For centuries, people have gazed at the constellation Pisces and imagined starry fish swimming in space. Aboard the International Space Station, however, astronauts have a much closer view of real finned friends, thanks to the Medaka Osteoclast investigation. Sponsored by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the study will help scientists uncover new knowledge about human bone health in space and on Earth. Living in the Aquatic Habitat, the Medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish serve as a model for researching the impact of microgravity environments on osteoclasts ...

Van's Natural Foods, the market leader in delicious, better-for-you frozen breakfast foods, brings its healthy eating approach to grocery store shelves with a new line of cereals, crackers and snack bars. Rich in whole grains, including millet, quinoa and amaranth, the new items provide families with great-tasting, nutritious options for breakfast, snacking and meals on the run. All of Van's cereals, crackers and snack bars are certified gluten free by the Gluten-Free Certification Organization, offering easy, nutritious choices with great taste the whole family can ...

Bruegger's Bagels celebrates 30 years of serving up its fresh-baked, New York-style bagels by adding new flavors to its lineup of nearly 20 bagel varieties and by inviting its Facebook fans to bring back some retired favorites. For those who crave something new, Bruegger's Bagels' latest flavor - the Five Grain Everything Bagel - will appear in bakeries starting today through May 7. Nostalgic bagel lovers can visit the Bruegger's Bagels Facebook page for a chance to bring back a flavor blast from the past. Old-time favorites like Trail Mix, Cranberry Orange, Marble ...

In a future shaped by climate change, only the strong – or heat-resistant – will survive. A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences opens a window into a genetic process that allows some corals to withstand unusually high temperatures and may hold a key to species survival for organisms around the world. "If we can find populations most likely to resist climate change and map them, then we can protect them," said study co-author Stephen Palumbi, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and director of Stanford's ...

A simple, precise and inexpensive method for cutting DNA to insert genes into human cells could transform genetic medicine, making routine what now are expensive, complicated and rare procedures for replacing defective genes in order to fix genetic disease or even cure AIDS. Discovered last year by Jennifer Doudna and Martin Jinek of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of the Laboratory for Molecular Infection Medicine-Sweden, the technique was labeled a "tour de force" in a 2012 review in the journal ...

Maintaining the right sodium levels in the body is crucial for controlling blood pressure and ensuring proper muscle function. Conventional wisdom has suggested that constant sodium levels are achieved through the balance of sodium intake and urinary excretion, but a new study in humans published by Cell Press on January 9th in the journal Cell Metabolism reveals that sodium levels actually fluctuate rhythmically over the course of weeks, independent of salt intake. This one-of-a-kind study, which examined cosmonauts participating in space-flight simulation studies, challenges ...

Washington, DC – A new Harvey L. Neiman Health Policy Institute study shows that fewer than one-in-five healthcare providers meet Medicare Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) requirements. Those that meet PQRS thresholds now receive a .5 percent Medicare bonus payment. In 2015, bonuses will be replaced by penalties for providers who do not meet PQRS requirements. As it stands, more than 80 percent of providers nationwide would face these penalties. Researchers analyzed 2007-2010 PQRS program data and found that nearly 24 percent of eligible radiologists qualified ...

Researchers at UCLA say it's not just what you eat that makes those pants tighter — it's also genetics. In a new study, scientists discovered that body-fat responses to a typical fast-food diet are determined in large part by genetic factors, and they have identified several genes they say may control those responses. The study is the first of its kind to detail metabolic responses to a high-fat, high-sugar diet in a large and diverse mouse population under defined environmental conditions, modeling closely what is likely to occur in human populations. The researchers ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Most people know a colonoscopy requires some preparation by the patient. Now, a Mayo Clinic physician suggests an additional step to lower the risk of colorectal cancer: Ask for your doctor's success rate detecting easy-to-miss polyps called adenomas. The measure of success is called the adenoma detection rate, or ADR, and has been linked to a reduced risk of developing a new cancer after the colonoscopy. The current recommended national benchmark is at least 20 percent, which means that an endoscopist should be able to detect adenomas in at least ...

New York, NY — A new study led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers has found that leptin, a hormone that plays a key role in energy metabolism, fertility, and bone mass, also regulates airway diameter. The findings could explain why obese people are prone to asthma and suggest that body weight–associated asthma may be relieved with medications that inhibit signaling through the parasympathetic nervous system, which mediates leptin function. The study, conducted in mice, was published in the online edition of the journal Cell Metabolism. "Our study ...

Clinical pharmacologist Jens Titze, M.D., knew he had a one-of-a-kind scientific opportunity: the Russians were going to simulate a flight to Mars, and he was invited to study the participating cosmonauts. Titze, now an associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University, wanted to explore long-term sodium balance in humans. He didn't believe the textbook view – that the salt we eat is rapidly excreted in urine to maintain relatively constant body sodium levels. The "Mars500" simulation gave him the chance to keep salt intake constant and monitor urine sodium levels ...

Researchers have found new evidence that metabolic stress can increase the onset of atrial arrhythmias, such as atrial fibrillation (AF), a common heart condition that causes an irregular and often abnormally fast heart rate. The findings may pave the way for the development of new therapies for the condition which can be expected to affect almost one in four of the UK population at some point in their lifetime. The British Heart Foundation (BHF) study, led by University of Bristol scientists and published in Circulation: Arrhythmia and Electrophysiology, found that metabolic ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — If you want to understand a novel, it helps to start from the beginning rather than trying to pick up the plot from somewhere in the middle. The same goes for analyzing a strand of DNA. The best way to make sense of it is to look at it head to tail. Luckily, according to a new study by physicists at Brown University, DNA molecules have a convenient tendency to cooperate. The research, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, looks at the dynamics of how DNA molecules are captured by solid-state nanopores, tiny holes that ...

