This press release is available in Spanish. VIDEO: Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have developed a new system which improves the ability of a GPS to determine a vehicle’s position as compared to that of conventional... Click here for more information. Researchers at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid have developed a new system which improves the ability of a GPS ...

Troy, N.Y. – A new study from engineers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of California, Berkeley, pairs light and genetics to give researchers a powerful new tool for manipulating cells. Results of the study, published in the journal Nature Methods, show how blue light can be used as a switch to prompt targeted proteins to accumulate into large clusters. This process of clustering, or oligomerization, is commonly employed by nature to turn on or turn off specific signaling pathways used in cells' complex system of communications. The new study details ...

More and more opioids are being prescribed for pain relief in Germany. This is the conclusion arrived at by Ingrid Schubert, Peter Ihle, and Rainer Sabatowski, whose study of a sample of inhabitants of the state of Hesse with health insurance from a large statutory provider is published in the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2013; 110(4): 45-51). Behind this study lies the intention to improve pain treatment with opioids, particularly for patients with cancer. Prescribing too little results in inadequate alleviation of pain, while ...

SHREWSBURY, MA -- A study published today in the Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism presented compelling data showing the consumption of both high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and sucrose (table sugar) at levels consistent with average daily consumption do not increase liver fat in humans, a leading cause of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). The findings also add to an already well-established body of science that high fructose corn syrup and table sugar are metabolically equivalent. Increased fat levels in the liver and muscle tissue have ...

When is it time for parents to back away? A new study shows that college students with overcontrolling parents are more likely to be depressed and less satisfied with their lives. This so-called helicopter parenting style negatively affects students' well-being by violating their need to feel both autonomous and competent. The work, by Holly Schiffrin and colleagues from the University of Mary Washington in the United States, is published online in Springer's Journal of Child and Family Studies. Parental overinvolvement may lead to negative outcomes in children, including ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Researchers at Mayo Clinic have discovered an abnormal protein that accumulates in the brains of many patients affected with two common neurodegenerative disorders — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, and frontotemporal dementia. They say their findings have uncovered a potentially new therapeutic target and biomarker that would allow clinicians to confirm diagnosis of the diseases. The study is published online today in the journal Neuron. The Mayo research team, led by scientists at Mayo Clinic's campus in ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – New Geology science posted online ahead of print on 7 February 2013 draws on data from several sites in the U.S., as well as work in Christchurch, New Zealand, Argentina, South Australia, Japan, the southeastern Pacific, South Africa, and Mars. Tectonics, flooding, carbon storage, fossils, earthquakes, aeolian transport, and volcanoes are discussed. Brief highlights follow. Papers cover 1. The sedimentary fingerprint of the 2011 Mississippi River flood across the Louisiana coast 2. Evidence of extinction in the Confusion Range in western Utah 3. ...

Conservatives and liberals don't just differ when it comes to politics, they may also make different purchases at the grocery store, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological research has shown that conservatives and liberals differ on basic personality traits such as conscientiousness, tolerance for uncertainty, and openness to new experience. Researcher Vishal Singh of New York University Stern School of Business and colleagues hypothesized that the conservative tendency to prefer ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Health care transition (HCT) services help young people with special health care needs such as asthma or diabetes move from pediatric to adult health care. However, youths with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have less access to these services, which are designed to prevent gaps in care and insurance coverage. A University of Missouri researcher recommends that the medical community develop HCT services for individuals with ASD as a way to ensure consistent and coordinated care and increase their independence and quality of life. Nancy Cheak-Zamora, an ...

A large-scale field experiment conducted during the December 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia suggests that fraud had a significant impact on the results. The research marks an advance in efforts to quantify vote fraud. The researchers, including a visiting research scholar at Princeton University, estimate that fraud accounted for at least 11 percentage points of the vote recorded for the ruling United Russia party in Moscow. They estimated that the party received at least 635,000 votes in the city as a result of fraud in the election, which resulted in United ...

Territorial song sparrows use increasingly threatening signals to ward off trespassing rivals. First an early warning that matches the intruder's song, then wing waving – a bird's version of "flipping the bird" – as the dispute heats up, and finally, if all other signals have failed, attack. This hierarchical warning scheme, discovered by researchers at the University of Washington, adds nuance to a communication system that has been long-used as a model to study how people use and learn language "This is one of the most complicated communication systems outside of ...

An analysis of policy documents from Medicaid programs, suggests that current policies to manage conflicts of interest (COIs) of members of Medicaid drug selection committees are not transparent and vary widely, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. It is important to manage COI for formulary drug selections or reimbursement to ensure that products are selected based on evidence and with minimal bias and to protect against pharmaceutical industry influence, according to the study background. In an analysis, ...

