A detection dog to identify Clostridium difficile in stool samples and infected patients: proof of principle study Dogs can sniff out Clostridium difficile (the infective agent that is responsible for many of the dreaded "hospital acquired infections") in stool samples and even in the air surrounding patients in hospital with a very high degree of accuracy, finds a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today. The findings support previous studies of dogs detecting various types of cancer and could have great potential for screening hospital wards to help ...

Researchers in Belgium also show how dogs can help patients with severe sleep problems. They describe a 35 year old patient with severe excessive daytime sleepiness. She suffered sleep attacks up to six times a day and sometimes slept up to 16 hours a day. Until recently, this severe sleepiness considerably hampered her social life and limited her use of public transport, as she usually fell asleep within a few minutes of sitting down. She'd then wake up at the end of the line and have to fight sleepiness on the way back. Sometimes she'd forget where she started ...

The tooth fairy and malpractice Opinions of the tooth fairy as kind and giving may need to be revised following "mounting reports of less child-friendly activity", says a paper published in the BMJ Christmas edition and appearing online today. Researchers from across London became concerned following misdemeanours of the mythical character and a worrying trend in malpractice. One boy in particular became extremely distressed because the tooth fairy "had put a tooth in his left ear" after he left it under his pillow. Further investigation turned out he was right. Further ...

Mind wandering and driving: responsibility case-control study People whose minds wander whilst driving, especially when intense, are significantly more likely to be responsible for a crash and are threatening safety on the roads, warns a study in the Christmas issue published on bmj.com today. The term "mind wandering" has been coined to describe thinking unrelated to the task at hand. It happens most often at rest or during repetitive tasks. All drivers experience occasional drifting of their minds towards internal thoughts, a temporary "zoning out" that might dangerously ...

Can I take a space flight? Considerations for doctors With the prospect of space travel for tourists looming, clinicians could soon be asked to advise on medical clearance for their patients, says a paper published in the BMJ Christmas edition and appearing online today. Space travel opportunities are becoming increasingly available to the general public with bookings already in place. A team of experts from North America therefore looked to provide advice to clinicians who require direction when advising patients on space travel. The Aerospace Medical Association ...

Hamilton, Ont. (Dec. 13, 2012) — Our immune system does not shut down with age, says a new study led by McMaster University researchers. A study published in PLOS Pathogens today shows a specialized class of immune cells, known as T cells, can respond to virus infections in an older person with the same vigour as T cells from a young person. "For a long time, it was thought the elderly were at a higher risk of infections because they lacked these immune cells, but that simply isn't the case," said Jonathan Bramson, the study's principal investigator. "The elderly are ...

(TORONTO, Canada – Dec. 13, 2012 ) – Cancer scientists led by Dr. John Dick at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have found a way to follow single tumour cells and observe their growth over time. By using special immune-deficient mice to propagate human colorectal cancer, they found that genetic mutations, regarded by many as the chief suspect driving cancer growth, are only one piece of the puzzle. The team discovered that biological factors and cell behaviour – not only genes – drive tumour growth, contributing to therapy failure and relapse. The findings, published ...

Wrinkles, dryness, and a translucent and fragile appearance are hallmarks of old skin, caused by the natural aging of skin cells. But while most of us can recognize the signs of lost youth when we peer into the mirror each morning, scientists do not have a standardized way to measure the extent of age damage in skin. Now a group of Taiwanese researchers has used a specialized microscope to peer harmlessly beneath the skin surface to measure natural age-related changes in the sizes of skin cells. The results, which are published in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access ...

The insurance industry, the world's largest business with $4.6 trillion in revenues, is making larger efforts to manage climate change-related risks, according to a new study published today in the journal Science. "Weather- and climate-related insurance losses today average $50 billion a year. These losses have more than doubled each decade since the 1980s, adjusted for inflation," says the study's author Evan Mills, a scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)'s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "Insurers have become quite adept at quantifying ...

BOSTON—Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have discovered a molecular switch that enables advanced prostate cancers to spread without stimulation by male hormones, which normally are needed to spur the cancer's growth. They say the finding could lead to a new treatment for prostate cancers that are no longer controlled by hormone-blocking drugs. The researchers report in the Dec. 14 issue of Science that the molecular switch occurs in a protein, EZH2, which is increased in these tumors, termed castration-resistant prostate cancers (CRPC). EZH2 is part of a ...

Montreal, December 13, 2012 – From Gran Turismo to WWE Smackdown, sports-based video games represent a wide variety of pursuits. When it comes to the people who actually play those games, however, little is known. How do sports video game players fit their games into a larger sports-related context? How does their video game play inform their media usage and general sports fandom? That's what Concordia University communications professor Mia Consalvo sought to discover when she embarked on a large-scale study of video game players, the results of which were recently published ...

CHICAGO -- Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered a "two-faced" group of cells at work in human colon cancer, with opposing functions that can suppress or promote tumor growth. These cells are a subset of T-regulatory (Treg) cells, known to suppress immune responses in healthy individuals In this previously unknown Treg subset, the presence of the protein RORγt has been shown to differentiate between cancer-protecting and cancer-promoting properties. The Northwestern team, led by Khashayarsha Khazaie, research associate professor at the Robert H. ...

