A new technique that involves removing the nerves connecting the kidney to the brain has shown to significantly reduce blood pressure and help lower the risk of stroke, heart and renal disease in patients. The procedure, which has very few side effects, has already shown promising results in hard-to-treat cases of high blood pressure. The technique, published in the journal Hypertension, was performed by a team led by Professor Julian Paton at the University of Bristol who found that in an animal model of hypertension removing nerves connecting the kidney to the brain ...

ANN ARBOR—A University of Michigan researcher and colleagues at the University of Georgia and elsewhere have identified the most underfunded countries in the world for biodiversity conservation. They found that 40 of the most poorly funded countries harbor 32 percent of all threatened mammalian biodiversity. Most—though not all—of the countries in greatest need of more funding are developing nations, so important gains could be made at relatively low cost, the researchers concluded. "Knowing where the need is greatest could help aid donors to direct their funding for ...

The first evidence of widespread 'modern slavery' in England for refugees and asylum seekers is revealed in a study published today. The two-year study calls for an overhaul of government policy to restore asylum seekers' right to work and ensure all workers can access basic employment rights, such as National Minimum Wage, irrespective of immigration status. Dr Stuart Hodkinson from the University of Leeds, who co-authored of the study, said: "We found that in the majority of cases, if the asylum seeker had been able to work legally then the employer or agent would ...

HOUSTON – (July 1, 2013) – The idea that worms can be seen as waveforms allowed scientists at Rice University to find new links in gene networks that control movement. The work led by Rice biochemist Weiwei Zhong, which will appear online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, involved analyzing video records of the movement of thousands of mutant worms of the species Caenorhabditis elegans to identify the neuronal pathways that drive locomotion. One result was the discovery of 87 genes that, when inactivated, caused movement ...

Washington, DC, July 1, 2013 – Pregnant women with diabetes are more than three times as likely as mothers without diabetes to become infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) before hospital discharge, according to a study in the July issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). The study aim was to investigate the extent to which pre-pregnancy and gestational diabetes are associated with MRSA infection. Researchers found that pre-pregnancy ...

System 96E became a tropical depression and quickly grew into Tropical Storm Dalila on June 30. Dalila has been hugging the coast of southwestern Mexico practically since it formed, and continues to do so on satellite imagery taken on July 1.Because of its close proximity to the coast, there's a tropical storm warning in effect for the southwestern coast of Mexico from Punta San Telmo to La Fortuna, and a Tropical Storm Watch from north of La Fortuna. That means 1 to 3 inches of rainfall expected over coastal areas of the Mexican states of Micohcan, Colima and Jaliso, and ...

There are currently 27 fires in the northeast section of Manitoba. These fires have burned over 126,000 hectares (over 311,000 acres). Showers have lowered wildfire danger levels in most areas of the province with the exception of northeastern Manitoba where conditions continue to remain dry. The hot temperatures forecasted through this coming weekend will dry forested areas and increase these danger levels. The fire weather forecast for this area is for fast-spreading, high-intensity crown fire that is very difficult to control. This natural-color satellite image was ...

(Lebanon, NH, 6/26/13) —The rapid increase in papillary thyroid cancer in the US, may not be linked to increase in occurrence, according to a head and neck surgeon at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center, instead it may be linked to an increase in the diagnosis of pre-cancerous conditions and to a person's insurance status. That is the conclusion of a paper published in Thyroid, a peer reviewed journal of the American Thyroid Association, which included the research of Senior Author Louise Davies, MD, MS, The Veteran's Administration Outcomes Group, White River ...

Researchers at UCLA's Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have successfully established the foundation for using hematopoietic (blood-producing) stem cells from the bone marrow of patients with sickle cell disease to treat the disease. The study was led by Dr. Donald Kohn, professor of pediatrics and of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. Sickle cell disease causes the body to produce red blood cells that are formed like the crescent-shaped blade of a sickle, which hinders blood flow in the blood vessels and deprives ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 1, 2013—Among the increasingly valuable roles fungi are playing in the biotechnology industry is their ability to produce enzymes capable of releasing sugars from plants, trees, and other forms of complex biomass, which can then be converted to biofuels and biobased chemicals. Advances in fungal biology and in bioengineering fungal systems industrial applications are explored in a series of articles in Industrial Biotechnology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The articles are available on the Industrial Biotechnology ...

DENVER – Personalized medicine in lung cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. The standard procedure for detection of predictive anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK)-rearrangements is fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), but FISH is both expensive and often challenging to interpret. Lung cancer is often diagnosed by cytology necessitating predictive molecular marker analyses on cytological specimens. Now research published in the August issue ...

DENVER – The implementation of personalized health care in cancer relies on the identification and characterization of cancer biomarkers and the availability of accurate detection systems and therapies for those biomarkers. Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a tyrosine kinase, is a more recently characterized cancer biomarker in non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). To identify NSCLC patients with ALK gene rearrangement in clinical trials, researchers have used the methods known as fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) or immunohistochemistry (IHC). While IHC is a less ...

