SEATTLE – A second large, prospective study by scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has confirmed the link between high blood concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids and an increased risk of prostate cancer. Published July 11 in the online edition of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the latest findings indicate that high concentrations of EPA, DPA and DHA – the three anti-inflammatory and metabolically related fatty acids derived from fatty fish and fish-oil supplements – are associated with a 71 percent increased risk of high-grade prostate ...

OTTAWA, July 10, 2013—A new study by a Canadian Museum of Nature scientist helps answer a long-standing question in palaeontology—how numerous species of large, plant-eating dinosaurs could co-exist successfully over geological time. Dr. Jordan Mallon, a post-doctoral fellow at the museum, tackled the question by measuring and analyzing characteristics of nearly 100 dinosaur skulls recovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta, Canada. The specimens now reside in major fossil collections across the world, including that of the Canadian Museum of Nature. The work ...

A new study of HIV infection by UC San Francisco researchers points to changes in intestinal bacteria as a possible explanation for why successfully treated HIV patients nonetheless prematurely experience life-shortening chronic diseases. These changes in gut bacteria may perpetuate inflammation initially triggered by the body's immune response to HIV, according to the study, reported online July 10 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. In recent years, such persistent inflammation has been proposed as a cause of the early onset of common chronic diseases found ...

The combination of smoking and heavy drinking speeds up cognitive decline, according to new research published in the British Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers from UCL (University College London) found that smokers who drank alcohol heavily had a 36% faster cognitive decline compared to non-smoking moderate drinkers. Smoking and heavier alcohol consumption often co-occur, and their combined effect on cognition may be larger than the sum of their individual effects. The research team assessed 6,473 adults (4,635 men and 1,838 women) aged between 45 and 69 years old ...

Yoga can improve mood and mental wellbeing among prisoners, an Oxford University study suggests, and may also have an effect on impulsive behaviour. The researchers found that prisoners after a ten-week yoga course reported improved mood, reduced stress and were better at a task related to behaviour control than those who continued in their normal prison routine. 'We found that the group that did the yoga course showed an improvement in positive mood, a decrease in stress and greater accuracy in a computer test of impulsivity and attention,' say Dr Amy Bilderbeck and ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- There are several ways to "trap" a beam of light — usually with mirrors, other reflective surfaces, or high-tech materials such as photonic crystals. But now researchers at MIT have discovered a new method to trap light that could find a wide variety of applications. The new system, devised through computer modeling and then demonstrated experimentally, pits light waves against light waves: It sets up two waves that have the same wavelength, but exactly opposite phases — where one wave has a peak, the other has a trough — so that the waves cancel each ...

DURHAM, N.H., July 10, 2013 – A study by scientists with the U.S. Forest Service, Harvard University and partners suggests that trees are responding to higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels by becoming more efficient at using water. The study, "Increase in forest water-use efficiency as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rise," was published on-line today in the journal Nature. Dave Hollinger, a plant physiologist with the U.S. Forest Service's Northern Research Station, is a co-author with lead author Trevor Keenan of Harvard University and colleagues from ...

Children who receive a vaccine to prevent blood and ear infections, appear to be reducing the spread of pneumonia to the rest of the population, especially their grandparents and other older adults. Results of a new Vanderbilt study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and published in the July 11 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine show infant vaccination against pneumococcal bacteria since 2000 has reduced pneumonia hospitalization by more than 10 percent across the board, with the most significant reductions at the extreme ends of ...

Every cell in an organism's body has the same copy of DNA, yet different cells do different things; for example, some function as brain cells, while others form muscle tissue. How can the same DNA make different things happen? A major step forward is being announced today that has implications for our understanding of many genetically-linked diseases, such as autism. Scientists know that much of what a gene does and produces is regulated after it is turned on. A gene first produces a molecule called RNA, to which tiny proteins called RNA binding proteins (RBPs) bind ...

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft recently provided the first complete pictures of the solar system's downwind region, revealing a unique and unexpected structure. Researchers have long theorized that, like a comet, a "tail" trails the heliosphere, the giant bubble in which our solar system resides, as the heliosphere moves through interstellar space. The first IBEX images released in 2009 showed an unexpected ribbon of surprisingly high energetic neutral atom (ENA) emissions circling the upwind side of the solar system. With the collection of additional ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (July 10, 2013) – Four-year-olds with shorter than average sleep times have increased rates of "externalizing" behavior problems, reports a study in the July Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, the official journal of the Society for Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Preschool children with shorter nighttime sleep duration had higher odds of parent-reported overactivity, anger, aggression, impulsivity, tantrums, and annoying behaviors," ...

Chemists from North Carolina State University have performed a DNA-based logic-gate operation within a human cell. The research may pave the way to more complicated computations in live cells, as well as new methods of disease detection and treatment. Logic gates are the means by which computers "compute," as sets of them are combined in different ways to enable computers to ultimately perform tasks like addition or subtraction. In DNA computing, these gates are created by combining different strands of DNA, rather than a series of transistors. However, thus far DNA computation ...

