Can social media postings by consumers be a source of useful information about vehicle safety and performance defects for automobile manufacturers? Yes, say researchers at Virginia Tech's Pamplin College of Business, who conducted what is believed to be the first large-scale case study confirming the value of social media for vehicle quality management. The researchers developed a computer-based information system that provides auto manufacturers an efficient way to discover and classify vehicle defects. "A lot of useful but hidden data on vehicle quality is embedded ...

Bacteria have a bad rap as agents of disease, but scientists are increasingly discovering their many benefits, such as maintaining a healthy gut. A new study now suggests that bacteria may also have helped kick off one of the key events in evolution: the leap from one-celled organisms to many-celled organisms, a development that eventually led to all animals, including humans. Published this month in the inaugural edition of the new online journal eLife, the study by University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Medical School scientists involves choanoflagellates ...

The missing "lnc" in human disease LncRNAs (pronounced "link") are long non-coding RNAs that are emerging as important regulators of gene expression in biological processes and diseases. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two papers connect lncRNAs to inherited conditions in humans. Sylvia Bähring and colleagues at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center in Berlin found a chromosomal translocation that disrupts the expression of a lncRNA. This disruption alters the expression of the genes PTHLH and SOX9 and results in brachydactyly, an inherited ...

LncRNAs (pronounced "link") are long non-coding RNAs that are emerging as important regulators of gene expression in biological processes and diseases. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, two papers connect lncRNAs to inherited conditions in humans. Sylvia Bähring and colleagues at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center in Berlin found a chromosomal translocation that disrupts the expression of a lncRNA. This disruption alters the expression of the genes PTHLH and SOX9 and results in brachydactyly, an inherited malformation of the fingers and ...

Obesity is a chronic metabolic disorder that affects half a billion people worldwide. Managing obesity is difficult, as many patients rebound to their pre-treatment weight. There is a hypothesis that chronic weight gain causes the body to adopt a state that supports excess weight. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Malcolm Low at the University of Michigan challenged this hypothesis by developing a mouse model of obesity where the proopiomelanocortin (Pomc) gene in the hypothalamus can be turned on and off. With Pomc turned ...

Using a whopping nine-gigapixel image from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has created a catalogue of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way. This gigantic dataset contains more than ten times more stars than previous studies and is a major step forward for the understanding of our home galaxy. The image gives viewers an incredible, zoomable view of the central part of our galaxy. It is so large that, if printed with the resolution of a typical book, it would be 9 metres long ...

Astronomy & Astrophysics published the first analysis of a catalog of 84 million individual stars in the Milky Way bulge as a part of the VVV ESO public survey. This gigantic data set allows building the largest, deepest, and most accurate color-magnitude diagram ever produced, containing more than ten times more stars than any previous study. The bulge of the Milky Way is a large central concentration of ancient stars that is predominantly observed from the southern hemisphere. Understanding the formation and evolution of the bulge is fundamental for deciphering the ...

A number of herbs and dietary supplements (HDS) can cause potentially harmful drug interactions, particularly among people receiving medication for problems with their central nervous or cardiovascular systems. Those are the key findings of an extensive research review published in the November issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice. Researchers examined 54 review articles and 31 original studies. They found that the greatest problems were caused by interactions between prescribed drugs and HDS that included ingredients such as St John's Wort, ...

October 24, 2012, New York, NY – Cancers arise in the body all the time. Most are nipped in the bud by the immune response, not least by its T cells, which detect telltale molecular markers—or antigens—on cancer cells and destroy them before they grow into tumors. Cancer cells, for their part, evolve constantly to evade such assassination. Those that succeed become full-blown malignancies. Yet, given the right sort of help, the immune system can destroy even these entrenched tumors. In the October 22nd issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers led by ...

Red gold, green gold – a ground-breaking initiative has found a way of changing the colour of the world's most iconic precious metal. A University of Southampton team have discovered that by embossing tiny raised or indented patterns onto the metal's surface they can change the way it absorbs and reflects light – ensuring our eyes don't see it as 'golden' in colour at all. The finding results from a major initiative funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) targeting the development of a new generation of nanotechnology-enabled materials. ...

Amphibians are the vertebrate group that is more likely to become roadkill in Catalonia, even more so than reptiles, mammals and birds. This is the case according to an international team of scientists who have concluded that highly protected areas are home to more cases of animal death on the roads. Our network of roads is considered one of the main threats to fauna survival. Researchers at the universities of Barcelona (UB), Porto (Portugal) and Uppsala (Sweden) have studied the number of vertebrate deaths on 820 kilometres of road in North Eastern area of Spain and ...

"In our current paper we present new computational results that explore how membranes may influence crucial biological processes", explains Richard Matthews, Lise-Meitner-Fellow at the University of Vienna and first author of the study. The focus of the investigation is the self-assembly of microscopic particles, the formation of structures or patterns without human intervention. More specifically, the effect of the interactions between membranes and proteins, which can influence the formation of ordered structures in cells, is considered. Self-assembly has become a hot ...

