The number of people in England adding salt to food at the table fell by more than a quarter in the five years following a national campaign, according to research published in the British Journal of Nutrition. In 2003, the UK Food Standards Agency and the Department of Health launched a national salt reduction campaign to raise public awareness of the impact of salt on health and to work with the food industry to reduce the amount of salt in processed foods. Although previous research found that the national campaign led to an overall reduction in salt intake, this ...

Novel, smart materials like shape memory alloys very often display so-called glass-like magnetism. Other smart materials with similar properties include those which, when exposed to a magnetic field, change their electrical resistance, known as manganites, or change their temperature, known as magnetocaloric materials. Kaustav Mukherjee and his colleagues from the Consortium for Scientific Research Indore in India studied a key stage in the formation of such a magnetic glass material, called Pr0.5 Ca0.5 Mn0.975 Al0.025 O3, in a paper about to be published in EPJ B. They ...

The electronics industry has a remarkable impact on the environment, yet research is devising new solutions to reduce it. Among these, a new compound with an unutterable name, the diisopropylammonium bromide (DIPAB), a new ferroelectric material created by an international team of researchers that include Massimo Capone and Gianluca Giovannetti of Istituto Officina dei Materiali at CNR and of the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste (SISSA), whose research has been just published in Science magazine. "A ferroelectric material has properties analogous ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Vaccines usually consist of inactivated viruses that prompt the immune system to remember the invader and launch a strong defense if it later encounters the real thing. However, this approach can be too risky with certain viruses, including HIV. In recent years, many scientists have been exploring DNA as a potential alternative vaccine. About 20 years ago, DNA coding for viral proteins was found to induce strong immune responses in rodents, but so far, tests in humans have failed to duplicate that success. In a paper appearing in the Jan. 27 online ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Research has suggested that compounds that give colorful fruits their rich hues, especially berries, promote health and might even prevent cancer. But for the first time, scientists have exposed extracts from numerous berries high in those pigments to human saliva to see just what kinds of health-promoting substances are likely to survive and be produced in the mouth. It's too early to name the best berry for health promotion based on this initial work. But the researchers have discovered that two families of pigments that provide berries with their colors, ...

Jena (Germany) Today, more than 500 million people are suffering from a lack of adequate protein in their diet. Each year, the number of human beings increases by 80 million, a figure which is equivalent to the present population of Germany. Thus, providing enough food, particularly sufficient protein for the increasing populace is a challenging task for societies all over the world. On a prospective basis, a progressively smaller proportion of human protein requirement can be provided by animal proteins such as meat, eggs, and milk. "However, by feeding valuable plant ...

Chapel Hill, N.C. – Biobanks are organizations that collect, store and share human specimens (e.g., blood, solid tissues, hair) for research purposes. The rise of the human genome project and of large-scale genetics studies have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of biobanks in the last decade, increasing their importance in biomedical research. But until now, biobanks in the U.S. have never been studied systematically, leaving few clear details as to how they are run or the policies and practices they use in managing their work. A new study from the University ...

Tel Aviv — Because half of all instances of hearing loss are linked to genetic mutations, advanced gene research is an invaluable tool for uncovering causes of deafness — and one of the biggest hopes for the development of new therapies. Now Prof. Karen Avraham of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University has discovered a significant mutation in a LINC family protein — part of the cells of the inner ear — that could lead to new treatments for hearing disorders. Her team of researchers, including Dr. Henning Horn and Profs. Colin Stewart and Brian Burke of ...

This press release is available in Spanish.Poultry producers can reduce bacterial cross-contamination in poultry cages by treating the cages with forced air that's been heated to 122 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. While being transported in coops on trucks, poultry that have bacteria such as Campylobacter can contaminate, through their feces, other poultry that are free of pathogens. Those disease-causing bacteria can then be passed on to the next group of birds during the next trip, and so forth, unless ...

Minimally invasive islet transplantation for patients with type 1 diabetes achieves insulin independence and reverses the progression of atherosclerosis in the first few years after transplant, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study. The research is published in the February issue of the journal Diabetes Care and is available online. Patients with diabetes, particularly women, have a substantial increased risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, according to previous research. However, future cardiac events may be prevented with intensive glycemic ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 28, 2013 – Agricultural irrigation in California's Central Valley doubles the amount of water vapor pumped into the atmosphere, ratcheting up rainfall and powerful monsoons across the interior Southwest, according to a new study by UC Irvine scientists. Moisture on the vast farm fields evaporates, is blown over the Sierra Nevada and dumps 15 percent more than average summer rain in numerous other states. Runoff to the Colorado River increases by 28 percent, and the Four Corners region experiences a 56 percent boost in runoff. While the additional ...

Donors to biobanks – vast collections of human tissue samples that scientists hope will lead to new treatments for diseases – have a right to basic information about how their donations may be used, a Michigan State University ethicist argues in a new paper. The idea behind biobanks is that a repository with hundreds of thousands of samples, each linked to medical records and other health information, can yield discoveries smaller data sets can't match. Once samples are collected, researchers in many fields can use the data repeatedly. "More and larger biobanks are ...

New Rochelle, NY, January 28, 2013—Over 4 million adults in the United States identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual and approximately 700,000 identify as transgender. An NIH-sponsored investigation by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that the health status and healthcare needs of this sizable population are poorly understood and likely inadequately met. A journal is urgently needed to support, promote, and address the unique healthcare needs of each population that comprises the LGBT community, in the United States and worldwide. LGBT Health, a new peer-reviewed ...

