A new study comparing outcomes among prostate cancer patients treated with surgery versus radiotherapy found differences in urinary, bowel and sexual function after short-term follow-up, but those differences were no longer significant 15 years after initial treatment. The study, led by first author Matthew Resnick, M.D., instructor in Urologic Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was published in the Jan. 31 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. From Oct. 1, 1994, through Oct. 31, 1995, investigators enrolled men who had been diagnosed with localized ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal, January 20, 2013 – From Wikipedia to shareware, the Internet has made information and software more widely available than ever. At the heart of this explosion is the simple idea that information should be open and free for anyone. Yet with publishers charging exorbitant fees for subscriptions to academic journals, university libraries are struggling to keep up. Writing in the Journal of Academic Librarianship, Concordia collections librarian Geoffrey Little says that a key way to meet that challenge is through ...

PASADENA, Calif.—The skin is a human being's largest sensory organ, helping to distinguish between a pleasant contact, like a caress, and a negative sensation, like a pinch or a burn. Previous studies have shown that these sensations are carried to the brain by different types of sensory neurons that have nerve endings in the skin. Only a few of those neuron types have been identified, however, and most of those detect painful stimuli. Now biologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have identified in mice a specific class of skin sensory neurons that ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA – In the February 2013 issue of GSA Today, Sean Gallen and his colleagues from the Department of Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences at North Carolina State University take a new look at the origin of the Miocene rejuvenation of topographic relief in the southern Appalachians. Conventional wisdom holds that the southern Appalachian Mountains have not experienced a significant phase of tectonic forcing for more than 200 million years; yet, they share many characteristics with tectonically active settings, including locally high topographic relief, ...

According to a new study of more than 75,000 adults, women in that age group are more empathic than men of the same age and than younger or older people. "Overall, late middle-aged adults were higher in both of the aspects of empathy that we measured," says Sara Konrath, co-author of an article on age and empathy forthcoming in the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological and Social Sciences. "They reported that they were more likely to react emotionally to the experiences of others, and they were also more likely to try to understand how things looked from the perspective ...

Worldwide, many strains of the bacterium Staphyloccocus aureus, commonly known as staph infections, are already resistant to all antibiotics except vancomycin. But as bacteria are becoming resistant to this once powerful antidote, S. aureus has moved one step closer to becoming an unstoppable killer. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have not only identified the mechanism by which vancomycin resistance spreads from one bacterium to the next, but also have suggested ways to potentially stop the transfer. The work, led by Matthew Redinbo, ...

Binge drinking causes insulin resistance, which increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to the results of an animal study led by researchers at the Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The authors further discovered that alcohol disrupts insulin-receptor signaling by causing inflammation in the hypothalamus area of the brain. The results are published in the January 30 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine. "Insulin resistance has emerged as a key metabolic defect leading to Type 2 diabetes ...

Patients are currently being enrolled in the first clinical trial to investigate the efficacy of immunological therapy for chronic pulmonary sarcoidosis. The trial is being conducted by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai has the largest Sarcoidosis Service in the world and is one of only two institutions in the country participating in the trial; the other is the University of Cincinnati. Mount Sinai is a National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence for research in sarcoidosis. "The current standard treatment for chronic pulmonary ...

Researchers at Rochester Institute of Technology, international semiconductor consortium SEMATECH and Texas State University have demonstrated that use of new methods and materials for building integrated circuits can reduce power—extending battery life to 10 times longer for mobile applications compared to conventional transistors. The key to the breakthrough is a tunneling field effect transistor. Transistors are switches that control the movement of electrons through material to conduct the electrical currents needed to run circuits. Unlike standard transistors, which ...

A powerful cold front moving from the central United States to the East Coast is wiping out spring-like temperatures and replacing them with winter-time temperatures with powerful storms in between. An image released from NASA using data from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite provides a stunning look at the powerful system that brings a return to winter weather in its wake. On Jan. 30 at 1825 UTC (1:25 p.m. EST), NOAA's GOES-13 satellite captured an image of clouds associated with the strong cold front. The visible GOES-13 image shows a line of clouds that stretch from Canada ...

False-colored night-time satellite imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite clearly shows bands of thunderstorms wrapping into the eye of Cyclone Felleng as it parallels the coast of eastern Madagascar. The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite captured a night-time image of Cyclone Felleng when it was located east of Madagascar (4:09 p.m. EST/Jan. 30 at 12:09 a.m. local time, Madagascar). The image was created at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was false colored to reveal temperatures. The image shows powerful ...

Two Rutgers physics professors have proposed an explanation for a new type of order, or symmetry, in an exotic material made with uranium – a theory that may one day lead to enhanced computer displays and data storage systems and more powerful superconducting magnets for medical imaging and levitating high-speed trains. Their discovery, published in this week's issue of the journal Nature, has piqued the interest of scientists worldwide. It is one of the rare theory-only papers that this selective publication accepts. Typically the journal's papers describe results of ...

Nominated early this year for recognition on the UNESCO World Heritage List, which includes such famous cultural sites as the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and Stonehenge, the earthen works at Poverty Point, La., have been described as one of the world's greatest feats of construction by an archaic civilization of hunters and gatherers. Now, new research in the current issue of the journal Geoarchaeology, offers compelling evidence that one of the massive earthen mounds at Poverty Point was constructed in less than 90 days, and perhaps as quickly as 30 days — an incredible ...

