WASHINGTON – Older people who have low expectations for a satisfying future may be more likely to live longer, healthier lives than those who see brighter days ahead, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "Our findings revealed that being overly optimistic in predicting a better future was associated with a greater risk of disability and death within the following decade," said lead author Frieder R. Lang, PhD, of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. "Pessimism about the future may encourage people to live more carefully, ...

Amid efforts to expand production of biofuels, scientists are reporting new estimates that downgrade the amount of additional land available for growing fuel crops by almost 80 percent. Their report appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Steffen Fritz and colleagues explain that growing concern exists in the U.S. and the European Union on how production of biofuels will impact food security. This has led to a realization that increased production of biofuels must take place on so-called "marginal land," acreage not suitable for growing food crops, ...

Studying HIV-1, the most common and infectious HIV subtype, Johns Hopkins scientists have identified 25 human proteins "stolen" by the virus that may be critical to its ability to infect new cells. HIV-1 viruses capture many human proteins from the cells they infect but the researchers believe these 25 proteins may be particularly important because they are found in HIV-1 viruses coming from two very different types of infected cells. A report on the discovery, published online in the Journal of Proteome Research on Feb. 22, could help in building diagnostic tools and novel ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig/Halle. Pregnant women should avoid taking vitamin D supplements. Substitution appears to raise the risk of children developing a food allergy after birth. This was the conclusion drawn from a new survey carried out by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg in Germany which was published in the February issue of the medical journal Allergy. Vitamin D has always had a good reputation: it strengthens bones, protects against infections particularly during the ...

This press release is available in French. A team led by Dr. Marie-Josée Hébert from the University of Montreal Hospital* Research Centre (CRCHUM) has discovered a new cause of organ rejection in some kidney transplant patients. Her team has identified a new class of antibodies – anti-LG3 – which when activated lead to severe rejection episodes associated with a high rate of organ loss. This discovery, which holds promise for organ recipients, was published in the online version of the American Journal of Transplantation. Rejection is one of the major obstacles to organ ...

Preclinical, laboratory studies suggest a novel immunotherapy could potentially work like a vaccine against metastatic cancers, according to scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center. Results from a recent study show the therapy could treat metastatic cancers and be used in combination with current cancer therapies while helping to prevent the development of new metastatic tumors and train specialized immune system cells to guard against cancer relapse. Recently published in the journal Cancer Research, the study detailed the effects of a molecule ...

A Case Western Reserve University professor has found that young people addicted to alcohol and drugs can increase their chances of recovery by helping others. In 2010, Maria Pagano, PhD, found that adults who became involved in Alcoholics Anonymous-related service-type work were more likely to stay sober 10 years following treatment and have increased interest in others, a positive health outcome. Now, new research by Pagano finds that youths in AA respond the same way. In a study of nearly 200 juvenile offenders, she found that youth who became active in AA-related ...

Diana McIntyre approaches her 80th birthday later this year with the same energy and zest for life of friends decades her junior. Aside from back surgery years ago, she's never been sick and, through a busy volunteer schedule, never seems to slow down. McIntyre's good health feels normal—at least to her—although she recognizes not all seniors are so fortunate. But when it comes to terms like "normal," "healthy" or "successful" aging, she shakes her head. "I don't know what would be considered normal aging," said McIntyre, past president of the Seniors Association of ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Trust fools you into remembering that your partner was more considerate and less hurtful than he or she actually was. New research from Northwestern University and Redeemer University College (Ontario, Canada) is the first to systematically examine the role of trust in biasing memories of transgressions in romantic partnerships. People who are highly trusting tended to remember transgressions in a way that benefits the relationship, remembering partner transgressions as less severe than they originally reported them to be. People low on trust demonstrated ...

Economists often talk about "moral hazard," the idea that people's behavior changes in the presence of insurance. In finance, for instance, investors may take more risks if they know they will be bailed out, the subject of ongoing political controversy. When it comes to health insurance, the existence of moral hazard is a more matter-of-fact issue: When people get health insurance, they use more medical care, as shown by research including a recent randomized study on the impact of Medicaid, which MIT economist Amy Finkelstein helped lead. Such evidence helps explain ...

Too much antibiotic can decimate the normal intestinal microbiota, which may never recover its former diversity. That, in turn, renders the GI tract vulnerable to being colonized by pathogens. Now researchers from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, and Centro Superior de Investigación en Salud Pública, Valencia, Spain, show that reintroducing normal microbial diversity largely eliminated vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) from the intestinal tracts of mice. The investigators showed further that the findings may apply to humans. The research is published ...

DETROIT – A team of researchers led by Shawn P. McElmurry, Ph.D., P.E., assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in Wayne State University's College of Engineering, has confirmed that seasonal fluctuations in blood lead levels found in children in urban areas throughout the United States and elsewhere in the northern hemisphere are the result of resuspended dust contaminated with lead. The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology was based on nine years of data on more than 367,000 children in Detroit. The team of scientists ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center studied patients with metastatic gastric cancer and found that those who have both surgery and radiation have better survival than those who receive one or no form of treatment. The study appeared in an online issue of Cancer. "There were an estimated 21,000 new cases of gastric cancer in the United States in 2010 and 11,000 deaths from the disease," said Ravi Shridhar, M.D., Ph.D., of the Radiation Oncology Department at Moffitt. "Most gastric cancers are diagnosed at advanced stages, when surgery may not be an option." Until ...

