ROSEMONT, Ill.—Extreme heat or cold can cause dangerous and potentially fatal side effects in athletes. A literature review appearing in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS) provides an overview of the risk factors, signs and symptoms, and management of various conditions related to excessive heat and cold exposure. "Both extreme heat and cold can be challenging for athletes during training and competition," said lead study author Benjamin Noonan, MD, MS. "One role of the team physician is to educate coaches and ...

Using deceptive behavioral patterns of squirrels and birds, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed robots that are able to deceive each other. The research is funded by the Office of Naval Research and is led by Professor Ronald Arkin, who suggests the applications could be implemented by the military in the future. The research is highlighted in the November/December 2012 edition of IEEE Intelligent Systems. Arkin and his team learned by reviewing biological research results that squirrels gather acorns and store them in specific locations. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Dec. 3, 2012 – College football and basketball games may provide more than a way for students to show school spirit – they could help prevent the flu. According to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, colleges and universities should implement new or improved influenza vaccine strategies, such as giving flu shots at sporting events or during campus-wide, day-long campaigns, to increase the number of their students who get the annual flu vaccine. In the early online edition of the December issue of the Journal of American ...

Reston, Va. (December 3, 2012) – In the management of gliomas—or tumors that originate in the brain—precise assessment of tumor grade and the proliferative activity of cells plays a major role in determining the most appropriate treatment and predicting overall survival. Research published in the December issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine (JNM) highlights the potential of imaging with 3'-deoxy-3'-F-18-fluorothymidine (F-18-FLT) positron emission tomography (PET) to noninvasively and accurately provide tumor-specific details to guide management of patients with gliomas. Gliomas ...

University of Illinois researchers have developed a model that uses neonatal piglets for studying infant brain development and its effect on learning and memory. To determine if the model is nutrient-sensitive, they have done some research on the effects of iron-deficient diets. "Iron deficiency is a major problem worldwide," said Rodney Johnson, professor of animal sciences and director of the Division of Nutritional Sciences. "Infants who experience iron deficiency during the first 6 to 12 months of age can have irreversible developmental delays in cognition." He ...

This press release is available in Spanish.Outfitting soldiers with clothing that effectively repels or kills insects is one of the strategies U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are using to help protect U.S. military personnel deployed overseas against disease-transmitting mosquitoes and sand flies. As part of the Deployed War-Fighter Protection Research Program, scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Medical, Agricultural, and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Fla., and other ARS laboratories are collaborating with ...

ANN ARBOR—New research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health found BPA, or bisphenol A, in fetal liver tissue, demonstrating that there is considerable exposure to the chemical during pregnancy. Researchers also found a proportionately higher concentration of free BPA—as opposed to the conjugated forms modified by the body for elimination—further showing that in fetuses the ability to eliminate the chemical from the body is not the same as in adults. "The general message from our research is that people have to be cognizant of the fact that the adult ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- A Kansas State University research team has resolved a 40-year-old debate on the role of iron acquisition in bacterial invasion of animal tissues. The collaborative research -- led by Phillip Klebba, professor and head of the department of biochemistry -- clarifies how microorganisms colonize animal hosts and how scientists may block them from doing so. The findings suggest new approaches against bacterial disease and new strategies for antibiotic development. The study -- in collaboration with Tyrrell Conway, director of the Microarray and Bioinformatics ...

This press release is available in Spanish. With their ultra short X-ray flashes, free-electron lasers offer the opportunity to film atoms in motion in complicated molecules and in the course of chemical reactions. However, for monitoring this motion, the arrival time and the temporal profile of the pulses which periodically illuminate the system, must be precisely known. An international team of scientists has now developed a measurement technique that provides complete temporal characterization of individual FEL (free-electron laser) pulses at DESY's soft-X-ray ...

NEW YORK -- December 3, 2012 -- Racial and gender stereotypes have profound consequences in almost every sector of public life, from job interviews and housing to police stops and prison terms. However, only a few studies have examined whether these different categories overlap in their stereotypes. A new study on the connections between race and gender – a phenomenon called gendered race – reveals unexpected ways in which stereotypes affect our personal and professional decisions. Within the United States, Asians as an ethnic group are perceived as more feminine in comparison ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The amazing electrical, optical and strength properties of graphene, a single-atom-thick layer of carbon, have been extensively researched over the last decade. Recently, the material has been studied as a coating that might confer electrical conductivity while maintaining other properties of the underlying material. But the "transparency" of such a graphene coating to wetting — a measure of the degree to which liquids spread out or bead up on a surface — is not as absolute as some researchers had thought. New research at MIT shows that for materials ...

UEA research shows record high for global carbon emissions Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are set to rise again in 2012, reaching a record high of 35.6 billion tonnes - according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project, co-led by researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The 2.6 per cent rise projected for 2012 means global emissions from burning fossil fuel are 58 per cent above 1990 levels, the baseline year for the Kyoto Protocol. This latest analysis by the Global Carbon Project is published ...

In the largest genetic study of Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) to date, researchers from the CARDIoGRAMplusC4D Consortium report the identification of 15 genetic regions newly associated with the disease, bringing to 46 the number of regions associated with CAD risk. The team identified a further 104 independent genetic variants that are very likely to be associated with the disease, enhancing our knowledge of the genetic component that causes CAD. They used their discoveries to identify biological pathways that underlie the disease and showed that lipid metabolism and ...

