Databriefing: How long can we expect to live? An article from John Appleby, Chief Economist at the Kings Fund, published on bmj.com today brings attention to the rising amount of those expected to live to 100 and asks where it will end. According to the Office of National Statistics there seems to be "no end in sight" as far as the number of UK citizens reaching 100 years old is concerned. Approximately 13% of girls born in 1951 are expected to reach this milestone, increasing to 40% for girls born this year and a predicted 60% of those born in 2060. Appleby attributes ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study of 152 Vietnam veterans with combat-related brain injuries offers the first detailed map of the brain regions that contribute to emotional intelligence – the ability to process emotional information and navigate the social world. The study found significant overlap between general intelligence and emotional intelligence, both in terms of behavior and in the brain. Higher scores on general intelligence tests corresponded significantly with higher performance on measures of emotional intelligence, and many of the same brain regions were found ...

This press release is available in German.Trees do not grow in the deep sea, nevertheless sunken pieces of wood can develop into oases for deep-sea life - at least temporarily until the wood is fully degraded. A team of Max Planck researchers from Germany now showed how sunken wood can develop into attractive habitats for a variety of microorganisms and invertebrates. By using underwater robot technology, they confirmed their hypothesis that animals from hot and cold seeps would be attracted to the wood due to the activity of bacteria, which produce hydrogen sulfide during ...

ST. LOUIS -- In research published in the Jan. 21 issue of The Journal of Cell Biology, a team led by Susana Gonzalo, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Saint Louis University, has discovered a molecular pathway that contributes to triple-negative breast cancer, an often deadly and treatment resistant form of cancer that tends to strike younger women. In addition, Gonzalo and her team identified vitamin D and some protease inhibitors as possible new therapies and discovered a set of three biomarkers that can help to identify patients who ...

Public campaigns that call upon people to think and act interdependently may undermine motivation for many Americans, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Americans are repeatedly exposed to messages urging them to think and act with others in mind, telling us, for example, to act sustainably by bringing reusable bags to the grocery store or to act responsibly by getting a flu shot. Researchers MarYam Hamedani, Hazel Rose Markus, and Alyssa Fu of Stanford University wondered what impact these ...

As world food and energy demands grow, nations and some corporations increasingly are looking to acquire quality agricultural land for food production. Some nations are gaining land by buying up property – and accompanying water resources – in other, generally less wealthy countries. Sometimes called "land grabbing," this practice can put strains on land and water resources in impoverished countries where the land, and needed water, has been "grabbed" for commercial-scale agriculture. A new study by the University of Virginia and the Polytechnic University of Milan, ...

WASHINGTON, January 22, 2012—Plants can adapt to extreme shifts in water availability, such as drought and flooding, but their ability to withstand these extreme patterns will be tested by future climate change, according to a study by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their cooperators. The study was published this week in Nature by a team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists led by Guillermo Ponce Campos and Susan Moran and an Australian team led by Alfredo Huete from the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). This research included ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Super-small particles of silicon react with water to produce hydrogen almost instantaneously, according to University at Buffalo researchers. In a series of experiments, the scientists created spherical silicon particles about 10 nanometers in diameter. When combined with water, these particles reacted to form silicic acid (a nontoxic byproduct) and hydrogen — a potential source of energy for fuel cells. The reaction didn't require any light, heat or electricity, and also created hydrogen about 150 times faster than similar reactions using silicon particles ...

Bad news about the economy could cause you to pack on the pounds, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study shows that when there is a perception of tough times, people tend to seek higher-calorie foods that will keep them satisfied longer. When subconsciously primed with such messages, a "live for today" impulse is triggered causing people to consume nearly 40 percent more food than when compared to a control group primed with neutral words. "The findings of this study come at a time ...

BOSTON—Large-scale genomic sequencing has revealed two DNA mutations that appear to drive about 15 percent of brain tumors known as meningiomas, a finding that could lead to the first effective drug treatments for the tumors, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute. Surgery and radiation currently are the only treatments for meningiomas – slow-growing, often benign tumors that develop in the membranes surrounding the brain. Meningiomas can grow dangerously large, however, causing seizures and limb weakness, and occasionally are fatal. ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 22, 2013 — UC Irvine-led studies have revealed the cellular mechanism by which circadian rhythms – also known as the body clock – modify energy metabolism and also have identified novel compounds that control this action. The findings point to potential treatments for disorders triggered by circadian rhythm dysfunction, ranging from insomnia and obesity to diabetes and cancer. UC Irvine's Paolo Sassone-Corsi, one of the world's leading researchers on the genetics of circadian rhythms, led the studies and worked with international groups of scientists. ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study could provide the link that scientists have been looking for to confirm that reactivation of a latent herpes virus is a cause of some heart problems. Looking at blood samples from 299 heart patients, researchers at Ohio State University found that those who had suffered a heart attack were the most likely to have inflammatory proteins circulating in their blood compared to patients with less acute symptoms. And having more of one of these proteins in the blood was linked to the presence of antibodies that signal a latent Epstein-Barr virus ...

Muscular dystrophy is caused by the largest human gene, a complex chemical leviathan that has confounded scientists for decades. Research conducted at the University of Missouri and described this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has identified significant sections of the gene that could provide hope to young patients and families. MU scientists Dongsheng Duan, PhD, and Yi Lai, PhD, identified a sequence in the dystrophin gene that is essential for helping muscle tissues function, a breakthrough discovery that could lead to treatments for the ...

