Thirty percent of severe alcoholics develop liver disease, but scientists have not been able to explain why only a subset is at risk. A research team from Northwestern University and Rush University Medical Center now has a possible explanation: disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms can push those vulnerable over the edge to disease. The team studied mice that essentially were experiencing what shift workers or people with jet lag suffer: their internal clocks were out of sync with the natural light-dark cycle. Another group of mice had circadian disruption due to a faulty ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- An eight-week intervention involving 141 preschoolers in a Head Start program and their parents produced significant improvements in the children's behavior and brain functions supporting attention and reduced levels of parental stress that, in turn, improved the families' quality of life. The findings -- from the first phase of a long-term research project by University of Oregon neuroscientists that will monitor the families over time -- appear this week online in advance of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The ...

MADISON — We rely on our physical environment for many things – clean water, land for crops or pastures, storm water absorption, and recreation, among others. Yet it has been challenging to figure out how to sustain the many benefits people obtain from nature — so-called "ecosystem services" — in any given landscape because an improvement in one may come at the cost of another. Two ecologists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison report this week (July 1) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a novel approach to analyzing the production and location ...

Baltimore, MD – June 28, 2013. Acupuncture, when used as a complementary or adjuvant therapy for in vitro fertilization (IVF), may be beneficial depending on the baseline pregnancy rates of a fertility clinic, according to research from the University of Maryland School of Medicine. The analysis from the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Medicine is published in the June 27 online edition of the journal Human Reproduction Update. "Our systematic review of current acupuncture/IVF research found that for IVF clinics with baseline pregnancy rates higher than ...

NASA successfully completed two pre-vibration solar array deployment tests of the Global Precipitation Measurement satellite on June 6 and June 15, 2013. "Cross your fingers. Cross your toes," said Art Azarbarzin, GPM project manager, as he watched engineers take their places around the GPM Core satellite, set up on its end in the middle of the clean room. A loud hiss filled the room as engineers turned on air hoses. The hoses pumped air through tubes attached to the solar panels' supports and out of hockey puck-shaped coasters. Azarbarzin explained that the support ...

A key brain structure that regulates emotions works differently in preschoolers with depression compared with their healthy peers, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The differences, measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), provide the earliest evidence yet of changes in brain function in young children with depression. The researchers say the findings could lead to ways to identify and treat depressed children earlier in the course of the illness, potentially preventing problems later in life. "The ...

While public health officials around the world are on alert about the pandemic potential of new disease threats, a team that includes Penn State University biologist Marcel Salathé is developing innovative new systems and techniques to track the spread of infectious diseases, with the help of news websites, blogs, and social media. Salathé will publish an article in the 1 July 2013 issue of th New England Journal of Medicine, with colleagues from the Harvard Medical School, describing the advantages and challenges of "digital epidemiology" -- a new field of increasing importance ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Cerebral aneurysms of all sizes—even small ones below seven millimeters—are 12 times more likely to rupture if they are growing in size, according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. A cerebral aneurysm is a balloon-like bulge in a weakened blood vessel in the brain. If an aneurysm ruptures, blood is leaked into or around the brain, which can cause brain damage or death. According to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, an estimated 6 million people in the United States have an unruptured brain aneurysm, or 1 in 50 people. Ruptured ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – H7N9 pneumonia is characterized by imaging findings that differentiate it from other types of pneumonia, including rapidly progressive changes in the lungs and pulmonary connective tissues, according to the first study to describe radiologic findings in the disease. The results are published online in the journal Radiology. "The severity of these findings is associated with the severity of the clinical condition of the patients," said study co-author Zhiyong Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Radiology at Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center ...

Children from low-income families tend to do worse at school than their better-off peers. Now a new study of a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of children from across the United States has identified poor planning skills as one reason for the income-achievement gap, which can emerge as early as kindergarten and continue through high school. The study, by researchers at Cornell University, appears in the journal Child Development. "Low-income children appear to have more difficulty accomplishing planning tasks efficiently, and this, in turn, partially ...

The strain of cholera that has sickened thousands in Haiti came from a single source and was not repeatedly introduced to the island over the past three years as some have thought, according to a new study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The results of this latest study are consistent with earlier findings that indicate Vibrio cholerae bacteria were introduced to Haiti by United nations soldiers between July and October 2010, when Nepalese soldiers arrived to assist recovery efforts after the January 2010 earthquake ...

In many ways, the evolution of Chinese agriculture over the past 40 years is a remarkable success story. Spurred by investments in research and government subsidies for fertilizers and other farm technologies, China now feeds 22% of the world's population on just 9% of its total arable land. But as a special collection of papers in the July-August issue of the Journal of Environmental Quality (JEQ) points out, these achievements have come at a cost. Massive losses of nutrients from croplands and manure from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) have polluted ...

