Parental hopes of a "miraculous intervention," prompted by deeply held religious beliefs, are leading to very sick children being subjected to futile care and needless suffering, suggests a small study in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors, who comprise children's intensive care doctors and a hospital chaplain, emphasise that religious beliefs provide vital support to many parents whose children are seriously ill, as well as to the staff who care for them. But they have become concerned that deeply held beliefs are increasingly leading parents to insist on the ...

A new study led by scientists at the University of York has shown how birds, butterflies, other insects and spiders have colonised nature reserves and areas protected for wildlife, as they move north in response to climate change and other environmental changes. The study of over 250 species, led by researchers in the Department of Biology at York, is published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS). The conclusions were based on the analysis of millions of records of wildlife species sent in predominantly by members of the public. The ...

New research raises questions about the theory that modern humans and Neanderthals at some point interbred, known as hybridisation. The findings of a study by researchers at the University of Cambridge suggests that common ancestry, not hybridisation, better explains the average 1-4 per cent DNA that those of European and Asian descent (Eurasians) share with Neanderthals. It was published today, 13 August, in the journal PNAS. In the last two years, a number of studies have suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals had at some point interbred. Genetic evidence ...

A new technology which delivers sustained release of therapeutics for up to six months could be used in conditions which require routine injections, including diabetes, certain forms of cancer and potentially HIV/AIDS. Researchers from the University of Cambridge have developed injectable, reformable and spreadable hydrogels which can be loaded with proteins or other therapeutics. The hydrogels contain up to 99.7% water by weight, with the remainder primarily made up of cellulose polymers held together with cucurbiturils - barrel-shaped molecules which act as miniature ...

About 25,000 Danes currently live with congenital heart defects. Both heredity and environment play a role for these malformations, but exactly how various risk factors influence the development of the heart during pregnancy has been a mystery until now. With the aid of a supercomputer, an international, interdisciplinary research team has analysed millions of data points. This has allowed the scientists to show that a huge number of different risk factors – for example in the form of genetic defects – influence the molecular biology of heart development. – The ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida researchers curating a 17-foot-7-inch Burmese python, the largest found in Florida, discovered 87 eggs in the snake, also a state record. Scientists at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus examined the internal anatomy of the 164.5-pound snake Friday. The animal was brought to the Florida Museum from Everglades National Park as part of a long-term project with the U.S. Department of the Interior to research methods for managing the state's invasive Burmese python problem. Following scientific investigation, the ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have made a breakthrough in the performance of microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell excess electricity. The new technology developed at OSU can now produce 10 to 50 more times the electricity, per volume, than most other approaches using microbial fuel cells, and 100 times more electricity than some. Researchers say this could eventually change the way that wastewater ...

A new tool to observe cell behavior has revealed surprising clues about how cancer cells respond to therapy – and may offer a way to further refine personalized cancer treatments. The approach, developed by investigators at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, shows that erlotinib – a targeted therapy that acts on a growth factor receptor mutated in some lung, brain and other cancers – doesn't simply kill tumor cells as was previously assumed. The drug also causes some tumor cells to go into a non-dividing (quiescent) state or to slow down their rate of division. This variability ...

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 10, 2012 – Gamma-ray photons seen emanating from the center of the Milky Way galaxy are consistent with the intriguing possibility that dark-matter particles are annihilating each other in space, according to research submitted by UC Irvine astrophysicists to the American Physical Society journal Physical Review D. Kevork Abazajian, assistant professor, and Manoj Kaplinghat, associate professor, of the Department of Physics & Astronomy analyzed data collected between August 2008 and June 2012 from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope orbiting Earth. ...

A targeted approach to treating toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease, shows early promise in test-tube and animal studies, where it prevented the parasites from making selected proteins. When tested in newly infected mice, it reduced the number of viable parasites by more than 90 percent, researchers from the University of Chicago Medicine report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This precisely focused therapy combines short strands of "antisense" nucleic acid-like material with a small peptide that can transport those strands through cell membranes ...

Newly published research led by Dr. David Spence of Western University, Canada, shows that eating egg yolks accelerates atherosclerosis in a manner similar to smoking cigarettes. Surveying more than 1200 patients, Dr. Spence found regular consumption of egg yolks is about two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to increased build-up of carotid plaque, a risk factor for stroke and heart attack. The research is published online in the journal Atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis, also called coronary artery disease, is a disorder of the arteries where plaques, aggravated ...

ARGONNE, Ill. (August 12, 2012) -- For the first time X-ray scientists have combined high-resolution imaging with 3-D viewing of the surface layer of material using X-ray vision in a way that does not damage the sample. This new technique expands the range of X-ray research possible for biology and many aspects of nanotechnology, particularly nanofilms, photonics, and micro- and nano-electronics. This new technique also reduces "guesswork" by eliminating the need for modeling-dependent structural simulation often used in X-ray analysis. Scientists from the Advanced ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A team of investigators from UC Davis and Peking University have discovered a mechanism that may explain how alpha hydroxyl acids (AHAs) -- the key ingredient in cosmetic chemical peels and wrinkle-reducing creams -- work to enhance skin appearance. An understanding of the underlying process may lead to better cosmetic formulations as well as have medical applications. The findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry in an article entitled "Intracellular proton-mediated activation of TRPV3 channels accounts for exfoliation effect ...