ARGONNE, Ill. – For the first time, scientists witnessed the details of the full, ultrafast process of liquid droplets evolving into a bubble when they strike a surface. Their research determined that surface wetness affects the bubble's fate. This research could one day help eliminate bubbles formed during spray coating, metal casting and ink-jet printing. It also could impact studies on fuel efficiency and engine life by understanding the splashing caused by fuel hitting engine walls. "How liquid coalesces into a drop or breaks up into a splash when hitting something ...

Prostate cancer patients receiving the costly treatment known as proton radiotherapy experienced minimal relief from side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction, compared to patients undergoing a standard radiation treatment called intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT), Yale School of Medicine researchers report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Standard treatments for men with prostate cancer, such as radical prostatectomy and IMRT, are known for causing adverse side effects such as incontinence and erectile dysfunction. Proponents of ...

New research by a University of Alberta archeologist may lead to a rethinking of how, when and from where our ancestors left Africa. U of A researcher and anthropology chair Pamela Willoughby's explorations in the Iringa region of southern Tanzania yielded fossils and other evidence that records the beginnings of our own species, Homo sapiens. Her research, recently published in the journal Quaternary International, may be key to answering questions about early human occupation and the migration out of Africa about 60,000 to 50,000 years ago, which led to modern humans ...

Peach growers in California may soon have better tools for saving water because of work by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists in Parlier, Calif. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Dong Wang is evaluating whether infrared sensors and thermal technology can help peach growers decide precisely when to irrigate in California's San Joaquin Valley. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency, and the research supports the USDA priority of promoting international food security. Irrigation is the primary source of water for agriculture ...

The plague-causing bacteria Yersinia pestis evades detection and establishes a stronghold without setting off the body's early alarms. New discoveries reported this week help explain how the stealthy agent of Black Death avoids tripping a self-destruct mechanism inside germ-destroying cells. The authors of the study, appearing in the Dec. 13 issue of Cell Host & Microbe, are Dr. Christopher N. LaRock of the University of Washington Department of Microbiology and Dr. Brad Cookson, UW professor of microbiology and laboratory medicine. Normally, certain defender cells ...

A venomous primate with two tongues would seem safe from the pet trade, but the big-eyed, teddy-bear face of the slow loris (Nycticebus sp.) has made them a target for illegal pet poachers throughout the animal's range in southeastern Asia and nearby islands. A University of Missouri doctoral student and her colleagues recently identified three new species of slow loris. The primates had originally been grouped with another species. Dividing the species into four distinct classes means the risk of extinction is greater than previously believed for the animals but could ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — On the road to smaller, high-performance electronics, University of Illinois researchers have smoothed one speed bump by shrinking a key, yet notoriously large element of integrated circuits. Three-dimensional rolled-up inductors have a footprint more than 100 times smaller without sacrificing performance. The researchers published their new design paradigm in the journal Nano Letters. "It's a new concept for old technology," said team leader Xiuling Li, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois. Inductors, ...

Black holes range from modest objects formed when individual stars end their lives to behemoths billions of times more massive that rule the centers of galaxies. A new study using data from NASA's Swift satellite and Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope shows that high-speed jets launched from active black holes possess fundamental similarities regardless of mass, age or environment. The result provides a tantalizing hint that common physical processes are at work. "What we're seeing is that once any black hole produces a jet, the same fixed fraction of energy generates the ...

VIDEO: NASA's TRMM satellite passed above an intensifying Tropical Cyclone Evan on Dec. 11 at 1759 UTC (12:59 p.m. EST/U.S.) and saw the tallest thunderstorms around Evan's center of circulation reached... Click here for more information. NASA satellites have been monitoring Tropical Cyclone Evan and providing data to forecasters who expected the storm to intensify. On Dec. 13, Evan had grown from a tropical storm into a cyclone as NASA satellites observed cloud formation, ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 13, 2012) – Since Edison's first bulb, heat has been a mostly undesirable byproduct of light. Now researchers at Rice University are turning light into heat at the point of need, on the nanoscale, to trigger biochemical reactions remotely on demand. The method created by the Rice labs of Michael Wong, Ramon Gonzalez and Naomi Halas and reported today in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano makes use of materials derived from unique microbes – thermophiles – that thrive at high temperatures but shut down at room temperature. The Rice project ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll. — Every time a human or bacterial cell divides it first must copy its DNA. Specialized proteins unzip the intertwined DNA strands while others follow and build new strands, using the originals as templates. Whenever these proteins encounter a break – and there are many – they stop and retreat, allowing a new cast of molecular players to enter the scene. Scientists have long sought to understand how one of these players, a repair protein known as RecA in bacterial cells, helps broken DNA find a way to bridge the gap. They knew that RecA guided a broken ...

TORONTO, Dec. 13, 2012—There's new evidence about the benefits of marriage. Women who are married suffer less partner abuse, substance abuse or post-partum depression around the time of pregnancy than women who are cohabitating or do not have a partner, a new study has found. Unmarried women who lived with their partners for less than two years were more likely to experience at least one of the three problems. However, these problems became less frequent the longer the couple lived together. The problems were most common among women who were separated or divorced, especially ...

ARLINGTON, Va.—The Navy's chief of naval research, Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, met this week with leaders from U.S. and Canadian government agencies to address research efforts in the Arctic, in response to dramatic and accelerating changes in summer sea ice coverage. "Our Sailors and Marines need to have a full understanding of the dynamic Arctic environment, which will be critical to protecting and maintaining our national, economic and security interests," said Klunder. "Our research will allow us to know what's happening, to predict what is likely to come for the region, ...