Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found that preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who receive high-quality early intervention benefit developmentally regardless of the treatment model used -- a surprising result that may have important implications for special-education programs and school classrooms across the country. "This is the first study designed to compare long-standing comprehensive treatment models for young children with ASD," said Brian Boyd, a fellow at UNC's Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG) ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass- A team of MIT researchers has succeeded in carrying out the first systematic investigation of the factors that control boiling heat transfer from a surface to a liquid. This process is crucial to the efficiency of power plants and the cooling of high-power electronics, and could even lead to improvements in how vehicles travel through water. The research deals with a key transition point known as the critical heat flux, or CHF, a value of heat transfer, per unit time and area, where a surface's heat-transfer characteristics suddenly change: For example, ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – Several companies sell genetic testing directly to consumers, but little research has been done on how consumers experience such tests. The tests have raised questions about the validity and accuracy of the information provided to consumers – especially without the involvement of a qualified health care professional. Now, a study lead by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher is providing insight into how a diverse sample of primary care patients experience genetic testing. Lead researcher Katherine Wasson, PhD, MPH, and colleagues ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Cell therapies may stop or reverse the pain and disability of degenerative disc disease and the loss of material between vertebrae, according to Duke University scientists. The health conditions affect thousands of Americans. To use cell therapies, however, scientists have to keep the cells alive, synthesize the appropriate replacement material and get it to the right place in a patient's spine. With newly made biomaterials from Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, that goal could be closer. In a proof-of-concept study published online in the journal ...

A chemical analysis of oil sheens found floating recently at the ocean's surface near the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster indicates that the source is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. Both the Macondo well and natural oil seeps common to the Gulf of Mexico were confidently ruled out. Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) used a recently-patented method to fingerprint the chemical makeup of the sheens and to estimate the location of the source based on the ...

Supraglacial lakes – bodies of water that collect on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet – lubricate the bottom of the sheet when they drain, causing it to flow faster. Differences in how the lakes drain can impact glacial movement's speed and direction, researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY), University of Cambridge and Los Alamos National Laboratory report in "Environmental Research Letters." "Knowledge of the draining mechanisms allows us to improve our understanding of how surface melting can impact sea-level rise, not only through the direct contribution ...

People with pre-diabetes who lose roughly 10 percent of their body weight within six months of diagnosis dramatically reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes over the next three years, according to results of research led by Johns Hopkins scientists. The findings, investigators say, offer patients and physicians a guide to how short-term behavior change may affect long-term health. "We have known for some time that the greater the weight loss, the lower your risk of diabetes," says study leader Nisa Maruthur, M.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Division ...

A chemical analysis indicates that the source of oil sheens recently found floating at the ocean's surface near the site of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon oil spill is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. First reported to the U.S. Coast Guard by multinational oil and gas company BP in September 2012, the oil sheens raised public concern that the Macondo well, which was capped in July 2010, might be leaking. However, both the Macondo well and the natural oil seeps common to the Gulf of Mexico were confidently ruled out, according to researchers ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Premenopausal women who aren't interested in sex and are unhappy about this reality have distinctive blood flow patterns in their brains in response to explicit videos compared to women with normal sexual function, researchers report. A study of 16 women – six with normal sexual function and 10 with clear symptoms of dysfunction – showed distinct differences in activation of brain regions involved in making and retrieving memories, and determining how attentive they are to their response to sexual stimuli, researchers report in the journal Fertility and ...

The American health care system may be missing a golden opportunity to curtail sexually transmitted infections in communities, according to a new study of offenders following release from the justice system. Researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute presented findings at the STI & AIDS World Congress in Vienna, Austria, July 14 to 17, showing that individuals released from the justice system have a high risk of contracting an sexually transmitted infection within the first year. Sarah E. Wiehe, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics ...

HOUSTON -- (July 16, 2013) -- Using carpets of aligned carbon nanotubes, researchers from Rice University and Sandia National Laboratories have created a solid-state electronic device that is hardwired to detect polarized light across a broad swath of the visible and infrared spectrum. The research is available online from the American Chemical Society's journal ACS Nano. "Detecting polarized light is extremely useful," said Rice's Junichiro Kono, professor of electrical and computer engineering and of physics and astronomy. "Many animals and insects can see polarized ...

Spurred by increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, forests over the last two decades have become dramatically more efficient in how they use water. Scientists affiliated with the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Harvard Forest Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site report the results in this week's issue of the journal Nature. Harvard Forest is one of 26 such NSF LTER sites in ecosystems from deserts to grasslands, coral reefs to coastal waters, around the world. Studies have long predicted that plants would begin to use water more efficiently, that ...

Community pharmacists in the United States have a unique opportunity to consult with customers about HIV treatment when selling over-the-counter HIV tests, according to a study by researchers at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention and Butler University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences. In a study lead by Beth Meyerson, co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, Indiana licensed community pharmacists reported that they wanted an active role of consultation when customers purchased over-the-counter ...

