There's nothing worse than a shonky pool table with an unseen groove or bump that sends your shot off course: a new study has found that the same goes at the nano-scale, where the "billiard balls" are tiny electrons moving across a "table" made of the semiconductor gallium arsenide. These tiny billiard tables are of interest towards the development of future computing technologies. In a research paper titled "The Impact of Small-Angle Scattering on Ballistic Transport in Quantum Dots", an international team of physicists has shown that in this game of "semiconductor billiards", ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 7, 2012—Vaccine testing and development is an extremely lengthy and complex process that costs billions of dollars every year. In an effort to dramatically improve the speed and success of vaccine research and development, researchers have created an innovative biomimetic model of the human immune system known as the MIMIC® system. An article in the inaugural issue of Disruptive Science and Technology, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., describes this artificial human immune system which can facilitate faster, more effective ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 7, 2012—The body's natural inflammatory response is an essential reaction to injury and infection. When acute inflammation escalates out of control, such as in sepsis, it causes nearly 10% of deaths in the U.S. and more than $17 billion in healthcare costs each year. A group of researchers have developed a groundbreaking biohybrid device that can control acute inflammation to prevent sepsis and other related life-threatening complications, as described in an article in the inaugural issue of Disruptive Science and Technology, a new peer-reviewed journal ...

Reinvigorating the 1967 Folsom Report's 'Communities of Solution' to Address Today's Fragmented U.S. Health Care System In the wake of federal efforts to reform the U.S. health care system, a group of rising family medicine leaders call for a reinvigoration of community-centered health systems, as originally outlined in the landmark 1967 Folsom Report. They contend the vision of the original Folsom commission could not be more pertinent to America's current pressing needs. The group revitalizes and modernizes the Folsom Report's blueprint, offering an updated series of ...

1. Self-management May Not be Safe or Suitable for COPD Trial of Comprehensive Care Management Program for COPD Cut Short Due to Excess Mortality Self-monitoring and management of some chronic diseases can improve patient outcomes. Hospitalizations for exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are associated with decreases in quality of life, lung function, and life expectancy, so researchers hypothesized that a self-management program could benefit patients. The authors enrolled 960 COPD patients in 20 Veterans Affairs hospital-based outpatient ...

A CT-scan-based form of virtual colonoscopy that does not require laxative preparation appears to be as effective as standard colonoscopy in identifying the intestinal polyps most likely to become cancerous. In the May 15 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-based research team reports finding that the new technique, which uses computer-aided systems both to virtually cleanse and to analyze the images acquired, was able to identify more than 90 percent of the common polyps called adenomas that were 10 mm or larger. "While we know ...

People with multiple sclerosis may find that smoked cannabis provides relief from muscle tightness — spasticity — and pain, although the benefits come with adverse cognitive effects, according to a new study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Many patients with multiple sclerosis suffer from spasticity, an uncomfortable and disabling condition in which the muscles become tight and difficult to control. While there are drugs to relieve spasticity, they can have adverse effects and do not always sufficiently improve the condition in some patients. Researchers ...

For people receiving health care for acute and persistent low-back pain, symptoms will improve significantly in the first six weeks, but pain and disability may linger even after one year, states a large study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Low-back pain is a common condition that results in significant health care costs, disability and absenteeism in workplaces. However, there are differing views on how quickly and completely people recover from this condition. Researchers from Australia and Brazil examined data from 33 studies (11 166 participants) ...

Managing adult obesity is challenging for primary care physicians, but a new review published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) aims to provide an evidence-based approach to counselling patients to help them lose weight and maintain weight loss. "Even though evidence suggests that patients are considerably more likely to lose weight when they are advised to do so by their primary care physicians, most patients who are clinically obese do not receive weight-loss counselling in primary care," writes Dr. Gilles Plourde, Cliniques Médicales de Nutrition et d'Amaigrissement ...

A clinical study of 30 adult patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has shown that smoked cannabis may be an effective treatment for spasticity – a common and disabling symptom of this neurological disease. The placebo-controlled trial also resulted in reduced perception of pain, although participants also reported short-term, adverse cognitive effects and increased fatigue. The study will be published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal on May 14. Principal investigator Jody Corey-Bloom, MD, PhD, ...

