COLUMBUS, Ohio – Eating an apple a day might in fact help keep the cardiologist away, new research suggests. In a study of healthy, middle-aged adults, consumption of one apple a day for four weeks lowered by 40 percent blood levels of a substance linked to hardening of the arteries. Taking capsules containing polyphenols, a type of antioxidant found in apples, had a similar, but not as large, effect. The study, funded by an apple industry group, found that the apples lowered blood levels of oxidized LDL -- low-density lipoprotein, the "bad" cholesterol. When LDL ...

An online study of eligible voters around the country revealed that the preference for whites over blacks is the strongest in the least politically-partisan voters. Among these voters, race biases against Barack Obama could produce as much as a 20 percent gap in the popular vote in a contest that would otherwise be equal. "Although they may not determine the election outcome, race biases are having a strong anti-Obama effect among the least politically partisan voters," said Anthony Greenwald, a University of Washington psychology professor who conducted the survey. "If ...

Irvine, Calif., Oct. 2, 2012 — Efforts to treat disorders like Lou Gehrig's disease, Paget's disease, inclusion body myopathy and dementia will receive a considerable boost from a new research model created by UC Irvine scientists. The team, led by pediatrician Dr. Virginia Kimonis, has developed a genetically modified mouse that exhibits many of the clinical features of human diseases largely triggered by mutations in the valosin-containing protein. The mouse model will let researchers study how these now-incurable, degenerative disorders progress in vivo and will ...

This press release is available in German. One of the most deeply rooted concepts in science and in our everyday life is causality; the idea that events in the present are caused by events in the past and, in turn, act as causes for what happens in the future. If an event A is a cause of an effect B, then B cannot be a cause of A. Now theoretical physicists from the University of Vienna and the Université Libre de Bruxelles have shown that in quantum mechanics it is possible to conceive situations in which a single event can be both, a cause and an effect of another one. ...

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory have discovered the underlying order in metallic glasses, which may hold the key to the ability to create new high-tech alloys with specific properties. Glass materials may have a far less randomly arranged structure than formerly thought. Over the years, the ideas of how metallic glasses form have been evolving, from just a random packing, to very small ordered clusters, to realizing that longer range chemical and topological order exists. But by studying the structure of a metallic glass alloy formed ...

OAKLAND, Calif., October 1, 2012 — Use of electronic health records was associated with improved drug-treatment intensification, monitoring, and risk-factor control among patients with diabetes, according to a new Kaiser Permanente study. In the study, which appears in the current issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers also noted greater improvements among patients with poorer control of their diabetes and lipids. The findings provide an important contribution to the evidence base by demonstrating that, for the first time in a large population, EHRs help clinicians ...

CHICAGO – A study of girls and young women in California suggests that the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine (HPV4) appeared to be associated with syncope (fainting) on the day of vaccination and skin infections in the two weeks after vaccination, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is a family of small DNA viruses and infections with this viral family are the most commonly detected sexually transmitted infections in women. While most of these infections ...

CHICAGO --- It was a study everyone thought couldn't be done -- tracking, locating and interviewing nearly 2,000 youths up to five years after they were released from juvenile detention in Chicago to assess their mental health. But a team of intrepid Northwestern Medicine researchers found the young men and women and traveled anywhere necessary to interview them. Many were interviewed after they returned home. Others, however, were interviewed in less conventional locations -- a dancer on a break from her job in a nightclub, a woman in her boyfriend's garbage truck or ...

CHICAGO – Almost one-third of older adults received care in a skilled nursing facility in the last six months of life under the Medicare posthospitalization benefit, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. While most Medicare beneficiaries enroll in skilled nursing facility (SNF) care for rehabilitation or life-prolonging care, experience suggests that some dying patients are discharged to a SNF for end-of-life care. Switching patients from Medicare coverage under the SNF benefit to the hospice benefit ...

CHICAGO – A study of juveniles detained in Chicago suggests that more than 45 percent of males and nearly 30 percent of females had one or more psychiatric disorders with associated impairment five years after detention, according to a report published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, a JAMA Network publication. Psychiatric disorders are prevalent among incarcerated juveniles. The disorders are likely to persist as the juveniles grow to be young adults because risk factors for psychiatric disorders are common among delinquent youth, including maltreatment, ...

When people – and monkeys – look at faces, a special part of their brain that is about the size of a blueberry "lights up." Now, the most detailed brain-mapping study of the area yet conducted has confirmed that it isn't limited to processing faces, as some experts have maintained, but instead serves as a general center of expertise for visual recognition. Neuroscientists previously established that this region, which is called the fusiform face area (FFA) and is located in the temporal lobe, is responsible for a particularly effective form of visual recognition. But ...

OAKLAND, Calif. — A study of almost 200,000 young females who received the quadrivalent human papilloma virus (HPV4) vaccine found that immunization was associated only with same-day syncope (fainting) and skin infections in the two weeks after vaccination. These findings support the general safety of routine vaccination with HPV4 in a clinical care setting to prevent cervical and other genital and reproductive cancers. The association between HPV4 and syncope was not unexpected, the researchers noted, because injections in general are known to have a correlation to fainting, ...

"Questions have been raised if restricting nuclear energy – an option considered by some countries after the accident in Fukushima, Japan – combined with climate policies might get extremely expensive. Our study is a first assessment of the consequences of a broad range of combinations of climate and nuclear policies," lead author Nico Bauer says. Restrictions on nuclear power could be political decisions, but also regulations imposed by safety authorities. Power generation capacities would have to be replaced, but fossil fuels would become costly due to a price on CO2 ...

