Low-birth-weight babies with a particular brain abnormality are at greater risk for autism, according to a new study that could provide doctors a signpost for early detection of the still poorly understood disorder. Led by Michigan State University, the study found that low-birth-weight newborns were seven times more likely to be diagnosed with autism later in life if an ultrasound taken just after birth showed they had enlarged ventricles, cavities in the brain that store spinal fluid. The results appear in the Journal of Pediatrics. "For many years there's been a ...

Knowing the temperatures that viruses, bacteria, worms and all other parasites need to grow and survive could help determine the future range of infectious diseases under climate change, according to new research. Princeton University researchers developed a model that can identify the prospects for nearly any disease-causing parasite as the Earth grows warmer, even if little is known about the organism. Their method calculates how the projected temperature change for an area would alter the creature's metabolism and life cycle, the researchers report in the journal Ecology ...

WASHINGTON-–U.S. Naval Research Laboratory research physicists and engineers from the Plasma Physics Division, working at the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) transmitter facility, Gakona, Alaska, successfully produced a sustained high density plasma cloud in Earth's upper atmosphere. "Previous artificial plasma density clouds have lifetimes of only ten minutes or less," said Paul Bernhardt, Ph.D., NRL Space Use and Plasma Section. "This higher density plasma 'ball' was sustained over one hour by the HAARP transmissions and was extinguished only ...

Researchers from Italy have found that the antioxidant, N-acetylcysteine (NAC), when injected prior to harvesting of the liver, significantly improves graft survival following transplantation. Results published in the February issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), suggest that the NAC effect on early graft function and survival is higher when suboptimal organs are used. A 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) report estimates that 22,000 liver transplants were performed worldwide, with nearly 18,500 ...

(Edmonton) Researchers from the University of Alberta are helping children with Down syndrome who stutter find their voice and speak with ease. Stuttering is a common problem that affects almost half of all children with Down syndrome, yet despite the scope of the problem, little research exists about preferred treatment options—or even whether to treat at all. Researchers with the U of A's Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research (ISTAR) point to a new case study that shows fluency shaping can indeed improve a child's speech. "People who stutter, whether they ...

New research highlights a memory strategy that may help people who suffer from depression in recalling positive day-to-day experiences. The study is published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Previous research has shown that being able to call up concrete, detailed memories that are positive or self-affirming can help to boost positive mood for people with a history of depression. But it's this kind of vivid memory for everyday events that seems to be dampened for people who suffer from depression. Researcher ...

Experts have disabled a unique member of the signalling proteins which are essential for the development of the malaria parasite. They have produced a mutant lacking the ancient bacterial Shewanella-like protein phosphatase known as SHLP1 (pronounced shelph). This mutant is unable to complete its complex life cycle and is arrested in its development in the mosquito. The discovery could help in the design of new drugs to arrest the spread of this killer disease. SHLP1is critical to the cellular development of the malaria parasite. It can be found at every stage in the ...

Technology developed at The University of Nottingham has been used in a breakthrough study aimed at developing the first comprehensive model of a fully functioning fetal heart. The abdominal fetal ECG device, designed originally by academics in the University's Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and on commercial sale throughout the world since 2008 through the University spin-out company Monica Healthcare Ltd, has been used to observe living fetal hearts of babies in their mothers' wombs. The collaborative study led by experts at The University of ...

URBANA -- Developing strategies to increase the amount of saleable product while reducing dietary inputs is a priority for animal scientists. University of Illinois researchers have been looking at how dietary components affect gut health and disease resistance in chickens. "An important nutritional outcome is how well an animal is able to digest and metabolize its diet," said Ryan Dilger. Poultry and swine nutritionists are concerned about dietary fiber in alternative dietary ingredients, particularly the by-products of biofuel production. Fiber concentrations are ...

MIAMI – February 25, 2013 -- In a study published today in Nature Climate Change researchers used the latest emissions scenarios and climate models to show how varying levels of carbon emissions are likely to result in more frequent and severe coral bleaching events. Large-scale 'mass' bleaching events on coral reefs are caused by higher-than-normal sea temperatures. High temperatures make light toxic to the algae that reside within the corals. The algae, called 'zooxanthellae', provide food and give corals their bright colors. When the algae are expelled or retained ...

Cambridge, Mass. – February 25, 2013 – "People have often thought there's no upper bound for wind power—that it's one of the most scalable power sources," says Harvard applied physicist David Keith. After all, gusts and breezes don't seem likely to "run out" on a global scale in the way oil wells might run dry. Yet the latest research in mesoscale atmospheric modeling, published today in the journal Environmental Research Letters, suggests that the generating capacity of large-scale wind farms has been overestimated. Each wind turbine creates behind it a "wind shadow" ...

Even dying stars could host planets with life - and if such life exists, we might be able to detect it within the next decade. This encouraging result comes from a new theoretical study of Earth-like planets orbiting white dwarf stars. Researchers found that we could detect oxygen in the atmosphere of a white dwarf's planet much more easily than for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star. "In the quest for extraterrestrial biological signatures, the first stars we study should be white dwarfs," said Avi Loeb, theorist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics ...

