A Chinese study presented at the International Liver CongressTM 2013 has demonstrated the accuracy of a non-invasive test for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) diagnosis. Non Alcoholic Fatty Liver disease (NAFLD) comprises two groups of patients; one group with simple steatosis which is relatively benign and one group with NASH which may progress to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Up to now the only means of distinguishing the two was to perform a liver biopsy. Phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P-MRS), which allows non-invasive in vivo assessment ...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Wednesday 24 April 2013: New data from a number of clinical trials presented for the first time at the International Liver Congress™ 2013 demonstrate encouraging results in the use of new direct-acting antiviral agents (DAAs) for the treatment of hepatitis C. The following covers key results from the much anticipated Phase III trials conducted among HCV patients with a range of genotypes (GT 1 to 6) on DAA treatment. POSITRON A study of interferon (IFN)-ineligible, IFN-intolerant, or IFN-unwilling cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic GT 2 and ...

Resistive memory cells (ReRAM) are regarded as a promising solution for future generations of computer memories. They will dramatically reduce the energy consumption of modern IT systems while significantly increasing their performance. Unlike the building blocks of conventional hard disk drives and memories, these novel memory cells are not purely passive components but must be regarded as tiny batteries. This has been demonstrated by researchers of Jülich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA), whose findings have now been published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications. ...

Researcher Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues have now published their results in Nature Communications. "At present, researchers know very little about exactly how microglia work. At the same time, there is a lot of curiosity and high hopes among brain researchers that greater understanding of microglia could lead to entirely new drug development strategies for various brain diseases", says Johan Jakobsson, research group leader at the Division of Molecular Neurogenetics at Lund University. What the researchers have now succeeded in identifying is a deviation in the ...

An international team of scientists, including Dr Paul Brotherton from the University of Huddersfield, reveal that events after the initial migration of farmers into Europe had a major impact on the modern gene pool. The paper, published in Nature Communications, investigates a major component of the maternal population history of modern Europeans by focusing on haplogroup H mitochondrial genomes from ancient human remains. This genetic data is then compared with cultural changes taking place between the Early Neolithic (~5450 BC) and Bronze Age (~2200 BC) in Central Europe. ...

New research from the University of Southampton has found that working or travelling on an underground railway for a sustained period of time could have health implications. Previously published work suggests that working in environments such as steel mills or welding plants, which are rich in airborne metals, like iron, copper and nickel, can have damaging effects on health. However, little research has been done on the effects of working in an underground railway environment – a similarly metal-rich environment – and results of studies that have been conducted are often ...

VIDEO: The Natural Killer white blood cell in red is drawn to the cancerous B cell which has been treated with rituximab. It latches on to the side of the cell... Click here for more information. Scientists from the Manchester Collaborative Centre for Inflammation Research (MCCIR) have discovered why a particular cancer drug is so effective at killing cells. Their findings could be used to aid the design of future cancer treatments. Professor Daniel Davis and his team ...

Scientists in Mainz and Aachen have discovered a new mechanism that controls egg cell fertility and that might have future therapeutic potential. It was revealed by Professor Dr. Walter Stöcker of the Institute of Zoology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) that the blood protein fetuin-B plays an important and previously unknown role in the fertilization of oocytes. Fetuin-B, first identified in the year 2000, is formed in the liver and secreted into the blood stream. During a joint research project with researchers at RWTH Aachen University headed by Professor ...

A multicenter study led by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine shows that mild traumatic brain injury after blast exposure produces inflammation, oxidative stress and gene activation patterns akin to disorders of memory processing such as Alzheimer's disease. Their findings were recently reported in the online version of the Journal of Neurotrauma. Blast-induced traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become an important issue in combat casualty care, said senior investigator Patrick Kochanek, M.D., professor and vice chair of critical care medicine ...

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2013—Streetlights illuminate the night, shining upon roadways and sidewalks across the world, but these ubiquitous elements of the urban environment are notoriously inefficient and major contributors to light pollution that washes out the night sky. Recent innovations in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have improved the energy efficiency of streetlights, but, until now, their glow still wastefully radiated beyond the intended area. A team of researchers from Taiwan and Mexico has developed a new lighting system design that harnesses high-efficiency LEDs ...

UPTON, NY — In a paper to be published in an upcoming issue of Energy & Environmental Science (now available online), researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory describe details of a low-cost, stable, effective catalyst that could replace costly platinum in the production of hydrogen. The catalyst, made from renewable soybeans and abundant molybdenum metal, produces hydrogen in an environmentally friendly, cost-effective manner, potentially increasing the use of this clean energy source. The research has already garnered widespread recognition ...

CINCINNATI – Researchers report in Nature Genetics they have increased the number of confirmed genes linked to juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) from three to 17 – a finding that will clarify how JIA fits into the spectrum of autoimmune disorders and help identify potential treatment targets. Published April 21, the study involves an international research team that analyzed 2,816 JIA cases recruited from more than 40 pediatric rheumatology clinics. It was the largest collaborative patient population of JIA to date, including patient DNA samples from across the United ...

CINCINNATI—Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have found that targeted screening for populations with a higher estimated prevalence for hepatitis C may be cost-effective. These findings, published in the April 24, 2013, online edition of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, indicate that targeted screening for chronic hepatitis C virus infection is cost-effective when the prevalence of hepatitis C in a population exceeds 0.84 percent (84/10,000). The study further demonstrates how a screening tool, which can be incorporated into an electronic health ...

