Taking iron daily during pregnancy is associated with a significant increase in birth weight and a reduction in risk of low birth weight, finds a study published on bmj.com today. The effects were seen for iron doses up to 66 mg per day. The World Health Organization currently recommends a dose of 60 mg per day for pregnant women. Iron deficiency is the most widespread nutritional deficiency in the world. It is the most common cause of anaemia during pregnancy, especially in low and middle income countries, affecting an estimated 32 million pregnant women globally in ...

The efficient conversion of sunlight into useful energy is one of the challenges which stand in the way of meeting the world's increasing energy demand in a clean, sustainable way without relying on fossil fuels. Photosynthetic organisms, such as plants and some bacteria, have mastered this process: In less than a couple of trillionths of a second, 95 percent of the sunlight they absorb is whisked away to drive the metabolic reactions that provide them with energy. The efficiency of photovoltaic cells currently on the market is around 20 percent. What hidden mechanism does ...

Both the UK and Canada have experienced huge falls in diabetes-related mortality since the mid-1990s, with the result that the gap in mortality risk between those with and without diabetes has narrowed substantially. The findings are in new research published in Diabetologia, the Journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD), and written by Dr Lorraine Lipscombe, Women's College Hospital, Women's College Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada, and Adjunct Scientist, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, Toronto, Canada; and Dr Marcus Lind, ...

Patients transferred to hospital via helicopter ambulance tend to have a higher survival rate than those who take the more traditional road route, despite having more severe injuries. The research, published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care suggests that air ambulances are both effective and worthy of investment. Helicopters have been used as emergency ambulances for the past 40 years. For much of that time there has been ongoing debate about the cost of the service compared to the benefit in saving lives. The TraumaRegister DGU® of the German ...

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience Agency matters! Social preferences in the three-person ultimatum game The young field of "neureconomics" has shown that humans have a well-developed, innate sense of justice, presumably due to our evolutionary history as social animals. Johanna Alexopoulos and colleagues from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria, here show that two key variables determine whether we feel that a reward has been fairly distributed: how much we received compared to our peers, and how much influence we had over the distribution. Volunteers who were allowed ...

Patients given a clot-busting drug within six hours of a stroke are more likely to have a long-lasting recovery than those who do not receive the treatment, new research has found. A study of more than 3000 patients reviewed the effects of the drug rt-PA, which is given intravenously to patients who have suffered an ischaemic stroke. The international trial, led by the University of Edinburgh, found that 18 months after being treated with the drug, more stroke survivors were able to look after themselves. Patients who received rt-PA had fewer long-term problems with ...

The death of individual species is not the only concern for biologists worried about groups of animals, such as frogs or the "big cats," going extinct. University of California, Berkeley, researchers have found that lack of new emerging species also contributes to extinction. "Virtually no biologist thinks about the failure to originate as being a major factor in the long term causes of extinction," said Charles Marshall, director of the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology and professor of integrative biology. "But we found that a decrease in the origin of new species ...

Raising a child is not cheap. Now try raising one on a fixed income and long past the age one associates with parenthood: 65 years and older. More than 300,000 grandparents in California have primary responsibility for their grandchildren, and of this group, almost 65,000 are over the age of 65. More than 20,000 care for their grandkids without any extended family assistance at home. A new study from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development shows that these families —older adults raising grandchildren alone ...

Washington, DC – One of the largest clinical trials done in infants with congenital (present at birth) heart diseases, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, shows that the increasingly common practice of using the drug clopidogrel (Plavix®) to reduce shunt-related blood flow issues is not effective in the dose studied. "Once again, pediatric-specific research shows that newborns and infants are not little adults," said David Wessel, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Children's National Medical Center, and lead author on the international study published in the June ...

Picture two light beams intersecting one another in space. When the beams touch one another, does the light bend? Reflect? Combine into a single beam? The answer, of course, is the light beams do nothing; they simply continue on their path. That is because in most media — including air, water, and vacuums — particles of quantized light beams called photons do not interact. But in certain crystalline materials and with a powerful enough laser, it is possible to make photons interact with one another and take on a special set of characteristics. Known as nonlinear optical ...

Mealybugs only eat plant sap, but sap doesn't contain all the essential amino acids the insects need to survive. Luckily, the bugs have a symbiotic relationship with two species of bacteria – one living inside the other in a situation unique to known biology – to manufacture the nutrients sap doesn't provide. The net result: The bacteria get a comfy mealybug home, and the bugs get the nutrition they need to live. University of Montana microbiologist John McCutcheon describes such mutually beneficial relationships used to solve life's little problems as "almost hilariously ...

Scientists have discovered the survival secret to a genetic mutation that stokes leukemia cells, solving an evolutionary riddle and paving the way to a highly targeted therapy for leukemia. In a paper published today in Cell, researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center describe how a mutated protein, called Fbxw7, behaves differently when expressed in cancer cells versus healthy cells. "Fbxw7 is essential for making blood cells, so the big mystery is why a mutation on a gene so important for survival would persist," says lead author Iannis Aifantis, PhD, chair of pathology ...

