FRAX® is a computer-based algorithm developed by the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Metabolic Bone Diseases to help predict the 10-year risk of fragility fracture. Now with 34 specific country models, FRAX is being used increasingly by physicians around the world to help assess their patients' fracture risk in the course of a clinical assessment. In a newly published review paper, the International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) and the International Society for Clinical Densitometry (ISCD) detail the findings of a joint Task Force that met in November ...

This release is available in German. The car moves slowly towards the car park exit, the barriers open automatically – without the driver having to wind down the window and insert a ticket. This is thanks to a small RFID chip on the inside of the windshield. Devices on the ceiling above the car park entrance and exit read the adhesive foil transponder measuring just 1.5 x 10 centimeters and register the parking time. The fees are charged by a direct debit from an online account. VIATAG is the name of the RFID system which the research scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. –Prolonged estrogen deprivation in aging rats dramatically reduces the number of brain receptors for the hormone as well as its ability to prevent strokes, researchers report. However the damage is forestalled if estrogen replacement begins shortly after hormone levels drop, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "This is further evidence of a critical window for estrogen therapy, either right before or right after menopause," said Dr. Darrell W. Brann, Chief of GHSU's Developmental Neurobiology Program ...

This release is available in German. Just imagine the following scenario: four people are comfortably ensconced in a room. Each one of them can watch a film from the Internet on his or her laptop, in HD quality. This is made possible thanks to optical WLAN. Light from the LEDs in the overhead lights serves as the transfer medium. For a long time, this was just a vision for the future. However, since scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute HHI in Berlin, Germany, have developed a new transfer technology for video data ...

When parents fight, infants are likely to lose sleep, researchers report. "We know that marital problems have an impact on child functioning, and we know that sleep is a big problem for parents," said Jenae M. Neiderhiser, professor of psychology, Penn State. New parents often report sleep as being the most problematic of their child's behavior. Neiderhiser and colleagues found that poor sleep patterns in children from ages 9 to 18 months are likely influenced by conflict in their parents' marriage, the researchers report in the current issue of Child Development. Past ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — For all the ills that result from bad parenting, new evidence from an epidemiological study of thousands of people suggests coronary heart disease (CHD) might be added to that list. "We often think about how the early family psychosocial environment influences the mental health of kids," said Eric Loucks, assistant professor of epidemiology in the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "The fact that it may be important for chronic diseases, like heart disease, hasn't been thought of as much." Loucks' newly published ...

VIB researchers have developed a mouse model for Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) neuropathy, a hereditary disease of the peripheral nervous system. They also found a potential therapy for this incurable disease. The treatment not only halted the damage to the nerves and the atrophy of the muscles, it even succeeded in reversing the symptoms. The research was conducted under supervision of Wim Robberecht en Ludo Van Den Bosch from VIB-K.U.Leuven, in collaboration with the team of Vincent Timmerman at VIB-University of Antwerp. The study was published in Nature Medicine. CMT: ...

Upper aero-digestive tract cancers (UADT), especially those of the oral cavity, pharynx, and larynx, are often referred to as alcohol-related cancers as it has been shown repeatedly that heavy drinkers, in particular, are at increased risk. The combination of heavy alcohol use and cigarette smoking is the key factor in increasing the risk of these cancers. A distinguished group of scientists from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IRAC).evaluated the role of alcohol and tobacco consumption, based on 2,252 upper aerodigestive squamous-cell carcinoma cases ...

When it comes to satisfaction with body function and body appearance, older men and women have different opinions, although physical activity does improve satisfaction in both sexes, according to new study by a Baylor University researcher. Researchers found that as men and women age, there is a shift in body satisfaction away from appearance and towards body functionality, a finding that was documented more consistently in women. Additionally, when comparing concerns across genders, satisfaction with body functionality was more important for men than women. Another ...

CLEMSON, S.C. — Two Clemson University researchers seek to make diners mindful of mindless eating. Psychology professor Eric Muth and electrical and computer engineering professor Adam Hoover have created the Bite Counter, a measurement device that will make it easier for people to monitor how much they eat. Worn like a watch, the Bite Counter device tracks a pattern of wrist-roll motion to identify when the wearer has taken a bite of food. Think of it as a pedometer for eating. "At the societal level, current weight-loss and maintenance programs are failing to make ...

WASHINGTON – A new report from the National Research Council presents a framework for incorporating sustainability into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's principles and decision making. The framework, which was requested by EPA, is intended to help the agency better assess the social, environmental, and economic impacts of various options as it makes decisions. The committee that developed the framework used the definition of sustainability based on a declaration of federal policy in the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act and included in a 2009 Executive ...

Changes in ocean chemistry due to increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are expected to damage shellfish populations around the world, but some nations will feel the impacts much sooner and more intensely than others, according to a study by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). As CO2 levels driven by fossil fuel use have increased in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, so has the amount of CO2 absorbed by the world's oceans, leading to changes in the chemical make-up of seawater. Known as ocean acidification, this decrease in pH creates ...

A novel therapy that reduces elevated blood levels of a potentially toxic protein in women with preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy, may someday address the therapeutic dilemma posed by the condition – balancing life-threatening risks to the mother with the dangers that early delivery poses to an immature fetus. In a paper receiving online release in the journal Circulation, a team of U.S. and German researchers report promising results from their pilot study of a filtration technology that reduces reduce excess blood levels of soluble Flt-1, a protein ...

