Douglas McCauley and Paul DeSalles did not set out to discover one of the longest ecological interaction chains ever documented. But that's exactly what they and a team of researchers – all current or former Stanford students and faculty – did in a new study published in Scientific Reports. Their findings shed light on how human disturbance of the natural world may lead to widespread, yet largely invisible, disruptions of ecological interaction chains. This, in turn, highlights the need to build non-traditional alliances – among marine biologists and foresters, for example ...

Ever since Wonder Woman became the first big female super hero in 1942, super heroines from Batwoman to the Fantastic Four's Invisible Girl have been a force to be reckoned with. This month Grande Vegas Casino salutes the super women of our time with a Facebook Contest and Super Bonus Weekend. The Super Heroines Leaderboard Contests continue and there will be two more Super Heroines Live Raffles with $250 instant prizes this month. A contest on the Grande Vegas Facebook Page this week gives players a chance to vote for their favorite super heroine and possibly win a ...

In a new KLAS study titled "Proton Therapy 2012: Dollars, Decisions and Debates," the majority of participants said that concerns about market saturation and an estimated initial investment of $150-$200 million would likely prevent them from looking at proton therapy in the next five years. "Besides cost, providers mention that ROI is a concern due to the patient referral base, staffing requirements, and ongoing maintenance costs," explained Monique Rasband, oncology research director and author of the report. "On the flip side, some currently ...

Athens, Ga. – The rate at which the rabies virus evolves in bats may depend heavily upon the ecological traits of its hosts, according to researchers at the University of Georgia, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Their study, published May 17 in the journal PLoS Pathogens, found that the host's geographical location was the most accurate predictor of the viral rate of evolution. Rabies viruses in tropical and sub-tropical bat species evolved nearly four times faster than viral variants in bats in temperate ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – GSA Bulletin papers posted online 3-18 May 2012 cover a variety of locations: the Coast Range basalt province, southwest Washington State, USA; the Faroe Islands of the northeast Atlantic margin; Wairarapa fault, North Island, New Zealand; the eastern Mediterranean Sea offshore of southern Crete; the southern central Andes of Argentina; the Adriatic Carbonate Platform of southwest Slovenia; the Atacama Desert, Chile; Questa caldera, northern New Mexico, USA; the Norwegian Caledonides; and Lake Tahoe, USA. Petrology of the Grays River Volcanics, ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Pollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research Letters. How much the warming effect of these clouds offsets the cooling that other clouds provide is not yet clear. To find out, researchers need to incorporate this new-found warming into global climate models. Pollution strengthens thunderstorm clouds, causing their anvil-shaped tops to spread out high in the atmosphere and capture heat -- especially at night, said lead author and climate researcher ...

University of Iowa neuroscientist John Wemmie, M.D., Ph.D., is interested in the effect of acid in the brain. His studies suggest that increased acidity or low pH, in the brain is linked to panic disorders, anxiety, and depression. But his work also suggests that changes in acidity are important for normal brain activity too. "We are interested in the idea that pH might be changing in the functional brain because we've been hot on the trail of receptors that are activated by low pH," says Wemmie, a UI associate professor of psychiatry. "The presence of these receptors ...

San Diego, CA (May 18, 2012) — Clinicians, researchers and scientists from around the world will gather for Digestive Disease Week® (DDW) 2012, the largest and most prestigious gastroenterology meeting, from May 19-22, 2012, at the San Diego Convention Center, CA. DDW, the annual meeting of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute, is jointly sponsored by the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, the AGA, the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy and the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract. AGA researchers will present ...

Patients who watch an online instructional video are more likely to keep their appointments and arrive prepared for a scheduled colonoscopy than those who do not, according to a study by gastroenterologists at the University of Chicago Medicine. The study, presented at the 2012 annual Digestive Diseases Week meeting in San Diego, CA, found that among patients age 50 to 65 – the primary target for colon cancer screening – those who watched the video were 40 percent less likely to cancel an appointment. That suggests many more cancers could be prevented or detected and ...

New recommendations on devices, drugs and diagnosis in heart failure were launched at the Heart Failure Congress 2012, 19-22 May, in Belgrade, Serbia, and published in the European Heart Journal. The ESC Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute and Chronic Heart Failure 2012 were developed by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC. The Congress is the HFA's main annual meeting. An analysis of the most up to date clinical evidence in the field of heart failure by the ESC Guidelines task ...