New research has demonstrated a way to make bismuth electrons and nuclei work together as qubits in a quantum computer. The discovery, published in Nature Materials, takes us a key step further to creating practical quantum computing which could tackle complex programs that would otherwise take the lifetime of the universe to finish. The collaboration partners are based in the University of Warwick, UCL, ETH Zurich and the USA Sandia National Labs. Information on our normal computers is stored as bits, which are either ones or zeros. Quantum bits work differently ...

Anthrax uses a receptor on the surface of cells to inject its lethal toxins. However, the physiological function of this receptor, named Anthrax Toxin Receptor 2a (Antxr2a), remained unknown until now. A team led by Marcos Gonzalez-Gaitan, a professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in collaboration with Gisou van der Goot at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), reveals that Antxr2a actually plays a role in embryonic development, orienting cell division along a specific plane, which is a prelude to the formation of future tissues and organs. ...

Using powerful gene-analysis tools, researchers have discovered mutations in two related genes, ARID1A and ARID1B, that are involved in the most aggressive form of the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. While these findings do not immediately improve clinical treatments, they identify a novel pathway that is defective in these cancers, a pathway that scientists can now study to develop potential new therapies. "These gene alterations were not previously known to be mutated in neuroblastoma, and they may significantly advance our knowledge of the underlying biological pathways ...

An international team of genetics researchers has discovered four new gene regions that contribute to low birth weight. Three of those regions influence adult metabolism, and appear to affect longer-term outcomes such as adult height, risk of type 2 diabetes and adult blood pressure. "This large study adds to the evidence that genes have a strong influence on fetal growth," said one of the co-authors, Struan F.A. Grant, Ph.D., associate director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "The cumulative effect of the genes is surprisingly ...

LA JOLLA, CA – December 2, 2012 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have determined how two proteins help create organelles, or specialized subunits within a cell, that play a vital role in maintaining cell health. This discovery opens the door for research on substances that could interfere with the formation of these organelles and lead to new therapies for cancer. The study, published online ahead of print on December 2, 2012, by the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, focuses on the structure and function of the two proteins, ATG12 and ...

In a genome sequencing study of 74 neuroblastoma tumors in children, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center and the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) found that patients with changes in two genes, ARID1A and ARID1B, survive only a quarter as long as patients without the changes. The discovery could eventually lead to early identification of patients with aggressive neuroblastomas who may need additional treatments. Neuroblastomas affect nerve tissue throughout the body and are the most common, non-blood cancer in children. "These cancers have a ...

Scientists have discovered for the first time how humans – and other mammals – have evolved to have intelligence. Researchers have identified the moment in history when the genes that enabled us to think and reason evolved. This point 500 million years ago provided our ability to learn complex skills, analyse situations and have flexibility in the way in which we think. Professor Seth Grant, of the University of Edinburgh, who led the research, said: "One of the greatest scientific problems is to explain how intelligence and complex behaviours arose during evolution." ...

This press release is available in German. Abused children are at high risk of anxiety and mood disorders, as traumatic experience induces lasting changes to their gene regulation. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich have now documented for the first time that genetic variants of the FKBP5 gene can influence epigenetic alterations in this gene induced by early trauma. In individuals with a genetic predisposition, trauma causes long-term changes in DNA methylation leading to a lasting dysregulation of the stress hormone system. As a result, ...

Solvents are omnipresent in the chemical industry, and are a major environmental and safety concern. Therefore the large interest in mechanochemistry: an energy-efficient alternative that avoids using bulk solvents and uses high-frequency milling to drive reactions. Milling is achieved by the intense impact of steel balls in a rapidly moving jar, which hinders the direct observation of underlying chemistry. Scientists have now for the first time studied a milling reaction in real time, using highly penetrating X-rays to observe the surprisingly rapid transformations as ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (December 2, 2012) –Whitehead Institute scientists report that certain molecules present in high concentrations on the surfaces of many cancer cells could be exploited to funnel lethal toxic molecules into the malignant cells. In such an approach, the overexpression of specific transporters could be exploited to deliver toxic substances into cancer cells. Although this finding emerges from the study of a single toxic molecule and the protein that it transports, Whitehead Member David Sabatini says this phenomenon could be leveraged more broadly. "Our ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - A Loyola University Medical Center neurologist is reporting surprising results of a study of patients who experience both epileptic and non-epileptic seizures. Non-epileptic seizures resemble epileptic seizures, but are not accompanied by abnormal electrical discharges. Rather, these seizures are believed to be brought on by psychological stresses. Dr. Diane Thomas reported that 15.7 percent of hospital patients who experienced non-epileptic seizures also had epileptic seizures during the same hospital stay. Previous studies found the percentage of such ...

Bulk solvents, widely used in the chemical industry, pose a serious threat to human health and the environment. As a result, there is growing interest in avoiding their use by relying on "mechanochemistry" – an energy-efficient alternative that uses high-frequency milling to drive reactions. Because milling involves the intense impact of steel balls in rapidly moving jars, however, the underlying chemistry is difficult to observe. Now, for the first time, scientists have studied a milling reaction in real time, using highly penetrating X-rays to observe the surprisingly ...