DENVER – Stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) is considered the treatment of choice for early-stage non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) if patients are inoperable because of additional medical conditions. This is based on several prospective phase II trials, which reported consistently high rates of local tumor control. However, these studies only included small number of patients, the methodology of SBRT varied between the studies and SBRT was mainly practiced in specialized centers. Therefore, safety and efficacy of SBRT practiced in routine clinical practice outside ...

The Silver Fire in southern New Mexico continues to generate a lot of smoke, as seen recently on imagery from NASA's Terra satellite. The Silver Fire is burning in the Gila National Forest. As of July 1, the fire had consumed 133,625 acres. It began on June 7 from a lightning strike near Kingston, New Mexico. According to the multi-agency Incident Information System called Inciweb, the fire was 50 percent contained on July 1. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite has infrared capabilities that can detect ...

Physicians with the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine released a paper today that provides significant insight into future health conditions that women are likely to experience, and that can be detected early based on information relating to the course of pregnancy. The paper, Pregnancy as a Window to Future Health: The development of complications in pregnancy provides a new window of opportunity for early heart disease risk screening and intervention for women, acknowledges that, for most women, the demands of pregnancy on the cardiovascular and metabolic systems are ...

Typhoon Rumbia developed from a low pressure area east of the Philippines and crossed the country from east to west before moving into the South China Sea. NASA's TRMM satellite flew over Rumbia as it nears southeastern China and identified areas of heavy rainfall in the southern quadrant of the storm. On Sunday, June 30, NASA infrared satellite imagery revealed tightly curved bands of thunderstorms over the southern quadrant of the storm were wrapping into the northern quadrant of the low-level center. However, in the northwestern quadrant, the quadrant that will make ...

HOUSTON – Scientists have tracked down and quantified the diverse origins of cells that drive fibrosis, the incurable, runaway wound-healing that scars and ultimately destroys organs such as the lungs, liver and kidneys. Findings from research conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and continued at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center are reported in an advance online publication at Nature Medicine on June 30. "Answering a fundamental question about the origin of these ...

Washington, D.C.—Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in certain materials under specific low-temperature and high-pressure conditions. Research to create superconductors at higher temperatures has been ongoing for two decades with the promise of significant impact on electrical transmission. New research from a team led by Choong-Shik Yoo at Washington State University—and including Carnegie's Viktor Struzhkin, Takaki Muramatsu, ...

Ethnic segregation in nations straddling the world's steepest terrains may be reinforced by the biological tolerance different peoples have to altitude, according to one of the first studies to examine the effect of elevation on ethnic demographics. Research from Princeton University published in the journal Applied Geography suggests that people native to low-lying areas can be naturally barred from regions such as the Tibetan Plateau, the Andes or the Himalayas by altitude sickness, which is caused by low oxygen concentration in the air and can be life-threatening. ...

Vitamins, minerals, herbs and other dietary supplements are widely available in supermarkets and drug stores across the nation without a prescription, so it's no surprise that nearly half of all Americans take them. But they do carry risks, including potentially adverse interactions with prescription drugs, and some people may even use them in place of conventional medications. So it's important that primary care physicians communicate the pros and cons of supplements with their patients. In fact, both the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of ...

The pursuit that obsessed some of the world's greatest geniuses for centuries — alchemy and its quest for the "Philosopher's Stone" that would transform lead and other base metals into gold — is the topic of a new episode in the American Chemical Society Bytesize Science video series. The video, from the world's largest scientific society, is at http://www.BytesizeScience.com. It features Laurence Principe, Ph.D., a noted historian of science and expert on alchemy, which, far from being solely a misguided pseudoscience, helped set the stage for the emergence of modern ...

TEMPE, Ariz -- Knowing virtually everything about how the body's cells make transitions from one state to another – for instance, precisely how particular cells develop into multi-cellular organisms – would be a major jump forward in understanding the basics of what drives biological processes. Such a leap could open doors to far-reaching advances in medical science, bioengineering and related areas. An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University, with a partner at Imperial College London, report on taking at least a step toward better comprehension ...

Vitamin C affects whether genes are switched on or off inside mouse stem cells, and may thereby play a previously unknown and fundamental role in helping to guide normal development in mice, humans and other animals, a scientific team led by UC San Francisco researchers has discovered. The researchers found that vitamin C assists enzymes that play a crucial role in releasing the brakes that keep certain genes from becoming activated in the embryo soon after fertilization, when egg and sperm fuse. The discovery might eventually lead to the use of vitamin C to improve ...

The agriculture industry is researching new technologies to help feed the growing population. But feeding the world without harming air quality is a challenge. According to a new article in Animal Frontiers, biotechnologies increase food production and reduce harmful gas output from cattle. "We are increasing the amount of product with same input," said Clayton Neumeier, PhD student at University of California, Davis, in an interview. In the Animal Frontiers paper, Neumeier describes a recent experiment using biotechnologies. In the experiment, a test group of cattle ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Hovering about 70 light-years from Earth –– that's "next door" by astronomical standards –– is a star astronomers call HD 97658, which is almost bright enough to see with the naked eye. But the real "star" is the planet HD 97658b, not much more than twice the Earth's diameter and a little less than eight times its mass. HD 97658b is a super-Earth, a class of planet for which there is no example in our home solar system. While the discovery of this particular exoplanet is not new, determining its true size and mass is, thanks to Diana Dragomir, ...