The nighttime twinkling of fireflies has inspired scientists to modify a light-emitting diode (LED) so it is more than one and a half times as efficient as the original. Researchers from Belgium, France, and Canada studied the internal structure of firefly lanterns, the organs on the bioluminescent insects' abdomens that flash to attract mates. The scientists identified an unexpected pattern of jagged scales that enhanced the lanterns' glow, and applied that knowledge to LED design to create an LED overlayer that mimicked the natural structure. The overlayer, which increased ...

For over 100 years, it was assumed that the penicillin-producing mould fungus Penicillium chrysogenum only reproduced asexually through spores. An international research team led by Prof. Dr. Ulrich Kück and Julia Böhm from the Chair of General and Molecular Botany at the Ruhr-Universität has now shown for the first time that the fungus also has a sexual cycle, i.e. two "genders". Through sexual reproduction of P. chrysogenum, the researchers generated fungal strains with new biotechnologically relevant properties - such as high penicillin production without the contaminating ...

Athens, Ga. – On the list of undesirable medical conditions, a parasitic worm infection surely ranks fairly high. Although modern pharmaceuticals have made them less of a threat in some areas, these organisms are still a major cause of disease and disability throughout much of the developing world. But parasites are not all bad, according to new research by a team of scientists now at the University of Georgia, the Harvard School of Public Health, the Université François Rabelais in Tours, France, and the Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China. A study ...

The research carried out at IIASA in collaboration with the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research demonstrates that there is fundamental rigidity, known as lock-in, within the energy economy that favors the use of fossil fuels and nuclear power despite their large environmental and social costs. The researchers identify that this rigidity of the existing energy economy could be considerably reduced by introducing new rules that hold shareholders of companies liable for the damages caused by the companies they own. Allocating the liability between the company and ...

The flick of an antenna may be how a male wasp lays claim to his harem, according to new research at Simon Fraser University. A team of biologists, led by former PhD graduate student Kelly Ablard, found that when a male targeted a female, he would approach from her from the left side, and once in range, uses the tip of his antenna to tap her antenna. Ablard suggests the act transfers a yet unidentified specimen-specific pheromone onto the female's antenna that marks the female as "out of bounds," or "tagged." The tagging-pheromone helps a male relocate the females ...

Graphene oxide has a remarkable ability to quickly remove radioactive material from contaminated water, researchers at Rice University and Lomonosov Moscow State University have found. A collaborative effort by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour and the Moscow lab of chemist Stepan Kalmykov determined that microscopic, atom-thick flakes of graphene oxide bind quickly to natural and human-made radionuclides and condense them into solids. The flakes are soluble in liquids and easily produced in bulk. The experimental results were reported in the Royal Society of Chemistry ...

What if Noah got it wrong? What if he paired a male and a female animal thinking they were the same species, and then discovered they were not the same and could not produce offspring? As researchers from the Smithsonian's Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project race to save frogs from a devastating disease by breeding them in captivity, a genetic test averts mating mix-ups. At the El Valle Amphibian Conservation Center, project scientists breed 11 different species of highland frogs threatened by the chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has already ...

The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, today launched a new video series that will feature noted scientists discussing the status of knowledge in their fields, their own research, and its impacts and potential impacts on society. Chemistry over Coffee: Conversations with Celebrated Scientists is available at www.acs.org/ChemistryOverCoffee. The launch episode features Chad Mirkin, Ph.D., and Paul Weiss, Ph.D., internationally known leaders in nanotechnology. Mirkin, director of Northwestern University's International Institute for ...

New research reveals that a significant number of adolescents lose their protection from hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, despite having received a complete vaccination series as infants. Results in the January 2013 issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, suggest teens with high-risk mothers (those positive for HBeAg) and teens whose immune system fails to remember a previous viral exposure (immunological memory) are behind HBV reinfection. Infection with HBV is a major global health concern ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Cervical cancer rates for Hmong women are among the highest in the nation, yet past research has shown that cervical and breast cancer screening rates for this population are low – in part because of the Hmong's strong patriarchal culture. However, a new study by Oregon State University researchers examining attitudes regarding breast and cervical cancer screening among Oregon's Hmong population shows a much more complicated picture. The study found that Hmong women often make their own health decisions, but in an environment in which screening is not ...

ANN ARBOR—In 2006, the lab of Dr. David Ginsburg at the Life Sciences Institute put a call out for siblings attending the University of Michigan to donate blood for a study of blood-clotting disorders. The samples were collected over three years and have now enabled the researchers to identify the specific parts of the genome responsible for levels of a key substance for blood clotting. The findings were reported online Dec. 24 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Von Willebrand disease is the most common hereditary blood-clotting disorder—it's more ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Postpartum depression not only affects mothers but it could mean higher health risks for the baby – especially in low-income countries like Ghana where the condition isn't well-recognized, University of Michigan Health System research shows. Efforts to reduce child mortality and improve infant growth, health, and nutritional status in less-developed countries must address the mental health of new moms, the study suggests. Two-thirds of participating mothers of sick, hospitalized babies in Ghana showed high risk for symptoms of clinical depression ...