A new method that could give a deeper insight into evolutional biology by tracing directionality in gene migration has just appeared in EPJ Data Science. Paolo Masucci from the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, at University College of London, UK, and colleagues identified the segregation of genes that a marine plant underwent during its evolution. They found that the exchange of genes, or gene flow, between populations of a marine plant went westward from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. This methodology could also be used to estimate the information flow in complex ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- A nanomaterial engineered by researchers at Duke can help regulate chloride levels in nerve cells that contribute to chronic pain, epilepsy, and traumatic brain injury. The findings, published online Dec. 10, 2012, in the journal Small, were demonstrated in individual nerve cells as well as in the brains of mice and rats, and may have future applications in intracranial or spinal devices to help treat neural injuries. Carbon nanotubes are a nanomaterial with unique features, including mechanical strength and electrical conductivity. These characteristics, ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Silicon's crown is under threat: The semiconductor's days as the king of microchips for computers and smart devices could be numbered, thanks to the development of the smallest transistor ever to be built from a rival material, indium gallium arsenide. The compound transistor, built by a team in MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, performs well despite being just 22 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in length. This makes it a promising candidate to eventually replace silicon in computing devices, says co-developer Jesús del Alamo, the Donner ...

Contact: Rachel Griffith rgriffith@hmhb.org 703-797-1945 Contact: Kathy Fackelmann kfackelmann@gwu.edu 202-994-8354 George Washington University Study of text messaging service shows participants prepared for motherhood Following last week's mHealth Summit, the largest event of its kind where leaders focus on how wireless technology can improve health outcomes, text4baby announced results from the first randomized evaluation of its service. The largest mobile health initiative in the U.S., text4baby was found to be an effective service for pregnant women. ...

Mountaintop mining is the practice of using huge machines to remove layers of soil and rock to reach thin seams of coal. It is an efficient way to reach the high-thermal value, low-impurity coal in the central Appalachian range, which accounts for one-fifth of the nation's coal, and it is a resource for American energy independence. But it has disadvantages — mountaintops are deposited into valleys, trees and habitats are destroyed, chemical drainage may pollute streams, and many find it ugly. Taking conflicts into account — such as the benefits of steady jobs and ...

Radiation and chemotherapy can pack a powerful punch against all kinds of cancers. Those who survive, however, are often left with bad news: Their treatments have rendered them infertile. A UTSA professor has now demonstrated that it is possible to remove testicular stem cells from a monkey prior to chemotherapy, freeze them and later, after cancer treatments, transplant these cells where they can restart sperm production and restore fertility. UTSA Assistant Professor Brian Hermann worked in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine's ...

For patients in whom a recurrence of bowel cancer is suspected, the study data currently available allow no robust conclusions as to the advantages and disadvantages of using positron emission tomography (PET), alone or in combination with computed tomography (CT). This is because no studies have directly compared the benefits of these imaging techniques in recurrent colorectal carcinoma (bowel cancer) with conventional diagnostic techniques. Although PET or PET/CT show a higher diagnostic accuracy, i.e. in certain cases recurrences can be detected more reliably, it is ...

Free fatty acids created during the digestion of infant formula cause cellular death that may contribute to necrotizing enterocolitis, a severe intestinal condition that is often fatal and occurs most commonly in premature infants, according to a study by University of California, San Diego bioengineers. Their report, which was based on in vitro tests comparing the digestion of fresh human breast milk and nine different infant formulas, was published online in the journal Pediatric Research. Scientists have long known that premature infants fed formula are more likely ...

Chevy Chase, MD ––Metformin therapy has a beneficial treatment effect over placebo in improving body mass index (BMI) and fasting glucose levels in obese children, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The study showed reduction in BMI was sustained for six months. Childhood obesity has increased globally over the last two decades and it is linked to an increase in the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes in childhood, previously a condition that was only diagnosed in adults. Metformin ...

Chevy Chase, MD –– Mothers' vitamin D levels at a gestation of 26 weeks or less were positively related to birth weight and head circumference, and, in the first trimester were negatively associated with risk of a baby being born small for gestational age, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). The major source of vitamin D for children and adults is exposure to natural sunlight. Very few foods naturally contain or are fortified with vitamin D. Thus, the major cause of vitamin ...

The National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES) yesterday released a report titled Doctorate Recipients from U.S. Universities: 2010 that unveils important trends in U.S. doctoral education. The report calls attention to the changing characteristics of U.S. doctorate recipients over time, including the increased representation of women, minorities and foreign nationals; the emergence of new fields of study; the time it takes to complete doctoral study; the expansion of the postdoctoral pool; and employment opportunities after graduation. Understanding ...

"Some of the most pressing occupational health hazard risks in construction" are associated with masonry operations, asphalt roofing, and welding, wrote Deborah Young-Corbett in an article recently accepted by the Journal of Civil Engineering and Management. To reduce these health risks to construction workers, Young-Corbett, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech and a member of the university's Myers-Lawson School of Construction since 2007, has studied much of the existing literature, identifying numerous gaps or problems in current ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Just yelling "turn it down" isn't enough when young people are blasting music directly into their ears via earbuds and headphones, parents say. A new poll from the University of Michigan shows parents are strongly in favor of required hearing screenings for kids all the way up to age 17. The University of Michigan Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health recently asked a nationwide sample of parents of children 0-17 years old about whether they'd support requirements for hearing screening and where they'd prefer to have the screening ...

