WASHINGTON – New research suggests that cutting down swaths of forest in snowy regions at least doubles – and potentially quadruples – the number of large floods that occur along the rivers and streams passing through those forests. For decades, the common perception in hydrology has been that deforestation in such areas made seasonal floods bigger on average, but had little effect on the number of large floods over time, said geoscientist Kim Green of the University of British Columbia. But a new study by Green and her co-author Younes Alila published today in Water ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 3, 2012) - A simple test of eyelid sensitivity may help vision professionals in evaluating one of the most common eye-related symptoms: dry eyes. A new study linking increased eyelid sensitivity to decreased function of the eyelid margins is presented in the article – "Lid Margins: Sensitivity, Staining, Meibomian Gland Dysfunction, and Symptoms", appearing in the October issue of Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters ...

With baby boomers approaching the age of 65 and new cases of Alzheimer's disease expected to increase by 50 percent by the year 2030, Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool that allows adults to screen themselves for early signs of dementia. The home-based computer software is patterned after the paper-and-pencil Clock Drawing Test, one of health care's most commonly used screening exams for cognitive impairment. "Technology allows us to check our weight, blood-sugar levels and blood pressure, but not our own cognitive abilities," said project leader Ellen Yi-Luen ...

This press release is available in Spanish.U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are coming up with new strategies to combat a beetle threatening the nation's avocado trees. Laurel wilt disease is caused by the fungus Raffaelea lauricola, and is vectored by the redbay ambrosia beetle, an invasive pest from Asia that has spread to the Carolinas, Florida and west to Mississippi. The disease kills 90-95 percent of infected trees. Scientists are concerned that it will soon reach Mexico and California, which are major avocado production areas. Its victims also ...

BOZEMAN, MONT. – Montana State University ecologists who are about to return to Antarctica for another season had to adapt to dramatic changes in the sea ice last year. Now they have published a paper that says the Weddell seals they monitor had to deal with some dramatic changes in ice in recent years, too. In fact, the seals handled the adverse conditions well and suffered less than the Emperor penguins in that region. The paper was published Sept. 26 in the international journal, "Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences." Lead author was Thierry ...

You're in a store, trying to choose between similar shirts, one blue and one green. You don't feel strongly about one over the other, but eventually you decide to buy the green one. You leave the store and a market researcher asks you about your purchase and which shirt you prefer. Chances are that you'd say you prefer the green one, the shirt you actually chose. As it turns out, this choice-induced preference isn't limited to shirts. Whether we're choosing between presidential candidates or household objects, research shows that we come to place more value on the options ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Melanoma is on the rise nationally, and transplant recipients and lymphoma patients are far likelier than the average person to get that form of skin cancer and to die from it, a Mayo Clinic review has found. That is because their immune systems tend to be significantly depressed, making early detection of melanoma even more important, says co-author Jerry Brewer, M.D., a Mayo dermatologist. The findings are published in the October issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. VIDEO ALERT: Video of Dr. Brewer is available for journalists to download on the Mayo ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 3, 2012—Making moral judgments is increasingly a central element of the plots of popular video games. Do players of online video games perceive the content and characters as real and thus make moral judgments to avoid feeling guilty? Or does immoral behavior such as violence and theft make the game any more or less enjoyable? The article "Mirrored Morality: An Exploration of Moral Choice in Video Games" published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers examines these types ...

A promising study out today in the prestigious Journal of Neurosciences showed that in a mouse model of Rett syndrome, researchers were able to reverse abnormalities in brain activity and improve neurological function by treating the animals with an FDA-approved anesthesia drug, ketamine. Rett syndrome is among the most severe autism-related disorders, affecting about one in 10,000 female births per year, with no effective treatments available. "These studies provide new evidence that drug treatment can reverse abnormalities in brain function in Rett syndrome mice," ...

A new study led by researchers from the UCLA School of Nursing has found that nursing intervention can significantly decrease substance abuse among homeless youth. Published in the current issue of the American Journal on Addictions, the research also revealed that "art messaging" can have a positive effect on drug and alcohol abuse and other risky behaviors among this population. It is estimated that at least 1.2 million adolescents are homeless in the United States. These youths abuse substances with far greater frequency than do their non-homeless counterparts, and ...

Strategies implemented in high-income countries to improve blood glucose control in people with type 1 diabetes and so reduce complications, such as heart attacks, strokes, and early death, are working, but there is much need for further improvement, according to a study from Scotland published in this week's PLOS Medicine. Using information from national databases representing over 20 000 patients from 2005 to 2008, Scottish researchers led by Helen Colhoun from the University of Dundee, found that people with type 1 diabetes have 2 to 3 times the risk of heart attacks, ...

Both obesity and under-nutrition are common in women and children from the Western Sahara living in refugee camps in Algeria, highlighting the need to balance both obesity prevention and management with interventions to tackle under-nutrition in this population, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine. The authors, led by Carlos Grijalva-Eternod and Andrew Seal from the UCL Institute of Child Health in London, surveyed 2005 households in this refugee population who have been living in four refugee camps since 1975 and measured ...

Aaron Orkin from the Northern Ontario School of Medicine and colleagues describe their collaboration that developed, delivered, and studied a community-based first response training program in a remote indigenous community in northern Canada. ###Funding: No specific funding was received for writing this article. The program described in this article received funding from the Institute of Aboriginal People's Health of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (http://www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca/e/8668.html) and the Northern Ontario Academic Medical Association (http://www.noama.ca). ...

