The flame-retardant mixture known as "Firemaster 550" is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University. Firemaster 550 is made up of four principal component chemicals and is used in polyurethane foam in a wide variety of products, ranging from mattresses to infant nursing pillows. The flame-retardant mixture was developed by Chemtura Corp., and was first identified by the research ...

Help is on the way for people who suffer from vocal cord dysfunction. Researchers are developing methods that will contribute to manufacturing voice prostheses with improved affective features. For example, for little girls who have lost their voices, the improved artificial voice devices can produce age-appropriate voices, instead of the usual voice of an adult male. These advances in artificial voice production have been made possible by results achieved in a research project led by Professor Samuli Siltanen, results that are good news indeed for the approximately 30,000 ...

Though it was identified as a disorder as early as the 14th century, pica, or the eating of non-food items, has for years believed to be all but non-existent in a few corners of the globe – a 2006 study that reviewed research on pica found just four regions – the South of South America, Japan, Korea and Madagascar –where the behavior had never been observed. A new Harvard study, however, is showing that pica – and particularly geophagy, or the eating of soil or clay, is far more prevalent in Madagascar, and may be more prevalent worldwide, than researchers previously ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 24, 2012)—Hypnosis can help cut hot flashes by as much as 74%, shows a study supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This is the first controlled, randomized study of the technique to manage hot flashes, which affect as much as 80% of women who go through menopause. The study was published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. Controlled, randomized studies may pit an active drug against an inactive placebo pill. But it's hard to find a placebo for mind-body techniques. ...

A breakthrough study conducted in Canada has found that training of the well-known brainwave in humans, the alpha rhythm, enhances a brain network responsible for cognitive-control. The training technique, termed neurofeedback, is being considered as a promising new method for restoring brain function in mental disorders. Using several neuroimaging methods, a team of researchers at the Western University and the Lawson Health Research Institute have now uncovered that functional changes within a key brain network occur directly after a 30-minute session of noninvasive, ...

ESA's quartet of satellites studying Earth's magnetosphere, Cluster, has discovered that our protective magnetic bubble lets the solar wind in under a wider range of conditions than previously believed. Earth's magnetic field is our planet's first line of defence against the bombardment of the solar wind. This stream of plasma is launched by the Sun and travels across the Solar System, carrying its own magnetic field with it. Depending on how the solar wind's interplanetary magnetic field – IMF – is aligned with Earth's magnetic field, different phenomena can arise ...

This press release is available in German. It all began with a harmless game of soccer among young men in northwestern Albania. After one of the players had been injured in a subsequent dispute, his team members shot a relative of the suspected attacker. Now the male members of the families involved in the blood feud do not dare leave their homes. Such vendettas and blood feuds occur in many societies, sometimes lasting for decades. The harm for the participants is enormous and lacks apparent benefit, as the participants often no longer remember what actually triggered ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A protein that is necessary for lactation in mammals inhibits the critical cellular transition that is an early indicator of breast cancer and metastasis, according to research conducted at the University at Buffalo and Princeton University and highlighted as the cover paper in November issue of Nature Cell Biology. "This is the first confirmed report that this protein, called Elf5, is a tumor suppressor in breast cancer," explains Satrajit Sinha, PhD, associate professor of biochemistry in the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and a corresponding ...

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 24, 2012)—Hot flashes and night sweats can return after women stop using escitalopram—an antidepressant—to treat these menopause symptoms, according to a study published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society. This is typical of stopping hormone therapy as well. Not every woman who took escitalopram in this National Institutes of Health-supported study had her symptoms come back, however. Symptoms returned for only about one third of the women. These women were more likely than others to have had insomnia, ...

RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 24, 2012) – High compliance with hand hygiene and focusing on other simple infection control measures on medical, surgical and neuroscience intensive care units resulted in reduced rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection by 95 percent in a nine-year study, according to research findings by Virginia Commonwealth University physicians presented during IDWeek 2012. Most hospitals use vertical infection prevention strategies, which focus on culturing for patients harboring organisms such as MRSA and isolating those patients. ...

ATLANTA – Identifying risk factors in hospital readmissions could help improve patient care and hospital bottom lines, according to a study recently completed by Georgia State University's Experimental Economics Center and a team from the Emory University School of Medicine. The study, supported by a $1.2 million, three-year award to Georgia State's Andrew Young School of Policy Studies and Emory School of Medicine from the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging, identifies factors associated with hospital readmission within 30 days after surgery ...

Those tiny balls of boutique mozzarella cheese with the sticker-shock price tag beckoning from the dairy case — are they the real deal, mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, crafted from the milk of water buffaloes? Or are they really cheap fakes made from cow's milk? A new method described in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry promises to provide the answer for mozzarella and other dairy products. Barbara van Asch and colleagues explain that premium dairy products, such as imported specialty cheeses labeled with a designation of origin, are most vulnerable to ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Potatoes with higher levels of beneficial carotenoids are the result of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) studies to improve one of America's most popular vegetables. Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) bred yellow potatoes with carotenoid levels that are two to three times higher than those of the popular Yukon Gold yellow-fleshed potato variety. ARS plant geneticist Kathy Haynes and nutritionist Beverly Clevidence did the research at the agency's Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 24, 2012—Full-body or X-ray scanners used for airport security screening may affect the function of insulin pump or continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices. People with diabetes can present a travel letter obtained from their physicians to avoid possible damage caused by exposure to imaging equipment in airports. The risk to these sensitive devices posed by scanners and the low-pressure conditions on airplanes are the focus of the Editorial "Navigating Airport Security with an Insulin Pump and/or Sensor," published in Diabetes Technology & ...