The flame-retardant mixture known as "Firemaster 550" is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University. Firemaster 550 is made up of four principal component chemicals and is used in polyurethane foam in a wide variety of products, ranging from mattresses to infant nursing pillows. The flame-retardant mixture was developed by Chemtura Corp., and was first identified by the research ...

Help is on the way for people who suffer from vocal cord dysfunction. Researchers are developing methods that will contribute to manufacturing voice prostheses with improved affective features. For example, for little girls who have lost their voices, the improved artificial voice devices can produce age-appropriate voices, instead of the usual voice of an adult male. These advances in artificial voice production have been made possible by results achieved in a research project led by Professor Samuli Siltanen, results that are good news indeed for the approximately 30,000 ...

Though it was identified as a disorder as early as the 14th century, pica, or the eating of non-food items, has for years believed to be all but non-existent in a few corners of the globe – a 2006 study that reviewed research on pica found just four regions – the South of South America, Japan, Korea and Madagascar –where the behavior had never been observed. A new Harvard study, however, is showing that pica – and particularly geophagy, or the eating of soil or clay, is far more prevalent in Madagascar, and may be more prevalent worldwide, than researchers previously ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 24, 2012)—Hypnosis can help cut hot flashes by as much as 74%, shows a study supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This is the first controlled, randomized study of the technique to manage hot flashes, which affect as much as 80% of women who go through menopause. The study was published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. Controlled, randomized studies may pit an active drug against an inactive placebo pill. But it's hard to find a placebo for mind-body techniques. ...

A breakthrough study conducted in Canada has found that training of the well-known brainwave in humans, the alpha rhythm, enhances a brain network responsible for cognitive-control. The training technique, termed neurofeedback, is being considered as a promising new method for restoring brain function in mental disorders. Using several neuroimaging methods, a team of researchers at the Western University and the Lawson Health Research Institute have now uncovered that functional changes within a key brain network occur directly after a 30-minute session of noninvasive, ...

ESA's quartet of satellites studying Earth's magnetosphere, Cluster, has discovered that our protective magnetic bubble lets the solar wind in under a wider range of conditions than previously believed. Earth's magnetic field is our planet's first line of defence against the bombardment of the solar wind. This stream of plasma is launched by the Sun and travels across the Solar System, carrying its own magnetic field with it. Depending on how the solar wind's interplanetary magnetic field – IMF – is aligned with Earth's magnetic field, different phenomena can arise ...

This press release is available in German. It all began with a harmless game of soccer among young men in northwestern Albania. After one of the players had been injured in a subsequent dispute, his team members shot a relative of the suspected attacker. Now the male members of the families involved in the blood feud do not dare leave their homes. Such vendettas and blood feuds occur in many societies, sometimes lasting for decades. The harm for the participants is enormous and lacks apparent benefit, as the participants often no longer remember what actually triggered ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A protein that is necessary for lactation in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis, according to research conducted at the University at Buffalo and Princeton University and highlighted as the cover paper in November issue of Nature Cell Biology. "This is the first confirmed report that this protein, called Elf5, is a tumor suppressor in breast cancer," explains Satrajit Sinha, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a corresponding ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 24, 2012)—Hot flashes and night sweats can return after women stop using escitalopram—an antidepressant—to treat these menopause symptoms, according to a study published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. This is typical of stopping hormone therapy as well. Not every woman who took escitalopram in this National Institutes of Health-supported study had her symptoms come back, however. Symptoms returned for only about one third of the women. These women were more likely than others to have had insomnia, ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 24, 2012) – High compliance with hand hygiene and focusing on other simple infection control measures on medical, surgical and neuroscience intensive care units resulted in reduced rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection by 95 percent in a nine-year study, according to research findings by Virginia Commonwealth University physicians presented during IDWeek 2012. Most hospitals use vertical infection prevention strategies, which focus on culturing for patients harboring organisms such as MRSA and isolating those patients. ...

ATLANTA – Identifying risk factors in hospital readmissions could help improve patient care and hospital bottom lines, according to a study recently completed by Georgia State University's Experimental Economics Center and a team from the Emory University School of Medicine. The study, supported by a $1.2 million, three-year award to Georgia State's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and Emory School of Medicine from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging, identifies factors associated with hospital readmission within 30 days after surgery ...

Those tiny balls of boutique mozzarella cheese with the sticker-shock price tag beckoning from the dairy case — are they the real deal, mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, crafted from the milk of water buffaloes? Or are they really cheap fakes made from cow's milk? A new method described in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry promises to provide the answer for mozzarella and other dairy products. Barbara van Asch and colleagues explain that premium dairy products, such as imported specialty cheeses labeled with a designation of origin, are most vulnerable to ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Potatoes with higher levels of beneficial carotenoids are the result of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) studies to improve one of America's most popular vegetables. Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) bred yellow potatoes with carotenoid levels that are two to three times higher than those of the popular Yukon Gold yellow-fleshed potato variety. ARS plant geneticist Kathy Haynes and nutritionist Beverly Clevidence did the research at the agency's Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural ...