COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study of eight child prodigies suggests a possible link between these children's special skills and autism. Of the eight prodigies studied, three had a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders. As a group, the prodigies also tended to have slightly elevated scores on a test of autistic traits, when compared to a control group. In addition, half of the prodigies had a family member or a first- or second-degree relative with an autism diagnosis. The fact that half of the families and three of the prodigies themselves were affected by autism is surprising ...

(Boston) – Cardiothoracic surgeons and endocrinologists from Boston Medical Center (BMC) have found that among patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, achieving Surgical Care Improvement Project (SCIP) benchmarks for glycemic control may be irrelevant when perioperative continuous insulin infusion protocols are implemented. These findings appear on-line in the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Currently, 40 percent of all patients undergoing CABG suffer from diabetes, and this number is quickly rising. Traditionally these patients ...

Belatacept (trade name Nulojix®) has been approved since June 2011 to prevent a rejection reaction of the body to the donor organ (transplant) in adults who have received a kidney transplant. The Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has examined the added benefit of the drug pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG). The assessment showed an indication of a minor added benefit of belatacept in adults with transplants from donors who had been selected according to the so-called standard criteria. Serious side ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center have identified metabolic signatures that may pave the way for personalized therapy in glioma, a type of tumor that starts in the brain. The study appears online in the October issue of Cancer Research, a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research. According to the authors, little has been known about the underlying metabolic alterations that may drive the growth of the most aggressive type of glioma, termed glioblastoma. "For the first time, we have described global metabolomic signatures in glioma," said study ...

The humanized antibody ipilimumab (trade name Yervoy®) has been approved since August 2011 for the treatment of adult patients with advanced melanoma (black skin cancer) who have already been treated. The term "advanced" means that the melanoma can no longer be removed by an operation or that metastases have formed. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has examined the added benefit of the drug pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG). According to the findings, the drug offers major advantages with ...

Scientists at the University of Huddersfield are collaborating with experts at some of the world's leading research institutes in an attempt to unravel the mysteries of a particle that played a role in the creation of the universe. The existence of neutrinos and anti-neutrinos – particles that are almost massless and which travel at light speed from one side of the earth to the other – was confirmed more than 50 years ago. Scientists believe that they were created at the Big Bang and might hold the key to the nature of the universe. But they are light particles that ...

Vandetanib (trade name Caprelsa®) has been approved in Germany since February 2012 for adult patients suffering from a particular form of aggressive thyroid cancer. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has now examined the added benefit of the drug pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG). According to the findings, there is no proof of added benefit, because no data on patient-relevant outcomes for those patients for whom the drug is approved were presented by the drug manufacturer in its dossier. ...

This press release is available in Spanish. During the past year, the research group TIC 218 at the Department of Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications attached to the University of Granada and the Andalusian Information Technology and Communications Center (CITIC) has implemented the methods for the detection and diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease, within the PPMI initiative of the Michael J. Fox foundation for the study of Parkinson's disease. In addition, other databases were used such as that of the Virgen de la Victoria Hospital, Málaga, Spain, and Virgen de ...

Physician-researchers from the Cardiac Center at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia presented new findings on pediatric cardiovascular disease at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2012 in Los Angeles. They described racial disparities in risk factors for sudden cardiac death, imaging modalities and novel approaches to assessing cardiac anomalies, ventricular assist device use, special considerations in syndromes in adult congenital heart disease, changes in immunosuppressive drugs after pediatric heart transplant, and many other topics. Children's ...

A push to replace old, heat-trapping paving materials with new, cooler materials could actually lead to higher electricity bills for surrounding buildings, engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have found. Researchers published their findings Oct. 29 in the new Journal of Urban Climate. The new paving materials are designed to lower the overall temperature of the areas where they are used—something that the study, which was focused on local solar radiation and energy consumption, was not designed to measure. The study sounds a note of caution at a time ...

(TORONTO, Canada – Nov. 8, 2012) – Canadian and Italian stem cell researchers have discovered a new "master control gene" for human blood stem cells and found that manipulating its levels could potentially create a way to expand these cells for clinical use. The findings, published today online ahead of print in Cell Stem Cell, usher in a new paradigm for the regulation of human blood stem cells, says co-principal investigator Dr. John Dick, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Stem Cell Biology and is a Senior Scientist at University Health Network's McEwen Centre for ...

This press release is available in Spanish and Portuguese. Each year, huge carbon stores are lost as a result of deforestation. In South America, around four million hectares of forest are cut down every year. As a result, international climate protection programs are planning to financially compensate farmers who preserve forests or plant new trees. Demand for land is rising, however. And growing need for food and energy crops will inevitably lead to conflicts of interest over fertile land in countries such as Brazil and Ecuador. Thomas Knoke and Michael Weber at Technische ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Based on a new discovery by researchers at Oregon State University, the world's multi-billion dollar foundry industry may soon develop a sweet tooth. This industry, that produces metal castings used in everything from water pumps and jet engines to railroad and automobile parts, dates back thousands of years to before Greek and Roman times. It was important in the advance of human civilization, but still continues to evolve. Some modern technologies use various types of "binders" to essentially glue together sands and other materials to form sophisticated ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Along with reciting the days of the week and the alphabet, adults often practice reciting numbers with young children. Now, new research from the University of Missouri suggests reciting numbers is not enough to prepare children for math success in elementary school. The research indicates that counting, which requires assigning numerical values to objects in chronological order, is more important for helping preschoolers acquire math skills. "Reciting means saying the numbers from memory in chronological order, whereas counting involves understanding ...

New York, NY (Nov. 8, 2012) – A study by researchers at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, recently e-published ahead of print by the Journal of Clinical Oncology, suggests that women who have surgery for ovarian cancer at high-volume hospitals have superior outcomes than similar patients at low-volume hospitals. The improved survival rate is not dependent on a lower rate of complications following surgery, but on the treatment of the complications. In fact, patients with a complication after ...

CENTER CITY, Minn. (November 8, 2012) – Young adults undergoing addiction treatment benefit from regular participation in Twelve Step-based self-help groups after discharge, according to a naturalistic study published electronically and in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. The study was conducted collaboratively by the Center for Addiction Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the Butler Center for Research at Hazelden. "Very little is known about the effects of Twelve Step attendance and involvement on outcomes for young adults. ...

Deep in the inner ear of mammals is a natural battery — a chamber filled with ions that produces an electrical potential to drive neural signals. In today's issue of the journal Nature Biotechnology, a team of researchers from MIT, the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) demonstrate for the first time that this battery could power implantable electronic devices without impairing hearing. The devices could monitor biological activity in the ears of people with hearing or balance impairments, or ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 8, 2012 – The National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys revealed that over 21% of children 2 to 5 years old were considered overweight or obese. Child care settings can serve as a platform to teach children about nutrition in our fight against childhood obesity, as nearly 50% of children in the United States under age 5 are enrolled in child care. In a new study released in the November/December 2012 issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, training child care providers about their role in children's healthful eating ...

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Low antioxidant levels contribute to increased blood pressure during exercise for people with peripheral arterial disease, according to researchers at Penn State Hershey Heart and Vascular Institute. Peripheral arterial disease, or PAD, affects an estimated 10 million Americans and increases the chance of death from a cardiovascular event. Reduced blood flow causes pain in the legs and increases blood pressure in people who have PAD. However, the causes of the disease are unknown. "Past studies have shown that having low antioxidant levels and increased ...

Every six seconds, for millions of years, comets have been colliding with one another near a star in the constellation Cetus called 49 CETI, which is visible to the naked eye. Over the past three decades, astronomers have discovered hundreds of dusty disks around stars, but only two — 49 CETI is one — have been found that also have large amounts of gas orbiting them. Young stars, about a million years old, have a disk of both dust and gas orbiting them, but the gas tends to dissipate within a few million years and almost always within about 10 million years. Yet ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Nov. 8, 2012 – What do a tight, fitted bed sheet and a blood clot in the wrist have in common? Both are associated with a condition called sheet fitting palsy. True to its name, the palsy is reported in those who spend a long period of time repeatedly trying to pull a fitted bed sheet over the corner of a mattress. But it has also been reported in basketball players and in those who do push-ups as exercise. The injury is caused by the continuous flexing movement of the wrist and results in a tiny stroke in the artery to the hand. The resulting ...

A fermentation technique once used to make cordite, the explosive propellant that replaced gunpowder in bullets and artillery shells, may find an important new use in the production of advanced biofuels. With the addition of a metal catalyst, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have shown that the production of acetone, butanol and ethanol from lignocellulosic biomass could be selectively upgraded to the high volume production of gasoline, diesel or jet fuel. Using the bacterium Clostridium acetobutylicum, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Eating mindfully, or consuming food in response to physical cues of hunger and fullness, is just as effective as adhering to nutrition-based guidelines in reducing weight and blood sugar levels in adults with Type 2 diabetes, a new study suggests. In a comparison study of the effectiveness of the two types of behavioral interventions, participants lost about the same amount of weight – an average of between 3 1/2 and 6 pounds – and lowered their long-term blood sugar levels significantly after three months. One treatment group followed an established ...

Psychological science has come of age. But the rights of a mature discipline carry with them responsibilities, among them the responsibility to maximize confidence in our findings through good data practices and replication. The November issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science (APS), reflects the discipline's ongoing commitment to examine methodological issues that affect all areas of science — such as failures to replicate previous findings and problems of bias and error — with the goal of strengthening our ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Nov. 9, 2012) – Preclinical data suggests inactivation of a specific sub-class of nicotinic receptors may be an effective strategy to help smokers quit without feeling anxious, according to Virginia Commonwealth University researchers. These findings could one day point researchers to the development of novel therapies to help smokers quit without feeling anxious. Smokers use cigarettes for many reasons, but many report that they smoke to relieve anxiety, despite the health danger of cigarette smoking. Researchers are now working to understand the underlying ...