People having an ischemic stroke should receive clot-dissolving therapy – if appropriate -- within 60 minutes of arriving at the hospital, according to new American Stroke Association guidelines published in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Ischemic stroke, which accounts for nine in 10 strokes, is caused by a blood clot in the arteries leading to the brain. Calling 9-1-1 immediately after recognizing any of the warning signs of stroke -- and getting to a stroke center as fast as possible -- are still the most important steps for optimal stroke care. During ...

A relatively inexpensive program set up to combat river blindness, an infectious disease, has resulted in major health improvements in Africa, shows a study conducted by Erasmus University Medical Center researchers. The study, due to be published January 31 in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, shows that US$250 million helped cure or prevent blindness, skin disease, severe itching, and other symptoms in millions of people. In collaboration with the Management of the African Programme for Onchocerciasis Control (APOC), the researchers calculated the health impact of APOC. Onchocerciasis, ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study found a high prevalence of sleep disorders and a startlingly high rate of short sleep duration among active duty military personnel. The study suggests the need for a cultural change toward appropriate sleep practices throughout the military. "While sleep deprivation is part of the military culture, the high prevalence of short sleep duration in military personnel with sleep disorders was surprising," said Vincent Mysliwiec, MD, the study's principal investigator, lead author and chief of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Madigan ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 31, 2013 – University of Utah researchers decoded the genetic blueprint of the rock pigeon, unlocking secrets about pigeons' Middle East origins, feral pigeons' kinship with escaped racing birds, and how mutations give pigeons traits like a fancy feather hairdo known as a head crest. "Birds are a huge part of life on Earth, and we know surprisingly little about their genetics," especially compared with mammals and fish, says Michael D. Shapiro, one of the study's two principal authors and an assistant professor of biology at the University of ...

New York University physicists have developed a method for moving microscopic particles with the flick of a light switch. Their work, reported in the journal Science, relies on a blue light to prompt colloids to move and then assemble—much like birds flock and move together in flight. The method offers the potential to enhance the design of a range of industrial products, including the architecture of electronics. The study's authors were: Jeremie Palacci and Stefano Sacanna, post-doctoral fellows in NYU's Center for Soft Matter Research who devised the research; ...

Medical illustrators and neurological imaging experts at Johns Hopkins have figured out how night-hunting owls can almost fully rotate their heads - by as much as 270 degrees in either direction - without damaging the delicate blood vessels in their necks and heads, and without cutting off blood supply to their brains. In what may be the first use of angiography, CT scans and medical illustrations to examine the anatomy of a dozen of the big-eyed birds, the Johns Hopkins team, led by medical illustrator Fabian de Kok-Mercado, M.A., a recent graduate student in the Department ...

According to a Johns Hopkins earth scientist, the hole in the Antarctic ozone layer has caused changes in the way that waters in those southern oceans mix – a situation that has the potential to alter the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and eventually could have an impact on global climate change. In a paper published in this week's issue of the journal Science, Darryn W. Waugh and his team show that subtropical intermediate waters in the southern oceans have become "younger" as the upwelling, circumpolar waters have gotten "older" – changes that are consistent with ...

A genetically reprogrammed Herpes simplex virus (HSV) can cure metastatic diffusion of human cancer cells in the abdomen of laboratory mice, according to a new study published January 31 in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens. The paper reports on the collaborative research from scientists at the at the University of Bologna and specifically describes that the HSV converted into a therapeutic anticancer agent attacks breast and ovarian cancer metastases. Past decades have witnessed significant progress in the ability to treat numerous cancers by means of surgery, ...

Each intravenous drug user contracting Hepatitis C is likely to infect around 20 other people with the virus, half of these transmissions occurring in the first two years after the user is first infected, a new study estimates. The work, led by researchers from Oxford University, suggests that early diagnosis and treatment of Hepatitis C in intravenous drug users could prevent many transmissions by limiting the impact of these 'super-spreaders' (a highly infectious person who spreads a disease to many other people). Working out 'who has infected who' in fast-spreading ...

Cell division is serious business. Cells that divide incorrectly can lead to birth defects or set the stage for cancer. A new discovery from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation has identified how two genes work together to make sure chromosomes are distributed properly when cells divide, providing new insights that could contribute to the future development of cancer treatments. In a paper published in the new issue of the journal Science, OMRF researchers Dean Dawson, Ph.D., and Regis Meyer, Ph.D., reveal how two genes—known as Ipl1 and Mps1—are integral to the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Depletion of Antarctic ozone is a more important factor than increasing greenhouse gases in shifting the Southern Hemisphere jet stream in a southward direction, according to researchers at Penn State. "Previous research suggests that this southward shift in the jet stream has contributed to changes in ocean circulation patterns and precipitation patterns in the Southern Hemisphere, both of which can have important impacts on people's livelihoods," said Sukyoung Lee, professor of meteorology. According to Lee, based on modeling studies, both ...

New research has shown the presence of a disease affecting small blood vessels, known as microangiopathy, in the bone marrow of diabetic patients. While it is well known that microangiopathy is the cause of renal damage, blindness and heart attacks in patients with diabetes, this is the first time that a reduction of the smallest blood vessels has been shown in bone marrow, the tissue contained inside the bones and the main source of stem cells. These precious cells not only replace old blood cells but also exert an important reparative function after acute injuries ...

