After a cautious and rigorous analysis of national malpractice claims, Johns Hopkins patient safety researchers estimate that a surgeon in the United States leaves a foreign object such as a sponge or a towel inside a patient's body after an operation 39 times a week, performs the wrong procedure on a patient 20 times a week and operates on the wrong body site 20 times a week. The researchers, reporting online in the journal Surgery, say they estimate that 80,000 of these so-called "never events" occurred in American hospitals between 1990 and 2010 — and believe their ...

More than a century after it was first identified, Harvard scientists are shedding new light on a little-understood neural feedback mechanism that may play a key role in how the olfactory system works in the brain. As described in a December 19 paper in Neuron by Venkatesh Murthy, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, researchers have, for the first time, described how that feedback mechanism works by identifying where the signals go, and which type of neurons receive them. Three scientists from the Murthy lab were involved in the work: Foivos Markopoulos, Dan ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Fibromyalgia is a complex illness to diagnose and to treat. There is not yet a diagnostic test to establish that someone has it, there is no cure and many fibromyalgia symptoms -- pain, fatigue, problems sleeping and memory and mood issues -- can overlap with or get mistaken for other conditions. A new Mayo Clinic study suggests that many people who have fibromyalgia, especially men, are going undiagnosed. The findings appear in the online edition of the journal Arthritis Care & Research. More research is needed, particularly on why men who reported ...

Genomic technology has revolutionized gene discovery and disease understanding in autism, according to an article published in the December 20 issue of the journal Neuron. The paper highlights the impact of a genomic technology called high-throughput sequencing (HTS) in discovering numerous new genes that are associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). "These new discoveries using HTS confirm that the genetic origins of autism are far more complex than previously believed," said Joseph D. Buxbaum, PhD, Director of the Seaver Autism Center at the Icahn School of ...

Why would our immune system turn against our own cells? This is the question that the combined Inserm/CNRS/ Pierre and Marie Curie University/Association Institut de Myologie have strived to answer in their "Therapies for diseases of striated muscle", concentrating in particular on the auto-immune disease known as myasthenia gravis. Through the project known as FIGHT-MG (Fight Myasthenia Gravis), financed by the European Commission and coordinated by Inserm, Sonia Berrih-Aknin and Rozen Le Panse have contributed proof of the concept that a molecule imitating a virus may ...

Scientists are reporting an advance toward development of a pill that could become celiac disease's counterpart to the lactase pills that people with lactose intolerance can take to eat dairy products without risking digestive upsets. They describe the approach, which involves an enzyme that breaks down the gluten that causes celiac symptoms, in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Justin Siegel, Ingrid Swanson Pultz and colleagues explain that celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder in which the gluten in wheat, rye or barley products causes inflammation in ...

A new process for blowing up grains of rice produces a super-nutritious form of puffed rice, with three times more protein and a rich endowment of other nutrients that make it ideal for breakfast cereals, snack foods and nutrient bars for school lunch programs, scientists are reporting. Their study appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Syed S.H. Rizvi and colleagues explain that commercial puffed rice is made by steam extrusion. An extruder squeezes rice flour mixed with water through a narrow opening at high temperature and pressure. On exiting ...

Large amounts of a substitute for one of the world's most treasured fragrance ingredients — a substance that also has potential anti-cancer activity — could be produced with a sustainable new technology, scientists are reporting. Published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the advance enables cultures of bacteria to produce a substitute for natural ambergris, which sells for hundreds of dollars an ounce. Laurent Daviet, Michel Schalk and colleagues explain that ambergris, a waxy substance excreted by sperm whales, has been prized as a fragrance ingredient ...

The South African government is investing in scientific research to foster production of agricultural products like pinotage (the country's signature red wine) and honeybush (source of a tea so fragrant that a potful can perfume an entire house) to create jobs and boost the economy. That effort and others aimed at developing a globally competitive research enterprise are the topics of cover stories in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the world's largest scientific society. Britt E. Erickson, ...

Growth of new materials is the cornerstone of materials science - a highly inter-disciplinary field of science that touches every aspect of our lives from computers and cell phones to the clothes we wear. At the same time, the energy crisis has brought the spotlight on synthesis and growth of materials for clean energy technologies, such as solar cells and batteries. However, researchers in these areas do not simply grow materials —they assemble the atoms and molecules that form so-called thin films on various substrates. It is a process that is highly complex, time-consuming ...

Researchers at the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have described a new selective target in muscle regeneration. This is the association of alpha-enolase protein and plasmin. The finding could be used to develop new treatments to regenerate muscular injuries or dystrophies. The study has been published in PLOS ONE journal. Skeletal muscle has a great regeneration capacity after injury or genetic diseases such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the most common neuromuscular disorder in children. This condition is due to a defect in the gene of dystrophin, ...

Experiencing rejection not only affects how we think and feel — over the long-term it can also influence our physical and mental health. New research suggests that when rejection comes in the form of discrimination, people respond with a pattern of thoughts, behaviors, and physiological responses that may contribute to overall health disparities. "Psychological factors, like discrimination, have been suggested as part of the causal mechanisms that explain how discrimination gets 'under the skin' to affect health," says psychological scientist and senior researcher Wendy ...