San Francisco, CA. (June 20, 2013) – Residents in anesthesiology training programs have high rates of burnout and depression, reports a survey study in the July issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). The findings raise concerns that, "In addition to effects on the health of anesthesiology trainees, burnout and depression may also affect patient care and safety," write Dr Gildasio S. de Oliveira, Jr, and colleagues of Northwestern University, Chicago. Burnout and Depression Are Common in Anesthesia Trainees… The ...

San Francisco, CA. (June 20, 2013) – Retention of guidewires used to place central venous catheters (CVCs) is a complication that is considered always preventable—but nevertheless still happens, according to a report in the July issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS). Dr Andrea Vannucci and colleagues report their hospital's experience of four patients with retained guidewires, and analyze risk factors for these rare, preventable medical errors. A pair of accompanying editorials support the need for more ...

WASHINGTON —More than three-quarters (81.8 percent) of unscheduled admissions to the hospital now come through the emergency department, which is a sharp increase from the previous decade when only 64.5 percent of unscheduled admissions came through the ER. A study, published early online this week in the journal Medical Care, re-confirms recent findings by the RAND Corporation highlighting the growing role emergency physicians play in health care beyond the emergency department ("Changes in the Source of Unscheduled Hospitalizations in the United States"). "Although ...

VIDEO: This time-lapse movie shows a solar eruption that happened on June 7, 2011. At lower right, material blasts outward from the sun and then splashes down again, creating dramatic flashes... Click here for more information. On June 7, 2011, our Sun erupted, blasting tons of hot plasma into space. Some of that plasma splashed back down onto the Sun's surface, sparking bright flashes of ultraviolet light. This dramatic event may provide new insights into how young stars ...

Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in in the Earth's upper atmosphere in 1958, space scientists have believed that these belts consisted of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions, and an outer ring of high-energy electrons. However, in February of this year, a team of scientists reported in the journal Science the surprising discovery of a previously unknown third radiation ring. This narrow ring had briefly circled the Earth between the inner and outer rings in September ...

A team of researchers from Texas and Colorado has identified a variety of factors that influence the likelihood of E. coli contamination of spinach on farms prior to harvest. Their research is published in the July 2013 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. "Microbial contamination of produce seems strongly influenced by the time since the last irrigation, the workers' personal hygiene and the field's use prior to planting of produce," says first author Sangshin Park of Texas A&M University, College Station. "These factors, together with the role ...

"Enhancing student engagement has been identified as the key to addressing problems of low achievement, high levels of student misbehavior, alienation, and high dropout rates." – Pitt professor Ming-Te Wang PITTSBURGH—A student who shows up on time for school and listens respectfully in class might appear fully engaged to outside observers, including teachers. But other measures of student engagement, including the student's emotional and cognitive involvement with the course material, may tell a different story—one that could help teachers recognize students who are ...

Bacterial DNA may integrate into the human genome more readily in tumors than in normal human tissue, according to a new study from the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Institute for Genome Sciences. Researchers analyzed genomic sequencing data available from the Human Genome Project, the 1,000 Genomes Project and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). They considered the phenomenon of lateral gene transfer (LGT), the transmission of genetic material between organisms in the absence of sex. Scientists have already shown that bacteria can transfer DNA to the genome ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke University biomedical engineers and genome researchers have developed a proof-of-principle approach using light to detect infections before patients show symptoms. The approach was demonstrated in human samples, and researchers are now developing the technique for placement on a chip, which could provide fast, simple and reliable information about a patient. A diagnostic device based on this chip also could be made portable. The researchers developed a silver-based nanoparticle that homes in on a specific molecular marker that spills into the bloodstream ...

No matter how we jump, roll, sit, or lie down, our brain manages to maintain a visual representation of the world that stays upright relative to the pull of gravity. But a new study of rider experiences on the Hong Kong Peak Tram, a popular tourist attraction, shows that specific features of the environment can dominate our perception of verticality, making skyscrapers appear to fall. The study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The Hong Kong Peak Tram to Victoria Peak is a popular way to survey the Hong Kong ...

Memphis, Tenn. (June 20, 2013) – Inflammation in the kidney is a serious, common issue among adults and children in North America. Finding noninvasive ways to properly diagnose, monitor and treat the inflammation may be getting easier thanks to research by Robert J. Wyatt, MD, professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC). Dr. Wyatt is co-author of a Medical Progress report titled, "IgA Nephropathy" in this week's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. His co-author is Bruce A. Julian, MD, in the Department ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- As temperatures go up, bison get smaller. Joseph Craine, research assistant professor in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University, examined how climate change during the next 50 years will affect grazing animals such as bison and cattle in the Great Plains. The study, "Long-term climate sensitivity of grazer performance: a cross-site study," was recently published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE. "Bison are one of our most important conservation animals and hold a unique role in grasslands in North America," Craine said. ...

NEW YORK (June 20, 2013) -- The 9/11 attacks on America appear to have caused about one million former smokers across the country to take up the habit again and maintain it, according to a Weill Cornell Medical College public health study. The analysis, published in the June 20 issue of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy, is the first to look at the net costs to society of terrorism-induced smoking in the United States after 9/11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "This helps us better understand what the real costs of such disasters are in human and economic ...