If you're balding and want your hair to grow back, then here is some good news. A new research report appearing online in The FASEB Journal (www.fasebj.org) shows how the FDA-approved glaucoma drug, bimatoprost, causes human hair to regrow. It's been commercially available as a way to lengthen eyelashes, but these data are the first to show that it can actually grow human hair from the scalp. "We hope this study will lead to the development of a new therapy for balding which should improve the quality of life for many people with hair loss," said Valerie Randall, a researcher ...

Using regional anesthesia rather than general anesthesia reduces the need for blood transfusions in patients undergoing bilateral total knee replacement, according to a new study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery, in New York City. Currently, the majority of bilateral knee replacements in the United States (as well as single knee replacements) are performed under general anesthesia, and researchers say that a regional anesthesia known as neuraxial anesthesia should be promoted for these procedures. "The use of neuraxial anesthesia may not always be feasible ...

At home, in the car or with industrial processes – glass is a universal material. Its properties are so extraordinary that frequently there are no alternatives to this material. Take, for example, high-temperature fuel cells, in which layers of ceramics and metals are alternately attached to each other: to ensure no explosive hydrogen escapes, the metal and ceramic layers must be firmly bound to each other, and the seam must be sealed tight. Only glass can accomplish this type of seal – and here, we are specifically referring to solder glass. But how does glass behave at ...

Investigators at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have accelerated the search for the bacterial genes that make the Lyme disease bacterium so invasive and persistent. The discovery could advance the diagnosis and treatment of this disease, which affects an estimated 30,000 Americans each year. The researchers have developed a new technique that allowed them to test 15 times more bacterial genes than had been evaluated in the previous 30 years to ascertain their roles in infection. Findings appeared Oct. 25 in the journal The Public Library ...

Social animals usually congregate for protection or mating or to capture bigger prey, but a University of California, Berkeley, biologist has found that the terrestrial hermit crab has a more self-serving social agenda: to kick another crab out of its shell and move into a larger home. All hermit crabs appropriate abandoned snail shells for their homes, but the dozen or so species of land-based hermit crabs – popular terrarium pets – are the only ones that hollow out and remodel their shells, sometimes doubling the internal volume. This provides more room to grow, more ...

NASA's Terra satellite got a good look at Tropical Storm Son-tinh moving through the South China Sea and headed for landfall in Vietnam. NASA's Terra satellite flew over Son-Tinh on Oct. 26 at 0305 UTC (Oct. 25 at 11:05 p.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard captured a visible image of the storm. At the time, Son-tinh's western edge had already moved away from the Philippines. The image revealed powerful thunderstorms in the northwestern quadrant of the storm, and in the storm's center. On Oct. 26 at 1500 UTC, Tropical ...

New research presented in October at the 6th Neurodegenerative Conditions Research and Development Conference in San Francisco demonstrates the role of the investigational compound IRX4204 in alleviating cognitive decline in animal models of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The presentation entitled "Investigation of the RXR-specific agonist IRX4204 as a Disease Modifying Agent of Alzheimer's Disease Neuropathology and Cognitive Impairment" was made by lead researcher Giulio Maria Pasinetti, MD, PhD, of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. IRX4204 is a retinoid ...

Stroke survivors who smoke put themselves at a greater risk of additional strokes, heart attack or death than those who never smoked, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Stroke. Those who quit smoking before their stroke also had less risk of poorer outcomes than current smokers, researchers found. Researchers in Melbourne, Australia, tracked 1,589 patients who experienced a first or recurrent stroke in 1996-99. They followed them for 10 years, using medical records and in-person and telephone interviews, and tracked demographics, ...

In a new study out today, researchers used mice to identify a combination six naturally occurring bacteria that eradicate a highly contagious form of Clostridium difficile, an infectious bacterium associated with many hospital deaths. Three of the six bacteria have not been described before. This work may have significant implications for future control and treatment approaches. The researchers found that this strain of C. difficile, known as O27, establishes a persistent, prolonged contagious period, known as supershedding that is very difficult to treat with antibiotics. ...

When the era of regenerative medicine dawned more than three decades ago, the potential to replenish populations of cells destroyed by disease was seen by many as the next medical revolution. However, what followed turned out not to be a sprint to the clinic, but rather a long tedious slog carried out in labs across the globe required to master the complexity of stem cells and then pair their capabilities and attributes with specific diseases. In a review article appearing today in the journal Science, University of Rochester Medical Center scientists Steve Goldman, ...

STONY BROOK, NY– In a Perspectives article, "The Risks of Overfishing," published today in the journal Science, Dr. Ellen K. Pikitch, executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science and professor at Stony Brook University, cautions against continuing traditional fisheries management. According to Dr. Pikitch, current and recent studies demonstrate the need for "a more precautionary approach to fisheries management, in which fishing is restricted to those places and amounts where it can be conducted safely and with minimal risk of jeopardizing the integrity ...

Children's parties or activity days, where prospective adopters meet children awaiting adoption, could be part of the solution to the current adoption crisis, according to research that will be showcased during the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Festival of Social Science. "Such parties or activity days went out of fashion in the 1980s but no one is sure why," says Katherine Runswick-Cole of Manchester Metropolitan University who led the research. "However, our pilot study has shown an overwhelmingly positive response from practitioners, adopters and the ...