Chicago (February 25, 2013): Women who have had the lymph nodes under their arm surgically removed during breast cancer treatment are warned to avoid certain practices that can cause lymphedema—a condition that causes chronic, painless swelling in the arm. Now, a new study published in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons suggests that the vast majority of women who undergo breast cancer operations worry about developing this complication and that this fear far exceeds their actual risk of getting lymphedema. In fact, most women adopt four ...

As part of the study, scientists sampled the presence of 20 species of birds both near and far from 30 rural residences in the Adirondack Park. Calculating their occurrence at increasing distances from the residences, they determined that "human-adapted" species are 36 percent more likely to occur near the homes than in the surrounding mixed hardwood-conifer forests, and that "human-sensitive" species were 26 percent less likely. Beyond 200 meters, occupancy rates were similar to the surrounding forest. The report appears in the current online edition of the Journal of ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have identified what may be a major factor behind the increased risk of two adverse outcomes in pregnancies conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Two papers published in the journal Fertility and Sterility support the hypothesis that extremely high estrogen levels at the time of embryo transfer increase the risk that infants will be born small for their gestational age and the risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous condition that can threaten the lives of both mother and child. They also outline a protocol that reduced ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have identified a new so-called pseudogene that regulates the tumour-suppressing PTEN gene. They hope that this pseudogene will be able to control PTEN to reverse the tumour process, make the cancer tumour more sensitive to chemotherapy and to prevent the development of resistance. The findings, which are published in the scientific journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, can be of significance in the future development of cancer drugs. The development of tumours coincides with the activation of several cancer genes ...

An international team of researchers has found that a once-a-month, high-dose injection of a commonly used asthma drug is highly effective in treating teens and adults chronically afflicted with hives and severe, itchy rash. The drug, omalizumab, was tested on 323 people at 55 medical centers for whom standard antihistamine therapy failed to quell their underlying, allergy-like reaction, known as chronic idiopathic urticaria or chronic spontaneous urticaria. "Physicians and patients may now have a fast, safe and well-tolerated treatment option to consider before prescribing ...

DETROIT – For expectant moms who may contemplate the pros and cons of natural child birth or Caesarian section, a Henry Ford Hospital study suggests that C-section babies are susceptible to developing allergies by age two. Researchers found that babies born by C-section are five times more likely to develop allergies than babies born naturally when exposed to high levels of common allergens in the home such as those from dogs, cats and dust mites. The study is being presented Sunday at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology annual meeting in San Antonio. "This ...

LA JOLLA, CA – February 24, 2013 – Small stretches of DNA in the human genome are known as "pseudogenes" because, while their sequences are nearly identical to those of various genes, they have long been thought to be non-coding "junk" DNA. But now, a new study led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) shows how pseudogenes can regulate the activity of a cancer-related gene called PTEN. The study also shows that pseudogenes can be targeted to control PTEN's activity. Published in the latest issue of the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, ...

Two USC scientists have developed an algorithm that could help make DNA sequencing affordable enough for clinics – and could be useful to researchers of all stripes. Andrew Smith, a computational biologist at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, developed the algorithm along with USC graduate student Timothy Daley to help predict the value of sequencing more DNA, to be published in Nature Methods on February 24. Extracting information from the DNA means deciding how much to sequence: sequencing too little and you may not get the answers you are looking ...

The origin of an innate ability the brain has to protect itself from damage that occurs in stroke has been explained for the first time. The Oxford University researchers hope that harnessing this inbuilt biological mechanism, identified in rats, could help in treating stroke and preventing other neurodegenerative diseases in the future. 'We have shown for the first time that the brain has mechanisms that it can use to protect itself and keep brain cells alive,' says Professor Alastair Buchan, Head of the Medical Sciences Division and Dean of the Medical School at Oxford ...

The new study in Nature Climate Change shows that reaching the 3 energy-related objectives proposed by the United Nations in their Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative, launched in 2011, would reduce emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change and, in combination with other measures, could help keep global temperature rise from exceeding the internationally agreed target level of 2°C. "Achievement of the 3 objectives would provide an important entry point into stringent climate protection," says Joeri Rogelj, ETH Zurich researcher and IIASA-affiliated ...

Psychogenic diseases, formerly known as 'hysterical' illnesses, can have many severe symptoms such as painful cramps or paralysis but without any physical explanation. However, new research from the University of Cambridge and UCL (University College London) suggests that individuals with psychogenic disease, that is to say physical illness that stems from emotional or mental stresses, do have brains that function differently. The research was published today, 25 February, in the journal Brain. Psychogenic diseases may look very similar to illnesses caused by damage to ...

UPTON, NY – Identifying the mysterious mechanism underlying high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) remains one of the most important and tantalizing puzzles in physics. This remarkable phenomenon allows electric current to pass with perfect efficiency through materials chilled to subzero temperatures, and it may play an essential role in revolutionizing the entire electricity chain, from generation to transmission and grid-scale storage. Pinning down one of the possible explanations for HTS—fleeting fluctuations called charge-density waves (CDWs)—could help solve the ...

Cancer is characterized by uncontrolled cell division and growth. In order to identify new therapeutic targets through which to tackle the disease, scientists seek to clarify the mechanisms that control the expression of genes that favor the development of tumors, in processes such as uncontrolled cell division. Today, Nature has published a paper by the lab headed by Raúl Méndez, ICREA professor at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona). The study describes a mechanism controlled by the CPEB1 protein that affects more than 200 genes related to cell proliferation ...