Irvine, Calif., Dec. 19, 2012 — Most people are impressed by how a toad jumps. UC Irvine biologist Emanuel Azizi is more impressed by how one lands. An assistant professor of ecology & evolutionary biology who specializes in muscle physiology and biomechanics, Azizi found that nature's favorite leapers possess a neuromuscular response that's specific to the intensity of a landing – a mechanism that protects muscles from injury upon impact. The research is helping reveal how the nervous system modulates motor control patterns involved with jumping and landing. Azizi's ...

Obese, postmenopausal women are at greater risk for developing breast cancer and their cancers tend to be more aggressive than those in lean counterparts. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the December issue of the journal Cancer Research shows how this risk might be prevented. "By using nutrient tracers for fat and sugar, we tracked where the body stored excess calories. In lean models, excess fat and glucose were taken up by the liver, mammary and skeletal tissues. In obese models, excess fat and glucose were taken up by tumors, fueling their ...

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered that a particular protein helps nerve cells extend themselves along the spinal cord during mammalian development. Their results shed light on the subset of muscular dystrophies that result from mutations in the gene that holds the code for the protein, called dystroglycan, and also show how the nerve and muscle failings of the degenerative diseases are related. As mammals like mice and humans develop, nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord must form connections with themselves and with muscles to assure proper ...

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego have built a small fleet of portable pollution sensors that allow users to monitor air quality in real time on their smart phones. The sensors could be particularly useful to people suffering from chronic conditions, such as asthma, who need to avoid exposure to pollutants. CitiSense is the only air-quality monitoring system capable of delivering real-time data to users' cell phones and home computers—at any time. Data from the sensors can also be used to estimate air quality throughout the area where the ...

For more than half a century, researchers have known that the bacteria that colonize the gastrointestinal tract of mammals influence their host's cholesterol metabolism. Now, Jens Walter and colleagues of the University of Nebraska show that changes in cholesterol metabolism induced by diet can alter the gut flora. The research was published online ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. In the study, the researchers added plant sterol esters to the diets of hamsters. The overall effect of this was to inhibit several bacterial taxa, from ...

URBANA – Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) may have affected humans for much longer than is currently believed. Alfred Roca, an assistant professor in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois, thinks that the genomes of an isolated West African human population provide important clues about how the disease has evolved. HIV is thought to have originated from chimpanzees in central Africa that were infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a retrovirus. "If you look at the diversity present across SIV in chimpanzees, ...

This fall, the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and the National Academy of Sciences organized a colloquium that brought together more than 100 cosmologists, particle physicists and observational astrophysicists – three fields now united in the hunt to determine what is dark matter. Their goal: to take stock of the latest theories and findings about dark matter, assess just how close we are to detecting it and spark cross-disciplinary discussions and collaborations aimed at resolving the dark matter puzzle. So where do things stand? ...

Hospital MRIs may be better at predicting long-term outcomes for people with mild traumatic brain injuries than CT scans, the standard technique for evaluating such injuries in the emergency room, according to a clinical trial led by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH). Published this month in the journal Annals of Neurology, the study was led by UCSF neuroradiologist Esther Yuh, MD, PhD and followed 135 people treated for mild traumatic brain injuries over the past two years ...

PHILADELPHIA — The field of metamaterials involves augmenting materials with specially designed patterns, enabling those materials to manipulate electromagnetic waves and fields in previously impossible ways. Now, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania have come up with a theory for moving this phenomenon onto the quantum scale, laying out blueprints for materials where electrons have nearly zero effective mass. Such materials could make for faster circuits with novel properties. The work was conducted by Nader Engheta, the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor of Electrical ...

December 18, 2012 -- Researchers in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health assessed the impact of pollution on agricultural worker productivity using daily variations in ozone levels. Their results show that ozone, even at levels below current air-quality standards in most parts of the world, has significant negative impacts on worker productivity. Their findings suggest that environmental protection is important for promoting economic growth and investing in human capital in contrast to its common portrayal as a tax ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Brine water that flows back from gas wells in the Marcellus Shale region after hydraulic fracturing is many times more salty than seawater, with high contents of various elements, including radium and barium. The chemistry is consistent with brines formed during the Paleozoic era, a study by an undergraduate student and two professors in Penn State's Department of Geosciences found. The study indicates that the brine flowback elements found in high levels in the late stages of hydraulic fracturing come from the ancient brines rather than from salts ...

New York, NY, December 19, 2012 – About 30 percent of the more than 70,000 bladder cancer cases expected in 2012 are muscle invasive. In such cases, radical cystectomy is the preferred treatment. In a pilot trial, a team of investigators assessed the efficacy of open radical cystectomy (ORC) vs. robotic-assisted laparoscopic radical cystectomy (RARC). While there were no significant differences in treatment outcomes, RARC resulted in decreased estimated blood loss and shorter hospital stay compared to ORC. The results are published in the February 2013 issue of The Journal ...

Among HIV patients receiving well-organized care with free access to antiretroviral therapy, those who smoke lose more years of life to smoking than to HIV, according to a Danish study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online. The findings highlight the importance of smoking cessation efforts in the long-term, integrated care of patients infected with HIV. Marie Helleberg, MD, of Copenhagen University Hospital and colleagues estimated the effect of smoking on mortality, risk of death, and life expectancy, and the number of life years lost to smoking ...