GALVESTON, Texas — Hydrogen sulfide is a foul-smelling gas with an odor resembling that of rotten eggs. Sometimes called "swamp gas," this toxic substance is generally associated with decaying vegetation, sewers and noxious industrial emissions. And — as odd as it may seem — it also plays a critical role in protecting blood vessels from the complications of diabetes, according to a new study from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In the last few years, work from several laboratories has shown that hydrogen sulfide is produced by the body in small amounts, ...

Older women who live in a lower socioeconomic status neighborhood are more likely to exhibit lower cognitive functioning than women who live in more affluent neighborhoods, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The study, published online by the American Journal of Public Health, is the largest of its type to examine whether living in a poor neighborhood is associated with lower cognitive function. The study found that potential confounders such as vascular health, health behaviors and psychosocial factors such as depressive symptoms explained only a portion ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- Nearly half of the Earth's heat comes from the radioactive decay of materials inside, according to a large international research collaboration that includes a Kansas State University physicist. Glenn Horton-Smith, associate professor of physics, was part of a team gathering some of the most precise measurements of the Earth's radioactivity to date by observing the activity of subatomic particles -- particularly uranium, thorium and potassium. Their work appears in the July issue of Nature Geoscience in the article "Partial radiogenic heat model for ...

This release is available in Spanish. Detergent-like compounds called saponins are best known for their cleansing properties, but U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are studying these compounds' potential for helping protect plants from insect attack. In studies at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, operated in Peoria, Ill., by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), scientists Pat Dowd, Mark Berhow and Eric Johnson are "spiking" laboratory diets fed to corn earworms and fall armyworms with saponins from soybeans, switchgrass, ...

ST. LOUIS, MO August 2, 2011— Researchers working at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have made an another advancement in their efforts to improve the root crop cassava which is a major source of calories to 700 million people worldwide, primarily living in the developing world. A study conducted by Dr. Narayanan N. Narayanan and Dr. Uzoma Ihemere, research scientists working in the lab of Dr. Richard T. Sayre, have developed an approach that not only accelerates the reduction of cyanogen during food processing, resulting in a safer food product, but also lead ...

They make up less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the microbes that live in the colon, but the bacteria and archaea that sop up hydrogen in the gut are fundamental to colon health. In a new study, researchers take a first look at these "hydrogenotrophic" microbes, mapping where they live and how abundant they are in different parts of the lower intestine. The findings are reported in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal. This is the first study to sample these – or any other – microbes at specific locales in the colon, said University of Illinois ...

A Franklin University professor recently developed an evolutionary computation approach that offers researchers the flexibility to search for models that can best explain experimental data derived from many types of applications, including economics. To test the algorithm underlying that approach, Esmail Bonakdarian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computing sciences and mathematics at Franklin, leveraged the Glenn IBM 1350 Opteron cluster, the flagship system of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). "Every day researchers are confronted by large sets of survey or experimental ...

PITTSBURGH—Ever since the Nobel Prize for nerve growth factor was awarded more than 30 years ago, researchers have been searching for ways to use growth factor clinically. University of Pittsburgh Professor Yadong Wang has developed a minimally invasive method of delivering growth factor to regrow blood vessels. His research, which could be used to treat heart disease, the most common cause of death in the Western world, is published this week in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wang is a professor in the Department of ...

Personal photos occupy an ever-expanding amount of hard drive space. Baby, family and vacation photos can now number in the thousands. While some poke fun at the digital glut, others see a unique opportunity. Researchers at the University of Washington have created a way to take hundreds or thousands of digital portraits and in seconds create an animation of the person's face. The tool can make a face appear to age over time, or choose images from the same period to make the person's expression gradually change from a smile to a frown. The researchers were inspired, ...

COPD PATIENTS WITH SENSE OF HUMOR FEEL BETTER, BUT LAUGHTER MAY BE BAD FOR LUNGS COLUMBUS, Ohio – Having a sense of humor is associated with improved emotional functioning and an enhanced quality of life among patients with a chronic lung illness, but the actual act of laughing out loud can reduce lung function, at least in the short term, research suggests. The study evaluated humor and laughter in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Participants who exhibited a greater sense of humor were more likely to report fewer symptoms of depression ...

Tel Aviv — Eggs, one of the most commonly consumed breakfast foods in the United States, have long been a subject of controversy. Are they healthy or are they a high-cholesterol trap? The answer depends on what the hen eats, says a Tel Aviv University researcher. Dr. Niva Shapira of Tel Aviv University's School of Health Professions says that all eggs are not created equal. Her research indicates that when hens are fed with a diet low in omega-6 fatty acids from a young age — feed high in wheat, barley, and milo and lower in soy, maize and sunflower, safflower, and maize ...

College Park, Md. (August 2, 2011) -- Researchers have developed a new method to probe the fundamental workings of photosynthesis. The new experimental technique could help scientists better understand the nitty-gritty details of nature's amazingly efficient sunlight-to-fuel conversion system. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms grow by harvesting the sun's energy and storing it in chemical bonds. Antenna proteins, which are made up of multiple light-absorbing pigments, capture sunlight over a large surface area and then transfer the energy through a series of molecules ...