Services like Google Maps use algorithms to determine the fastest route from point A to point B—even factoring in real-time traffic information as you travel to redirect you if, for example, a parade is blocking part of your route. Now, a team of researchers from Spain and Japan have achieved this kind of traffic control for the connections in optical networks by using a new dynamic network management system—and it does Google Maps one better. If necessary, the flexible-grid system can also redirect the traffic-congesting parade to another street (by re-arranging one or ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists have watched a mild traumatic brain injury play out in the living brain, prompting swelling that reduces blood flow and connections between neurons to die. "Even with a mild trauma, we found we still have these ischemic blood vessels and, if blood flow is not returned to normal, synapses start to die," said Dr. Sergei Kirov, neuroscientist and Director of the Human Brain Lab at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. They also found that subsequent waves of depolarization – when brain cells lose their normal positive and ...

Chevy Chase, MD ––Women who were diagnosed with gestational diabetes during pregnancy face a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes in the future, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The prospective cohort study tracked 843 women who were diagnosed with gestational diabetes between 1996 and 2003 at Cheil General Hospital in Seoul, South Korea. About 12.5 percent of the women developed Type 2 diabetes within two months of delivering their babies. During the ...

When hospitals hire more nurses with four-year degrees, patient deaths following common surgeries decrease, according to new research by the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing's Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research as reported in the March issue of the prestigious policy journal Health Affairs. Less than half the nation's nurses (45%) have baccalaureate degrees, according to the most recent data available (2008). If all 134 Pennsylvania hospitals involved in the study had increased the percentage of their nurses with four-year degrees by 10 percentage ...

Chevy Chase, MD ––Chinese women are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease if they have their first menstrual cycle or enter menopause later than their peers, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The study also found earlier onset of menopause was associated with a higher risk of developing osteoporosis. The risk was significantly lower for women who were older than 50 when they underwent menopause. The findings could be used to identify women who are more likely to ...

NEW YORK, 7 March 2013 – Between 2011 and 2020, more than 140 million girls will become child brides, according to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). If current levels of child marriages hold, 14.2 million girls annually or 39,000 daily will marry too young. Furthermore, of the 140 million girls who will marry before the age of 18, 50 million will be under the age of 15. Despite the physical damage and the persistent discrimination to young girls, little progress has been made toward ending the practice of child marriage. In fact, the problem threatens to ...

They may have gained fame in the Steven Spielberg adventure film "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," but those quartz-crystal skulls that once ranked as a great enigma of archaeology are certifiably fake. And the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, (C&EN) the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society, recalls the details of their rise and fall. In the article, Sarah Everts, C&EN's European science correspondent, delves back into history, explaining that the skull sculptures — supposedly ...

Seoul, March 7, 2013– In the first gender benchmarking study of its kind, researchers have found that numbers of women in the science, technology and innovation fields are alarmingly low in the world's leading economies, and are actually on the decline in others, including the United States. South Korea's low ranking in the study results reflects a substantial underrepresentation of females in public and economic life. South Korean ranks last of the countries in the study in female economic status, access to resources, supportive policy, and participation in the knowledge ...

Television advertising may drive over-diagnosis of high cholesterol and over-treatment with statins, according to a new study¹ by Dr. Jeff Niederdeppe from Cornell University in the US and colleagues. It appears that a trip to the doctor enquiring about statins advertised on TV often leads to a prescription. The work appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Coronary heart disease is the leading cause of death in the US, and high levels of LDL-cholesterol, or 'bad' cholesterol, are a major contributor. Statins have been proven ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) —Patients diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have a significantly higher risk of developing insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, placing them at greater risk for heart disease and diabetes, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Researchers say public health interventions are urgently needed to prevent PTSD-related metabolic disorder at its early, reversible stage. This retrospective study included 207,954 veterans in Southern California and Nevada ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) — Pregnant women who have a reduced number of capillaries under their skin during pregnancy may be at heightened risk for preeclampsia, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Researchers say monitoring such changes in small blood vessels early in pregnancy may allow for medical intervention long before the potentially life-threatening condition occurs. The study, conducted by researchers in England, evaluated 305 women early in pregnancy to determine whether measuring ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) — African-American women who survive breast cancer are more likely to develop heart failure than other women who have beaten the disease, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. All told, these women have a 1.4-fold greater risk for heart failure compared to their white counterparts, though the likelihood of dying after developing heart failure is roughly the same. This trend remained even after taking other potential contributing factors into account, including age, high ...

A network of seismographic stations recorded spectacular signals from the blast waves of the meteor that landed near Chelyabinsk, Russia, as the waves crossed the United States. The National Science Foundation- (NSF) supported stations are used to study earthquakes and the Earth's deep interior. While thousands of earthquakes around the globe are recorded by seismometers in these stations--part of the permanent Global Seismographic Network (GSN) and EarthScope's temporary Transportable Array (TA)--signals from large meteor impacts are far less common. The meteor ...

