DURHAM, N.C. -- Researchers at Duke University Medical Center have found protective, anti-diabetic functions for a hormone that, like insulin, is produced by the islet cells of the pancreas. The new hormone was found to stimulate insulin secretion from rat and human islet cells and protect islet cells in the presence of toxic, cell-killing factors used in the study. The study, which was supported in part by JDRF, a global leader in type 1 diabetes research, appears in the July 3 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. The findings provide insight into the health and survival ...

(Boston) - Investigators from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Boston University's Slone Epidemiology Center report research findings that may shed light on influences on obesity during adulthood. Appearing in the journal Pediatrics, the study found an association of severity of sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescence with obesity during adulthood. The findings were based on the ongoing Black Women's Health Study, which has followed a large cohort of African-American women since 1995. Information provided in 2005 by more than 33,000 ...

BALTIMORE, July 2, 2012 -- Women infected with the Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii) parasite, which is spread through contact with cat feces or eating undercooked meat or unwashed vegetables, are at increased risk of attempting suicide, according to a new study of more than 45,000 women in Denmark. A University of Maryland School of Medicine psychiatrist with expertise in suicide neuroimmunology is the senior author of the study, which is being published online today in the Archives of General Psychiatry. "We can't say with certainty that T. gondii caused the women to try ...

(Boston) - A recent study by Erika J. Wolf, PhD, and Principal Investigator Mark W. Miller, PhD, both from the National Center for PTSD at the VA Boston Healthcare System and Department of Psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), found an association between posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociation. The findings, published in the Archives of General Psychiatry, suggest that symptoms of dissociation, which reflect problems in consciousness and awareness, are a prominent feature of PTSD in a distinct subtype of individuals with the disorder. ...

GALVESTON, Texas -- Teens are sexting -- and at higher rates than previously reported. In the first study of the public health impact of teen sexting, researchers found that close to 30 percent are engaging in the practice of sending nude pictures of themselves via email or text. Further, the practice is indicative of teens' sexual behavior overall and, particularly, girls' participation in risky sexual behaviors. These findings, from a University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston study that is the first to explore the public health impact of sexting, are published ...

PITTSBURGH-- Through an exploration of tree rings and oxygen isotopes, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are now able to better pinpoint the history of droughts in the arid and semiarid areas of the American West. A paper published in the online July 2 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences explores the Medieval Climate Anomaly, a particularly warm period occurring in the northern hemisphere of the American West around 950 to 1250 C.E. While this time period is known as being a "dry period," the Pitt researchers have discovered an unexpected ...

Alexandria, VA -- Advances in diagnostic imaging have benefited children with otolaryngologic disease, allowing shorter hospital stays, fewer invasive procedures, more targeted surgical procedures, and earlier and more precise diagnoses. However, despite improved technology, concerns about exposure of children to ionizing radiation have recently come to the forefront, according to a commentary in the July 2012 issue of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery. Children have more radiosensitive body tissues than adults, and also tend to live longer, giving the effects of radiation ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (JULY 2, 2012) – The dangers of fast food are well documented; the portions are often larger and the food is generally high in calories and low in nutrients. Now, University of Minnesota School of Public Health researchers have examined the eating habits of residents in Singapore and found new evidence that a diet heavy in fast food increases the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. The latest research, published online today by the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, found that people who consume fast food ...

Istanbul, 2 July 2012: Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for the breast cancer genes BRCA1/2 is now feasible and established, with good success rates for those treated, according to investigators from the reproduction, oncology and genetics centres of the university hospitals of Maastricht and Brussels. The results follow a review of the largest number of PGD treatments for BRCA1/2 in Europe and were presented today at the annual meeting of ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology) by Professor Willem Verpoest from the Centre for Reproductive Medicine ...

Istanbul, 2 July 2012: While many small studies have shown a relationship between infertility and psychological distress, reporting a high prevalence of anxiety, mood disorders and depressive symptoms, few have studied the psychological effect of childlessness on a large population basis. Now, based on the largest cohort of women with fertility problems compiled to date, Danish investigators have shown that women who remained childless after their first investigation for infertility had more hospitalisations for psychiatric disorders than women who had at least one child ...

Istanbul, 2 July 2012: The state funding of fertility treatment through public reimbursement policies has a direct influence on national birth rates. Lower levels of reimbursement are correlated with higher unmet needs for treatment, while more generous reimbursement policies increase access to treatment and may even make a measurable contribution to national birth rates. The findings come from a study reported here today at the annual meeting of ESHRE (European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology). The results, says health economist Dr Mark Connolly from the ...

EAST BRUNSWICK, N.J., July 2, 2012 – Savient Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: SVNT) today announced a new publication showing that adult patients with refractory chronic gout (RCG) treated bi-weekly with KRYSTEXXA® (pegloticase) experienced statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in health-related quality of life (HRQOL), pain and physical function. The article confirms that chronic gout, especially refractory chronic gout, is associated with decline in HRQOL and physical functioning compared to patients without chronic gout. The results were published ...

