The number of new cases of heart failure in Ontario decreased 33% over a decade, suggesting preventive efforts may be working. However, mortality rates remain high for people with the disease, states a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Heart failure is a major cause of admission to hospital and has a high death rate for patients. In recent decades, the incidence has been increasing; in 2000, patients with heart failure accounted for the second highest number of days in hospital in Canada. However, there is some recent evidence that the number ...

Canada needs a national approach to managing its supply of pharmaceutical drugs, starting with a mandatory reporting system for drug shortages, argues an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) and CPJ (Canadian Pharmacists Journal). Shortages of drugs, particularly those used in chemotherapy, as well as antibiotics, antiepileptics and anesthetics, have become increasingly common, unpredictable and widespread in Canada. These shortages result in poorer health for Canadians, with consequences such as worsening of medical conditions, negative reactions ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., August 20, 2012 – The underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease are not fully understood, but a good deal of evidence points to the accumulation of β-amyloid, a protein that's toxic to nerve cells. β-amyloid is formed by the activity of several enzymes, including one called BACE1. Most Alzheimer's disease patients have elevated levels of BACE1, which in turn leads to more brain-damaging β-amyloid protein. In a paper published August 15 in The Journal of Neuroscience, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A groundbreaking new research study from Indiana University suggests there may be benefits to the controversial activities of "pro-ana" bloggers, the online community for people with eating disorders. Most of the 33 bloggers from seven countries interviewed for the study, which has just been published in the journal Health Communication, said their writing activities provide a way to express themselves without judgment, which the authors believe can be crucial to their treatment. "We don't know what are the effects of participating in this community ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 20, 2012 – The more that we understand the brain, the more complex it becomes. The same can be said about the genetics and neurobiology of psychiatric disorders. For "Mendelian" disorders, like Huntington disease, mutation of a single gene predictably produces a single clinical disorder, following relatively simple genetic principals. Compared to Mendelian disorders, understanding bipolar disorder has been extremely challenging. Its biology is not well understood and its genetics are complex. In a new paper, Dr. Inti Pedroso and colleagues utilize ...

There is insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of a drug that is being used increasingly to prevent life-threatening bleeding in women after giving birth in community settings in low income countries, according to a review of all the available research published today (Monday) in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. [1] Misoprostol (brand name Cytotec) was originally developed for treating gastric ulcers, but is increasingly used in low- and middle-income countries for preventing postpartum haemorrhage (PPH). It is given to women during labour to prevent ...

The genetics research group, based at the University of Helsinki and the Folkhälsan Research Center and led by Professor Hannes Lohi, has in collaboration with an international group of researchers investigated the characteristics and environmental factors associated with compulsive tail chasing in dogs. A questionnaire study covering nearly 400 dogs revealed several similarities between compulsive behavior in dogs and humans: early onset, recurrent compulsive behaviors, increased risk for developing different types of compulsions, compulsive freezing, the beneficial effect ...

The start of the Universe should be modeled not as a Big Bang but more like water freezing into ice, according to a team of theoretical physicists at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University. They have suggested that by investigating the cracks and crevices common to all crystals - including ice - our understanding of the nature of the Universe could be revolutionised. Lead researcher on the project, James Quach said current theorising is the latest in a long quest by humans to understand the origins and nature of the Universe. "Ancient Greek philosophers wondered ...

Alexandria, VA – It's not every day that lava flows through a college campus parking lot. But, since January 2010, Syracuse University has been bringing the lava to Central New York. Using commercially available basalt gravel and a coke-fired furnace, the geologists involved with the Syracuse University Lava Project are able to produce a wide range of flow morphologies and other features at a scale comparable to natural flows. Although one of the most common and voluminous types of lava flows, basaltic lava is still not completely understood. The majority of basaltic ...

An economically feasible way to store solar energy in existing residential power networks is the subject of an award winning paper written by two Virginia Tech electrical engineers and presented at an international conference. Reza Arghandeh of Blacksburg, Va., a doctoral candidate in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech http://www.ece.vt.edu/ , won the best student paper award at the 20th International Conference on Nuclear Engineering, held in conjunction with the American Society of Mechanical Engineering Power 2012 Conference ...

WASHINGTON -- Children as young as 3 apparently can tell the difference between whining and when someone has good reason to be upset, and they will respond with sympathy usually only when it is truly deserved, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "The study provides the first evidence that 3-year-olds can evaluate just how reasonable another person's distressed reaction is to a particular incident or situation, and this influences whether they are concerned enough to try to do something to help," said the study's lead author, ...

Amsterdam, NL, August 20, 2012 – Amputation disrupts not only the peripheral nervous system but also central structures of the brain. While the brain is able to adapt and compensate for injury in certain conditions, in amputees the traumatic event prevents adaptive cortical changes. A group of scientists reports adaptive plastic changes in an amputee's brain following implantation of multielectrode arrays inside peripheral nerves. Their results are available in the current issue of Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience. "We found that a neurally-interfaced hand prosthesis ...

