Taking a long time to get pregnant may be linked to minor neurodevelopmental problems in the child, suggests a small study published online in the Fetal & Neonatal Edition of Archives of Disease in Childhood. This suggests that impaired fertility itself - defined as failing to become pregnant after 12 months - rather than fertility treatment, may be a key factor in any subsequent developmental problems in the child, say the authors. It is well known that children conceived as a result of fertility treatment are at a higher risk of premature birth and low birthweight, ...

Five year-olds who watch TV for three or more hours a day are increasingly likely to develop antisocial behaviours, such as fighting or stealing by the age of seven, indicates research published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood. But the risk is very small, say the authors, who additionally found that time spent playing computer/electronic games had no impact on behaviour. Prolonged screen viewing time has been linked to various behavioural and emotional problems in children, say the authors, but most research has focused exclusively on television, and almost ...

Research carried out by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and collaborators reveals that the last region on earth to be colonised by humans was home to more than 1,000 species of birds that went extinct soon after people reached their island homes. The paper was published today (25th) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. Almost 4,000 years ago, tropical Pacific Islands were an untouched paradise, but the arrival of the first people in places like Hawaii and Fiji caused irreversible damage to these natural havens, due to overhunting ...

More than half of lower-back MRIs ordered at two Canadian hospitals were either inappropriate or of questionable value for patients. And family doctors were more apt to order these unnecessary tests compared to other specialists, demonstrates newly published medical research from Alberta and Ontario teams. The findings are important because in some parts of the country, MRI tests for the lower back account for about one-third of all MRI requests. Across the country, wait times for MRIs are long and patient access is limited. The findings were published online in the peer-reviewed ...

We have shown in our first clinical study of our novel prototype cigarettes that it is possible to reduce smokers' exposure to certain smoke toxicants. The only way to be certain of avoiding the risks of smoking is not to smoke. And reducing the health risks of smoking has been the overriding aim of tobacco research for many years. It is known that the risk of developing smoking-related disease is greater in people who smoke more cigarettes per day and for longer periods. We have spent several decades researching the nature of tobacco smoke, identifying key toxicants ...

Neurons that control hunger in the central nervous system also regulate immune cell functions, implicating eating behavior as a defense against infections and autoimmune disease development, Yale School of Medicine researchers have found in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Autoimmune diseases have been on a steady rise in the United States. These illnesses develop when the body's immune system turns on itself and begins attacking its own tissues. The interactions between different kinds of T cells are at the heart of ...

VIDEO: This video is a real-time look at red blood cells moving through the capillaries taken using a technique called photoacoustic flowoxigraphy. Click here for more information. In an engineering breakthrough, a Washington University in St. Louis biomedical researcher has discovered a way to use light and color to measure oxygen in individual red blood cells in real time. The technology, developed by Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Think new discoveries are the bee's knees? This one is even better -- this research out of Rhode Island Hospital is the mice's knees. Researchers have found that adding lubricin, a protein that our bodies naturally produce, to the fluid in our joints may reduce the risk of or even prevent osteoarthritis (OA). The findings, in a paper by Gregory D. Jay, M.D., Ph.D., of the department of emergency medicine, is published online in advance of print in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The discoveries were made in part by studying ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Longhorn cattle have a hybrid global ancestry, according to a study by University of Texas at Austin researchers published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study of the genome of the Longhorn and related breeds tells a fascinating global history of human and cattle migration. It traces back through Christopher Columbus' second voyage to the New World, the Moorish invasion of Spain and the ancient domestication of the aurochs in the Middle East and India. "It's a real Texas story, an American story," said Emily ...

In this News Digest: Summary of a study being published online March 25, 2013 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, reports that Chinese women who consumed more soy before being diagnosed with lung cancer lived longer compared with those who consumed less soy. Quote for attribution to Jyoti Patel, MD, American Society of Clinical Oncology Cancer Communications Committee member and lung cancer expert Links to additional information on Cancer.Net, ASCO's cancer information Website New results from a large observational follow-up study conducted in Shanghai, China, ...

In the early 1940s, California fishermen hauled in a historic bounty of sardine at a time that set the backdrop for John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" novel. But by the end of the decade the nets came up empty and the fishery collapsed. Where did they all go? According to a new study led by scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the forces behind the sardine mystery are a dynamic and interconnected moving target. Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scripps graduate student Ethan Deyle, professor George Sugihara, and ...

Contrary to convention, vegetation, when well-maintained, can lower the rates of certain types of crime, such as aggravated assault, robbery and burglary, in cities, according to a Temple University study, "Does vegetation encourage or suppress urban crime? Evidence from Philadelphia, PA," published in the journal, Landscape and Urban Planning. "There is a longstanding principle, particularly in urban planning, that you don't want a high level of vegetation, because it abets crime by either shielding the criminal activity or allowing the criminal to escape," said Jeremy ...

Studying the relationship between plants and the insects that feed on them is an arduous task, as it must be done through direct observation. It can take years for a researcher to fully understand the diets of a community of herbivorous insects in a tropical rain forest. Now, five Smithsonian scientists are paving a fast track using the DNA found inside the insects' stomachs, potentially turning years of research into months. This method will help scientists understand the ecology and evolution of plant-herbivore interactions more efficiently. Their findings are published ...

