A new type of prophylactic treatment for brain injury following prolonged epileptic seizures has been developed by Emory University School of Medicine investigators. Status epilepticus, a persistent seizure lasting longer than 30 minutes [check this, some people say FIVE], is potentially life-threatening and leads to around 55,000 deaths each year in the United States. It can be caused by stroke, brain tumor or infection as well as inadequate control of epilepsy. Physicians or paramedics now treat status epilepticus by administering an anticonvulsant or general anesthesia, ...

MADISON – For decades, archaeologists have debated how farming spread to Stone Age Europe, setting the stage for the rise of Western civilization. Now, new data gleaned from the teeth of prehistoric farmers and the hunter-gatherers with whom they briefly overlapped shows that agriculture was introduced to Central Europe from the Near East by colonizers who brought farming technology with them. "One of the big questions in European archaeology has been whether farming was brought or borrowed from the Near East," says T. Douglas Price, a University of Wisconsin-Madison ...

ANN ARBOR — Ancient carbon trapped in Arctic permafrost is extremely sensitive to sunlight and, if exposed to the surface when long-frozen soils melt and collapse, can release climate-warming carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere much faster than previously thought. University of Michigan ecologist and aquatic biogeochemist George Kling and his colleagues studied places in Arctic Alaska where permafrost is melting and is causing the overlying land surface to collapse, forming erosional holes and landslides and exposing long-buried soils to sunlight. They found that ...

Volcanoes are well known for cooling the climate. But just how much and when has been a bone of contention among historians, glaciologists and archeologists. Now a team of atmosphere chemists, from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Copenhagen, has come up with a way to say for sure which historic episodes of global cooling were caused by volcanic eruptions. The answer lies in patterns of isotopes found in ancient volcanic sulfur trapped in ice core, patterns due to stratospheric photochemistry. Their mechanism is published in the highly recognized ...

Vascular brain injury from conditions such as high blood pressure and stroke are greater risk factors for cognitive impairment among non-demented older people than is the deposition of the amyloid plaques in the brain that long have been implicated in conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, a study by researchers at the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UC Davis has found. Published online early today in JAMA Neurology (formerly Archives of Neurology), the study found that vascular brain injury had by far the greatest influence across a range of cognitive domains, ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is an aggressive blood cancer that is currently incurable in 70% of patients. In a bold effort, CSHL scientists are among those identifying and characterizing the molecular mechanisms responsible for this cancer in order to generate potential new therapeutics. CSHL Assistant Professor Christopher Vakoc, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues, including the group of Professor Robert Roeder Ph.D. at The Rockefeller University, report the characterization of a protein required for AML in a paper published today in the Proceedings ...

A discovery using stem cells from a patient with motor neurone disease could help research into treatments for the condition. The study used a patient's skin cells to create motor neurons - nerve cells that control muscle activity - and the cells that support them called astrocytes. Researchers studied these two types of cells in the laboratory. They found that a protein expressed by abnormalities in a gene linked to motor neurone disease, which is called TDP-43, caused the astrocytes to die. The study, led by the University of Edinburgh and funded by the Motor Neurone ...

While most infection control measures are focused on hospitals, a new study points to the need for more targeted interventions to prevent the spread of drug-resistant bugs in nursing homes as community-associated strains of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) are on the rise in these facilities. The study is published in the March issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. CA-MRSA is a growing cause of invasive disease, including bloodstream infections, abscesses, and pneumonia. ...

An international research team coordinated at the IRCM in Montréal found a possible alternative treatment for lymphoid leukemia. Led by Dr. Tarik Möröy, the IRCM's President and Scientific Director, the team discovered a molecule that represents the disease's "Achilles' heel" and could be targeted to develop a new approach that would reduce the adverse effects of current treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation therapy. The study's results are being published today in the prestigious scientific journal Cancer Cell. The researchers' results have direct implications ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – New Geosphere articles posted online 11 Jan. and 5 Feb. 2013 include additions to the "Origin and Evolution of the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane" series, the "Neogene Tectonics and Climate-Tectonic Interactions in the Southern Alaskan Orogen" series, and the "Crevolution 2: Origin and Evolution of the Colorado River System II" series. A new series is also introduced: "Results of IODP Exp313: The History and Impact of Sea-level Change Offshore New Jersey." Papers cover: 1. Fresh water and the New Jersey shelf 2. Adobe Hills, California-Nevada, USA 3. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Spending a day in someone else's shoes can help us to learn what makes them tick. Now the same approach is being used to develop a better understanding between humans and robots, to enable them to work together as a team. Robots are increasingly being used in the manufacturing industry to perform tasks that bring them into closer contact with humans. But while a great deal of work is being done to ensure robots and humans can operate safely side-by-side, more effort is needed to make robots smart enough to work effectively with people, says Julie Shah, ...

With Valentine's Day looming, many married couples will wish marital bliss for their single friends. At the same time, many singles will pity their coupled friends' loss of freedom. People like to believe that their way of life — whether single or coupled — is the best for everyone, especially if they think their relationship status is unlikely to change, according to a study forthcoming in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study suggests that this bias may influence how we treat others, even in situations where relationship ...

