SANTA CRUZ, CA--Giant insects ruled the prehistoric skies during periods when Earth's atmosphere was rich in oxygen. Then came the birds. After the evolution of birds about 150 million years ago, insects got smaller despite rising oxygen levels, according to a new study by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Insects reached their biggest sizes about 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. This was the reign of the predatory griffinflies, giant dragonfly-like insects with wingspans of up to 28 inches (70 centimeters). ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers have identified an immune system deficiency whose presence shows someone is up to four times likelier to die than a person without it. The glitch involves an antibody molecule called a free light chain; people whose immune systems produce too much of the molecule are far more likely to die of a life-threatening illness such as cancer, diabetes and cardiac and respiratory disease than those whose bodies make normal levels. The study is published in the June issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Researchers studied blood samples ...

Rochester, MN, June 4, 2012 – Micah True, legendary ultra-marathoner, died suddenly while on a routine 12-mile training run March 27, 2012. The mythic Caballo Blanco in the best-selling book, Born to Run, True would run as far as 100 miles in a day. On autopsy his heart was enlarged and scarred; he died of a lethal arrhythmia (irregularity of the heart rhythm). Although speculative, the pathologic changes in the heart of this 58 year-old veteran extreme endurance athlete may have been manifestations of "Phidippides cardiomyopathy," a condition caused by chronic excessive ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Nobody wins when patients stay in the hospital unnecessarily, so the federal government in recent years has pushed hospitals to be careful about admitting Medicare recipients as inpatients. The apparent result is that more patients are being "held for observation" instead, according to a new study by Brown University gerontologists. While the shift in how hospitals care for elderly patients in the emergency department may reduce costs to Medicare, it can also increase out-of-pocket expenditures for patients. "The dual trends of increasing ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The antidepressant drug duloxetine, known commercially as Cymbalta, helped relieve painful tingling feelings caused by chemotherapy in 59 percent of patients, a new study finds. This is the first clinical trial to find an effective treatment for this pain. Chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy is a common side effect of certain chemotherapy drugs. The tingling feeling -- usually felt in the toes, feet, fingers and hands -- can be uncomfortable for many patients, but for about 30 percent of patients, it's a painful sensation. Previous studies have ...

Pittsburgh, PA…An international team of researchers has announced the discovery of Afrasia djijidae, a new fossil primate from Myanmar that illuminates a critical step in the evolution of early anthropoids—the group that includes humans, apes, and monkeys. The 37-million-year-old Afrasia closely resembles another early anthropoid, Afrotarsius libycus, recently discovered at a site of similar age in the Sahara Desert of Libya. The close similarity between Afrasia and Afrotarsius indicates that early anthropoids colonized Africa only shortly before the time when these animals ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Skin cancer patients whose childhood included periods of neglect or maltreatment are at a much greater risk for their cancers to return when they face a major stressful event, based on a new study. The research suggests that such experiences during a person's youth can set a lower level of immune response for life, which in turn might make them more susceptible to the kind of cancers that are often successfully fought by the immune system, so-called immunogenic tumors. While the research focused on patients with a fairly benign form of skin cancer -- ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- High doses of the herb American ginseng (Panax quinquefolius) over two months reduced cancer-related fatigue in patients more effectively than a placebo, a Mayo Clinic-led study found. Sixty percent of patients studied had breast cancer. The findings are being presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual meeting. Researchers studied 340 patients who had completed cancer treatment or were being treated for cancer at one of 40 community medical centers. Each day, participants received a placebo or 2,000 milligrams of ginseng administered ...

STANFORD, Calif. — In a new study of the effects of soy supplements for postmenopausal women, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the USC Keck School of Medicine found no significant differences — positive or negative — in overall mental abilities between those who took supplements and those who didn't. While questions have swirled for years around a possible link between soy consumption and changes in cognition, this research offers no evidence to support such claims. "There were no large effects on overall cognition one way or another," said ...

North Carolina's coordinated, regional systems for rapid care improved survival rates of patients suffering from the most severe heart attack, according to research in the American Heart Association's journal, Circulation. Fewer ST -segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) patients died when paramedics diagnosed them en route to hospitals and hospitals followed well-defined guidelines to quickly treat or transfer patients to facilities that performed artery-opening procedures, if needed. Death rates were 2.2 percent for patients treated to guideline standards and ...

San Antonio, Texas, June 4, 2012 – Prisoners need education on the appropriate use of topical antibiotic products, according to a study released today at the 39th Annual Educational Conference and International Meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). The first study to report on the widespread misuse of topical antibiotics among inmates entering prisons from other correctional facilities found that, among inmates who reported having used topical antibiotics during the previous six months, 59 percent of male and 40 percent ...

CHICAGO – A 38-year longitudinal study of New Zealanders suggests that individuals with higher genetic risk scores were more likely to be chronically obese in adulthood, according to a report published in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. Obesity is capable of being inherited and genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have started to uncover the molecular roots of heritability by identifying multiple single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with higher adult body mass index (BMI), the authors write in ...