DURHAM, N.H., March 25, 2013 –Bubbling brooks and streams are a scenic and much loved feature of forest ecosystems, but long-term data at the U.S. Forest Service's Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest suggests that more productive forests might carry considerably less water, according to a study published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Mark Green, a research hydrologist with the Forest Service's Northern Research Station and an assistant professor at Plymouth State University, is the lead author for the study titled "Decreased Water ...

PASADENA, Calif.—When our noses pick up a scent, whether the aroma of a sweet rose or the sweat of a stranger at the gym, two types of sensory neurons are at work in sensing that odor or pheromone. These sensory neurons are particularly interesting because they are the only neurons in our bodies that regenerate throughout adult life—as some of our olfactory neurons die, they are soon replaced by newborns. Just where those neurons come from in the first place has long perplexed developmental biologists. Previous hypotheses about the origin of these olfactory nerve cells ...

March 25, 2013 – (BRONX, NY) – Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have discovered a novel strategy for preventing infections due to the highly common herpes simplex viruses, the microbes responsible for causing genital herpes (herpes simplex virus 2) and cold sores (herpes simplex virus 1). The finding, published online by The FASEB Journal, could lead to new drugs for treating or suppressing herpes virus infections. "We've essentially identified the molecular "key" that herpes viruses use to penetrate cell membranes and infect cells ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. – Pregnant women in Ghana who slept on their back (supine sleep) were at an increased risk of stillbirth compared to women who did not sleep on their back, according to new research led by a University of Michigan researcher. In the study, published this month in the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics, researchers found that supine sleep increased the risk of low birth weight by a factor of 5 and that it was the low birth weight that explained the high risk for stillbirth in these women. The study's senior author, Louise O'Brien, Ph.D., ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Although it's known that construction of homes in suburban areas can have negative impacts on native plants and animals, a recent study led by University of Massachusetts Amherst ecologist Susannah Lerman suggests that well- managed residential development such as provided by homeowners associations (HOA) can in fact support native wildlife. For their recent study published in Ecology and Society, Lerman and her colleagues Kelly Turner and Christofer Bang of Arizona State University (ASU), Phoenix, set out to assess whether neighborhoods managed by HOAs ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Patients at Michigan hospitals are less likely to experience a urinary tract infection caused by a catheter than at other hospitals in the country, according to a new study by the University of Michigan. Michigan hospitals lead the way in using key prevention practices to reduce the number of catheter-associated UTIs and also have lower rates of UTIs – which are one of the most common hospital-acquired infections in the nation– according to the new findings that appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine. "Hospitals ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Solutions that meet the broad, varied, and often competing priorities of conservation are difficult to come by. Research published in the March 28 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes a hard look at why, in an effort to find ways to resolve the issue. "People often think of conservation solutions that are effective, cost-efficient, and equitable –– the so-called triple bottom line solutions –– as the holy grail, the best possible outcome," said Ben Halpern, researcher at UC Santa Barbara's National Center for ...

Boston – Hospital readmissions are a costly problem for patients and for the United States health care system with studies showing nearly 20 percent of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge at an annual cost of $17 billion. Preventing avoidable readmissions could result in improved patient care and significant cost savings. In a new model developed at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), researchers help clinicians identify which medical patients are at the greatest risk for potentially avoidable hospital readmissions so extra steps ...

Researchers have identified areas off southern California with high numbers of whales and assessed their risk from potentially deadly collisions with commercial ship traffic in a study published in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. Scientists from NOAA Fisheries, the Marine Mammal Commission and Cascadia Research Collective analyzed data collected over seven years by NOAA on marine mammal and ecosystem research surveys in the Southern California Bight. Maps predicting the density of endangered humpback, fin and blue whales were developed by merging the observed ...

Scientists have confirmed the discovery of the first-ever, two-headed bull shark. The study, led by Michigan State University and appearing in the Journal of Fish Biology, confirmed the specimen, found in the Gulf of Mexico April 7, 2011, was a single shark with two heads, rather than conjoined twins. There have been other species of sharks, such as blue sharks and tope sharks, born with two heads. This is the first record of dicephalia in a bull shark, said Michael Wagner, MSU assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife, who confirmed the discovery with colleagues ...

The advent of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have made us all more connected, but long-distance social networks existed long before the Internet. An article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sheds light on the transformation of social networks in the late pre-Hispanic American Southwest and shows that people of that period were able to maintain surprisingly long-distance relationships with nothing more than their feet to connect them. Led by University of Arizona anthropologist Barbara Mills, the study is based ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers are digging deeper into whether infants' ability to learn new words is shaped by the particular language being acquired. A new Northwestern University study cites a promising new research agenda aimed at bringing researchers closer to discovering the impact of different languages on early language and cognitive development. For decades, researchers have asked why infants learn new nouns more rapidly and more easily than new verbs. Many researchers have asserted that the early advantage for learning nouns over verbs is a universal feature ...