Previously, there had been a lack of reliable data in Germany on the long-term psychological consequences of political imprisonment in the GDR. Professor Andreas Maercker, Head of the Department of Psychopathology and Clinical Intervention at the University of Zurich, and private lecturer Dr. Matthias Schützwohl, Group Leader at the Clinic and Polyclinic of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at Dresden University of Technology, interviewed 146 former political prisoners in the mid-1990s. 15 years later, they studied the majority of those concerned (78 men and 15 women) again. ...

Vulnerability to major depression is linked with how satisfied we are with our lives. This association is largely due to genes. This is the main finding of a new twin study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in collaboration with the University of Oslo. The researchers compared longitudinal information from identical and fraternal twins to determine how vulnerability to major depression is associated with dispositional (overall) lifetime satisfaction. Previous studies have systematically shown that life satisfaction is considerably stable over time. People ...

Researchers have identified a new means to eradicate malaria infections by rapidly killing the blood-borne Plasmodium parasites that cause the disease. Malaria causes up to 3 million deaths each year, predominantly afflicting vulnerable people such as children under five and pregnant women, in tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Treatments are available for this disease, but the Plasmodium parasite is fast becoming resistant to the most common drugs, and health authorities say they desperately need new strategies to tackle the disease. This new potential ...

Giant German hippopotamuses wallowing on the banks of the Elbe are not a common sight. Yet 1.8 million years ago hippos were a prominent part of European wildlife, when mega-fauna such as woolly mammoths and giant cave bears bestrode the continent. Now palaeontologists writing in Boreas, believe that the changing climate during the Pleistocene Era may have forced Europe's hippos to shrink to pygmy sizes before driving them to warmer climes. "Species of hippo ranged across pre-historic Europe, including the giant Hippopotamus antiquus a huge animal which often weighed ...

Theoretical physicists like to play with very unconventional toys. Manoel Manghi from Toulouse University in France and his colleagues have adopted a seemingly playful approach to examining what happens to a double stranded molecule of DNA when it is stretched to the breaking point, in a study about to be published in EPJ E. Instead of using optical tweezers to stretch DNA as previously done in experimental settings, the authors focused on using a theoretical model to account for the structural deformations of DNA and determine how its mechanical characteristics could explain ...

Copenhagen, Denmark – Data publishers should have the option of submitting their biodiversity datasets for peer review, according to a discussion paper commissioned by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). The proposal is among a set of recommendations made by Mark Costello and co-authors in the paper Quality assurance and Intellectual Property Rights in advancing biodiversity data publication, freely available for download through the GBIF Online Resource Centre. The paper argues that concerns over data quality impede the use of large biodiversity databases ...

Montreal, October 25, 2012 – Always look on the bright side of life. Thanks to a new study from Concordia University, this catchy refrain offers a prescription for staying healthy during one's golden years. Research has shown that lonely older adults are at greater risk of developing health problems but a new study by Carsten Wrosch, a professor in Concordia's Department of Psychology and member of the Centre for Research in Human Development, offers hope. In a forthcoming article in Psychosomatic Medicine, Wrosch proves that older adults who approach life with a positive ...

VIDEO: This animation shows the evolution of Saturn's 'Great Springtime Storm' in the planet's stratosphere. It is based on observations performed at mid-infrared wavelengths. As clouds broke out in Saturn's stormy troposphere,... Click here for more information. The heat-seeking capabilities of the international Cassini spacecraft and two ground-based telescopes have provided the first look at the aftermath of Saturn's 'Great Springtime Storm'. Concealed from the naked ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A gene linked to the risk of developing Alzheimer's, heart disease and diabetes becomes less important to quality of life once people hit their 90s, a Mayo Clinic study shows. At that point, good friends and a positive attitude have a bigger impact, the researchers say. The findings are published this month in the Journal of American Medical Directors Association. Researchers used the National Institutes of Health-supported Rochester Epidemiology Project, a database of patient records in Olmsted County, Minn., to find people ages 90 to 99 living on ...

In the course of the 25th ECNP Congress leading experts and five and a half thousand psychiatrists, neurologists, neuroscience researchers and public health professionals from over 90 different countries met from 13 to 17 October 2012 in Vienna, Austria, to celebrate ECNP´s 25-year anniversary and engage in groundbreaking debate. Against the background of the increasing burden of disorders of the brain and restrained drug development in this area, the ECNP Congress once again highlighted the key importance of neuroscience for better treatment and prevention. "Crucially, ...

The case of six Italian scientists sentenced to be jailed for failing to warn of the L'Aquila earthquake in Italy in 2009 highlights the difficult task facing scientists in dealing with risk communication and uncertainty. We deal with risks and uncertainty all the time in our daily lives. Weather forecasts do not come with guarantees and despite the death tolls on our roads we continue to use bikes, cars, and buses. We have also long built our homes and workplaces in areas known to have a history of earthquakes, floods, or volcanic activity. Much as society and governments ...

A new video-article in JoVE, Journal of Visualized Experiments, details the use of a new laser-activated bio-adhesive polymer. The chitosan-based polymer, SurgiLux, was developed by scientists at the University of New South Wales. Chitosan is a polymer derived from chitin, which is found in fungal cell walls or in exoskeletons of crustaceans and insects.This molecular component allows SurgiLux to form low energy bonds between the polymer and the desired tissue when it absorbs light. The technology may soon replace traditional sutures in the clinic. For thousands of years, ...