Chances are the only thing you remember about your first swig of alcohol is how bad the stuff tasted. What you didn't know is the person who gave you that first drink and when you had it says a lot about your predisposition to imbibe later in life. A national study by a University of Iowa-led team has found that adolescents who get their first drink from a friend are more likely to drink sooner in life, which past studies show makes them more prone to abusing alcohol when they get older. The finding is designed to help specialists predict when adolescents are likely to ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., January 27, 2013 – Most patients with an inherited heart condition known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia/cardiomyopathy (ARVD/C) don't know they have a problem until they're in their early 20s. The lack of symptoms at younger ages makes it very difficult for researchers to study how ARVD/C evolves or to develop treatments. A new stem cell-based technology created by 2012 Nobel Prize winner Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D., helps solve this problem. With this technology, researchers can generate heart muscle cells from a patient's own skin cells. ...

For purposes of their research, the scientists irradiated two separate layered systems with ultrashort laser pulses on the order of just one hundred femtoseconds (10-15 s). One sample consisted essentially of a single thin layer of ferromagnetic nickel. By contrast, a second sample of this same nickel material was coated with a non-magnetic layer of gold. Only a mere 30 nanometers (10-9 m) thick, the gold layer swallowed up the lion's share of the laser light so that barely any light ended up reaching the nickel layer. In spite of this, the nickel layer's magnetization ...

Charged particle accelerators have become crucially important to modern day life, be it in health care for cancer treatment or for answering important fundamental scientific questions like the existence of the HIGGS boson, the so called 'God particle'. In a simple picture, charged particles like electrons and protons are accelerated between two end plates across which an electrical voltage is applied. High energies need high voltages (millions and billions of volts) and long acceleration paths in giant sized machines – for instance the trillion volt machine called the 'large ...

HOUSTON – (Jan. 28, 2013) – Rice University scientists have taken an important step toward the creation of two-dimensional electronics with a process to make patterns in atom-thick layers that combine a conductor and an insulator. The materials at play – graphene and hexagonal boron nitride – have been merged into sheets and built into a variety of patterns at nanoscale dimensions. Rice introduced a technique to stitch the identically structured materials together nearly three years ago. Since then, the idea has received a lot of attention from researchers interested ...

BOULDER – Even if you live more than 1,000 miles from the nearest large city, it could be affecting your weather. In a new study that shows the extent to which human activities are influencing the atmosphere, scientists have concluded that the heat generated by everyday activities in metropolitan areas alters the character of the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems. This affects temperatures across thousands of miles, significantly warming some areas and cooling others, according to the study in Nature Climate Change. The extra "waste heat" generated from ...

Stem cells from bone marrow or fat improve recovery after stroke in rats, finds a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy. Treatment with stem cells improved the amount of brain and nerve repair and the ability of the animals to complete behavioural tasks. Stem cell therapy holds promise for patients but there are many questions which need to be answered, regarding treatment protocols and which cell types to use. This research attempts to address some of these questions. Rats were treated intravenously with stem cells or ...

Pollution from forest fires is impacting the health of people with asthma and other chronic obstructive lung diseases, finds a study in Biomed Central's open access journal Environmental Health. This study uses data from pharmacies and dispensaries to measure the increase in drugs needed to alleviate symptoms associated with pollution. Forest fires burn nearly 1000 km2 of trees in British Columbia every year. The Ministry of Environment keeps a close watch on levels of particulate matter in the air caused by these fires but it is harder to measure the impact of this ...

The connection between poor sleep, memory loss and brain deterioration as we grow older has been elusive. But for the first time, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a link between these hallmark maladies of old age. Their discovery opens the door to boosting the quality of sleep in elderly people to improve memory. UC Berkeley neuroscientists have found that the slow brain waves generated during the deep, restorative sleep we typically experience in youth play a key role in transporting memories from the hippocampus – which provides short-term ...

The spread of breast cancer to distant organs within the body, an event that often leads to death, appears in many cases to involve the loss of a key protein, according to UC San Francisco researchers, whose new discoveries point to possible targets for therapy. In the January 27, 2013 online edition of Nature Cell Biology, UCSF scientists describe for the first time how the protein, known as GATA3 — which is abnormal or absent in many cases of human breast cancer — normally acts downstream in biochemical pathways to prevent the distant spread of cancer, an event called ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Patients with early stage breast cancer who are treated with lumpectomy plus radiation have a better chance of survival compared with those who undergo mastectomy, according to Duke Medicine research. The study, which appears online Jan. 28, 2013, in the journal CANCER, demonstrates the effectiveness of breast-conserving therapies such as lumpectomy, where only the tumor and surrounding tissue are surgically removed. "Our findings support the notion that less invasive treatment can provide superior survival to mastectomy in stage I or stage II breast ...

A new analysis has found that lumpectomy plus radiation for early breast cancer may provide patients with a better chance of survival than mastectomy. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the results provide confidence in the efficacy of breast-conserving treatments even among patients with aggressive, early disease. Lumpectomy combined with radiation is a good treatment choice for women with early breast cancer; however, over the past 10 years, a growing number of women have been choosing mastectomy even for very small ...