Increasingly frequent extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, severe storms, and heat waves have focused the attention of climate scientists on the connections between greenhouse warming and extreme weather. Because of the potential threat to U.S. national security, a new study was conducted to explore the forces driving extreme weather events and their impacts over the next decade, specifically with regard to their implications for national security planning. The report finds that the early ramifications of climate extremes resulting from climate change are already ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Shark attacks in the U.S. reached a decade high in 2012, while worldwide fatalities remained average, according to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File report released today. The U.S. saw an upturn in attacks with 53, the most since 2000. There were seven fatalities worldwide, which is lower than 2011 but higher than the yearly average of 4.4 from 2001 to 2010. It is the second consecutive year for multiple shark attacks in Western Australia (5) and Reunion Island (3) in the southwest Indian Ocean, which indicates the localities ...

Although the current Supreme Court has been criticized for its lack of diversity on the bench, the Court is actually more diverse overall today than ever in history, according to a new study that borrows statistical methods from ecology to reveal a more precise picture of diversity. The study, which appears in the online edition of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, examines seven categories of diversity for every Supreme Court justice since the Court first convened in 1790 with Justice John Jay, including ethnic/racial origin, religion, professional background, childhood ...

A team of UCLA-led researchers has identified a protein with broad virus-fighting properties that potentially could be used as a weapon against deadly human pathogenic viruses such as HIV, Ebola, Rift Valley Fever, Nipah and others designated "priority pathogens" for national biosecurity purposes by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. In a study published in the January issue of the journal Immunity, the researchers describe the novel antiviral property of the protein, cholesterol-25-hydroxylase (CH25H), an enzyme that converts cholesterol to an ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has identified characteristics in benign breast disease associated with future cancer risk in African-American women. Michele Cote, Ph.D., associate professor of oncology in the School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, recently reviewed data from about 1,400 20- to 84-year-old African-American women who underwent breast biopsies between 1997 and 2000. Researchers identified biopsies that showed benign breast disease (BBD) and also tracked subsequent breast cancers. BBD is an established risk factor ...

Dance is a beautiful form of expression, but it could be physically taxing and strenuous on the human body, particularly for children and adolescents. A new study by researchers at the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital examined dance-related injuries among children and adolescents 3 to 19 years of age from 1991 to 2007. During the 17-year study period, an estimated 113,000 children and adolescents were treated in U.S. emergency departments for dance-related injuries. According to the study, which is being ...

Rice University researchers "cured" a strain of bacteria of its ability to resist an antibiotic in an experiment that has implications for a long-standing public health crisis. Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez and his team managed to remove the ability of the Pseudomonas aeruginosa microorganism to resist the antibiotic medication tetracycline by limiting its access to food and oxygen. Over 120 generations, the starving bacteria chose to conserve valuable energy rather than use it to pass on the plasmid – a small and often transmissible DNA element – that ...

VIDEO: Using cutting-edge time-lapse photography, University of Southern California researchers have discovered clues to the development of the head at the cellular level, which could point scientists to a better understanding... Click here for more information. Highlights of this news release: The research has determined two molecular signaling pathways that help control formation of the head and face The discovery may lead to future understanding of certain birth defects ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When a person living in the U.S. without legal permission or suspected of doing so is involved in a work-related lawsuit, most courts disregard their immigration status when determining remedies, says a study from a University of Illinois expert in labor relations. According to research from Michael LeRoy, a professor of law and of labor and employment relations at Illinois, by mostly ignoring the immigration status of workers who file suit against former employers, lower courts are essentially refusing to view the complaint as an occasion to enforce ...

Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have provided important new details into the activation of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), a cell surface protein that has been strongly linked to a large number of cancers and is a major target of cancer therapies. "The more we understand about EGFR and the complex molecular machinery involved in the growth and proliferation of cells, the closer we will be to developing new and more effective ways to cure and treat the many different forms ...

HOUSTON - Researchers employed an extensive analysis of genomic information to identify a new, high-risk cohort of ovarian cancer patients, characterize their tumors, find a potential treatment and test it in mouse models of the disease. The exhaustive analysis that led to micro RNA 506 (miR-506) as a potential therapeutic candidate for advanced or metastatic ovarian cancer is the cover article in the Feb. 11 edition of Cancer Cell. "Functional analysis showed that miR-506 is a robust inhibitor of a cellular transition that makes ovarian cancer cells more resistant ...

Alexandria, VA – Geoscience Currents #69 explores how female geoscience enrollments and degrees changed in the 2011-2012 academic year. New data collected shows that female geoscience enrollments and degrees in the U.S. dropped sharply at both the Bachelor's and Master's levels, but increased slightly at the Doctoral level. The percentage of women enrolled in undergraduate geoscience programs in 2011-2012 was at the lowest levels seen since the 1990s, and Master's participation rates fell below 40% for the first time since 2001. Alternatively, women's participation in geoscience ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — Batten disease is a rare, fatal genetic disorder that affects children. Currently, no effective treatment exists for the disease, which ultimately kills all who are affected. Dachshunds also suffer from Batten disease, and now researchers from the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine and School of Medicine, in collaboration with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc., have developed a treatment for the disease that has significantly delayed the onset and progression of symptoms in the Dachshunds. The effectiveness of the treatment in the dogs has ...