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's could be better understood thanks to insight into proteins linked to such conditions, a study suggests. Scientists studying thread-like chains of protein – called amyloid fibres – have found that low levels of these proteins may cause more harm to health than high levels. These rarely formed protein chains, which have been linked with dozens of diseases, are produced as a result of a genetic flaw or changes in body chemistry brought about by ageing. When this happens, short fibres are formed which become sticky and attract ...

Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence. "Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University. The ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (JULY 1, 2013). Researchers from The Tel-Aviv Medical Center found delays in diagnosis of cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) averaging 2 years in 42 patients who eventually underwent surgery. This is an important finding, because previous studies have shown that early diagnosis and treatment of CSM lead to better outcomes. The majority of patients initially sought a diagnosis for their symptoms from family physicians, who arrived at a correct diagnosis in only 4.8% of cases and never at the first clinic visit. Many other patients initially consulted ...

Potential gene therapy for Sickle cell disease Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in hemoglobin (HBB) that deform red blood cells. A small number of patients have been successfully treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation; however, there are several drawbacks and complications associated with this procedure, including graft vs. host disease and long-term immune suppression. Many of complications could potentially be avoided by the use of autologous HSC transplant, which uses patient cells that ...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is an autosomal recessive disorder caused by mutations in hemoglobin (HBB) that deform red blood cells. A small number of patients have been successfully treated with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation; however, there are several drawbacks and complications associated with this procedure, including graft vs. host disease and long-term immune suppression. Many of complications could potentially be avoided by the use of autologous HSC transplant, which uses patient cells that have been treated genetically modified to replace ...

Malaria, a mosquito-born infectious disease, kills over 600,000 people every year. Research has focused on the development of a vaccine to prevent the disease; however, many malaria vaccines targeting parasite antigens have failed because the antigen targets are highly variable. Based on the observation that low-density infections can induce antibody-independent immunity to different malaria strains, Michael Good and colleagues at Griffith University in Australia created a vaccine using blood-stage malaria parasites that were attenuated with a chemical agent that keeps ...

Of the many negative stereotypes that exist about older adults, the most common is that they are forgetful, senile and prone to so-called "senior moments." In fact, while cognitive processes do decline with age, simply reminding older adults about ageist ideas actually exacerbates their memory problems, reveals important new research from the USC Davis School of Gerontology. The study, forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science, is an extension of the idea of "stereotype threat" — that when people are confronted with negative stereotypes about a group with which ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, July 1st 2013 – The very system that is meant to protect the body from invasion may be a traitor. These new findings of a study, led by investigators at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), reveal that infection-fighting white blood cells play a role in activating cancer cells and facilitating their spread to secondary tumours. This research, published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation has significant implications for both the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. ...

The forest we are used to looking at is not at all in equilibrium. Since the Ice Age, a number of plants have been 'missing' in Northern Europe, i.e. species that have not yet arrived. The same applies in many other parts of the world. Similarly, there is evidence that -- even today -- it often takes a very long time before plants follow when glaciers retreat, or the climate changes. In future, such disequilibrium will become the norm in the plant communities on Earth. This has been demonstrated by a new synthesis carried out by two researchers at Aarhus University -- Professor ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Studies have shown that children with autism often struggle socially and now new research suggests that a corresponding lack of motor skills – including catching and throwing – may further contribute to that social awkwardness. The findings, published in the July issue of Adapted Physical Activity Quarterly, add to the growing body of research highlighting the link between autism and motor skill deficits. Lead author Megan MacDonald is an assistant professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University. She is an expert ...

BACKGROUND The Alzheimer's Association projects that the number of people living with Alzheimer's disease will soar from 5 million to 13.8 million by 2050 unless scientists develop new ways to stop the disease. Current medications do not treat Alzheimer's or stop it from progressing; they only temporarily lessen symptoms, such as memory loss and confusion. Current Alzheimer's drugs aim to reduce the amyloid plaques—sticky deposits that build up in the brain--that are a visual trademark of the disease. The plaques are made of long fibers of a protein called Amyloid ...

DALLAS, July 1, 2013 — DNA fragments in your blood may someday help doctors quickly learn if chest pain means you have narrowed heart arteries, according to a new study published in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. The study involved 282 patients, ages 34 to 83, who reported chest pain and were suspected of having coronary artery disease. Researchers used computed tomography imaging to look for hardened, or calcified, buildup in the blood vessels that supply the heart. Blood samples also were tested for bits of ...

KUALA LUMPUR—July 1, 2013—The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (EGPAF) welcomes the World Health Organization (WHO)'s new HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention guidelines. For the first time, the 2013 guidelines combine recommendations across the continuum of HIV care and prevention programs, including expanding treatment eligibility for HIV-positive pregnant women, mothers, and children. These recommendations signify a major step forward in the global effort to achieve an AIDS-free generation, but will require a significant shift in current implementation efforts. ...