Researchers from the University of Granada (UGR) have developed a new material using doped carbon that allows low-cost energy to be produced and also reduces the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere. The recently-patented material is a gel that enables the CO2 to be turned back into hydrocarbons via electro-catalytic transformation, with great savings both in time and money At present, power stations run using renewable energies (wind, solar or wave) produce energy peaks that are wasted, since they do not coincide with the energy needs. Storing this energy in batteries ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) — Poor dental health, especially tooth loss, is associated with several established cardiovascular risk factors, including diabetes, smoking, blood pressure, obesity and other novel risk factors, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Although several studies have proposed a link between periodontal disease and coronary heart disease, knowledge about periodontal disease in patients with established heart disease is lacking. Researchers investigated the prevalence of self-reported ...

Research done in the Universities of Granada (Spain), Freiburg (Germany) and University College London (UK) has demonstrated that when we have a low opinion of somebody, we are more likely to reject their money, even though the offer is attractive, because the social information we have on that person influences our decision. Furthermore, people are prepared to even lose money rather than accept it from those they do not hold in high consideration. The article has been published in the journal Frontiers in Decision Neuroscience, based on a study in which the researchers ...

Women, persons with disabilities and three racial and ethnic groups--African Americans, Hispanics and American Indians--continue to be underrepresented in science and engineering (S&E) according to a new report released by the National Science Foundation. The report, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering: 2013, highlights the most recent data on S&E education and employment patterns for these groups. Data in the report demonstrate that women earn a smaller proportion of degrees in many S&E fields of study, although their participation ...

Geneva, Switzerland (07 March, 2013) – French women are less likely to spend any time on physical activities including sport, exercise or even household chores, compared to women in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the UK, according to a new survey. The multi-national survey on sport and exercise habits also reveals that more than 50 per cent of French women did not play competitive sport or spend any time on intensive workouts such as running or cycling in a given week. As the French women's football team prepare for this summer's UEFA Women's EURO in Sweden, the countdown ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) — Nonsmokers, beware. It seems the more you are exposed to secondhand tobacco smoke—whether it was during your childhood or as an adult, at work or at home—the more likely you are to develop early signs of heart disease, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Researchers found that 26 percent of people exposed to varying levels of secondhand smoke had signs of coronary artery calcification (CAC), compared to 18.5 percent in the general population. The new data also shows ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) —The use of electronic discharge orders aimed at providing evidence-based decision support and clear instructions to heart failure patients helped increase compliance with quality care measures and lowered hospital readmission rates, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Despite more widespread use of standardized discharge orders and evidence suggesting their effectiveness, little is known about how they impact adherence to quality measures or hospital readmission rates ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) – Using a telemedicine system to engage people in underserved, urban communities to measure and report their blood pressure remotely—outside of the doctor's office—appears to help them achieve blood pressure goals and improve adherence to lifestyle changes and medication recommendations, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. Overall, researchers say that just being in a system of care, with or without telemedicine, can result in important reductions in blood pressure. ...

SAN FRANCISCO (March 7, 2013) —Women with coronary artery disease who completed a 12-week cardiac rehabilitation program were two-thirds less likely to die compared to those who were not referred to the program. In addition, the mortality benefit derived from this evidence-based program appears to be much more striking in women than men with the same condition, yet referrals and attendance among women fall short, according to research being presented at the American College of Cardiology's 62nd Annual Scientific Session. "Cardiac rehabilitation can be a lifesaver, especially ...

Using zoning laws to shape the type of development and activity that occur in a neighborhood may be one way to reduce crime in urban areas, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Studying high-crime areas in the city of Los Angeles, researchers found that city blocks that included both residential and commercial zoning purposes experienced less crime than nearby blocks zoned primarily for commercial purposes. Crime was lowest in blocks zoned for residential-only uses, even in relatively high crime neighborhoods. The study found that single-use commercially zoned ...

Spouses, family members and others who provide informal care to U.S. military members after they return home from conflict often toil long hours with little support, putting them at risk for physical, emotional and financial harm, according to a new RAND Corporation report. Researchers estimate there are between 275,000 and 1 million women and men who are providing care or have provided care for military members or veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Caregivers include spouses, children and parents of military members and veterans. Despite the serious challenges ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Locally advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck is a potentially curable disease in nearly every patient at the time of diagnosis, yet despite the most aggressive efforts, up to 30-50 percent of patients may ultimately succumb to the disease. For diseases where outcomes are so uncertain, medical science frequently addresses the need by intensifying therapy. In the case of head and neck cancer, one of the great questions of the current day is whether or not addition of multiple drugs to radiation therapy is superior to the current standard ...