PITTSBURGH—While Omega-3 essential fatty acids—found in foods like wild fish and grass-fed livestock—are necessary for human body functioning, their effects on the working memory of healthy young adults have not been studied until now. In the first study of its kind, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have determined that healthy young adults ages 18-25 can improve their working memory even further by increasing their Omega-3 fatty acid intake. Their findings have been published online in PLOS One. "Before seeing this data, I would have said it was impossible ...

HOUSTON – (Oct. 25, 2012) – Results of a large-scale, randomized clinical trial called RESPECT revealed that patent foramen ovale (PFO) closure may be superior to medical therapy in preventing recurrent stroke, according to a presentation of findings today at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) conference in Miami. "In contrast to a previously reported randomized trial for the treatment of cryptogenic stroke, the RESPECT trial enrolled only patients with documented cryptogenic embolic strokes and excluded patients with other potential causes of stroke ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 25, 2012—Targeted T-cells can seek out and destroy tumor cells that carry specific antigen markers. Two novel anti-tumor therapies that take advantage of this T-cell response are described in articles published in Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The articles are available free on the Human Gene Therapy website at http://www.liebertpub.com/hum. Richard Morgan and colleagues from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Bethesda, MD, and Duke University Medical ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report in the journal Developmental Cell that they have identified genes that control growth and regeneration of the intestine in the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. "How animals repair their internal organs after injury is not well understood," said University of Illinois cell and developmental biology professor Phillip Newmark, who led the study. "Planarian flatworms are useful models for studying this question." After injury, planaria are able to re-grow missing body parts, including any organs that are damaged or lost, ...

Mobile devices include an increasing number of input and output techniques that are currently not used for communication. Recent research results by Dr Eve Hoggan from HIIT / University of Helsinki, Finland, however, indicate that a synchronous haptic communication system has value as a communication channel in real-world settings with users that express greetings, presence and emotions through presages. -Pressure and tactile techniques have been explored in tangible interfaces for remote communication on dedicated devices but until now, these techniques have not been ...

Bethesda, MD—When astronauts return to Earth, their altitude isn't the only thing that drops—their blood pressure does too. This condition, known as orthostatic hypotension, occurs in up to half of those astronauts on short-term missions (two weeks or less) and in nearly all astronauts after long-term missions (four to six months). A new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) solves the biological mystery of how this happens by showing that low gravity compromises the ability of arteries and veins to constrict normally, inhibiting ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (October 25, 2012) –Whitehead Institute researchers report that common assumptions employed in the generation and interpretation of data from global gene expression analyses can lead to seriously flawed conclusions about gene activity and cell behavior in a wide range of current biological research. "Expression analysis is one of the most commonly used methods in modern biology," says Whitehead Member Richard Young. "So we are concerned that flawed assumptions may affect the interpretation of many biological studies." Much of today's interpretation ...

University of Illinois cell and developmental Biology professor Fei Wang and colleagues have created a new technique to study how myeloids, a type of blood stem cell, become the white blood cells important for immune system defense against infections and tissue damage. This approach offers new insights into the molecular mechanisms at work during myeloid differentiation, and may improve our ability to treat myeloid diseases like leukemia, the researchers report. Their findings appear in the journal Blood. Myeloids are blood stem cells from bone marrow or the spinal cord ...

MIAMI, FL – OCTOBER 25, 2012 – A clinical trial indicates that using an investigational medical device to close a PFO, or "hole in the heart," may be superior to medical management alone in the prevention of a repeated stroke. Results of the RESPECT trial were presented today at the 24th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. A PFO (patent foramen ovale) is a flap-like opening ...

MIAMI, FL – OCTOBER 25, 2012 – A clinical trial that compared catheter-based PFO closure using an investigational device found that there was no significant reduction in ischemic and bleeding events compared to standard medical therapy; stroke risk was non-significantly reduced with device therapy. The PC Trial was presented at the 24th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation (CRF), TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional cardiovascular medicine. ...

TORONTO, ON – It is time to put the nature versus nurture debate to rest and embrace growing evidence that it is the interaction between biology and environment in early life that influences human development, according to a series of studies recently published in a special edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Biologists used to think that our differences are pre-programmed in our genes, while psychologists argued that babies are born with a blank slate and their experience writes on it to shape them into the adults they become. Instead, ...

Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, researchers have discovered a band, or stream, of stars believed to be the remnant of an ancient star cluster slowly being ingested by the Milky Way, Earth's home galaxy. "The Milky Way is constantly gobbling up small galaxies and star clusters," said Ana Bonaca, a Yale graduate student and lead author of a study forthcoming in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "The more powerful gravity of our Milky Way pulls these objects apart and their stars then become part of the Milky Way itself." Researchers have previously found evidence of ...

Evolution, often perceived as a series of random changes, might in fact be driven by a simple and repeated genetic solution to an environmental pressure that a broad range of specieshappen to share, according to new research. Princeton University research published in the journal Science suggests that knowledge of a species' genes — and how certain external conditions affect the proteins encoded by those genes — could be used to determine a predictable evolutionary pattern driven by outside factors. Scientists could then pinpoint how the diversity of adaptations seen ...