Prostate cancer patients with cardiovascular disease were 52 per cent more likely to regret their treatment choices than men without problems with their heart or veins, according to a study published in the July issue of the urology journal BJUI International. Research led by Harvard Medical School, USA, looked at 795 men with recurrent cancer in the Comprehensive Observational Multicenter Prostate Adenocarcinoma (COMPARE) registry. "Treatment regret can have an adverse impact on a patient's overall outlook and has been associated with a poorer global quality of life" ...

Becoming an Avon cosmetics Sales Representative is helping some poor South African women escape poverty as well as inspiring many with self-confidence and hope. South Africa's growing band of 'Avon Ladies' are benefiting from economic empowerment, a sustainable income, raised social status and greater personal confidence, according to new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The research team conducted two large surveys - one with 300 black Avon Representatives working in South Africa and one with 77 of their consumers - as well as interviews ...

London, (July 02, 2012). Is social media censorship a means to quell a modern uprising? Some politicians and law enforcers during the political turbulence of 2011 thought so but recent research suggests that uncensored citizens experience less violence and longer periods of peace between outbursts than communities subject to censorship. These new findings appear in the Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, published by SAGE. A consensus is forming around Internet censorship in the wake of last year's uprisings, extending from the Arab Spring to the UK, according to Antonio ...

A major collaboration between US research centers has highlighted three factors that could ultimately determine whether an outbreak of influenza becomes a serious epidemic that threatens national health. The research suggests that the numbers in current response plans could be out by a factor of two or more depending on the characteristics of the particular pandemic influenza. Researchers from Argonne, Los Alamos, and Sandia National Laboratories, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, have used sensitivity analysis to uncover the most important disease characteristics ...

Producing strong, lightweight and complex parts for car manufacturing and the aerospace industry is set to become cheaper and more accurate thanks to a new technique developed by engineers from the University of Exeter. The research team has developed a new method for making three-dimensional aluminium composite parts by mixing a combination of relatively inexpensive powders. Combining these elements causes a reaction which results in the production of particles that are 600 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Around 100 nanometres in size, the reaction uniformly ...

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have discovered that tiny vanadium pentoxide nanoparticles can inhibit the growth of barnacles, bacteria, and algae on surfaces in contact with water, such as ship hulls, sea buoys, or offshore platforms. Their experiments showed that steel plates to which a coating containing dispersed vanadium pentoxide particles had been applied could be exposed to seawater for weeks without the formation of deposits of barnacles, bacteria, and algae. In comparison, plates that were coated only with the ship's normal ...

A consortium of nine research centres has obtained the melon genome, a horticultural specie with high economic value around the world. It is the first time that a Spanish initiative that unites private and state-run centres has obtained the complete genome of a higher organism, in this case a plant, which produces flowers and seeds. Also, it has been done by applying massive sequencing technologies. Besides the complete melon genome, scientists have obtained the particular genomes of seven melon varieties. The study is published in the magazine Proceedings of the National ...

The industry is interested in establishing a biorefinery sector in Denmark that can replace oil-based products with biofriendly materials, chemicals, energy and fuel. But this requires a larger biomass production than we are currently achieving. Scientists from University of Copenhagen and Aarhus University have published an extensive report that shows how we can increase the production of biomass by more than 200% in an environmentally friendly way. The report called "The ten-million-tonne plan" shows how we can increase the Danish production of biomass from agriculture ...

Experts at The University of Nottingham are the first to create a stable version of a 'trophy molecule' that has eluded scientists for decades. In research published in the prestigious journal Science, the team of chemists at Nottingham has shown that they can prepare a terminal uranium nitride compound which is stable at room temperature and can be stored in jars in crystallized or powder form. Previous attempts to prepare uranium-nitrogen triple bonds have required temperatures as low as 5 Kelvin (-268 °C) — roughly the equivalent temperature of interstellar space ...

A new approach to testing medical treatment options could ensure that more patients get the most beneficial treatment for them – but still yield valuable research results that stand up to scientific scrutiny. The approach tries to overcome a huge chicken-and-egg problem in medical research: Not enough people volunteer for studies of new treatments partly because researchers can't promise the studies will help them -- but without enough volunteers, researchers can't study new treatment options. But a new "adaptive" way of designing medical studies could help. In a ...

Researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the University of South Florida, the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer in Lyon, France, conducted a case control study and found associations between having antibodies to certain types of cutaneous human papillomavirus (HPV) and a kind of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Their study, the first case-control study to investigate the association between SCC and cutaneous HPV types belonging to five different genera, appeared in a recent ...

Amsterdam, NL, July 2, 2012 – After stroke, patients often suffer from dysphagia, a swallowing disorder that results in greater healthcare costs and higher rates of complications such as dehydration, malnutrition, and pneumonia. In a new study published in the July issue of Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, researchers have found that transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), which applies weak electrical currents to the affected area of the brain, can enhance the outcome of swallowing therapy for post-stroke dysphagia. "Our pilot study demonstrated that ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What makes laparoscopic surgery "minimally invasive" — instruments enter the patient through narrow tubes — also makes it visually constraining. As they work on different tasks, surgeons all see the same view. What if each surgeon could control a separate view best suited to the specific task? In a new paper, pediatric surgeon Dr. Francois Luks and his team of co-authors at Brown University and Hasbro Children's Hospital report that in a small in vitro trial, surgeons with their own views performed faster and more accurately. "When ...