Philadelphia, November 12, 2012 – A new article being published early online in Annals of Internal Medicine describes the diagnosis and treatment protocol established in a Roanoke, Va. hospital to care for dozens of patients presenting with suspected fungal meningitis related to contaminated epidural spinal injections. This unprecedented surge of patients seeking care for a rare central nervous system (CNS) infection required physicians to react quickly with little data to guide treatment decisions. The authors suggest that the data collected from these cases may fill information ...

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 12, 2012 – A new study published online today in Nature Genetics reveals a genetic link between chronic pancreatitis and alcohol consumption. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and more than 25 other health centers across the United States found a genetic variant on chromosome X near the claudin-2 gene (CLDN2) that predicts which men who are heavy drinkers are at high risk of developing chronic pancreatitis. This finding enables doctors to identify people with early signs of pancreatitis or an attack of acute pancreatitis ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Doctors who commit suicide appear to be under-treated for mental health problems, despite their seemingly good access to health care, a new University of Michigan study shows. Although more physicians than non-physicians in the study had known mental health problems prior to suicide, this didn't translate into a higher rate of antidepressant use, according to the study, which appears in General Hospital Psychiatry and provides a deeper look at why physicians may have a higher-than-average suicide rate. Major depression is a known risk factor for ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – The precision and three-dimensional view provided by robots can enable essentially scar-free surgery for some women needing hysterectomies, physicians report. The case report in the Journal of Minimal Access Surgery is of a 46-year-old physically fit female with a history of excessive bleeding and benign growths on her uterus. Her surgery was performed through a two inch-long incision in the belly button, the thinnest part of the abdomen, using the robotic arms in a "chopstick" fashion, said Dr. John R. Lue, Chief of the Medical College of Georgia Section ...

Tel Aviv University researchers have uncovered a unique 11th century BCE sacred compound at the site of Tel Beth-Shemesh, an ancient village that resisted the aggressive expansion of neighboring Philistines. The newly discovered sacred complex is comprised of an elevated, massive circular stone structure and an intricately constructed building characterized by a row of three flat, large round stones. Co-directors of the dig Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of TAU's Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology say that this temple complex is unparalleled, ...

Bethesda, MD – The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) is rallying the biomedical research community to advocate against devastating funding cuts facing the nation's research agencies unless Congress acts before the end of the year. Under sequestration, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) could lose $2.8 billion and would fund 25 percent (2,300) fewer grants. The National Science Foundation (NSF) could be cut by nearly $600 million. More than 5,800 emails have been sent to Congress in response to a FASEB e-action alert urging individuals ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A new study conducted by researchers at Hasbro Children's Hospital, the Center for Injury Research and Policy of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, Fairfax (VA) County Public Schools, and Boston Children's Hospital has found that high school field hockey players competing in states with mandated protective eyewear have significantly lower rates of head, eye, and facial injuries when compared to players who compete in states without protective eyewear mandates. Each academic year, an estimated 63,000 girls participate in high ...

International researchers, including a team at McGill University, have discovered a new cause for thyroid hormone deficiency, or hypothyroidism. This common endocrine disorder is typically caused by problems of the thyroid gland, and more rarely, by defects in the brain or the pituitary gland (hypophysis). However, a new cause of the disease has been discovered from an unsuspected source and is reported in the journal Nature Genetics. The scientists, led by McGill Professor Daniel Bernard, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics in the Faculty of Medicine, identified ...

"Pennsylvania has opened up its doors to fracking in ways that many other states in the U.S. have not," said David Dausey, Ph.D., chair of the Mercyhurst University Public Health Department. "We don't know enough about the environmental and human health effects of fracking and, as a result, Pennsylvania has become the home of experimental fracking." Dausey discusses his concerns in this month's episode of The Dausey File: Public Health News Today. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is a controversial method to extract natural gas or petroleum from subterranean shale ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (November 12, 2012) – For elderly patients receiving home healthcare after a hospital stay, "social environmental factors"—particularly care provided by a family member or other informal caregiver—have a significant impact on the risk of repeated hospital admissions, reports a study in the October-December issue of Advances in Nursing Science. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part ofWolters Kluwer Health. "Understanding how social environmental factors contribute to home healthcare patients being rehospitalized would be ...

LAGOS, Nigeria – Fifteen science academies of Africa issued a joint statement in Lagos, Nigeria, today calling on the African scientific community to intensify its study of the impact of climate change. Noting that Africa's contribution of scientific information to understanding climate change has been "meagre" to date, the statement calls for African researchers to step up their observation, modeling, and analyses of the effects of climate change on a regional scale, and to help plan interventions to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change on the continent. ...

Philadelphia, PA—Scientists have estimated that there are 1.7 million species of animals, plants and algae on earth, and new species continue to be discovered. Unfortunately, as new species are found, many are also disappearing, contributing to a net decrease in biodiversity. The more diversity there is in a population, the longer the ecosystem can sustain itself. Hence, biodiversity is key to ecosystem resilience. Disease, destruction of habitats, pollution, chemical and pesticide use, increased UV-B radiation, and even the presence of new species are some of the causes ...