Putting a speed limit on cargo ships as they sail near ports and coastlines could cut their emission of air pollutants by up to 70 percent, reducing the impact of marine shipping on Earth's climate and human health, scientists have found. Their evaluation of the impact of vessel speed reduction policies, such as those proposed by the California Air Resources board, appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology. David R. Cocker III and colleagues explain that marine shipping is the most efficient form of transporting goods, with more than 100,000 ships carrying ...

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has dissected a case of synergy in drug-resistant chronic myeloid leukemia to understand the mechanism by which two drugs, danusertib and bosutinib, work together to overcome resistance in the BCR-ABL gatekeeper mutation-specific disease. The team includes a researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Austria and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The goal is to address an unmet medical need because this BCR-ABL mutation confers ...

Chewing betel quid — the fourth most popular psychoactive substance in the world after tobacco, alcohol and caffeine — exposes its 600 million users to substances that act as direct carcinogens in the mouth, scientists are reporting in a new study. It appears in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. Mu-Rong Chao and Chiung-Wen Hu explain that betel quid (BQ) consists of nuts from the arcea tree, sometimes combined with spices, such as cardamom or saffron, and other ingredients. Available in commercial forms, BQ is popular among people in China, India and other ...

Televised political advertising takes up a large portion of campaigns budgets. Much of it is spent on negative political ads. But do these negative ads work? A new study by Juliana Fernandes, assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Miami (UM), shows that a negative political ad is most effective when it's shown in moderation. The findings reveal that massive exposure to a negative ad has a backlash effect on the evaluation of the sponsor candidate. "People will be more likely to appreciate and vote for the candidate that is sponsoring the negative ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 24, 2012–Shingles, a reactivation of the herpes zoster (chickenpox) virus affects nearly 1 in 3 Americans. About 1 million cases are diagnosed each year, with some patients suffering excruciating pain and itching due to post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), a complication of the viral infection that can last for years despite treatment. The latest information on shingles and PHN, including a new, improved vaccine to prevent shingles and alternative therapies to control symptoms, are discussed in a special focus section in Population Health Management, ...

VIDEO: A fossil discovered in Texas is a new species of coelacanth fish. Paleontologist John Graf, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, identified the skull as a 100 million-year-old coelacanth, making it the... Click here for more information. Pieces of tiny fossil skull found in Fort Worth have been identified as 100 million-year-old coelacanth bones, according to paleontologist John F. Graf, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The coelacanth has one of the longest ...

PITTSBURGH—Inside the brain, an unpredictable race—like a political campaign—is being run. Multiple candidates, each with a network of supporters, have organized themselves into various left- and right-wing clusters—like grassroots political teams working feverishly to reinforce a vision that bands them together. While scientists know that neurons in the brain anatomically organize themselves into these network camps, or clusters, the implications of such groupings on neural dynamics have remained unclear until now. Using mathematical modeling, two researchers from the ...

Durham, NC – What makes some ocean animals more prone to extinction than others? A new study of marine fossils provides a clue. An analysis of roughly 500 million years of fossil data for marine invertebrates reveals that ocean animals with small geographic ranges have been consistently hard hit — even when populations are large, the authors report. The oceans represent more than 70% of the Earth's surface. But because monitoring data are harder to collect at sea than on land, we know surprisingly little about the conservation status of most marine animals. By using ...

Boosting the activity of a vitamin-sensitive cell adhesion pathway has the potential to counteract the muscle degeneration and reduced mobility caused by muscular dystrophies, according to a research team led by scientists at the University of Maine. The discovery, published 23 October in the open access journal PLOS Biology, is particularly important for congenital muscular dystrophies, which are progressive, debilitating and often lethal diseases that currently remain without cure. The researchers found that they could improve muscle structure and function in a zebrafish ...

A team of neuroscientists have proposed a new and potentially revolutionary way of determining the neuronal connectivity (the "connectome") of the whole brain of the mouse, in an essay published October 23 in the open access journal PLOS Biology. The team, led by Professor Anthony Zador, Ph.D. of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, aims to provide a comprehensive account of neural connectivity. At present the only method for obtaining this information with high precision relies on examining individual cell-to-cell contacts (synapses) by electron microscopy. But such methods ...

STANFORD, Calif. — In a painless clinical procedure performed on a patient with electrodes temporarily implanted in his brain, Stanford University doctors pinpointed two nerve clusters that are critical for face perception. The findings could have practical value in treating people with prosopagnosia — the inability to distinguish one face from another — as well in gaining an understanding of why some of us are so much better than others at recognizing and remembering faces. In a study to be published Oct. 24 in the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists showed that ...