By charting the differing fates of individual T cells, researchers have shown that previously unpredictable aspects of the adaptive immune response can be effectively modeled. The crucial question: What determines which of the immune system's millions of cells will mobilize to fight an acute infection and which will be held back to survive long-term, forming the basis of the immunological memory? The scientists' findings, published in the journal Science, could have implications for improved immunotherapy and vaccination strategies. The scientists found that the immediate ...

HOUSTON – (March 20, 2013) – As Syria's raging civil war approaches the two-year mark, the United States should prepare a more focused strategy that strengthens the moderate political forces in Syria and engages Syria's regional and international stakeholders, according to a new special report from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The report also recommends that U.S. strategy should buttress Syria's neighbors, address the deepening humanitarian crisis and plans for a post-Assad Syria. The special report, "Syria at the Crossroads: United States Policy ...

"We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially", says Miami University (Ohio) computational biologist Iddo Friedberg. "But for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered." Understanding the function of genes is a problem that has emerged at the forefront of molecular biology. Many groups develop and employ sophisticated algorithms to decipher these "words". However, until now there was no comprehensive picture of how well these methods ...

Norm Borin of California Polytechnic State University and Arline Savage of the School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, argue that the fictitious mining company in the 2009 James Cameron movie, Avatar, makes a perfect case study for how not to be a sustainable company and offers lesson to more down to earth corporations hoping to gain green credentials as opposed to the blues. We hear a lot about indigenous peoples (the Na'vi in the movie) whose health and lives are all but destroyed by invading corporations such as Resources Development Administration ...

Sleep plays an important role in the brain's ability to consolidate learning when two new potentially competing tasks are learned in the same day, research at the University of Chicago demonstrates. Other studies have shown that sleep consolidates learning for a new task. The new study, which measured starlings' ability to recognize new songs, shows that learning a second task can undermine the performance of a previously learned task. But this study is the first to show that a good night's sleep helps the brain retain both new memories. Starlings provide an excellent ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal, March 20, 2013 – The aerospace industry is a key sector of the Canadian economy. With sales of over $22.4 billion in 2011, Canada ranks fourth globally in aerospace production. Nearly half of that revenue was generated in Quebec, where Montreal is one of the few places worldwide in which all the components needed to assemble an aircraft are available within a single metropolitan area. To determine whether Canada can keep up with the global pace, Industry Canada commissioned a study to evaluate how well Canadian aerospace ...

When Georgia Tech opens the doors to the Georgia Dome next month as the host institution for the 2013 Final Four, expect third-seeded Florida to walk out as the national champion. That's the prediction from Georgia Tech's Logistic Regression/Markov Chain (LRMC) college basketball ranking system, a computerized model that has chosen the men's basketball national champ in three of the last five years. The LRMC predicts that Florida, Louisville, Indiana and Gonzaga are most likely to advance to the Final Four in Atlanta, with Florida and Gonzaga playing for the title on ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- New research from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, published in the Journal of Surgical Research, may help clinicians determine which patients are at highest risk for post-surgical blood clots in the legs or lungs. A team led by Robert Canter, UC Davis associate professor of surgery, studied the medical histories of more than 470,000 surgical patients to determine which factors increased their risk of blood clots, also called venous thromboembolism (VTE). The team then created a nomogram, a type of calculator, which can help clinicians ...

URBANA - Although the 2012 drought in the Midwest may have dimmed the memories for some of the 2011 Ohio and Mississippi River flood, engineers, landowners, conservationists, crop scientists and soil scientists haven't forgotten. They are working hard to repair levees and restore the flood damaged Birds Point-New Madrid floodway in preparation for the next big flood which will eventually happen. "After the waters recede, people forget about the catastrophic flooding and damage to agricultural lands, road infrastructure, homes, and businesses and the ongoing restoration ...

Humans have between 20,000 and 25,000 genes that carry instructions for assembling the proteins that do the work of cells. Work led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital found that children who inherit certain variations in four particular genes are at much higher risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The study also showed that Hispanic patients were more likely than patients of European or African ancestry to inherit high-risk versions of two of these genes. ALL rates are known to be higher among Hispanic children than those of European or African ...

Sugar-sweetened sodas, sports drinks and fruit drinks may be associated with about 180,000 deaths around the world each year, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2013 Scientific Sessions. Sugar-sweetened beverages are consumed throughout the world, and contribute to excess body weight, which increases the risk of developing diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and some cancers. Using data collected as part of the 2010 Global Burden of Diseases Study, the researchers linked ...

Among patients with emergency department (ED) visits with the same presenting complaint as those with visits ultimately given a primary care-treatable diagnosis based on the ED discharge diagnosis, a substantial proportion required immediate emergency care or hospital admission, findings that do not support use of discharge diagnosis as the basis for policies discouraging ED use, according to a study in the March 20 issue of JAMA. "With increasing medical care costs, policymakers have turned to ED utilization as a potential source for cost savings," according to background ...

In an examination of long-term mortality after stroke, adults 50 years of age and younger who experienced a stroke had a significantly higher risk of death in the following 20 years compared with the general population, according to a study in the March 20 issue of JAMA. "Stroke is one of the leading causes of mortality, with an annual 6 million fatal events worldwide. Stroke mainly affects elderly people, yet approximately 10 percent of strokes occur in patients younger than 50 years. Despite this considerable proportion, only limited data exist on long-term prognosis ...