NASA's Aqua satellite documented the formation of Tropical Storm Oswald in the Gulf of Carpentaria on Jan. 21 and the landfall on Jan. 22 in the southwestern Cape York Peninsula of Queenstown, Australia. Oswald has since become remnant low pressure area over land. Tropical Storm Oswald was hugging the southwestern coast of the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia when NASA's Aqua satellite first flew overhead on Jan. 21 at 0430 UTC (Jan. 20 at 11:30 p.m. EST). The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured ...

Jan. 22, 2013 - A common type of bacteria may help pigs stay healthy during weaning. In a study of 36 weanling-age pigs, researchers found that a dose of lipid-producing Rhodococcus opacus bacteria increased circulating triglycerides. Triglycerides are a crucial source of energy for the immune system. "We could potentially strengthen the immune system by providing this bacterium to animals at a stage when they are in need of additional energy," said Janet Donaldson, assistant professor in Biological Sciences Mississippi State University. "By providing an alternative ...

A novel software tool, developed at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, streamlines the detection of disease-causing genetic changes through more sensitive detection methods and by automatically correcting for variations that reduce the accuracy of results in conventional software. The software, called ParseCNV, is freely available to the scientific-academic community, and significantly advances the identification of gene variants associated with genetic diseases. "The algorithm we developed detects copy number variation associations with a higher level of accuracy ...

This flu season you've probably seen a number of friends on social media talking about symptoms. New research from Brigham Young University says such posts on Twitter could actually be helpful to health officials looking for a head start on outbreaks. The study sampled 24 million tweets from 10 million unique users. They determined that accurate location information is available for about 15 percent of tweets (gathered from user profiles and tweets that contain GPS data). That's likely a critical mass for an early-warning system that could monitor terms like "fever," ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – Coming out to one's family can be stressful, but gay black males face a unique set of personal, familial and social challenges. "Parents and youths alike worry that gay men cannot meet the rigid expectations of exaggerated masculinity maintained by their families and communities," says Michael C. LaSala, director of the Master of Social Work program at Rutgers University School of Social Work. LaSala, an associate professor, recently completed an exploratory study of African American gay youth and their families from urban neighborhoods in New York ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – New University at Buffalo research demonstrates how defects in an important neurological pathway in early development may be responsible for the onset of schizophrenia later in life. The UB findings, published in Schizophrenia Research (paper at http://bit.ly/Wq1i41), test the hypothesis in a new mouse model of schizophrenia that demonstrates how gestational brain changes cause behavioral problems later in life – just like the human disease. Partial funding for the research came from New York Stem Cell Science (NYSTEM). The genomic pathway, called the ...

NEW YORK (January 22, 2013) -- A research study of more than 600 black patients with uncontrolled hypertension found that less than half were prescribed a diuretic drug with proven benefit that costs just pennies a day, report researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College and the Visiting Nurse Service of New York's (VNSNY) Center for Home Care Policy and Research. The researchers say these new findings should be taken as a serious wake-up call for physicians who treat black patients with hypertension. Their study, reported in the American Journal of Hypertension, found ...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – New research into the treatment and prognosis of gastrointestinal cancers was released today in advance of the tenth annual Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium being held January 24-26, 2013, at The Moscone West Building in San Francisco, CA. Five important studies were highlighted today in a live presscast: Postoperative Treatment with S-1 Chemotherapy Reduces Relapses and Extends Survival in Patients with Pancreatic Cancer: Early results from a Phase III clinical trial conducted in Japan show patients who received the chemotherapy drug S-1 after ...

HOUSTON — Marked for death with molecular tags that act like a homing signal for a cell's protein-destroying machinery, a pivotal enzyme is rescued by another molecule that sweeps the telltale targets off in the nick of time. The enzyme, called TRAF3, lives on to control a molecular network that's implicated in a variety of immune system-related diseases if left to its own devices. The University of Texas MD Anderson scientists identified TRAF3's savior and demonstrated how it works in a paper published online Sunday in Nature. By discovering the role of OTUD7B as ...

New York University College of Nursing (NYUCN) researchers Michele G. Shedlin, PhD, and Joyce K. Anastasi, PhD, DrNP, FAAN, LAc, published a paper, "Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines and Supplements by Mexican-Origin Patients in a U.S.–Mexico Border HIV Clinic," in the on-line version of the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care. Complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) and therapies are often used to improve or maintain overall health and to relieve the side effects of conventional treatments or symptoms associated with chronic illnesses ...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Jan. 22, 2013 — A multi-center Phase III clinical trial demonstrates that Abraxane (nab-paclitaxel) plus gemcitabine is the first combination of cancer drugs to extend survival of late-stage pancreatic cancer patients compared to standard treatment. The MPACT (Metastatic Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma Clinical Trial) study was led by physicians from Scottsdale Healthcare's Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials, a partnership between Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen). Their findings show that Abraxane ...

A few years ago, manufacturers of water bottles, food containers, and baby products had a big problem. A key ingredient of the plastics they used to make their merchandise, an organic compound called bisphenol A, had been linked by scientists to diabetes, asthma and cancer and altered prostate and neurological development. The FDA and state legislatures were considering action to restrict BPA's use, and the public was pressuring retailers to remove BPA-containing items from their shelves. The industry responded by creating "BPA-free" products, which were made from plastic ...