Many plumes of smoke from fires burning across the southeastern United States of America can be seen here. The fires are affecting several states including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, and Florida. There are currently over 1000 new fires in the past week across the South. There were 17 new large fires with 3 being uncontained as well as numerous smaller ones. A "large fire" is defined by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) as a wildfire of 100 acres or more occurring in timber, or a wildfire of 300 acres or more occurring in grass/sage. In addition to ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The widespread use of media among college students – from texting to chatting on cell phones to posting status updates on Facebook – may be taking an academic toll, say researchers with The Miriam Hospital's Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine. According to a new study, freshmen women spend nearly half their day – 12 hours – engaged in some form of media use, particularly texting, music, the Internet and social networking. Researchers found media use, in general, was associated with lower grade point averages (GPAs) and other negative academic ...

(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have pinpointed a genetic signature for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from airway cells harvested utilizing a minimally invasive procedure. The findings provide a novel way to study COPD and could lead to new treatments and ways to monitor patient's response to those treatments. The study is published online in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive lung disease that leads to the loss of lung function ...

An acute dose of alcohol may cause greater impairment in coordination, learning and memory in the elderly than in young people, according to a study by Baylor University. Researchers said the findings have profound significance for older people —a population that is aging worldwide at an unprecedented rate and that includes Baby Boomers as they become seniors. "Health implications such as falls, accidents and poor medicine-taking are pretty easy to conclude," said Douglas B. Matthews, Ph.D., senior author of the paper, published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical ...

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 504-670-4707 (New Orleans Press Center, April 5-10) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society Revealing hidden artwork with airport security full-body-scanner technology NEW ORLEANS, April 10, 2013 — In the latest achievement in efforts to see what may lie underneath the surface of great works of art, scientists today described the first use of an imaging technology like that used in airport whole-body security scanners to detect the face of an ancient Roman man hidden below the surface of a wall painting in the Louvre Museum in Paris. They ...

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 504-670-4707 (New Orleans Press Center, April 5-10) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society Safety reflector technology from footwear getting new life in detecting bioterror threats NEW ORLEANS, April 10, 2013 — Tiny versions of the reflectors on sneakers and bicycle fenders that help ensure the safety of runners and bikers at night are moving toward another role in detecting bioterrorism threats and diagnosing everyday infectious diseases, scientists said today. Their report on progress in using these innovative "retroreflectors" ...

Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 504-670-4707 (New Orleans Press Center, April 5-10) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society High levels of lead detected in rice imported from certain countries NEW ORLEANS, April 8, 2013 — Rice imported from certain countries contains high levels of lead that could pose health risks, particularly for infants and children, who are especially sensitive to lead's effects, and adults of Asian heritage who consume large amounts of rice, scientists said here today. Their research, which found some of the highest lead levels in baby food, ...

SEATTLE – By the end of 2011, most of the 255 Washington residents who received a prescription for lethal medication to end their lives under the state's Death with Dignity Act had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Of those, 40 were patients at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, part of the Pacific Northwest's only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center. Because several states are considering similar Death with Dignity laws, and because such legislation disproportionately affects cancer patients and their families, SCCA conducted a study to describe ...

A new broad range antibiotic, developed jointly by scientists at The Rockefeller University and Astex Pharmaceuticals, has been found to kill a wide range of bacteria, including drug-resistant Staphylococcus (MRSA) bacteria that do not respond to traditional drugs, in mice. The antibiotic, Epimerox, targets weaknesses in bacteria that have long been exploited by viruses that attack them, known as phage, and has even been shown to protect animals from fatal infection by Bacillus anthracis, the bacteria that causes anthrax. Target selection is critical for the development ...

HOUSTON -- (April 10, 2013) – Some breast tumor circulating cells in the bloodstream are marked by a constellation of biomarkers that identify them as those destined to seed the brain with a deadly spread of cancer, said researchers led by those at Baylor College of Medicine in a report that appears online in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "What prompted us to initiate this study was our desire to understand the characteristics of these cells," said Dr. Dario Marchetti, professor of pathology at BCM, director of the CTC (circulating tumor cell) Core Facility ...

People buy larger amounts of soda when purchasing packs of smaller drinks than when offered single servings of different sized drinks, according to research published April 10 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Brent M. Wilson and colleagues from the University of California, San Diego. The researchers tested the effects of limiting sugary drink sizes on people's soda consumption by offering them three kinds of menus. One menu offered 16 , 24 or 32 ounce sized individual drinks, a second gave them the choices of a 16 oz. drink, or bundles of two 12 ounce drinks or ...

The great age of the embryos is unusual because almost all known dinosaur embryos are from the Cretaceous Period. The Cretaceous ended some 125 million years after the bones at the Lufeng site were buried and fossilized. Led by University of Toronto Mississauga paleontologist Robert Reisz, an international team of scientists from Canada, Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, Australia, and Germany excavated and analyzed over 200 bones from individuals at different stages of embryonic development. "We are opening a new window into the lives of dinosaurs," says Reisz. ...

A significant breakthrough has been made by scientists at The University of Manchester towards developing an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Researchers at the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology have detailed how an enzyme in the brain interacts with an exciting drug-like lead compound for Huntington's Disease to inhibit its activity. Their findings demonstrate that it can be developed as an effective treatment for neurodegenerative diseases. The research is published in the journal Nature. Working ...