London – In response to a complaint by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the European Ombudsman has launched an inquiry into the actions of the European Union (EU) agency responsible for the administration of the REACH chemical-testing program, which is expected to consume millions of animals in toxicity tests. PETA's complaint, submitted in July 2012, alleges that the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is not properly investigating cases in which animal testing could be avoided under the rules of REACH. PETA maintains that evidence derived from public documents ...

Hydrogen has tremendous potential as an eco-friendly fuel, but it is expensive to produce. Now researchers at Princeton University and Rutgers University have moved a step closer to harnessing nature to produce hydrogen for us. The team, led by Princeton chemistry professor Annabella Selloni, takes inspiration from bacteria that make hydrogen from water using enzymes called di-iron hydrogenases. Selloni's team uses computer models to figure out how to incorporate the magic of these enzymes into the design of practical synthetic catalysts that humans can use to produce ...

[EMBARGOED FOR JAN. 31, 2013] A new study suggests that patients with influenza can emit small virus-containing particles into the surrounding air during routine patient care, potentially exposing health care providers to influenza. Published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the findings raise the possibility that current influenza infection control recommendations may not always be adequate to protect providers from influenza during routine patient care in hospitals. Werner E. Bischoff, MD, PhD, and colleagues from the Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina ...

ANN ARBOR--- Young adults in Generation X are as likely to connect with friends, family and co-workers online as they are in person, according to a University of Michigan study. In a typical month, adults in their late 30s report that they engaged in about 75 face-to-face contacts or conversations, compared to about 74 electronic contracts through personal emails or social media. "Given the speed of emerging technologies, it is likely that electronic contacts will continue to grow in the years ahead, eventually exceeding face-to-face interactions," says Jon D. Miller, ...

Debts that remain after a bankruptcy If you have had to file bankruptcy recently due to the sluggish economy, you're not alone. Bankruptcy has many benefits, but the main reason to file is to receive a discharge of your debts. Normally, once you receive a discharge, you are under no further legal obligation to pay the debt. Although the bankruptcy discharge is a powerful tool against many types of debt, such a medical bills and credit card debt, there are certain types of debt that cannot be discharged in a bankruptcy. Nondischargeable debts To a certain extent, ...

Should California grant driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants? Whatever your position on the issue, there is no denying that undocumented immigrants make up a significant portion of California's population. Like other Californians, many of these immigrants need to drive in order to run errands, take their children to school or go to work. However, because they are residing in the United States illegally, they are not eligible to get driver's licenses. Increasingly, many legislators and safety advocates in California are becoming concerned that these unlicensed ...

Study reveals thousands of preventable surgical errors occur annually Placing your well-being in the care of a medical professional is always somewhat unnerving, requiring a degree of trust in another's abilities not often needed in our daily lives. Consequently, when a physician's actions are negligent and result in entirely preventable harm, we understandably seek avenues to recover. Unfortunately, a recent study conducted by Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has disclosed the frequency with which surgeons are guilty of making preventable errors while ...

How to protect a business from the fallout of divorce Marriage and business often go hand-in-hand. Frequently in this economy, one spouse or both spouses may own their own business or both spouses may even own a business together. The creation of a successful business requires a lot time and hard work and is likely to be the most important financial asset in a marriage. Unfortunately, more than half of first marriages in the United States end in divorce as do the majority of second and third marriages. Therefore, divorce and business also go hand-in-hand, and business ...

Understanding the divorce process in Florida Each state has its own rules for divorce, and as a result there are a lot of myths about the requirements of filing a divorce. The state of Florida no longer requires fault as a ground for divorce, and therefore the only requirement for a Florida resident to dissolve his or her marriage is to prove the marriage is "irretrievably broken." In Florida the official term for divorce is "dissolution of marriage," and either spouse may file for dissolution. While Florida is a no-fault state for the purposes ...

If you need disability benefits, you may be in for a long wait The stress of living with a disability can be overwhelming, but the added stress of dealing with the system to collect Social Security Disability payments can make it even worse. A backlog of cases has significantly increased the amount of time that applicants have to wait to get their benefits approved. Recent reports indicate that applications for Social Security retirement and disability benefits have skyrocketed in recent years. This is likely due to the growing number of baby boomers who are reaching ...

The division of a military pension in a divorce A married couple with one or both spouses serving in the military can experience special challenges. There are often children involved, and one spouse may have to postpone or forgo education or employment to care for the children full-time while the other spouse is deployed. In addition, frequent moves and the stress of serving in the military can strain even the strongest relationships. In fact, statistics from the Department of Defense show there were almost 30,000 military divorces in 2011, which is the highest rate ...

Federal regulators target debt collection companies with aggressive tactics Harassing phone calls and threats of arrest are practices currently being used by aggressive debt collectors. Many of these tactics are not only rude, but illegal. In an effort to refresh current laws and remind debt collection agencies that creditor harassment will not be tolerated, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, is launching a new set of rules to ensure debt collectors are not violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The regulations are aimed at holding these ...