It's common knowledge that a child who misses a meal can't concentrate in school. But what happens years down the road? Does that missed meal have any bearing on health in adulthood? A new University of Nebraska-Lincoln study shows that missed meals in childhood can be linked to experiencing pain and depression in adulthood. Depression and chronic pain are experienced by 44 percent of working-aged adults and the study shows a correlation between childhood conditions and pain and depression in adulthood. The study by UNL sociologist Bridget Goosby examines how childhood ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Inspired by a chemical that fungi secrete to defend their territory, MIT chemists have synthesized and tested several dozen compounds that may hold promise as potential cancer drugs. A few years ago, MIT researchers led by associate professor of chemistry Mohammad Movassaghi became the first to chemically synthesize 11,11'-dideoxyverticillin, a highly complex fungal compound that has shown anti-cancer activity in previous studies. This and related compounds naturally occur in such small amounts that it has been difficult to do a comprehensive study of ...

Yttria stabilized zirconia, also known as YSZ, is a material of great interest because of its relatively high oxygen-ion based conductivity. In particular, it finds applications in electrochemical devices, such as solid oxide fuel cells and oxygen sensors. In a study published in EPJ B, Kia Ngai, from the University of Pisa in Italy, and colleagues from the Complutense University in Madrid, Spain, devised a model of the oxygen-ion dynamics that contribute to the conductivity of YSZ. The problem is that fuel cells currently operate above 700 ºC, which strongly limits their ...

Light from two massive stars that exploded hundreds of millions of years ago recently reached Earth, and each event was identified as a supernova. A supernova discovered Feb. 6 exploded about 450 million years ago, said Farley Ferrante, a graduate student at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, who made the initial observation. The exploding star is in a relatively empty portion of the sky labeled "anonymous" in the faint constellation Canes Venatici. Home to a handful of galaxies, Canes Venatici is near the constellation Ursa Major, best known for the Big Dipper. A ...

Chronic or acute, liver failure can be deadly. Toxins take over, the skin turns yellow and higher brain function slows. "There is no effective therapy at the moment to deal with the toxins that build up in your body," said Neil Talbot, a Research Animal Scientist for the USDA Agricultural Research Service. "Their only option now is to transplant a liver." Talbot thinks a line of special liver cells could change that. In an interview with the American Society of Animal Science, he discussed how a line of pig liver cells called PICM-19 could perform many of the same functions ...

Bethesda, MD - The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is once again calling on Congress and the President to work together to prevent sequestration, the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that are scheduled to go into effect on March 1st. "These automatic spending cuts will stop science advances in their tracks and cost highly trained researchers their jobs," said FASEB President, Judith S. Bond, PhD. A new analysis (http://bit.ly/V9Ra2s) produced by FASEB calculated the impact of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) sequestration ...

PHILADELPHIA — An increasing body mass index was associated with a higher risk for colorectal cancer with a specific molecular characteristic, and inversely, physical activity was linked to a decreased risk for that same cancer, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "We know that exercise and avoiding obesity decrease colorectal cancer risk, but little is known about why," said Shuji Ogino, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pathology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and associate professor in the Department ...

Syphilis still affects large numbers of pregnant women world-wide, causing serious health problems and even death to their babies, yet this infection could be prevented by early testing and treatment, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Researchers, led by Lori Newman from the World Health Organization, estimate that in 2008, 1.4 million pregnant women around the world were infected with syphilis, 80% of whom had attended antenatal care services. The researchers reached this figure by using information on the number ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — New research from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center finds that the protein HER2 plays a role even in breast cancers that would traditionally be categorized as HER2-negative – and that the drug Herceptin, which targets HER2, may have an even greater role for treating breast cancer and preventing its spread. About 20 percent of women with breast cancer have tumors labeled HER2-positive. And since the drug Herceptin has come on the scene, it has had a tremendous impact on survival for these women, particularly when it is given in the ...

An analysis of breast cancer trends in the U.S. finds a small but statistically significant increase in the incidence of advanced breast cancer for women 25 to 39 years of age, without a corresponding increase in older women, according to a study appearing in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "In the United States, breast cancer is the most common malignant tumor in adolescent and young adult women 15 to 39 years of age, accounting for 14 percent of all cancer in men and women in the age group. The individual average risk of a woman developing breast cancer in the United ...

In an analysis of data on patients who underwent bariatric surgery 2004-2009, there was no significant difference in the rates of complications and reoperation for Medicare patients before vs. after a 2006 Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services policy that restricted coverage of bariatric surgery to centers of excellence, according to a study appearing in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "Prompted by concerns about perioperative safety with bariatric surgery, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a national coverage decision in 2006 that limited coverage ...

In contrast to the commonly adopted surveillance intervals in current abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening programs, surveillance intervals of several years may be clinically acceptable for the majority of patients with small AAA, as the smallest AAAs often do not appear to change significantly over many years, according to a meta-analysis of previous studies reported in the February 27 issue of JAMA. "The survival rate following rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm is only 20 percent, making AAAs an important cause of mortality," according to background information ...