Stage at diagnosis only partly explains the wide variation in lung cancer survival rates among different developed countries, indicates a large study of nearly 60,000 patients, published online in Thorax. Other factors, such as treatment, are also likely to have a key role, say the authors. Stage at diagnosis has often been suggested as one of the primary reasons why lung cancer survival is low in certain countries, such the UK, on the grounds that patients go to see their doctors too late for treatment to be effective. The authors collected information on more ...

The number of children admitted to hospital as emergencies has steadily increased every year since 2003, with the largest rises seen among the under 5s, indicates research published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Common infections account for much of this rise, say the authors, who suggest this indicates a "systematic failure in the NHS" to assess children with acute illness that could be better managed by family doctors, out of hours services, and the telephone advice service NHS Direct rather than hospitals. The authors base their findings on hospital ...

During the 1930s, dedicated sanitaria and invasive surgery were commonly prescribed for those with the infection - usually caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which the editors describe as "the most successful human pathogen of all time." TB often lies dormant with no symptoms, but in a proportion of cases, becomes active, predominantly attacking the lungs. But it can also affect the bones and nervous system, and if left untreated can be fatal. The infection is developing increasing resistance around the world to the powerful drugs currently used to treat it. "Whatever ...

University of British Columbia and Berkeley researchers have used a sophisticated new computer system to quickly reconstruct protolanguages – the rudimentary ancient tongues from which modern languages evolved. The results, which are 85 per cent accurate when compared to the painstaking manual reconstructions performed by linguists, will be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We're hopeful our tool will revolutionize historical linguistics much the same way that statistical analysis and computer power revolutionized the study ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The increasing production and use of antibiotics, about half of which is used in animal production, is mirrored by the growing number of antibiotic resistance genes, or ARGs, effectively reducing antibiotics' ability to fend off diseases – in animals and humans. A study in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that China – the world's largest producer and consumer of antibiotics – and many other countries don't monitor the powerful medicine's usage or impact on the environment. On Chinese commercial pig ...

A new type of prophylactic treatment for brain injury following prolonged epileptic seizures has been developed by Emory University School of Medicine investigators. Status epilepticus, a persistent seizure lasting longer than 30 minutes [check this, some people say FIVE], is potentially life-threatening and leads to around 55,000 deaths each year in the United States. It can be caused by stroke, brain tumor or infection as well as inadequate control of epilepsy. Physicians or paramedics now treat status epilepticus by administering an anticonvulsant or general anesthesia, ...

MADISON – For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization. Now, new data gleaned from the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped shows that agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them. "One of the big questions in European archaeology has been whether farming was brought or borrowed from the Near East," says T. Douglas Price, a University of Wisconsin-Madison ...

ANN ARBOR — Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought. University of Michigan ecologist and aquatic biogeochemist George Kling and his colleagues studied places in Arctic Alaska where permafrost is melting and is causing the overlying land surface to collapse, forming erosional holes and landslides and exposing long-buried soils to sunlight. They found that ...

Volcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions. The answer lies in patterns of isotopes found in ancient volcanic sulfur trapped in ice core, patterns due to stratospheric photochemistry. Their mechanism is published in the highly recognized ...

Vascular brain injury from conditions such as high blood pressure and stroke are greater risk factors for cognitive impairment among non-demented older people than is the deposition of the amyloid plaques in the brain that long have been implicated in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, a study by researchers at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UC Davis has found. Published online early today in JAMA Neurology (formerly Archives of Neurology), the study found that vascular brain injury had by far the greatest influence across a range of cognitive domains, ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. In a bold effort, CSHL scientists are among those identifying and characterizing the molecular mechanisms responsible for this cancer in order to generate potential new therapeutics. CSHL Assistant Professor Christopher Vakoc, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues, including the group of Professor Robert Roeder Ph.D. at The Rockefeller University, report the characterization of a protein required for AML in a paper published today in the Proceedings ...

A discovery using stem cells from a patient with motor neurone disease could help research into treatments for the condition. The study used a patient's skin cells to create motor neurons - nerve cells that control muscle activity - and the cells that support them called astrocytes. Researchers studied these two types of cells in the laboratory. They found that a protein expressed by abnormalities in a gene linked to motor neurone disease, which is called TDP-43, caused the astrocytes to die. The study, led by the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Motor Neurone ...

While most infection control measures are focused on hospitals, a new study points to the need for more targeted interventions to prevent the spread of drug-resistant bugs in nursing homes as community-associated strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are on the rise in these facilities. The study is published in the March issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. CA-MRSA is a growing cause of invasive disease, including bloodstream infections, abscesses, and pneumonia. ...