Children living in poorer neighborhoods are nearly 30 percent more likely to be obese than children in more affluent residences, according to a new study from Rice University. The study by Rice sociologists Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research's Urban Health Program, and Justin Denney, associate director of the program, reveals that living in neighborhoods with higher levels of poverty and lower levels of education is associated with increased child obesity risk, regardless of family composition or other individual factors. The research ...

The role that new low carbon technologies can play in helping the UK meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and moving towards a green economy have been highlighted today with the publication of three in-depth reports into core areas of innovation. These three new analyses, Technology Innovation Needs Assessments (TINAs), cover non-domestic buildings, industrial emissions efficiency, and domestic buildings and are part of a series that spans 11 low carbon technology areas. The TINAs examine the potential for innovation in these technologies and assess the ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- A new Northwestern University study shows the power of language in infants' ability to understand the intentions of others. As the babies watched intently, an experimenter produced an unusual behavior--she used her forehead to turn on a light. But how did babies interpret this behavior? Did they see it as an intentional act, as something worthy of imitating? Or did they see it as a fluke? To answer this question, the experimenter gave 14-month-old infants an opportunity to play with the light themselves. The results, based on two experiments, ...

Recommendations and decisions to use "least toxic pesticides" and "pesticides as a last resort" have flourished in the last decade, but according to three scientific organizations – the Weed Science Society of America (WSSA), the American Phytopathological Society (APS) and the Plant-Insect Ecosystems Section of the Entomological Society of America (P-IE ESA) – these are not the correct approaches to the pesticide component of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) program. The three organizations have joined to take an objective look at the problems associated with "least ...

iFreedom Direct, a dedicated VA-approved lender serving military members, celebrates Veterans Day 2012 by debuting an informative new graphic on its two company websites and Facebook page. The infographic entitled Beyond Commander in Chief features a timeline of the 44 Presidents and their terms along with 24 headshots of those who served their country in the Armed Forces before calling the White House their home. Of course, George Washington started it all when he was named Commander in Chief of the Continental Army in 1775 -- even before being elected President. ...

Mental health experts from Meharry Medical College School of Medicine have released the first comprehensive report on the correlation between the incarceration of African American males and substance abuse and other health problems in the United States. Published in Frontiers in Psychology on the 12th of November, the report looks at decades of data concerning the African American population rates of incarceration and subsequent health issues. The authors conclude that the moral and economic costs of current racial disparities in the judicial system are fundamentally avoidable, ...

Child protection professionals are to be offered new guidance on how best to involve families in the case reviews that follow the death or serious injury of a child as a result of abuse or neglect. A report being launched today (Monday November 12) will reveal the results of a study led by experts at The University of Nottingham and commissioned by the British Association for the Study and Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (BASPCAN). The research explored the personal experiences of both professionals and families to make recommendations on best practice in this ...

MADISON — High levels of family stress in infancy are linked to differences in everyday brain function and anxiety in teenage girls, according to new results of a long-running population study by University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists. The study highlights evidence for a developmental pathway through which early life stress may drive these changes. Here, babies who lived in homes with stressed mothers were more likely to grow into preschoolers with higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. In addition, these girls with higher cortisol also showed less communication ...

China's endangered wild pandas may need new dinner reservations – and quickly – based on models that indicate climate change may kill off swaths of bamboo that pandas need to survive. In this week's international journal Nature Climate Change, scientists from Michigan State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences give comprehensive forecasts of how changing climate may affect the most common species of bamboo that carpet the forest floors of prime panda habitat in northwestern China. Even the most optimistic scenarios show that bamboo die-offs would effectively ...

PHILADELPHIA - Fat cells store excess energy and signal these levels to the brain. In a new study this week in Nature Medicine, Georgios Paschos PhD, a research associate in the lab of Garret FitzGerald, MD, FRS director of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, shows that deletion of the clock gene Arntl, also known as Bmal1, in fat cells, causes mice to become obese, with a shift in the timing of when this nocturnal species normally eats. These findings shed light on the complex causes of obesity ...

How can solar energy be stored so that it can be available any time, day or night, when the sun shining or not? EPFL scientists are developing a technology that can transform light energy into a clean fuel that has a neutral carbon footprint: hydrogen. The basic ingredients of the recipe are water and metal oxides, such as iron oxide, better known as rust. Kevin Sivula and his colleagues purposefully limited themselves to inexpensive materials and easily scalable production processes in order to enable an economically viable method for solar hydrogen production. The device, ...

ANN ARBOR—A thin, flexible electrode developed at the University of Michigan is 10 times smaller than the nearest competition and could make long-term measurements of neural activity practical at last. This kind of technology could eventually be used to send signals to prosthetic limbs, overcoming inflammation larger electrodes cause that damages both the brain and the electrodes. The main problem that neurons have with electrodes is that they make terrible neighbors. In addition to being enormous compared to the neurons, they are stiff and tend to rub nearby cells ...

An international group of scientists has identified three genetic regions that predispose Asian women who have never smoked to lung cancer. The finding provides further evidence that risk of lung cancer among never-smokers, especially Asian women, may be associated with certain unique inherited genetic characteristics that distinguishes it from lung cancer in smokers. Lung cancer in never-smokers is the seventh leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, and the majority of lung cancers diagnosed historically among women in Eastern Asia have been in women who never smoked. ...