Administration of the drug eritoran to patients with severe sepsis and septic shock failed to demonstrate a significant effect on reducing all-cause 28-day mortality or 1-year mortality, compared with placebo, according to a study in the March 20 issue of JAMA. Severe sepsis, a syndrome of acute infection complicated by organ dysfunction, is caused by a dysregulated systemic inflammatory response. Sepsis can progress to systemic hypotension (septic shock), multiple organ dysfunction, and death. "Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or endotoxin, the major component of the outer ...

Heart failure patients who are moderately or severely depressed have four times the risk of dying and double the risk of having to go to the emergency room or be hospitalized compared to those who are not depressed, according to new research reported in Circulation: Heart Failure, an American Heart Association Journal. "Depression is a key driver of healthcare use in heart failure," said Alanna M. Chamberlain, Ph.D., M.P.H., the study's lead author and assistant professor of epidemiology in the Department of Health Sciences Research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. ...

Heart disease patients who have anxiety have twice the risk of dying from any cause compared to those without anxiety, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association. Patients with both anxiety and depression have triple the risk of dying, researchers said. "Many studies have linked depression to an increased risk of death in heart disease patients," said Lana Watkins, Ph.D., lead author of the study and an associate professor in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. "However, anxiety hasn't received ...

Washington, DC — Sexually naïve male mice respond differently to the chemical signals emitted by newborn pups than males that have mated and lived with pregnant females, according to a study published March 20 in The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings may help scientists to better understand the changes that take place in the brains of some mammals during the transition into parenthood. Sex differences in the behaviors mice display toward newborn pups are well documented. While virgin female mice routinely provide parental care to pups upon first encounter, ...

VIDEO: EPFL scientists have developed a tiny, portable personal blood testing laboratory: a minuscule device implanted just under the skin provides an immediate analysis of substances in the body, and a... Click here for more information. Humans are veritable chemical factories - we manufacture thousands of substances and transport them, via our blood, throughout our bodies. Some of these substances can be used as indicators of our health status. A team of EPFL scientists ...

Research: Use of high potency statins and rates of admission for acute kidney injury: multicenter, retrospective observational analysis of administrative databases Editorial: Statins in acute kidney injury: friend or foe? Patients taking high potency statins for high blood pressure are at a 34% higher risk of being hospitalised for acute kidney injury (AKI), compared with those taking low potency statins, a paper published today on bmj.com suggests. The use of statins is often recommended to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease among high risk patients. However, ...

SAN DIEGO — Mayo Clinic neurology experts will present research findings on Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, sleep disorders, concussions, multiple sclerosis and more at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in San Diego, March 16. They also are available to offer expert comment on other research findings. Mayo studies being presented and their embargo times include: Cognitively normal people with high amyloid levels likelier to develop dementia EMBARGOED until Monday, March 18, 2013, 1:30 p.m. EDT People who aren't showing signs of cognitive ...

Personal View: The new somatic symptom disorder in DSM-5 risks mislabeling many people as mentally ill Millions of people could be mislabeled as mentally ill when psychiatry's bible of diagnoses is updated in May, warns a senior doctor in this week's BMJ. The next edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) – used around the world to classify mental disorders - will include a new category of somatic symptom disorder. But Allen Frances, Chair of the current (DSM-IV) task force warns that the DSM-5 ...

For medicines intended for chronic use, the number of patients studied before regulatory approval is insufficient to properly evaluate safety and long-term efficacy, requiring the need for new legislation, according to a study by European researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Current European guidelines specify that in order to fully evaluate the safety of medicines being developed for chronic (long-term) treatment of non-life threatening diseases, at least 1000 patients must take the new drug and that 300 and 100 patients must use the drug for 6 and 12 ...

In Africa, issues of vaccine supply, financing, and sustainability require urgent attention if the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, according to African experts writing in this week's PLOS Medicine. Shingai Machingaidze, Charles Wiysonge, and Gregory Hussey from the University of Cape Town in South Africa commend African countries for their progress in immunisation programmes but infectious disease outbreaks, for example, polio and measles outbreaks, as well as high vaccine dropout rates across the region, indicate failures within the immunisation system. ...

One of the most southerly populations of polar bears in the world – and the best studied – is struggling to cope with climate-induced changes to sea ice, new research reveals. Based on over 10 years' data the study, published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology, sheds new light on how sea ice conditions drive polar bears' annual migration on and off the ice. Lead by Dr Seth Cherry of the University of Alberta, the team studied polar bears in western Hudson Bay, where sea ice melts completely each summer and typically re-freezes from late November ...

Research: Use of caffeinated substances and risk of crashes in long distance drivers of commercial vehicles: case-control study Long distance commercial drivers who consume caffeinated substances such as coffee or energy drinks, to stay awake while driving, are significantly less likely to crash than those who do not, even though they drive longer distances and sleep less, finds a study published today on bmj.com. Long distance drivers routinely experience monotonous and extended driving periods in a sedentary position, which has been associated with wake time drowsiness, ...