CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – As the brain develops, each neuron must find its way to precisely the right spot to weave the intricate network of links the brain needs to function. Like the wiring in a computer, a few misplaced connections can throw off functioning for an entire segment of the brain. A new study by researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine reveals how some nerve cells, called interneurons, navigate during the development of the cerebral cortex. Mutations in a key gene behind this navigation system underlie a rare neurological disorder called ...

Researchers using a new approach to identifying genes associated with depression have found that variants in a group of genes involved in transmission of signals by the neurotransmitter glutamate appear to increase the risk of depression. The report published in the journal Translational Psychiatry suggests that drugs targeting the glutamate system may help improve the limited success of treatment with current antidepressant drugs. "Instead of looking at DNA variations one at a time, we looked at grouping of genes in the same biological pathways and found that a set ...

This press release is available in Spanish. While one team of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists is testing the effectiveness of pesticides against mosquitoes, another group is learning how repellents work. At the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Center for Medical, Agricultural and Veterinary Entomology (CMAVE) in Gainesville, Fla., entomologist Sandra Allan is using toxic sugar-based baits to lure and kill mosquitoes. Allan and her CMAVE cooperators are evaluating insecticides and designing innovative technology to fight biting insects and arthropods. ...

1. Prophylactic Probiotics Reduce Clostridium difficile-associated Diarrhea in Patients Taking Antibiotics Prophylactic use of probiotics can reduce Clostridium difficile-associated diarrhea (CDAD). Clostridium difficile is a bacterium that can cause symptoms ranging from diarrhea to life-threatening inflammation of the colon. CDAD most commonly affects older adults in hospitals or in long term care facilities and typically occurs after use of antibiotics. Probiotics are microorganisms thought to counteract disturbances in intestinal flora, and thereby reduce the risk ...

52,000 More Primary Care Physicians Needed by 2025 to Meet Anticipated Demand Researchers project the United States will need 52,000 additional primary care physicians by 2025 — a 25 percent increase in the current workforce — to address the expected increases in demand due to population growth, aging, and insurance expansion following passage of the Affordable Care Act. Analyzing nationally representative data, the researchers conclude population growth will be the single greatest driver of increased primary care utilization, requiring approximately 33,000 additional ...

MINNEAPOLIS – A new study shows that people who have had a head injury and have lived or worked near areas where the pesticide paraquat was used may be three times more likely to develop Parkinson's disease. The study is published in the November 13, 2012, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Paraquat is a herbicide commonly used on crops to control weeds. It can be deadly to humans and animals. "While each of these two factors is associated with an increased risk of Parkinson's on their own, the combination is associated ...

Erosion caused by flowing water does not only smooth out objects, but can also form distinct shapes with sharp points and edges, a team of New York University researchers has found. Their findings, which appear in the latest edition of the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), reveal the unexpected ways that erosion can affect landscapes and artificial materials. The impact of erosion is widely recognized by environmentalists and geologists, but less clear is how nature's elements, notably water and air, work to shape land, rocks, and artificial ...

ANN ARBOR—At hospital shift changes, doctors and nurses exchange crucial information about the patients they're handing over—or at least they strive to. In reality, they might not spend enough time talking about the toughest cases, according to a study led by the University of Michigan. These quick but important handoff conversations can have a major effect on patient care in the early parts of a shift. More than a half billion of them happen in U.S. hospitals every year, and that number has substantially increased with enforcement of work-hour regulations. Studies have ...

Two studies published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine examined the cost of delivering the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to primary school girls in Tanzania. Both studies found that the cost of HPV vaccine delivery to adolescent girls may be substantially higher compared with the cost of delivering a new vaccine to an infant where the delivery schedule matches the existing infant immunization schedule. Cervical cancer is the second largest cancer-related killer of women in the world, with half a million new cases of cervical cancer worldwide ...

There are substantial inequalities in the stage at which cancer patients receive their diagnosis – a critical factor for cancer survival – a new study by the University of Cambridge reveals. The researchers found that age, sex and income as well as the type of cancer influenced the risk of a patient being diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease. Eliminating these inequalities would help improve the chances of a cure for up to 5,600 patients with seven common cancers each year. The research was published today in the Annals of Oncology. The scientists studied ten ...

Tumor cells circulating in a patient's bloodstream can yield a great deal of information on how a tumor is responding to treatment and what drugs might be more effective against it. But first, these rare cells have to be captured and isolated from the many other cells found in a blood sample. Many scientists are now working on microfluidic devices that can isolate circulating tumor cells (CTCs), but most of these have two major limitations: It takes too long to process a sufficient amount of blood, and there is no good way to extract cancer cells for analysis after their ...

BOSTON, MA—A research team at Brigham and Women's Hospital has developed a novel device that may one day have broad therapeutic and diagnostic uses in the detection and capture of rare cell types, such as cancer cells, fetal cells, viruses and bacteria. The device is inspired by the long, elegant appendages of sea creatures, such as jellyfish and sea cucumbers. The study will be published online on November 12, 2012 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The device, a microchip, is inspired by a jellyfish's long, sticky tentacles that are used to capture ...