National Science Foundation-funded researchers at Purdue University have discovered that sunlit snow is the major source of atmospheric bromine in the Arctic, the key to unique chemical reactions that purge pollutants and destroy ozone. The new research also indicates that the surface snowpack above Arctic sea ice plays a previously unappreciated role in the bromine cycle and that loss of sea ice, which been occurring at an increasingly rapid pace in recent years, could have extremely disruptive effects in the balance of atmospheric chemistry in high latitudes. The ...

University of Nebraska-Lincoln materials engineers have developed a structural nanofiber that is both strong and tough, a discovery that could transform everything from airplanes and bridges to body armor and bicycles. Their findings are featured on the cover of this week's April issue of the American Chemical Society's journal, ACS Nano. "Whatever is made of composites can benefit from our nanofibers," said the team's leader, Yuris Dzenis, McBroom Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and a member of UNL's Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience. "Our ...

A first-ever vaccine created by University of Guelph researchers for gut bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism symptoms. The groundbreaking study by Brittany Pequegnat and Guelph chemistry professor Mario Monteiro appears this month in the journal Vaccine. They developed a carbohydrate-based vaccine against the gut bug, Clostridium bolteae. C. bolteae is known to play a role in gastrointestinal disorders, and it often shows up in higher numbers in the GI tracts of autistic children than in those of healthy kids. More than 90 per ...

WOODS HOLE, Mass.—The often damaging impacts of intensive agriculture on nearby streams, rivers, and their wildlife has been well documented in temperate zones, such as North America and Europe. Yet a new study in an important tropical zone—the fast-changing southern Amazon, a region marked by widespread replacement of native forest by cattle ranches and more recently croplands—suggests that at least some of those damaging impacts may be buffered by the very deep and highly permeable soils that characterize large areas of the expanding cropland. The study, led by Christopher ...

PHILADELPHIA - Deep brain stimulation (DBS) in a precise region of the brain appears to reduce caloric intake and prompt weight loss in obese animal models, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The study, reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, reinforces the involvement of dopamine deficits in increasing obesity-related behaviors such as binge eating, and demonstrates that DBS can reverse this response via activation of the dopamine type-2 receptor. "Based on this research, DBS may provide therapeutic relief to binge eating, ...

In an advance toward coping with bacteria that shrug off existing antibiotics and sterilization methods, scientists are reporting development of a new family of selective antimicrobial agents that do not rely on traditional antibiotics. Their report on these synthetic colloid particles, which can be custom-designed to recognize the shape of specific kinds of bacteria and inactivate them, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Vesselin Paunov and colleagues point out that many bacteria have developed resistance to existing antibiotics. They sought a new ...

Life on Earth may have originated not in warm tropical seas, but with weird tubes of ice — sometimes called "sea stalactites" — that grow downward into cold seawater near the Earth's poles, scientists are reporting. Their article on these "brinicles" appears in ACS' journal Langmuir. Bruno Escribano and colleagues explain that scientists know surprisingly little about brinicles, which are hollow tubes of ice that can grow to several yards in length around streamers of cold seawater under pack ice. That's because brinicles are difficult to study. The scientists set out ...

Because it has no source of energy, a dead star — known as a white dwarf — will eventually cool down and fade away. But circumstantial evidence suggests that white dwarfs can still support habitable planets, says Prof. Dan Maoz of Tel Aviv University's School of Physics and Astronomy. Now Prof. Maoz and Prof. Avi Loeb, Director of Harvard University's Institute for Theory and Computation and a Sackler Professor by Special Appointment at TAU, have shown that, using advanced technology to become available within the next decade, it should be possible to detect biomarkers ...

URBANA – Although U.S. cattle genetics are exported all over the world in the form of frozen semen, the same is not true for pigs because boar semen does not freeze well. In an attempt to improve semen storage and pig reproduction, animal scientists at the University of Illinois are looking at how sperm survives in the sow oviduct. "Many mammals and birds will store sperm for some period of time," said associate professor of animal sciences David Miller. "Pigs will store sperm for 24 to 48 hours." Sperm must be stored in species in which mating and ovulation are poorly ...

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered that humans are passing antibiotic resistance to wildlife, especially in protected areas where numbers of humans are limited. In the case of banded mongoose in a Botswana study, multidrug resistance among study social groups, or troops, was higher in the protected area than in troops living in village areas. The study also reveals that humans and mongoose appear to be readily exchanging fecal microorganisms, increasing the potential for disease transmission. "The research identifies the coupled nature of humans, ...

The newly proposed scientific project to understand the most complicated 3 pounds of material in the world — the human brain — is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. In the article, Lauren Wolf, C&EN associate editor, focuses on the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative, previously known as the Brain Activity Map project, which President Barack Obama announced earlier in April. Sometimes ...

WASHINGTON — Long waits for insurance authorization allowing psychiatric patients to be admitted to the hospital from the emergency department waste thousands of hours of physician time, given that most requests for authorization are ultimately granted. A study to be published in the May issue of Annals of Emergency Medicine argues that pre-authorization process is akin to health care "rationing by hassle factor" ("Insurance Prior Authorization Approval Does Not Substantially Lengthen the Emergency Department Length of Stay for Patients with Psychiatric Conditions"). "An ...