Amsterdam, NL, August 20, 2012 – Research has found that declines in temporal information processing (TIP), the rate at which auditory information is processed, underlies the progressive loss of function across multiple cognitive systems in the elderly, including new learning, memory, perception, attention, thinking, motor control, problem solving, and concept formation. In a new study, scientists have found that elderly subjects who underwent temporal training improved not only the rate at which they processed auditory information, but also in other cognitive areas. ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 20—From the early days of cinema, film producers have used various techniques to create the illusion of depth – with mixed results. But even with digital technology, the latest Hollywood blockbusters still rely on clunky glasses to achieve a convincing 3-D effect. New optics research by a team of South Korean investigators offers the prospect of glasses-free, 3-D display technology for commercial theaters. Their new technique, described in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal Optics Express, can bring this added ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 20, 2012—Major depression affects as many as 16% of reproductive-aged women in the U.S. Yet pregnant women have a higher rate of undiagnosed depression than nonpregnant women, according to a study published in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://www.liebertpub.com/jwh. Jean Ko, PhD and coauthors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Atlanta, GA, found that more than 1 in 10 women ages ...

Researchers at King's College London, in collaboration with European research institutes ICFO (Barcelona) and AMOLF (Amsterdam), have succeeded in mapping how light behaves in complex photonic materials inspired by nature, like iridescent butterfly wings. Scientists have broken the limit of light resolution at the nanoscale and delivered a fundamental insight into how light and matter interact, which could lead to the development of enhanced bio-sensors for healthcare and more efficient solar cells and displays. Optical measurements of light waves at the nanoscale have ...

Scientists have discovered that a space inside a special type of carbon molecule can be used to imprison other smaller molecules such as hydrogen or water. The nano-metre sized cavity of the hollow spherical C60 Buckminsterfullerene — or bucky ball — effectively creates a 'nanolaboratory', allowing detailed study of the quantum mechanical principles that determine the motion of the caged molecule, including the mysterious wave-like behaviour that is a fundamental property of all matter. Experiments by the international collaboration of researchers, including physicists ...

Thirty years into the HIV epidemic, many people who are at high risk of HIV infection cannot or will not adopt safer sexual practices, such as abstinence and condom use. This means there is room in the market for alternative methods to reduce either exposure to or transmission of HIV among these individuals. One such strategy, HIV home testing (HT), is the subject of a recent study by Alex Carballo-Dieguez and his colleagues at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at New York. Their work appears online in the journal AIDS and Behavior published by Springer. A ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Intel Corp. have collaborated to synthesize and study a grid-like array of short pieces of a disease-associated protein on silicon chips normally used in computer microprocessors. They used this chip, which was created through a process used to make semiconductors, to identify patients with a particularly severe form of the autoimmune disease lupus. Although the new technology is focused on research applications, it has the potential to eventually improve diagnoses of a multitude of diseases, ...

Despite differences in rituals and beliefs among the world's major religions, spirituality often enhances health regardless of a person's faith, according to University of Missouri researchers. The MU researchers believe that health care providers could take advantage of this correlation between health – particularly mental health – and spirituality by tailoring treatments and rehabilitation programs to accommodate an individual's spiritual inclinations. "In many ways, the results of our study support the idea that spirituality functions as a personality trait," said ...

DENVER — New research indicates that urban American Indian youth who follow American Indian traditional spiritual beliefs are less likely to use drugs and alcohol. Arizona State University social scientists will present their findings at the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. The study, "Spirituality and Religion: Intertwined Protective Factors for Substance Use Among Urban American Indian Youth," was recently published in The American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse. The authors are: Stephen Kulis, the study's principal investigator and ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Adults across the U.S. rate not getting enough exercise as the top health concern for children in 2012, according to a new University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. In the poll's annual top 10 list, a nationwide sample of adults were asked to identify the top 10 biggest health concerns for kids in their communities. For the first time, not enough exercise was rated by most adults at the top of the list (39 percent). That was followed closely by childhood obesity (38 percent) and smoking and tobacco use ...

A trawl of the genome of the deadly bacterium Bacillus anthracis has revealed a clutch of targets for new drugs to combat an epidemic of anthrax or a biological weapons attack. The targets are all proteins that are found in the bacteria but not in humans and are involved in diverse bacterial processes such as metabolism, cell wall synthesis and bacterial persistence. The discovery of a range of targets might bode well for creating a drug cocktail that could preclude the emergence of drug resistance. Ravi Gutlapalli of the Department of Biotechnology, at Acharya Nagarjuna ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Algae are high on the genetic engineering agenda as a potential source for biofuel, and they should be subjected to independent studies of any environmental risks that could be linked to cultivating algae for this purpose, two prominent researchers say. Writing in the August 2012 issue of the journal BioScience, the researchers argue that ecology experts should be among scientists given independent authority and adequate funding to explore any potential unintended consequences of this technological pursuit. A critical baseline concern is whether genetically ...

URBANA – In evaluating the bioactive compounds of Illinois blueberry and blackberry wines, University of Illinois scientists have found compounds that inhibit enzymes responsible for carbohydrate absorption and assimilation. And that could mean a tasty way to help people with diabetes decrease their blood sugar. "We're thinking about a dealcoholized fermented fruit beverage that would optimize the inhibition of the alpha-amylase and alpha-glucosidase enzymes and also make use of the wines' other healthful bioactive components," said Elvira de Mejia, a U of I professor ...