CHICAGO – Fasting prior to blood lipid tests appears to have limited association with lipid subclass levels, suggesting that fasting for routine lipid level determinations may be unnecessary, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. "Although current guidelines recommend measuring lipid levels in a fasting state, recent studies suggest that nonfasting lipid profiles change minimally in response to food intake and may be superior to fasting levels in predicting adverse cardiovascular outcomes," write Davinder ...

CHICAGO – A dance intervention program improved the self-rated health of Swedish girls with internalizing problems, such as stress and psychosomatic symptoms, according to a report of a study published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Exercise is considered a strategy to prevent and treat depression in school-aged youth and has been shown to promote positive feelings, enhance confidence to cope with problems, and increase confidence and self-control, the authors write in the study background. Ann Duberg, R.P.T., ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Last year a clinical trial of L-DOPA -- a mainstay of Parkinson's disease therapy -- was launched for Angelman syndrome, a rare intellectual disorder that shares similar motor symptoms such as tremors and difficulty with balance. The clinical trial is based on a 10-year-old case report showing benefit with the drug, but few studies since have explored the neurological justification for using L-DOPA to treat parkinsonian features in Angelman syndrome. New research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, conducted in animal models ...

Research led by the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital – Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project has identified a fusion gene responsible for almost 30 percent of a rare subtype of childhood leukemia with an extremely poor prognosis. The finding offers the first evidence of a mistake that gives rise to a significant percentage of acute megakaryoblastic leukemia (AMKL) cases in children. AMKL accounts for about 10 percent of pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML). The discovery paves the way for desperately needed treatment advances. Investigators traced ...

A University of Texas at Arlington physics professor has helped create a hybrid nanomaterial that can be used to convert light and thermal energy into electrical current, surpassing earlier methods that used either light or thermal energy, but not both. Working with Louisiana Tech University assistant professor Long Que, UT Arlington associate physics professor Wei Chen and graduate students Santana Bala Lakshmanan and Chang Yang synthesized a combination of copper sulfide nanoparticles and single-walled carbon nanotubes. The team used the nanomaterial to build a prototype ...

A pre-election survey by the independent research organization NORC at the University of Chicago found that party affiliation alters how people react to political as well as non-political issues, including how individuals assess their own financial well-being. The results suggest that partisanship is often a substitute for knowledge and personal experience, researchers said. "We conducted this survey because the country is facing serious problems and solving them is made much harder by our deep partisan divide," said Kirk Wolter, senior fellow and executive vice president ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (11/12/2012) —If you've eaten fish, gone for a boat ride or even taken a drink from the tap, you know clean water is a valuable commodity. But just how valuable? That's always been a tough question for policy makers to answer as they weigh the worth of clean water against societal needs that compromise it, such as the need to grow food or produce fossil fuels. Now, however, their ability to do so has been greatly enhanced by a new policy-making framework developed by a team of scientists led by Bonnie Keeler, research associate at the University of ...

After cellulose, xylan is the most abundant biomass material on Earth, and therefore represents an enormous potential source of stored solar energy for the production of advance biofuels. A major roadblock, however, has been extracting xylan from plant cell walls. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) have taken a significant step towards removing this roadblock by identifying a gene in rice plants whose suppression improves both the extraction of xylan and the overall release of the sugars needed to make biofuels. The ...

A new study has found that participating in an 8-week meditation training program can have measurable effects on how the brain functions even when someone is not actively meditating. In their report in the November issue of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Boston University (BU), and several other research centers also found differences in those effects based on the specific type of meditation practiced. "The two different types of meditation training our study participants completed yielded some differences in ...

Northridge, Calif. (November 12, 2012) – Eating more soy was associated with larger reductions in menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS), such as hot flashes, among U.S. women that can convert soy to a compound called equol, according to data from a first-of-its-kind study presented in an oral session at the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) 2012 annual meeting. "Numerous studies have examined the association between soy isoflavones – from both soy foods and supplements - and menopausal VMS, but with mixed results," said Belinda H. Jenks, Ph.D., Director of Scientific ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 12, 2012 – Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have reported progress in fabricating advanced materials at the nanoscale. The spontaneous self-assembly of nanostructures composed of multiple elements paves the way toward materials that could improve a range of energy efficient technologies and data storage devices. ORNL Materials Science and Technology Division researcher Amit Goyal led the effort, combining theoretical and experimental studies to understand and control the self-assembly of insulating barium ...

A new study demonstrates the dynamic role cilia play in guiding the migration of neurons in the embryonic brain. Cilia are tiny hair-like structures on the surfaces of cells, but here they are acting more like radio antennae. In developing mouse embryos, researchers were able to see cilia extending and retracting as neurons migrate. The cilia appear to be receiving signals needed for neurons to find their places. Genetic mutations that cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Joubert syndrome interfere with these migratory functions of cilia, the researchers show. The ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Communication can be challenging for any married couple, but a personality trait called alexithymia that keeps people from sharing or even understanding their own emotions can further impede marital bliss. University of Missouri interpersonal communication researchers found when one spouse suffers from alexithymia, the partners can experience loneliness and a lack of intimate communication that lead to poor marital quality. Nick Frye-Cox, a doctoral student in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, says people with alexithymia can describe ...