Adding foods rich in specific amino and fatty acids to the diets of youth with Type 1 diabetes kept them producing some of their own insulin for up to two years after diagnosis, said researchers at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The youth still required supplemental insulin, but they may have reduced risk of diabetes complications by continuing to produce some of their own insulin, said Elizabeth Mayer-Davis, professor of nutrition at Gillings and medicine at UNC's School of Medicine, who led the study ...

A new report by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Disease Ecology Laboratory of Instituto de Ciencias Veterinarias del Litoral, Argentina (ICIVET LITORAL, UNL-CONICET) shows that increases in precipitation and changes in vegetative structure in Argentine forests – factors driven by climate change and deforestation in the region – are leading to increased parasitism of young nesting birds by fly larvae (botflies) of the species Philornis torquans. In temperate and tropical areas of the Americas, wild bird chicks are the target of parasitic flies whose larvae ...

In the Yukon territory of Canada, several large wildfires continue to burn unabated. The fires on this image are located near Carmacks and also near Stewart Crossing. The Yukon Wildland Fire Management map dated July 15, 2013 shows quite a few fires in the Yukon territory with many currently uncontained. These MODIS image fires appear to be the uncontained fires noted on the map. During this year to date the Yukon territory has seen 133,166 hectares (329, 060 acres) of land burned by fires. NASA's Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate ...

It's a wonder we still put up with passwords. We forget our highly secretive combinations, so we frequently have them reset and sent to our cellphones and alternative email addresses. We come up with clever jumbles of letters and words, only to mess up the order. We sit there on the login screen, desperately punching in a code we should know by heart. Despite their inefficiencies, passwords are still the most common electronic authentication systems, protecting everything from our bank accounts, laptops and email to health information, utility bills and, of course, ...

A new study found that STD clinics could provide important access to cervical cancer screenings for women who traditionally have trouble receiving these screenings because of lack of insurance or other obstacles. Cervical cancer can be painful and deadly but can be effectively treated if caught soon enough. Yet in the U.S., reaching women who are underscreened for this cancer remains a public health challenge because insurance is the primary indicator for screening. "Women who are uninsured, as well as women of color, are at highest risk for being underscreened for ...

Infrared satellite data helps identify cloud top and sea-surface temperatures, and the AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured those when it flew over Tropical Depression 08W in the western North Pacific Ocean. Tropical Depression 08W formed east of the Philippines. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument took an image of 08W on July 16 at 04:35 UTC (12:35 a.m. EDT). The AIRS infrared image showed a large area of strong thunderstorms appeared mostly east of the center of 08W's circulation. Those thunderstorms had cloud top temperatures near 210 ...

A landmark single-cell genomic study of microorgansims from sites across the globe is highlighting British Columbia's role as an 'oasis' of biodiversity. The findings, to be published Sunday in Nature, could also prompt scientists to redefine how the tree of life represents relationships among and between life's three domains. "British Columbia has long been recognized for its biological diversity in flora and fauna," says University of British Columbia microbiologist Steven Hallam, Canada Research Chair in Environmental Genomics and one of the study's authors. "What ...

1. An aspirin every other day may keep colon cancer away for healthy women Long-term use of alternate-day, low-dose aspirin may reduce risk for colorectal cancer in healthy women. Evidence has recently emerged that daily aspirin may help to prevent several types of cancer, including colorectal, but there is little evidence for an alternate-day dosing strategy. Between 1994 and 1996 researchers randomly assigned 38,876 women aged 45 years or older to take either 100 mg of aspirin or placebo every other day. Participants were sent annual supplies of monthly calendar packs ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study suggests that Chinese people may be at higher risk for stroke than Caucasians. The research is published in the July 16, 2013, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "While stroke is the second most-common cause of death worldwide, in China it is the leading cause of death and adult disability," said study author Chung-Fen Tsai, MD, with the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "The global impact of stroke in the decades ahead is predicted to be greatest in middle income countries, including China. ...

The vaccination programme against HPV infection began in 2008 in the UK, but only among girls, on the grounds that this would curb the spread of the infection to boys as well. But, say the authors, from the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Homerton University Hospital, and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, gay men are more than 15 times as likely to develop genital cancer, particularly anal cancer, as a result of becoming infected with HPV, as are straight men. While rates of anal cancers are higher among men who are also HIV positive - despite antiretroviral treatment ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have used vascular precursor cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to generate, in an animal model, functional blood vessels that lasted as long as nine months. In their report being published in PNAS Early Edition, the investigators describe using iPSCs – reprogrammed adult cells that have many of the characteristics of embryonic stem cells – from both healthy adults and from individuals with type 1 diabetes to generate blood vessels on the outer surface of the brain or under the skin of mice. ...

In children with fever but no other symptoms of illness, it is difficult to know whether a child has a viral infection that will resolve on its own or a potentially serious bacterial infection that requires antibiotics. Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report that they can distinguish between viral and bacterial infections in children with fever by profiling the activity of genes in a blood sample. In a small study, analyzing genes in white blood cells was more than 90 percent accurate, far better than the standard diagnostic test, ...