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Social Science25 Apr 2013

New hope for Autistic children who never learn to speak

An Autistica consultation published this month found that 24% of children with autism were non-verbal or minimally verbal, and it is known that these problems can persist into adulthood. Professionals have long attempted to support the development of language in these children but with mixed outcomes. An estimated 600,000 people in the UK and 70 million worldwide have autism, a neuro-developmental condition which is life-long. Today, scientists at the University of Birmingham publish a paper in Frontiers in Neuroscience showing that while not all of the current interventions ...

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Science25 Apr 2013

Museum find proves exotic 'big cat' prowled British countryside a century ago

The rediscovery of a mystery animal in a museum's underground storeroom proves that a non-native 'big cat' prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century. The animal's skeleton and mounted skin was analysed by a multi-disciplinary team of Durham University scientists and fellow researchers at Bristol, Southampton and Aberystwyth universities and found to be a Canadian lynx – a carnivorous predator more than twice the size of a domestic cat. The research, published today in the academic journal Historical Biology, establishes the animal as the earliest ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Delays in diagnosis worsen outlook for minority, uninsured pediatric retinoblastoma patients

MIAMI –– When the eye cancer retinoblastoma is diagnosed in racial and ethnic minority children whose families don't have private health insurance, it often takes a more invasive, potentially life-threatening course than in other children, probably because of delays in diagnosis, Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) researchers will report at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology being held in Miami, April 24-27. By analyzing data and tumor samples from 203 children across the United States who had been treated ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Toxicity differences inform decision on conditioning for neuroblastoma transplants

MIAMI--The stem cell transplant regimen that was commonly used in the United States to treat advanced neuroblastoma in children appears to be more toxic than the equally effective regimen employed in Europe and Egypt, according to a new study being presented at the 26th annual meeting of the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology in Miami April 24-27. The U.S. regimen was associated with more acute toxicity to the kidneys and liver. This and other research informed the recent decision of the Children's Oncology Group (COG) to switch to the busulfan-based regimen ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Chernobyl follow-up study finds high survival rate among young thyroid cancer patients

Chevy Chase, MD—More than a quarter of a century after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, many children and teenagers who developed thyroid cancer due to radiation are in complete or near remission, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). Following the April 26, 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union, the number of children and teenagers diagnosed with differentiated thyroid cancer spiked in Ukraine, Belarus and western areas of Russia. ...

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Technology25 Apr 2013

Discovery of wound-healing genes in flies could mitigate human skin ailments

Biologists at UC San Diego have identified eight genes never before suspected to play a role in wound healing that are called into action near the areas where wounds occur. Their discovery, detailed this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, was made in the laboratory fruit fly Drosophila. But the biologists say many of the same genes that regulate biological processes in the hard exoskeleton, or cuticle, of Drosophila also control processes in human skin. That makes them attractive candidates for new kinds of wound-healing drugs or other compounds that could be used ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Study shows drinking one 12oz sugar-sweetened soft drink a day can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes by 22 percent

Drinking one (or one extra)* 12oz serving size of sugar-sweetened soft drink a day can be enough to increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 22%, a new study suggests. The research is published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) and comes from data in the InterAct consortium**. The research is by Dr Dora Romaguera, Dr Petra Wark and Dr Teresa Norat, Imperial College London, UK, and colleagues. Since most research in this area has been conducted in North American populations, the authors wanted to establish if ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Using microbubbles to improve cancer therapy

Microbubbles decrease the time and acoustic power of ultrasound required to heat and destroy an embedded target, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal Journal of Therapeutic Ultrasound. If these results can be replicated in the clinic, microbubbles could improve the efficiency of high intensity ultrasound treatment of solid tumors. High intensity ultrasound is already used to treat solid tumors. Ultrasound can be focused through soft tissue and, because it does not require probes or surgery, is non-invasive. However if the tumor is behind the ribcage ...

