PITTSBURGH, April 3, 2013 – A reformulated version of an anti-HIV gel developed for vaginal use was found safe and acceptable by HIV-negative men and women who used it rectally, according to a Phase I clinical trial published today in PLOS ONE. The study, led by researchers with the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded Microbicide Trials Network (MTN), tested a reduced glycerin formulation of tenofovir gel, and has spurred the development of an expanded safety study of the gel, expected to launch later this year. Rectal microbicides, gel-based antiretroviral ...

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers. In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach ...

ATLANTA – Humans' closest animal relatives, chimpanzees, have the ability to "think about thinking" – what is called "metacognition," according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University and the University at Buffalo. Michael J. Beran and Bonnie M. Perdue of the Georgia State Language Research Center (LRC) and J. David Smith of the University at Buffalo conducted the research, published in the journal Psychological Science of the Association for Psychological Science. "The demonstration of metacognition in nonhuman primates has important implications ...

VIDEO: This animation shows the seasonal change in the extent of the Arctic sea ice between March 1, 2012 and February 28, 2013. The annual cycle starts with the maximum extent... Click here for more information. Last September, at the end of the northern hemisphere summer, the Arctic Ocean's icy cover shrank to its lowest extent on record, continuing a long-term trend and diminishing to about half the size of the average summertime extent from 1979 to 2000. During the cold ...

ANN ARBOR—The rare Green Pea galaxies discovered by the general public in 2007 could help confirm astronomers' understanding of reionization, a pivotal stage in the evolution of the early universe, say University of Michigan researchers. Reionization occurred a few hundred million years after the Big Bang as the first stars were turning on and forming the first galaxies. During this period, the space between the galaxies changed from an opaque, neutral fog to a transparent charged plasma, as it is today. Plasma is gas that's electrically charged. As for how this happened, ...

Jumping silicon atoms are the stars of an atomic scale ballet featured in a new Nature Communications study from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The ORNL research team documented the atoms' unique behavior by first trapping groups of silicon atoms, known as clusters, in a single-atom-thick sheet of carbon called graphene. The silicon clusters, composed of six atoms, were pinned in place by pores in the graphene sheet, allowing the team to directly image the material with a scanning transmission electron microscope. The "dancing" movement ...

The mountain ranges of the North American Cordillera are made up of dozens of distinct crustal blocks. A new study clarifies their mode of origin and identifies a previously unknown oceanic plate that contributed to their assembly. The extensive area of elevated topography that dominates the Western reaches of North America is exceptionally broad, encompassing the coastal ranges, the Rocky Mountains and the high plateaus in between. In fact, this mountain belt consists of dozens of crustal blocks of varying age and origin, which have been welded onto the American continent ...

The initial clinical trial of a novel approach to treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – blocking production of a mutant protein that causes an inherited form of the progressive neurodegenerative disease – may be a first step towards a new era in the treatment of such disorders. Investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Washington University School of Medicine report that infusion of an antisense oligonucleotide against SOD1, the first gene to be associated with familial ALS, had no serious adverse effects and the drug was successfully distributed ...

New research out of St. Michael's Hospital has found that multiple factors independently predict what makes youth more likely to make repeat suicide-related behaviour. The study, led by Dr. Anne Rhodes, a research scientist at the hospital's Suicide Studies Research Unit, looked at whether factors such as permanent removal from the parental home by the courts due to maltreatment, neighbourhood size or income, gender, severity of first visit to an emergency department, age or having a mental disorder made youth significantly more likely to repeat suicide-related behavior. "We ...

Washington–A new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts, "Making Hard Choices: Navigating the Economic Shock of Unemployment," examines how American families cope with unexpected financial setbacks and how those periods of economic uncertainty draw down financial resources. The report studies families across race and income levels, revealing different experiences resulting from unemployment and the difficult choices many of them face. Building upon Pew's prior research, this report underscores the significance of financial resources other than income, particularly savings ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have determined that the overexpression of microRNA-155 (miR-155), a short, single strand of ribonucleic acid encoded by the miR-155 host gene, promotes the growth of blood vessels in tumors, tumor inflammation, and metastasis. As a therapeutic target, miR-155 could potentially provide a new avenue of treatment when targeted with drugs to suppress its activity. The study was published in an online issue of Oncogene in January. MiR-155, which plays an important role in various physiological and pathological processes, is considered ...

JUPITER, FL, April 3, 2013 – Human diseases caused by misfolded proteins known as prions are some of most rare yet terrifying on the planet—incurable with disturbing symptoms that include dementia, personality shifts, hallucinations and coordination problems. The most well-known of these is Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which can be described as the naturally occurring human equivalent of mad cow disease. Now, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have for the first time identified a pair of drugs already approved for human use that ...

PubMed Central may draw readership away from biomedical journal sites, with this effect increasing over time. This finding—that PubMed Central directly competes with biomedical publishers—was published online in The FASEB Journal. In the study, Phillip M. Davis shows that as articles are deposited in PubMed Central, they draw readership away from the scientific journal even when journals themselves are providing free access to the articles. Over time, this may weaken the ability of journals to build communities of interest around research papers, impede the communication ...