In another installment of the PLOS Medicine series on Global Mental Health Practice, Joshua Ssebunnya from the Butabika National Referral and Teaching Mental Hospital in Kampala and colleagues describe their work developing a national mental health policy for Uganda. ###Funding: The Mental Health and Poverty Project (MHaPP) is a Research Programme Consortium (RPC) funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID)(RPC HD6 2005) for the benefit of developing countries. The views expressed are not necessarily those of DfID. The funders had no role in study ...

A quarter of households in refugee camps in Algeria are currently suffering from the double burden of excess weight and under-nutrition. According to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, obesity is an emerging threat to this community, with one in two women of childbearing age being overweight, whilst nutritional deficiencies such as iron-deficiency anaemia and stunted growth remain a persistent problem. The collaborative study by the UCL Institute of Child Health (ICH), the Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ...

CHICAGO—Regenerative-medicine researchers have moved a promising step closer to helping infertile, premenopausal women produce enough eggs to become pregnant. Today, surgeons at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center's Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, NC, reported that they were able to stimulate ovarian cell production using an in vitro rat model, and observed as the cells matured into very early-stage eggs that could possibly be fertilized. Results from this novel study were presented at the 2012 American College of Surgeons Annual Clinical Congress. ...

CHICAGO – Although some data have suggested a possible inverse association between serum vitamin D levels and the incidence of upper respiratory tract infections (colds), participants in a randomized controlled trial who received a monthly dose of 100,000 IUs of vitamin D3 did not have a significantly reduced incidence or severity of colds, according to a study in the October 3 issue of JAMA. The association of vitamin D insufficiency and susceptibility to viral respiratory tract infections has been unclear, according to background information in the article. David ...

CHICAGO – Among patients with either coronary artery disease (CAD) risk factors only, known prior heart attack, or known CAD without heart attack, the use of beta-blockers was not associated with a lower risk of a composite of cardiovascular events that included cardiovascular death, nonfatal heart attack or nonfatal stroke, according to a study in the October 3 issue of JAMA. "Treatment with beta-blockers remains the standard of care for patients with coronary artery disease, especially when they have had a myocardial infarction [MI; heart attack]. The evidence is derived ...

CHICAGO – A study that included more than 45,000 residents of Sweden with rheumatoid arthritis finds that individuals with this disease had an associated higher risk of venous thromboembolism (a blood clot that forms within a vein), and that this elevated risk was stable for 10 years after the time of diagnosis, according to a study in the October 3 issue of JAMA. "Recent reports suggest that rheumatoid arthritis (RA) may be a risk factor for venous thromboembolism (VTE), particularly in conjunction with hospitalization. Using hospitalization data to identify RA and ...

CHICAGO – Preliminary research finds that for patients with nondystrophic myotonias (NDMs), rare diseases that affect the skeletal muscle and cause functionally limiting stiffness and pain, use of the anti-arrhythmic medication mexiletine resulted in improvement in patient-reported stiffness, according to a preliminary study in the October 3 issue of JAMA. Data on treatment of NDMs are largely anecdotal, consisting of case series and a single-blind, controlled trials of several medications including mexiletine, according to background information in the article. Jeffrey ...

Drug resistance is a major problem when treating infections. This problem is multiplied when the infection, like HIV-1, is chronic. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Retrovirology has examined the genetic footprint that drug resistance causes in HIV and found compensatory polymorphisms that help the resistant virus to survive. Currently the strategy used to treat HIV-1 infection is to prevent viral replication, measured by the number of viral particles in the blood, and to repair the immune system, assessed using CD4 count. Over the past 20 ...

Children in smaller families are only slightly more likely to survive childhood in high mortality environments, according to a new study of mothers and children in sub-Saharan Africa seeking to understand why women, even in the highest fertility populations in world, rarely give birth to more than eight children. The study by Dr David Lawson and Dr Alex Alvergne from UCL Anthropology, and Dr Mhairi Gibson from the University of Bristol, challenges the popular theory proposed by evolutionary anthropologists that natural selection sets the upper limit of high fertility to ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Transportation practices tend to be more environmentally friendly in wealthier metropolitan areas located within states that mandate comprehensive planning, new research suggests. The study involved an examination of 225 U.S. metropolitan areas between 1980 and 2008 to gauge how sustainable their transportation practices were and determine what kinds of socioeconomic factors appeared to influence those practices. Overall, transportation has become less sustainable across the country over this period, but some communities have slowed the decline more ...

Indoor tanning increases the risks of developing non-melanoma skin cancer (known as basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma), particularly among those exposed before the age of 25, finds a study published on bmj.com today. It follows a BMJ study published in July that showed 3,438 (5.4%) new cases of melanoma diagnosed each year in Western Europe are related to sunbed use, particularly among young adults. Some experts are now calling for Europe to follow the example of the United States by introducing a "tan tax" on indoor tanning salons. The researchers, ...

Leading doctors are calling for action to tackle unnecessary care that is estimated to account for up to $800bn in the United States every year. In a special report for this week's BMJ, journalist Jeanne Lenzer describes how a new movement led by prominent doctors is challenging the basic assumption in US healthcare that more is better. The report comes as an international conference 'Preventing Overdiagnosis' is announced for September 2013 in the United States, hosted by The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, in partnership with the BMJ, ...