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Social Science25 Apr 2013

Precision agriculture improves farming efficiency, has important implications on food security

Precision agriculture promises to make farming more efficient and should have an important impact on the serious issue of food security, according to a new study published in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. In an article about the study in the magazine's May issue, University of Reading Professor Margaret A. Oliver, BSc, PhD, assesses how there is potential to manage land more effectively to improve the farming economy and crop quality, and to ensure food security. Spatial variation is at the core of ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Researchers make a significant step forward in combating antibiotic resistance

Antibiotic resistance is a global problem. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that for tuberculosis alone multi-drug resistance accounts for more than 150,000 deaths each year. WHO warns of "a doomsday scenario of a world without antibiotics," in which antibiotic resistance will turn common infections into incurable killers and make routine surgeries a high-risk gamble. Certain types of bacteria are a scourge of the hospital environment because they are extremely resistant to antibiotics and consequently difficult, if not impossible, to treat. This group of ...

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Science25 Apr 2013

Mysterious hot spots observed in a cool red supergiant

Astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse – one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth – revealing the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star. The new image, taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, also shows regions of surprisingly hot gas in the star's outer atmosphere and a cooler arc of gas weighing almost as much as the Earth. Betelgeuse is easily visible to the unaided eye as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself ...

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Earth Science25 Apr 2013

Ancient Earth crust stored in deep mantle

Washington, D.C.— Scientists have long believed that lava erupted from certain oceanic volcanoes contains materials from the early Earth's crust. But decisive evidence for this phenomenon has proven elusive. New research from a team including Carnegie's Erik Hauri demonstrates that oceanic volcanic rocks contain samples of recycled crust dating back to the Archean era 2.5 billion years ago. Their work is published in Nature. Oceanic crust sinks into the Earth's mantle at so-called subduction zones, where two plates come together. Much of what happens to the crust during ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Psychopaths are not neurally equipped to have concern for others

Prisoners who are psychopaths lack the basic neurophysiological "hardwiring" that enables them to care for others, according to a new study by neuroscientists at the University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico. "A marked lack of empathy is a hallmark characteristic of individuals with psychopathy," said the lead author of the study, Jean Decety, the Irving B. Harris Professor in Psychology and Psychiatry at UChicago. Psychopathy affects approximately 1 percent of the United States general population and 20 percent to 30 percent of the male and female U.S. prison ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Researchers use nasal lining to breach blood/brain barrier

BOSTON (April 24, 2013) – Neurodegenerative and central nervous system (CNS) diseases represent a major public health issue affecting at least 20 million children and adults in the United States alone. Multiple drugs exist to treat and potentially cure these debilitating diseases, but 98 percent of all potential pharmaceutical agents are prevented from reaching the CNS directly due to the blood-brain barrier. Using mucosa, or the lining of the nose, researchers in the department of Otology and Laryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School and the ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

After brain injury, new astrocytes play unexpected role in healing

DURHAM, N.C. – The production of a certain kind of brain cell that had been considered an impediment to healing may actually be needed to staunch bleeding and promote repair after a stroke or head trauma, researchers at Duke Medicine report. These cells, known as astrocytes, can be produced from stem cells in the brain after injury. They migrate to the site of damage where they are much more effective in promoting recovery than previously thought. This insight from studies in mice, reported online April 24, 2013, in the journal Nature, may help researchers develop treatments ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Intractable seizures halted with experimental treatment for rare pediatric 'Pretzel syndrome'

PHILADELPHIA - With a better understanding of underlying mechanisms that cause a rare neurodevelopmental disorder in the Old Order Mennonite population, referred to as Pretzel syndrome, a new study reports that five children were successfully treated with a drug that modifies the disease process, minimizing seizures and improving receptive language. The study, by researchers including experts from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The disease - PSME or polyhydramnios, megalencephaly, ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Facebook interests could help predict, track and map obesity

Boston, Mass.—The higher the percentage of people in a city, town or neighborhood with Facebook interests suggesting a healthy, active lifestyle, the lower that area's obesity rate. At the same time, areas with a large percentage of Facebook users with television-related interests tend to have higher rates of obesity. Such are the conclusions of a study by Boston Children's Hospital researchers comparing geotagged Facebook user data with data from national and New York City-focused health surveys. Together, the conclusions suggest that knowledge of people's online interests ...