A process that normally occurs in developing embryos – the changing of one basic cell type into another – has also been suspected of playing a role in cancer metastasis. Now a study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center researchers has associated this process, called epithelial-mesenchymal transition or EMT, with disease progression and treatment response in breast cancer patients. The report also identifies underlying mechanisms that someday may become therapeutic targets. "Until now, EMT had only been modeled in experimental systems, but its clinical ...

Overdoses of opioid drugs are a major cause of emergency hospital admissions and preventable death in many countries. In Massachusetts, annual opioid-related overdose deaths have exceeded motor vehicle deaths since 2005, so several strategies have been introduced to tackle this growing problem. For example, overdose education and naloxone distribution (OEND) programs train drug users, their families and friends, and potential bystanders to prevent, recognize, and respond to opioid overdoses. OEND participants are trained to recognize signs of overdose, seek help, rescue ...

Medical school policies that restrict gifts to physicians from the pharmaceutical and device industries are becoming increasingly common, but the effect of such policies on physician prescribing behaviour after graduation into clinical practice is unknown. So a team of US researchers set out to examine whether attending a medical school with a gift restriction policy affected subsequent prescribing of three newly marketed psychotropic (stimulant, antidepressant, and antipsychotic) drugs. They identified 14 US medical schools with an active gift restriction policy ...

Afforestation, planting trees in an area where there have previously been no trees, can reduce the effect of climate change by cooling temperate regions finds a study in BioMed Central's open access journal Carbon Balance and Management. Afforestation would lead to cooler and wetter summers by the end of this century. Without check climate change is projected to lead to summer droughts and winter floods across Europe. Using REMO, the regional climate model of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, researchers tested what would happen to climate change in 100 years ...

An international study led by King's College London has identified a new genetic variant associated with stroke. By exploring the genetic variants linked with blood clotting – a process that can lead to a stroke – scientists have discovered a gene which is associated with large vessel and cardioembolic stroke but has no connection to small vessel stroke. Published in the journal Annals of Neurology, the study provides a potential new target for treatment and highlights genetic differences between different types of stroke, demonstrating the need for tailored treatments. ...

The scientists, from Imperial College London, say their research brings them another step closer to a new kind of industrial revolution, where parts for these biological factories could be mass-produced. These factories have a wealth of applications including better drug delivery treatments for patients, enhancements in the way that minerals are mined from deep underground and advances in the production of biofuels. Professor Paul Freemont, Co- Director of the Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation at Imperial College London and principle co-investigator of the study, ...

January 31, 2013, Shenzhen, China – In a study published today in Science, researchers from University of Utah, BGI, and other institutes have completed the genome sequencing of rock pigeon, Columba livia, among the most common and varied bird species on Earth. The work reveals the evolutionary secrets of pigeons and opens a new way for researchers to study the genetic traits controlling pigeons' splendid diversity. The findings also help to fill the genetic gaps in exploiting pigeon as a model for the molecular genetic basis of avian variation. People are quite familiar ...

Malaria in pregnancy causes a range of adverse effects, including abortions, stillbirths, premature delivery and low infant birth weight. Many of these effects are thought to derive from a placental inflammatory response resulting from interaction of infected red blood cells with the placental tissue. In a study published in the latest issue of the journal PLOS Pathogen*, a researchers' team led by Carlos Penha-Gonçalves at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC), Portugal, observed, for the first time, the mouse placental circulation and showed how it can influence the ...

Researchers at the University of Florida and Oberlin College have developed a sequencing method that will allow potentially hundreds of plant chloroplast genomes to be sequenced at once, facilitating studies of molecular biology and evolution in plants. The chloroplast is the compartment within the plant cell that is responsible for photosynthesis and hence provides all of the sugar that a plant needs to grow and survive. The chloroplast is unusual in containing its own DNA genome, separate from the larger and dominant genome that is located in every cell's nucleus. ...

This press release is available in Spanish. The relationship between genetics and Parkinson's has been investigated for more than a decade, but it is only over the last few years that significant results have begun to be obtained. The first mutations related to the development of this disease were found in 2004. A team from the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country came across a mutation of the LRRK2 gene, which is particularly prevalent among the population of Gipuzkoa. It is the R1441G mutation and is known as the Basque mutation. Now, Doctor Javier Ruiz, a doctor ...

On Jan. 31, 2013 at 2:09am EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 575 miles per second, which is a fairly typical speed for CMEs. Historically, CMEs at this speed are mild. Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME is a solar phenomenon that can send solar particles into space and reach Earth one to three days later. Earth-directed ...

For social animals such as schooling fish, the loss of their numbers to human activity could eventually threaten entire populations, according to a finding that such animals rely heavily on grouping to effectively navigate their environment. Princeton University researchers report in the journal Science that collective intelligence is vital to certain animals' ability to evaluate and respond to their environment. Conducted on fish, the research demonstrated that small groups and individuals become disoriented in complex, changing environments. However, as group size is ...

How does a mountain range maintain its youthful, rugged appearance after 200 million years without tectonic activity? Try a geological facelift – courtesy of the earth's mantle. Researchers from North Carolina State University noticed that a portion of the Appalachian Mountains in western North Carolina near the Cullasaja River basin was topographically quite different from its surroundings. They found two distinct landscapes in the basin: an upper portion with gentle, rounded hills, where the average distance from valley to mountain top was about 500 feet; and a lower ...