, MD, and colleagues examined one of the costs associated with surgery to remove a type of cyst, called a cholesteatoma, from the middle ear. Otologists routinely send specimens to the pathology lab, but the study found this doesn't appear to be necessary. The study found that in 178 cases involving seven otologists, there was virtually perfect agreement between the otologists' ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Genes linked to chronic inflammation in asthma may be more active in people who are obese, according to new research that uncovers several biological ties between obesity and asthma. "Our findings point the way to the management of asthma in the obese through simple weight reduction," said first author Paresh Dandona, MD, PhD, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Chief of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University at Buffalo. The research appeared online June 26 in the journal Obesity and involved two related studies: A comparative study between ...

In patients with high-risk breast cancer, addition of the erythropoiesis-stimulating agent (ESA) epoetin alfa to the chemotherapy regimen may help avoid the decrease in hemoglobin levels and resulting anemia often seen in these patients and does not negatively affect relapse-free (RFS) or overall survival (OS). However, it can increase the risk of thrombotic events, according to a study published July 17 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. To investigate the safety and efficacy of epoetin alfa, Volker Moebus, M.D., of the Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, ...

A Johns Hopkins study finds that healthy people who carry a genetic mutation for arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) are at much higher risk of developing the symptoms of the life-threatening heart disease if they participate in endurance sports and frequent exercise. The study also suggests that those carriers who significantly cut back on their exercise regimen may reduce their risk or delay the onset of symptoms. An article on the study results is published online July 17, 2013, in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. ...

Recent changes in hockey rules regulating contact to the head have not reduced the number of concussions suffered by players during National Hockey League (NHL) season, according to research published July 17 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Michael Cusimano and colleagues from the Injury Prevention Research Office at St. Michael's Hospital, Canada. The authors compared reports hockey players suffering concussions in the National Hockey League (NHL) before and after rules regulating head contact were changed in 2010-11 and 2011-12. Based on official game records ...

VIDEO: This is a CT-generated movie of the premaxilla of Diplodocus (YPM 4677), with bone rendered transparent and teeth opaque. Click here for more information. Some of the largest herbivorous dinosaurs replaced their teeth at a rate of approximately one tooth every 1-2 months to compensate for tooth wear from crunching up plants, according to research published July 17 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Michael D'Emic from Stony Brook University and colleagues from other ...

KANSAS CITY, MO - Hematopoietic stem cells—bone marrow-derived adult stem cells that give rise to the wide variety of specialized blood cells—come in two flavors: the reserve force sits quietly waiting to be called upon while the active arm continually proliferates spawning billions of blood cells every day. In their latest study, researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research reveal a new mechanism that is critical in maintaining the delicate balance between the two. Publishing in the July 17 advance online issue of Nature, the team led by Stowers Investigator ...

The discovery of a protein that encourages blood vessel growth, and especially 'bad' blood vessels – the kind that characterise diseases as diverse as cancer, age-related macular degeneration and rheumatoid arthritis – has been reported in the journal Nature. The team at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology discovered the new protein, called LRG1, by screening for mouse genes that are over-expressed in abnormal retinal blood vessels in diseased eyes. In these diseased retinas the LRG1 protein is expressed by blood vessel endothelial cells, which line blood vessel walls. ...

The study is the result of a collaboration of scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, University of Michigan, and University of California San Diego, USA, who were interested in finding out whether autophagy can be affected by events in the cell nucleus. Surprisingly, they discovered that a signal chain in the nucleus serves as a kind of molecular switch that determines whether the cell dies or survives. Put simply autophagy is a process whereby the cell consumes parts of itself, and is a way for it to clean up abnormal lumps of proteins and rid itself of damaged ...