WASHINGTON, DC—A team at Children's National Medical Center has found that external stimulation has an impact on the postnatal development of a specific region of the brain. Published in Nature Neuroscience, the study used sensory deprivation to look at the growth and collection of NG2-expressing oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (NG2 cells) in the sensory cortex of the brain. This type of research is part of the Center for Neuroscience Research focus on understanding the development and treatment of white matter diseases. NG2 cells can develop into oligodendrocytes progenitor ...

A University of Houston researcher has developed a nanoparticle coating for solar panels that makes it easier to keep the panels clean, maintaining their efficiency for longer and reducing the maintenance and operations costs. The patent-pending coating developed by physics professor Seamus "Shay" Curran, director of UH's Institute for NanoEnergy, has successfully undergone testing at the Dublin Institute for Technology and will undergo field trials being conducted by an engineering firm in North Carolina. Curran said the June testing in Ireland and the field trials ...

If a hurricane's path carries it over large areas of fresh water, it will potentially intensify 50 percent faster than those that do not pass over such regions, meaning it has greater potential to become a stronger storm and be more devastating, according to a study co-written by a group of researchers at Texas A&M University. Ping Chang, professor of oceanography and atmospheric sciences and director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, along with his former student, Karthik Balaguru, now at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, are the ...

URBANA – A study that examined how rural farmers in Ethiopia learn new farming techniques and adopt them on their own farms discovered that learning from a friend was a stronger motivator than learning from neighbors in close proximity. The goal of the study was to find out how farmers in Ethiopia learn and ultimately adopt new agricultural technologies such as using fertilizers in the production of grains, trying new grain crop varieties, and installing an irrigation system to grow new high-value fruit and vegetable crops. "One strategy used by extension in developing ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A sedentary lifestyle is a common cause of obesity (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/obesity/DS00314), and excessive body weight and fat in turn are considered catalysts for diabetes (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes/DS01121), high blood pressure (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/high-blood-pressure/DS00100), joint damage (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/arthritis/DS01122/DSECTION=risk-factors) and other serious health problems. But what if lack of exercise itself were treated as a medical condition? Mayo Clinic physiologist Michael Joyner, ...

Montreal, August 13, 2012 – Does the ideal ratio of couch to rug size keep you up at night? Are the exposed wires of your stereo causing you angst? Is that crocheted toilet paper cover kitschy enough to be cool? If you wonder, then you are not alone. For Concordia University's Zeynep Arsel, such questions have led to exciting new research into buyer behaviour. The assistant professor of marketing at the John Molson School of Business teamed up with Jonathan Bean from Parsons The New School of Design in New York City to co-author a recent article in the Journal of Consumer ...

New York, NY and San Diego, CA, August 13, 2012 – Despite years of research, glioblastoma, the most common and deadly brain cancer in adults, continues to outsmart treatments targeted to inhibit tumor growth. Biologists and oncologists have long understood that a protein called the epidermal growth factor receptor or EGFR is altered in at least 50 percent of patients with glioblastoma. Yet patients with glioblastoma either have upfront resistance or quickly develop resistance to inhibitors aimed at stopping the protein's function, suggesting that there is another signalling ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers may have discovered a new method to predict solar flares more than a day before they occur, providing advance warning to help protect satellites, power grids and astronauts from potentially dangerous radiation. The system works by measuring differences in gamma radiation emitted when atoms in radioactive elements "decay," or lose energy. This rate of decay is widely believed to be constant, but recent findings challenge that long-accepted rule. The new detection technique is based on a hypothesis that radioactive decay rates are influenced ...

VIDEO: This animation shows rapid transport of a single ion over about 0.37 millimeters within 8 millionths of a second. The ion is held and moved with electric fields, its transport... Click here for more information. Take that, sports cars! Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can accelerate their beryllium ions from zero to 100 miles per hour and stop them in just a few microseconds. What's more, the ions come to a complete stop and hardly ...

NASA's Terra satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Kai-tak affecting the northern Philippines on August 13 as the storm heads toward China for a final landfall. Warnings are already in effect in part of the Philippines. Tropical storm Kai-tak is the fourteenth tropical cyclone of the western North Pacific season. On August 13 at 11 a.m. EDT, Kai-tak had maximum sustained winds near 40 knots (46 mph/74 kmh). It was located approximately 290 nautical miles (334 miles/ 537 km) east-Northeast of Manila, Philippines, has tracked west-southwestward at 11 knots (12.6 ...

On August 13, the Atlantic tropics are quieter than they were the previous week, when four low pressure areas were marching across the ocean basin. Satellite imagery shows two lows in the Atlantic as Tropical Storm Hector spins in the Eastern Pacific Ocean with System 95E near the Mexican coast. The NOAA GOES-13 satellite sits in a fixed orbit over the eastern U.S. and provides infrared and visible imagery of the Atlantic Ocean basin continuously. At the same time, NOAA's GOES-15 satellite covers the western U.S. and eastern Pacific Ocean. At NASA's GOES Project, the ...

VIDEO: This movie shows a coronal mass ejection (CME) on the sun from July 22, 2012 at 10 p.m. EDT until 2 a.m. July 23 as captured by NASA's Solar TErrestrial... Click here for more information. On July 23, 2012, a massive cloud of solar material erupted off the sun's right side, zooming out into space, passing one of NASA's Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft along the way. Using the STEREO data, scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center ...