AURORA, Colo. (July 10, 2013) – Rates of angiography and percutaneous coronary interventions were significantly lower among Medicare Advantage beneficiaries when compared to those covered by Medicare fee-for-service, according to a study by a University of Colorado School of Medicine physician published in the July 10 issue of JAMA. The study, which included nearly 6 million Medicare Advantage and Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries from 12 states, also found that geographic variation in procedure rates was substantial for both payment types. "Treatment of cardiovascular ...

According to the World Health Organization, 80% of blindness is preventable or treatable — but it remains a severe health concern across the globe, even in industrialized countries. Now hope is on the horizon — especially if countries are willing to emulate Israel's approach to eye health, says Prof. Michael Belkin of the Goldschleger Eye Research Institute at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center in a new study published in the American Journal of Ophthalmology. In the last decade, rates of preventable blindness in Israel have been ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Fewer Americans may be feeling the blues, with rates of depression in people over 50 on the decline, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study. Between 1998 and 2008, rates of severe depression fell among the majority of older adults, especially the elderly, who have historically been a higher risk group for depression, new findings show. Meanwhile, late middle agers between ages 55-59 appeared to experience increased depression over the 10 year period. The nationally representative study appears in the Journal of General Internal ...

NEW YORK, JULY 10, 2013 — Researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, together with collaborators in Germany, have developed a new method for identifying the cell of origin of intracellular and secreted proteins within multicellular environments. The technique, named cell type specific labeling using amino acid precursors (CTAP), exploits the inability of vertebrate cells to synthesize essential amino acids normally required for growth and homeostasis. The research was published online in the journal Nature Methods on June 30, 2013. This technological advance ...

Everyone knows that as we grow older our bones become more fragile. Now a team of U.S. and German scientists led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley has shown that this bone-aging process can be significantly accelerated through deficiency of vitamin D - the sunshine vitamin. Vitamin D deficiency is a widespread medical condition that has been linked to the health and fracture risk of human bone on the basis of low calcium intake and reduced bone density. ...

New research in the Journal of Newborns & Infant Nursing Reviews concludes that so-called "kangaroo care" (KC), the skin-to-skin and chest-to-chest touching between baby and mother, offers developmentally appropriate therapy for hospitalized preterm infants. In the article, "Kangaroo Care as a Neonatal Therapy," Susan Ludington-Hoe, RN, CNM, PhD, FAAN, from Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing, describes how KC delivers benefits beyond bonding and breastfeeding for a hospital's tiniest newborns. "KC is now considered an essential ...

Preparing semiconductor quantum dots is sometimes more of a black art than a science. That presents an obstacle to further progress in, for example, creating better solar cells or lighting devices, where quantum dots offer unique advantages that would be particularly useful if they could be used as basic building blocks for constructing larger nanoscale architectures. Andrew Greytak, a chemist in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Carolina, is leading a research team that's making the process of synthesizing quantum dots much more systematic. ...

Today, the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) announced that its scientists have successfully completed the first full-scale simulation of an operating nuclear reactor. CASL is modeling nuclear reactors on supercomputers to help researchers better understand reactor performance with much higher reliability than previously available methods, with the goal of ultimately increasing power output, extending reactor life, and reducing waste. Simulation results from the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA) program, developed by CASL, ...

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered that a protein used by cancer cells to evade death also plays a vital role in heart health. This dual role complicates efforts to develop cancer drugs that target the protein, but may lead to new therapies for heart muscle damage. The research appeared in the June 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development. The protein, MCL1, is currently the focus of widespread cancer drug development efforts. MCL1 is best known as an inhibitor of death via the cell's suicide pathway in a process called apoptosis. ...

Cyberbullying in the college environment can pose serious consequences for students' living and learning environments, including physical endangerment, according to newly published research by a UT Arlington associate education professor. Jiyoon Yoon, director of the Early Childhood – Grade 6 Program for the UT Arlington College of Education and Health Professions, co-authored the paper "Cyberbullying Presence, Extent, and Forms in a Midwestern Post-secondary Institution," which appears in the June 2013 issue of Information Systems Education Journal. The researchers ...

Thresher sharks hunt schooling sardines in the waters off a small coral island in the Philippines by rapidly slapping their tails hard enough to stun or kill several of the smaller fish at once, according to research published July 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Simon Oliver of the Thresher Shark Research and Conservation Project, and colleagues from other institutions. The researchers tracked shark activity with handheld video cameras and analyzed 25 instances of tail-slapping to stun prey. Sharks seemed to initiate the behavior by drawing their pectoral fins ...

On July 9, 2013, at 11:09 a.m. EDT, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later. These particles cannot travel through the atmosphere to harm humans on Earth, but they can affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 375 miles per second, which is a fairly ...

The population of the critically endangered large primate known as the drill (Mandrillus leucophaeus) has been largely reduced to a few critical habitat areas in Cameroon, according to a recently published study by researchers with the San Diego Zoo's Institute for Conservation Research. The study highlights the challenges faced by this species as its living area becomes ever more fragmented by human disturbance. In addition, the report directs conservation efforts towards key areas where the populations continue to survive and thrive. "The drill is one of Africa's ...