The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral cover in the last 27 years. The loss was due to storm damage (48%), crown of thorns starfish (42%), and bleaching (10%) according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville. "We can't stop the storms but, perhaps we can stop the starfish. If we can, then the Reef will have more opportunity to adapt to the challenges of rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification, says John Gunn, CEO of AIMS. ...

University of Leeds-led research has used tree rings from eight cedar trees in Bolivia to unlock a 100-year history of rainfall across the Amazon basin, which contains the world's largest river system. The new study shows that the rings in lowland tropical cedar trees provide a natural archive of data closely related to historic rainfall. Researchers measured the amounts of two different oxygen isotopes trapped in the wood's rings: oxygen-16 and the heavier oxygen-18. By looking at the varying amounts of the two isotopes, they could see how the pattern of rainfall ...

[Barriers to cervical screening in women who have experienced sexual abuse: an exploratory study 2012; 38: 214-20 (Research) The effect of childhood sexual abuse on women's lives and their attitudes to cervical screening 2012; 38:1-2 (Editorial)] Women who have been sexually abused as children or young adults are much less likely to get screened for cervical cancer than other women, indicates exploratory research published in the Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care. Figures published last year by the national NHS Cervical Cancer Screening Programme ...

October 1, 2012 — (Bronx, NY) — In sharp contrast to previous studies suggesting that errors account for the majority of retracted scientific papers, a new analysis—the most comprehensive of its kind—has found that misconduct is responsible for two-thirds of all retractions. In the paper, misconduct included fraud or suspected fraud, duplicate publication and plagiarism. The paper's findings show as a percentage of all scientific articles published, retractions for fraud or suspected fraud have increased 10-fold since 1975. The study, from a collaboration between three ...

Diseases that progressively destroy nerve cells in the brain or spinal cord, such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), are devastating conditions with no cures. Now, a team that includes a University of Iowa researcher has identified a new class of small molecules, called the P7C3 series, which block cell death in animal models of these forms of neurodegenerative disease. The P7C3 series could be a starting point for developing drugs that might help treat patients with these diseases. These findings are reported in two new studies published ...

A seemingly unique part of the human and mammalian brain is the neocortex, a layered structure on the outer surface of the organ where most higher-order processing is thought to occur. But new research at the University of Chicago has found the cells similar to those of the mammalian neocortex in the brains of birds, sitting in a vastly different anatomical structure. The work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms a 50-year-old hypothesis about the identity of a mysterious structure in the bird brain that has provoked decades of scientific ...

PHILADELPHIA — Whether human or baboon, it helps to have friends. For both species, studies have shown that robust social networks lead to better health and longer lives. Now, a team of University of Pennsylvania researchers has helped show that baboon personality plays a role in these outcomes, and, like people, some baboons' personalities are better suited to making and keeping friends than others. The research was conducted by psychology professor Robert Seyfarth and biology professor Dorothy Cheney, both of Penn's School of Arts and Sciences. They collaborated with ...

A SIMPLE blood test could one day be a more accurate way to test for the early signs of breast cancer than using mammograms to spot a lump say researchers today (Tuesday), as Breast Cancer Awareness Month gets underway. They also hope the blood test could improve treatment by detecting whether breast cancer patients are likely to relapse and what drugs their particular type of tumour will respond to. This pioneering new clinical study – funded by Cancer Research UK in collaboration with the University of Leicester and Imperial College London – is about to start in the ...

More effective treatments for one of the deadliest forms of cancer are one step closer thanks to groundbreaking research from an international collaborative study. Scientists from the Universities of Sheffield and Cologne have identified the dependencies of multiple Small Cell Lung Cancer (SCLC) types – paving the way for clinical trials of new targeted treatments which could revolutionise the current approach. Around 40,000 people are diagnosed annually with lung cancer in the UK, and SCLC accounts for nearly one in five of all these cases. Unfortunately, the prognosis ...

The proportion of Americans who are severely obese -- those people 100 pounds or more overweight -- continues to increase rapidly and much faster than those with moderate obesity, but the rate of growth has slowed, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The RAND study found that from 2000 to 2010, the proportion of Americans who were severely obese rose from 3.9 percent of the population to 6.6 percent -- an increase of about 70 percent. The findings mean that more than 15 million adult Americans are morbidly obese with a body mass index of 40 or more. The good ...

Fermented soybean meal (FSBM), considered a promising substitute for fish meal in weanling pig diets because of its protein content, lower cost, and lack of anti-nutritional factors, may have an additional advantage. University of Illinois researchers recently found that pigs digest the phosphorous in FSBM better than the phosphorus in conventional soybean meal. "Most of the P in soybean meal is bound to phytate, so it's not available to pigs," explained animal sciences professor Hans Stein. Previous research by Stein's group found that pigs digest the phosphorous in ...

Sea cucumbers and sea urchins are able to change the elasticity of collagen within their bodies, and could hold the key to maintaining a youthful appearance, according to scientists at Queen Mary, University of London. The researchers investigated the genes of marine creatures such as sea urchins and sea cucumbers, known as echinoderms. They found the genes for "messenger molecules" known as peptides, which are released by cells and tell other cells in their bodies what to do. The study was published online in the journals PLOS One and General and Comparative Endocrinology. ...