San Antonio, Texas, June 4, 2012 – Preventing further complications in patients who develop infections after surgery to replace a knee or hip could save the U.S. healthcare system as much as $65 million annually, according to an analysis presented today at the 39th Annual Educational Conference and International Meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). The research team, led by Keith Kaye, MD, MPH, corporate director of Infection Prevention, Hospital Epidemiology and Antimicrobial Stewardship at Detroit Medical Center/Wayne ...

Scientists have shown that the brains of people with depression respond differently to feelings of guilt – even after their symptoms have subsided. University of Manchester researchers found that the brain scans of people with a history of depression differed in the regions associated with guilt and knowledge of socially acceptable behaviour from individuals who never get depressed. The study – published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry – provides the first evidence of brain mechanisms to explain Freud's classical observation that exaggerated guilt and ...

DURHAM, N.C.— An ambitious effort to coordinate heart attack care among every hospital and emergency service in North Carolina improved patient survival rates and reduced the time from diagnosis to treatment, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers who spearheaded the program. "When treating heart attacks, the most important care decisions need to take place before the patient is brought to the hospital," says James Jollis, M.D., a Duke cardiologist and first author of the findings published today in the journal Circulation. "These procedures should be ...

CHICAGO – An observational study that examined the comparative effectiveness of rhythm control vs. rate control drug treatment on mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation (a rapid, irregular heart beat) suggests there was little difference in mortality within four years of treatment, but rhythm control may be associated with more effective long-term outcomes, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. AF affects approximately 2.3 million Americans and 250,000 Canadians, and the condition has a complex ...

Family members of children with a staph infection often harbor a drug-resistant form of the germ, although they don't show symptoms, a team of researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found. The results are published in the June issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine. The investigators focused on family members of nearly 200 children who had Staphylococcus aureus infections in the skin and soft tissue, in areas such as the nose, armpits and/or groin. They found that of the more than 600 household members who lived with ...

BOSTON -- June 4, 2012 -- Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have shown that while a type of "good" fat found in the body can be activated by cold temperatures, it is not able to be activated by the drug ephedrine. The finding, published in today's issue of PNAS USA Early Edition, may lead to drugs or other methods aimed at activating the good fat, known as brown fat. When activated, brown fat burns calories and can help in the battle against obesity. "We propose that agents that work similarly to cold in activating brown fat specifically can provide promising approaches ...

Analyzing medical records from thousands of patients, statisticians have devised a statistical model for predicting what other medical problems a patient might encounter. Like how Netflix recommends movies and TV shows or how Amazon.com suggests products to buy, the algorithm makes predictions based on what a patient has already experienced as well as the experiences of other patients showing a similar medical history. "This provides physicians with insights on what might be coming next for a patient, based on experiences of other patients. It also gives a predication ...

PASADENA, Calif.—A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee—these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain's primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality. The new finding is described ...

A three-drug treatment for the blood cancer multiple myeloma provided rapid, deep and potentially durable responses, researchers report today online in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology, and yesterday, Sunday, June 3, 2012, at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL, USA. The researchers, led by Andrzej J. Jakubowiak, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and director of the multiple myeloma program at the University of Chicago Medical Center, found that combining carfilzomib, a next generation proteasome inhibitor, ...

VIDEO: As a retrovirus matures, the two parts of its shell protein (red and blue or yellow and blue) dramatically rearrange themselves, twisting and moving away from each other. Click here for more information. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have for the first time uncovered the detailed structure of the shell that surrounds the genetic material of retroviruses, such as HIV, at a crucial and potentially vulnerable stage ...

VIDEO: A fruit fly embryo from when it was about two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva, filmed by a new microscope developed at EMBL.... Click here for more information. "This video shows a fruit fly embryo from when it was about two-and-a-half hours old until it walked away from the microscope as a larva, 20 hours later," says Lars Hufnagel, from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. "It shows all ...

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have conducted the first comprehensive census of human cells' export workers. In a study published online today in Nature Cell Biology, they found an unexpected variety of genes involved in transporting molecules to the cell membrane and beyond. Using a combination of genetics and sophisticated microscopy, Rainer Pepperkok and colleagues systematically silenced each of our 22 000 genes, and observed to what extent this affected the cell's ability to transport a protein. They found that ...

Among the founding fathers of the biotechnology industry, Roberto Crea, PhD., founder and CEO of CreAgri Inc., is internationally acknowledged for the role he played in the successful establishment and growth of Genentech, Inc.--as one of the first four scientific founders of the legendary biotech company—and for his pioneering role in the production of many rDNA protein drugs from bacteria. Among other innovations, Dr. Crea is the inventor of the synthetic DNA process that led to the discovery of the first recombinant human insulin, Humulin , and many other pharmaceutical ...