This press release is available in German. Pulsars are the compact remnants from explosions of massive stars. Some of them spin around their own axis hundreds of times per second, emitting beams of radiation into space. Until now, they could only be found through their pulsed radio emissions. Now, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute/AEI) in Hanover assisted by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have discovered a millisecond pulsar solely via its pulsed gamma radiation. A new data analysis method developed ...

Smoking reduces life expectancy by ten years in Japan, but much of the risk can be avoided by giving up smoking, a paper published on bmj.com today shows. Previous studies in Japan suggested smoking reduced life expectancy by only a few years compared with about ten years in Britain and the USA. This new report, from researchers in Oxford and Japan, investigates the impact of smoking on mortality in a large group of Japanese people who were living in Hiroshima or Nagasaki in 1950. The findings are, however, nothing to do with radiation exposure from the bombs. The ...

WASHINGTON, DC—October 25, 2012—Biomedical and health research and development (R&D) spending from all sources declined by more than $4 billion or 3% between FY10 and FY11 according to Research!America's 2011 U.S. Investment in Health Research report. This represents the first drop in overall spending since Research!America began compiling the data in 2002. The decline follows an uptick in research funding attributed to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which allocated $10.4 billion to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) over two fiscal years (2009-2010). ...

In a tropical cyclone, strong uplift of air pushes the tops of thunderstorms high into the troposphere. When that strength wanes, the cloud tops drop and become less cold. That's because the higher you go in the troposphere, the colder it gets. NASA satellite infrared data has revealed that Tropical Storm Tony's cloud top temperatures are warming and the storm is weakening. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared imagery of Tropical Storm Tony on Oct. 24 at 12:17 p.m. EDT that showed the strongest thunderstorms ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Hurricane Sandy as it was moving over eastern Cuba early on Oct. 25. The AIRS instrument captured an infrared image of Sandy that showed a large area of very high, cold cloud tops indicating the power within the storm. Sandy is now headed toward the Bahamas and warnings and watches have already been posted for the mainland U.S. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared imagery of Hurricane Sandy's eastern half on Oct. 25 at 0559 UTC (1:59 a.m. EDT) that showed some strong thunderstorms ...

NASA's Aqua satellite watched from space as Somalia in the Horn of Africa experienced a landfalling tropical cyclone on Oct. 25. On Oct. 25, NASA's Aqua satellite saw Tropical Storm Murjan begin to make landfall in eastern Somalia, just south of Cape Guardafui. Cape Guardafui is located in the northeastern Bari province and forms the geographical point of the Horn of Africa. On Oct. 25, 2012 at 0720 UTC (3:20 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Oct. 25, 2012) - University of South Florida researchers have identified a genetic biomarker for age-related hearing loss, a major breakthrough in understanding and preventing a condition of aging that affects 30 million Americans and greatly diminishes their quality of life. In a nine-year study that was a collaboration between USF's Global Center for Hearing & Speech Research and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at the Rochester Institute of Technology, researchers were able to identify the first genetic biomarker for presbycusis. The genetic ...

Tropical Storm Son-tinh soaked the Philippines and is now moving into the South China Sea. NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of the storm as the bulk western half of the storm had already moved over water. On Oct. 25, 2012 at 0525 UTC (1:25 a.m. EDT) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Sin-Tingh. The image showed that the western half of the storm had already moved into the South China Sea, while powerful thunderstorms in the eastern half were ...

A new study by Northwestern University researchers has revealed that public DNS services could actually slow down users' web-surfing experience. As a result, researchers have developed a solution to help avoid such an impact: a tool called namehelp that could speed web performance by 40 percent. Through a large-scale study involving more than 10,000 hosts across nearly 100 countries, Fabián Bustamante, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his team found that one cause ...

This press release is available in German. Leipzig. Researchers from Germany and Slovakia have pointed out that the chemical triclosan is one of those particularly harmful substances for the ecological status of rivers that are still not sufficiently monitored. With extensive monitoring conducted in the Elbe river basin that was more comprehensive than standard monitoring procedures, concentrations of the chemical at numerous test sites exceeded the predicted no-effect concentration (PNEC) for algal communities up to a factor of twelve. From the 500 river basin-specific ...

MIAMI, FL – OCTOBER 25, 2012 – A study confirmed no differences in various measures of heart damage, according to cardiac magnetic resonance (MRI) imaging, in patients receiving the anti-clotting medication abxicimab directly into the heart (intracoronary) compared to those receiving it intravenously (IV). The results of the AIDA STEMI MRI sub-study were presented today the 24th annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Sponsored by the Cardiovascular Research Foundation, TCT is the world's premier educational meeting specializing in interventional ...

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (October 25, 2012) – A recent report says illegal hunting of wildlife in South African Development Community (SADC) states can lead to the eradication of many species across extensive areas and even complete ecological collapse. Africa's iconic large carnivores, such as cheetah, lion, leopard, and wild dog, are particularly vulnerable to this practice, either because they are caught in the bycatch from unselective methods such as snaring, or due to loss of prey. The report says that the scale and severity of the threat is such that, without ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- A team of UC Davis scientists has shown in experimental mouse models that a new drug delivery system allows for administration of three times the maximum tolerated dose of a standard drug therapy for advanced bladder cancer, leading to more effective cancer control without increasing toxicity. The delivery system consists of specially designed nanoparticles that home in on tumor cells while carrying the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel. The same delivery system also was successfully used to carry a dye that lights up on imaging studies, making it potentially ...