Washington, DC (December 10, 2012) – Many Americans have fatalistic views on cancer prevention—they believe that getting cancer is a matter of luck or fate. Recent research, published in the Journal of Communication, found that people who use the internet to inquire about their health are more likely to have a positive outlook on cancer prevention and diagnosis. Chul-joo Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jeff Niederdeppe, Cornell University, and Derek Freres, University of Pennsylvania, published in the Journal of Communication their findings from a nationally ...

Primary care physicians Johannes Hauswaldt, Eva Hummers-Pradier, and Ulrike Junius-Walker address the question of how frequently different patient groups attend doctor's appointments in this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[47]: 814–20). Current estimates for Germany are of 18 doctor's appointments per patient per year. However, until now there has been no further information on, for example, age groups or whether frequent contact with doctors is particularly noticeable in particular patient groups. The authors defined patient ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- It's the medical resource behind discoveries that have affected patients around the globe, treasured by researchers and funded by the National Institutes of Health for nearly 50 years: the Rochester Epidemiology Project. This comprehensive medical records pool makes Olmsted County, Minn., one of the few places in the world where scientists can study virtually an entire geographic population to identify trends in disease, evaluate treatments and find factors that put people at risk for illness — or protect them. And, as it nears the half-century mark, ...

A North Carolina State University researcher has taken a "snapshot" of the way particles combine to form carbon-12, the element that makes all life on Earth possible. And the picture looks like a bent arm. Carbon-12 can only exist when three alpha particles, or helium-4 nuclei, combine in a very specific way. This combination is known as the Hoyle state. NC State physicist Dean Lee and German colleagues Evgeny Epelbaum, Hermann Krebs and Ulf-G. Meissner had previously confirmed the existence of the Hoyle state using a numerical lattice that allowed the researchers to ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You'd think it would be easy to use seismic waves to find tunnels dug by smugglers of drugs, weapons or people. You'd be wrong. Nedra Bonal of Sandia's geophysics and atmospheric sciences organization is nearing the end of a two-year study, "Improving Shallow Tunnel Detection From Surface Seismic Methods," aimed at getting a better look at the ground around tunnels and learning why seismic data finds some tunnels but not others. Her eventual goal is to come up with a seismic detection process for the border and other areas where tunnels pose ...

For immediate release – Dec. 10, 2012 (Toronto) – Setting minimum prices for alcohol increases health and economic benefits, say international experts, who met today for a seminar on alcohol pricing and public health. The meeting — sponsored by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia (CARBC) and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) — focused on new analyses on Ontario and other provinces where minimum pricing policies have been implemented for a number of years. Alcohol costs the Canadian economy ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2012 — The chemistry of early photography comes under the lens in a new episode of Bytesize Science, the American Chemical Society (ACS) award-winning video series. Produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, it is available at www.BytesizeScience.com. The video, which features Art Kaplan, of the Getty Conservation Institute, explains that the history of photography is rich with chemical innovations and insights. Early photographers came up with hundreds of different processes to develop images in unique and often beautiful ways. Kaplan describes ...

Advanced ceramic composites can withstand the ultrahigh operational temperatures projected for hypersonic jet and next generation gas turbine engines, but real-time analysis of the mechanical properties of these space-age materials at ultrahigh temperatures has been a challenge – until now. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed the first testing facility that enables CT-scanning of ceramic composites under controlled loads at ultrahigh temperatures and in real-time. Working at Berkeley ...

A newly found understanding of receptor signaling may have revealed a better way to design drugs. A study from Nationwide Children's Hospital suggests that a newly identified group of proteins, alpha arrestins, may play a role in cell signaling that is crucial to new drug development. The study appears in PLOS ONE. More than one-third of drugs on the market work by targeting G protein-coupled receptors that control how cells communicate and function. With many hundreds of members, G protein-coupled receptors are the largest family of signaling receptors throughout the ...

Infants with severe lower respiratory tract infection caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) may have a dysfunctional innate immune response that relates to the severity of their disease. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children's Hospital study appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. RSV is the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infection in young children worldwide. The majority of children hospitalized with this condition are previously healthy with no known risk factors for serious disease. Of these infants, up to 20 ...

ATLANTA – December 10, 2012—A new American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work. Previous epidemiologic ...

HERSHEY, Pa. -- Overweight women are not receiving proper advice on healthy weight gains or appropriate exercise levels during their pregnancies, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. "Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is associated with weight retention after delivery and is a positive predictor of obesity after pregnancy," Dr. Cynthia Chuang, associate professor of medicine and public health sciences said. "Excessive gestational weight is particularly concerning for overweight and obese women given their already increased risk for pregnancy ...