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Environment25 Apr 2013

New battery design could help solar and wind power the grid

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have designed a low-cost, long-life battery that could enable solar and wind energy to become major suppliers to the electrical grid. "For solar and wind power to be used in a significant way, we need a battery made of economical materials that are easy to scale and still efficient," said Yi Cui, a Stanford associate professor of materials science and engineering and a member of the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, a SLAC/Stanford joint ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Personalizing prostate cancer screenings

CHICAGO --- With the help of genetics, prostate specific antigen (PSA) screenings may become more accurate and reduce the number of unnecessary prostate biopsies, according to a new study from Northwestern Medicine®. Personalized PSA testing using genetic variants could account for an 18 percent reduction in the number of men who likely would have undergone unnecessary biopsies, according to the study. It will be published in the May 2013 issue of The Journal of Urology. The high survival rate of men with prostate cancer is largely a reflection of PSA testing, but support ...

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Environment25 Apr 2013

Air pollution linked to hardening of the arteries

ANN ARBOR—Long-term exposure to air pollution may be linked to heart attacks and strokes by speeding up atherosclerosis, or "hardening of the arteries," according to a University of Michigan public health researcher and colleagues from across the U.S. Sara Adar, the John Searle Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the U-M School of Public Health, and Joel Kaufman, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and medicine at the University of Washington, led the study that found that higher concentrations of fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) were ...

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Science25 Apr 2013

Speeding the search for better methane capture

Like the Roman god Janus, methane presents Earth's atmosphere with two situational faces. As the main component of natural gas, methane when burned as a fuel produces less carbon dioxide than the burning of oil or coal, which makes it a plus for global climate change. However, pure methane released into the atmosphere via leaks from unconventional oil and gas extraction, coal mining or from the melting of Arctic ice is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, contributing an estimated 30-percent of current net climate warming. To exploit the good and blunt ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Cleveland Clinic research shows gut bacteria byproduct predicts heart attack and stroke

EMBARGOED UNTIL 5 P.M. EDT, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24, 2013, Cleveland: A microbial byproduct of intestinal bacteria contributes to heart disease and serves as an accurate screening tool for predicting future risks of heart attack, stroke and death in persons not otherwise identified by traditional risk factors and blood tests, according to Cleveland Clinic research published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. The research team was led by Stanley Hazen, M.D., Ph.D., Vice Chair of Translational Research, Chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine for ...

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Medicine25 Apr 2013

Dietary medium chain triglycerides prevent nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

Scientists at the Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, a U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Human Nutrition Research Center at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, led by Dr. Martin Ronis have determined that dietary substitution of saturated fats enriched in medium chain triglycerides (MCT) for polyunsaturated fat prevents the development of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD occurs in patients with obesity and type II diabetes and is being seen at younger ages in association with the obesity epidemic. NAFLD is characterized ...

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Science25 Apr 2013

High-volume Bitcoin exchanges less likely to fail, but more likely breached, says study

Online exchanges that trade hard currency for the rapidly emerging cyber money known as Bitcoin have a 45 percent chance of failing — often taking their customers' money with them. The finding is from a new computer science study that applied survival analysis to examine the factors that prompt Bitcoin currency exchanges to close. Results showed also that currency exchanges that buy and sell a higher volume of Bitcoins are less likely to shut down, but more likely to suffer a security breach. The study analyzed 40 exchanges that buy and sell the virtual Bitcoin to ...

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Environment25 Apr 2013

Discovered: A mammal and bug food co-op in the High Arctic

University of Alberta researchers were certainly surprised when they discovered the unusual response of pikas to patches of vegetation that had previously been grazed on by caterpillars from a species normally found in the high Arctic. U of A biology researcher Isabel C. Barrio analyzed how two herbivores, caterpillars and pikas, competed for scarce vegetation in alpine areas of the southwest Yukon. The caterpillars come out of their winter cocoons and start consuming vegetation soon after the snow melts in June. Weeks later, the pika starts gathering and storing food ...

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