Preliminary results from an ongoing, large-scale study by Yale School of Medicine researchers shows that oxytocin — a naturally occurring substance produced in the brain and throughout the body— increased brain function in regions that are known to process social information in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A Yale Child Study Center research team that includes postdoctoral fellow Ilanit Gordon and Kevin Pelphrey, the Harris Associate Professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology, will present the results on Saturday, May 19 at 3 p.m. ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Patients with moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can be successfully managed in a primary care setting by appropriately trained primary care physicians (PCPs) and community-based nurses, according to Australian researchers. "With the rise in demand and growing waiting lists for sleep physician consultation and laboratory-based sleep services, there has been increasing interest in development of ambulatory strategies for the diagnosis and management of OSA involving home sleep monitoring and auto-titrating continuous positive airway ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Sleep disordered breathing (SDB), which is associated with an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular events and psychopathological outcomes, is also associated with an increased risk of cancer mortality, according to a new study. "Recent in vitro and animal studies have shown that repeated episodes of hypoxia (an inadequate supply of oxygen) are associated with accelerated cancer progression," said F. Javier Nieto, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – There is a very high prevalence of osteopenia/osteoporosis among male patients with pulmonary disease, according to a new study from researchers in California. "While post-menopausal women are routinely screened for osteoporosis, men are not," said Kathleen Ellstrom, PhD, RN, APRN-BC, Pulmonary Clinical Nurse Specialist and Director of the Pulmonary Rehabilitation Program at the Veterans Administration Loma Linda Healthcare System. "The high prevalence of bone disease we found in male patients referred to our pulmonary rehabilitation program ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – A number of specific risk factors are associated with an exacerbation-prone phenotype of severe asthma, according to a new study from researchers in Sweden. The results will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco. "Acute exacerbations are a major source of morbidity and mortality in asthma," said lead author Maciek Kupczyk, MD, PhD, a researcher at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm "In children, the costs of asthma care are three times higher in exacerbators as compared to those patients who did not experience ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – For more than three decades, researchers have warned of the potential health risks associated with exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), especially among children whose parents smoke. Now a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Arizona reports that those health risks persist well beyond childhood, independent of whether or not those individuals end up becoming smokers later in life. The study will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco. "This study shows that exposure to parental ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO - Treatment of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in children normalizes disturbances in the neuronal network responsible for attention and executive function, according to a new study. "OSA is known to be associated with deficits in attention, cognition, and executive function," said lead author Ann Halbower, MD, Associate Professor at the Children's Hospital Sleep Center and University of Colorado Denver. "Our study is the first to show that treatment of OSA in children can reverse neuronal brain injury, correlated with improvements in attention ...

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – The link between prenatal exposure to air pollution and childhood lung growth and respiratory ailments has been established by several studies in recent years, and now a new study suggests that these prenatal exposures can be especially serious for children with asthma. The study will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco. "In this study, we found that prenatal exposures to airborne particles and the pollutant nitrogen dioxide adversely affect pulmonary function growth among asthmatic children between 6 and ...

SAN DIEGO – On September 12, 2011, a Springfield, Virginia man arrived at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital (MGUH) in the early stages of liver failure. The man had mistakenly eaten poisonous mushrooms, handpicked from his yard. He would be the first of four patients in the course of two weeks to seek treatment at MGUH for mushroom (amanitin) poisoning. Their clinical course, management, and outcomes were presented today at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) in San Diego, the largest international gathering of physicians and researchers in the field of gastroenterology, ...

Statins prevent cancer and reduce death from all causes in heart transplant recipients. The findings were independent of cholesterol levels. The research was presented at the Heart Failure Congress 2012, 19-22 May, in Belgrade, Serbia. The Congress is the main annual meeting of the Heart Failure Association of the European Society of Cardiology. Cancer is the leading cause of death late after heart transplantation. Skin cancer is particularly common, but solid organ cancers including colorectal cancer, prostate cancer and lymphoma also occur. The increased rate of ...

Madison, Wis. and San Francisco — Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), commonly known as sleep apnea, is associated with an increased risk of cancer mortality, according to a new study. While previous studies have associated SDB with increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, depression, and early death, this is the first human study to link apnea with higher rate of cancer mortality. Lead author Dr. F. Javier Nieto, chair of the department of population health sciences at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, says the study showed a nearly five times ...

A combination of three drugs used worldwide as the standard of care for a serious lung disease puts patients in danger of death or hospitalization, and should not be used together to treat the disease, called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, according to the surprising results of a rigorous independent study. The study, which will appear online May 20 in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with a presentation at the annual meeting of the American Thoracic Society, was conducted by IPF Clinical Research Network, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ...

A team of researchers from UCSF and UC San Diego has identified an approved arthritis drug that is effective against amoebas in lab and animal studies, suggesting it could offer a low-dose, low cost treatment for the amoebic infections that cause human dysentery throughout the world. Based on these results, the team has received Orphan Drug Status for the drug, known as auranofin, from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and has applied for approval to start clinical trials to treat both amebiasis and the parasite Giardia in humans. The findings, which showed that ...

Research by a collaborative group of scientists from UC San Diego School of Medicine, UC San Francisco and Wake Forest School of Medicine has led to identification of an existing drug that is effective against Entamoeba histolytica. This parasite causes amebic dysentery and liver abscesses and results in the death of more than 70,000 people worldwide each year. Using a high-throughput screen for drugs developed by the research team, they discovered that auranofin – a drug approved by the US Food and Drug Administration 25 years ago for rheumatoid arthritis – is very effective ...

Helen E. Davies, M.D., of the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, and colleagues compared the effectiveness of treatments to relieve breathing difficulties among patients with malignant pleural effusion (presence of fluid in the pleural cavity [space between the outside of the lungs and the inside wall of the chest cavity], as a complication of malignant disease). The treatments compared were chest tube drainage and talc slurry for pleurodesis (a procedure in which the pleural space is obliterated) vs. indwelling pleural catheters (IPCs). Malignant pleural effusion ...