University of Notre Dame researchers have successfully created three-dimensional anatomical models from CT scans using 3-D printing technology, a process that holds promise for medical professionals and their patients. A paper by the researchers, "3D Printing of Preclinical X-ray Computed Tomographic Data Sets," was published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments this week. The strategy was initiated last spring by then-freshman Evan Doney, a Glynn Family Honors student in the laboratory of W. Matthew Leevy, research assistant professor at the Notre Dame Integrated ...

Coral Gables, Fla. – April 2, 2013 -- New research from the University of Miami School of Business Administration offers marketers a strategy for how best to structure free giveaways with products in order to maximize sales. The study, just published in the Journal of Marketing, shows that when a product that triggers more emotion (called affect), such as makeup, is offered with a free gift, shoppers are more likely to buy that product if the type of gift is unknown than if the type of gift is revealed. So much so, that in this case, it can up to double the purchase ...

Bottom-up synthesis of nanowires through metal-catalyzed vapor phase epitaxy is a very attractive process to generate high-quality nanowires thus providing an additional degree of freedom in design of innovative devices that extend beyond what is achievable with the current technologies. In this nano-fabrication process, nanowires grow through the condensation of atoms released from a molecular vapor (called precursors) at the surface of metallic nano-droplets. Gold is broadly used to form these nano-droplets. This self-assembly of nanowires takes place spontaneously ...

Could drug addiction treatment of the future be as simple as an on/off switch in the brain? A study in rats has found that stimulating a key part of the brain reduces compulsive cocaine-seeking and suggests the possibility of changing addictive behavior generally. The study, published in Nature, was conducted by scientists at the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the University of California, San Francisco. "This exciting study offers a new direction of research for the treatment ...

Scientists have decoded the genome of the western painted turtle, one of the most abundant turtles on Earth, finding clues to their longevity and ability to survive without oxygen during long winters spent hibernating in ice-covered ponds. Understanding the natural mechanisms turtles use to protect the heart and brain from oxygen deprivation may one day improve treatments for heart attacks or strokes, the researchers say. Both can lead to severe disability or death within minutes in patients deprived of oxygen. The research team includes scientists at Washington University ...

Consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs) offer low premiums but high deductibles on the premise that patients who are faced with deductibles of $1,000 or more for individual coverage (or twice that for family coverage) will shop around for the best price for the health care. In practice, however, that's not the case, according to a new study by the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and the RAND Corporation. Examining the consumer decisions with and without CDHPs when receiving nine common outpatient services (such as office visits, chest x-rays and ...

An instrument that will measure the composition of Mars' upper atmosphere has been integrated to NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft. MAVEN has a scheduled launch date of Nov. 18. Engineers and scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. in collaboration with partners at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Battel Engineering, Scottsdale, Ariz.; and AMU Engineering, Miami, Fla. built the Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer (NGIMS) instrument. "The NGIMS team is delighted to provide this instrument to the MAVEN ...

WASHINGTON--The first published results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), a major physics experiment operating on the International Space Station, were announced today by the AMS collaboration spokesman, Nobel Laureate Samuel Ting. The result is the most precise measurement to date of the ratio of positrons to electrons in cosmic rays. Measurements of this key ratio may eventually provide the world with our first glimpse into dark matter. The AMS experiment, developed under the leadership of Professor Ting, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and ...

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, Iowa State University, and the University of Crete in Greece have found a new way to switch magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than currently used in magnetic memory technologies. Magnetic switching is used to encode information in hard drives, magnetic random access memory and other computing devices. The discovery, reported in the April 4 issue of Nature, potentially opens the door to terahertz and faster memory speeds. Ames Laboratory physicist Jigang Wang and his team used short laser pulses ...

NORTHFIELD, ILL.— The emergence of molecular diagnostic testing in lung cancer offers new hope for patients battling the number one cancer killer in the United States and abroad. Now, for the first time after a decade of biomarker testing in lung cancer, a uniform approach for testing for the EGFR mutation and ALK rearrangement along with the availability of targeted therapies offer lung cancer patients the chance for improved quality of life and more time with their loved ones. The College of American Pathologists (CAP), the International Association for the Study of ...

VIDEO: A new study finds that newlyweds who are more satisfied with marriage are more likely to gain weight, according to psychologist Andrea L. Meltzer, lead researcher and an assistant professor... Click here for more information. On average, young newlyweds who are satisfied with their marriage gain weight in the early years after they exchange vows, putting them at increased risk for various health problems related to being overweight. That is the finding of a new study ...

A team of Virginia Tech researchers has discovered a way to extract large quantities of hydrogen from any plant, a breakthrough that has the potential to bring a low-cost, environmentally friendly fuel source to the world. "Our new process could help end our dependence on fossil fuels," said Y.H. Percival Zhang, an associate professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering "Hydrogen is one of the most important biofuels of the future." Zhang and his team have succeeded in using xylose, the most ...