A new study suggests that surgery for appendicitis that uses a pinhole incision through the navel may be a feasible alternative to traditional appendectomies. Published early online in the British Journal of Surgery, the findings indicate that larger studies to test the potential of the procedure are warranted. An experimental, minimally invasive, and scarless surgical procedure for appendicitis called transgastric appendicectomy avoids the use of external incisions and causes less pain than traditional appendectomies. Through the insertion of a needle, an endoscope is ...

VIDEO: CLARITY provided this 3D view showing a thick slice of a mouse brain's memory hub, or hippocampus. It reveals a few different types of cells: Projecting neurons (green), connecting interneurons... Click here for more information. Slicing optional. Scientists can now study the brain's finer workings, while preserving its 3-D structure and integrity of its circuitry and other biological machinery. A breakthrough method, called CLARITY, developed by National Institutes ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Combining neuroscience and chemical engineering, researchers at Stanford University have developed a process that renders a mouse brain transparent. The postmortem brain remains whole — not sliced or sectioned in any way — with its three-dimensional complexity of fine wiring and molecular structures completely intact and able to be measured and probed at will with visible light and chemicals. The process, called CLARITY, ushers in an entirely new era of whole-organ imaging that stands to fundamentally change our scientific understanding of the most-important-but-least-understood ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Do the brains of different people listening to the same piece of music actually respond in the same way? An imaging study by Stanford University School of Medicine scientists says the answer is yes, which may in part explain why music plays such a big role in our social existence. The investigators used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify a distributed network of several brain structures whose activity levels waxed and waned in a strikingly similar pattern among study participants as they listened to classical music they'd never heard ...

Hunter-gatherers living in glacial conditions produced pots for cooking fish, according to the findings of a pioneering new study led by the University of York which reports the earliest direct evidence for the use of ceramic vessels. Scientists from the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden and Japan carried out chemical analysis of food residues in pottery up to 15,000 years old from the late glacial period, the oldest pottery so far investigated. It is the first study to directly address the often posed question "why humans made pots?" The research is published in Nature. The ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Mining the records of routine interactions between patients and their care providers can detect drug side effects a couple of years before an official alert from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a Stanford University School of Medicine study has found. The study, led by Nigam Shah, MBBS, PhD, assistant professor of medicine, will be published online April 10 in Nature Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics. This approach is a step forward in mining patient-based information, as opposed to coded insurance reports or drug-specific databases, to ...

Half of all formal patient complaints made in Australia to health ombudsmen concern just 3% of the country's doctors, with 1% accounting for a quarter of all complaints, finds research published online in BMJ Quality & Safety. Doctors complained about more than three times are highly likely to be the subject of a further complaint - and often within a couple of years - the findings show. The problem is unlikely to be confined to Australia, warn commentators, who point out that while regulators often know about these problem doctors, patients usually don't. The researchers ...

Rates of surgery to correct childhood squint in England have tumbled over the past 50 years, finds research published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology. But there's still a fivefold difference between the areas with the lowest and highest rates of the procedure, similar to the wide variations in tonsil removal, and it's not clear why, say the authors. Squint (strabismus) is one of the most common eye problems in children, with a prevalence of between 2% and 5%. Risk factors include family history, low birthweight, premature birth, being born to an older ...

A research team of Inserm, CNRS and MDC lead by Michael Sieweke of the Centre d'Immunologie de Marseille Luminy (CNRS, INSERM, Aix Marseille Université) and Max Delbrück Centre for Molecular Medicine, Berlin-Buch, today revealed an unexpected role for hematopoietic stem cells: they do not merely ensure the continuous renewal of our blood cells; in emergencies they are capable of producing white blood cells "on demand" that help the body deal with inflammation or infection. This property could be used to protect against infections in patients undergoing bone marrow transplants, ...

For the first time, scientists have been able to predict how much pain people are feeling by looking at images of their brains, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder. The findings, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, may lead to the development of reliable methods doctors can use to objectively quantify a patient's pain. Currently, pain intensity can only be measured based on a patient's own description, which often includes rating the pain on a scale of one to 10. Objective measures of pain could confirm these pain reports ...

The study will be presented today (11 April 2013) at the Sleep and Breathing Conference in Berlin, organised by the European Respiratory Society and the European Sleep Research Society. Previous research has demonstrated that people with sleep apnoea are less productive at work, usually due to excessive daytime sleepiness. This study aimed to assess whether continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) improved productivity at work. The researchers used the Endicott Work Productivity Scale, a questionnaire designed to assess productivity at work, and the Epworth Sleepiness ...

MIAMI –April 9, 2013 – Many terrestrial animals are frequently observed scavenging on other animals– whether it is a hyena stealing a lion kill in the Serengeti or a buzzard swooping down on a dead animal. However, documenting this sort of activity in the oceans is especially difficult, and often overlooked in marine food web studies. In a new study published in PLOS ONE titled, "White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) scavenging on whales and its potential role in further shaping the ecology of an apex predator," Captain Chris Fallows from Apex Expeditions collaborated ...