If your parents have a history of high blood pressure, you can significantly reduce your risk of developing the disease with moderate exercise and increased cardiovascular fitness, according to new research in the American Heart Association's journal Hypertension. In a study of more than 6,000 people, those who had a parent with high blood pressure but were highly fit had a 34 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure themselves, compared to those with a low-fitness level who had the same parental history. "Understanding the roles that family history and ...

STANFORD, Calif. — What goes bump in the night? In many U.S. households: people. That's according to new Stanford University School of Medicine research, which found that about 3.6 percent of U.S. adults - or upward of 8.4 million - are prone to sleepwalking. The work also showed an association between nocturnal wanderings and certain psychiatric disorders, such as depression and anxiety. The study, the researchers noted, "underscores the fact that sleepwalking is much more prevalent in adults than previously appreciated." Maurice Ohayon, MD, DSc, PhD, professor of ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Current colorectal cancer screening guidelines for individuals with first-degree relatives with precancerous colon polyps are based on studies that were not properly designed or were too limited to shape those guidelines, according to a new systemic review of research on the topic. The review authors call for new studies to measure the risk and identify the factors that modify it. "We found that most studies that are cited for the risk for colorectal cancer when first-degree relatives -- parents, siblings or children -- have a precancerous polyp do not ...

SALT LAKE CITY, May 14, 2012 – If the world's nations ever sign a treaty to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide gas, there may be a way to help verify compliance: a new method developed by scientists from the University of Utah and Harvard. Using measurements from only three carbon-dioxide (CO2) monitoring stations in the Salt Lake Valley, the method could reliably detect changes in CO2 emissions of 15 percent or more, the researchers report in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of May 14, 2012. The method ...

Despite an unprecedented rate of economic growth, Chinese people are less happy overall than they were two decades ago, reveals timely new research from economist Richard Easterlin, one of the founders of the field of "happiness economics" and namesake of the Easterlin Paradox. In 1990, at the beginning of China's economic transformation, a large majority of Chinese people across age, education, income levels, and regions reported high levels of life satisfaction. Sixty-eight percent of those in the wealthiest income bracket and 65 percent of those in the poorest income ...

Anthropologists working in southern France have determined that a 1.5 metric ton block of engraved limestone constitutes the earliest evidence of wall art. Their research, reported in the most recent edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows the piece to be approximately 37,000 years old and offers rich evidence of the role art played in the daily lives of Early Aurignacian humans. The research team, comprised of more than a dozen scientists from American and European universities and research institutions, has been excavating at the site ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study led by Brown University researchers reports that percutaneous endoscopic gastric (PEG) feeding tubes, long assumed to help bedridden dementia patients stave off or overcome pressure ulcers, may instead make the horrible sores more likely to develop or not improve. The analysis of thousands of nursing home patients with advanced dementia appears in the May 14 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine. "This study provides new information about the risks of feeding tube insertion in people with advanced cognitive impairment," ...

What is the connection, if any, between sudden cardiac death and people with HIV/AIDS? And can that knowledge help prolong their lives? In a comprehensive, 10-year UCSF study, researchers found patients with HIV/AIDS suffered sudden cardiac death at a rate four times higher than the general population. "As part of my ongoing research in 2010, we were looking at every instance of sudden death in San Francisco," said first author Zian H. Tseng, MD, an electrophysiologist and an associate professor of medicine in the UCSF Division of Cardiology. "I noticed that many of ...

A new study describes a compound that selectively kills cancer cells by restoring the structure and function of one of the most commonly mutated proteins in human cancer, the "tumor suppressor" p53. The research, published by Cell Press in the May 15th issue of the journal Cancer Cell, uses a novel, computer based strategy to identify potential anti-cancer drugs, including one that targets the third most common p53 mutation in human cancer, p53-R175H. The number of new cancer patients harboring this mutation in the United States who would potentially benefit from this ...

Asymptomatic patients who undergo treadmill exercise echocardiography (ExE) after coronary revascularization may be identified as being at high risk but those patients do not appear to have more favorable outcomes with repeated revascularization, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The article is part of the journal's Less is More series. Cardiac events and recurrent ischemia (a temporary shortage of oxygen caused by impaired blood flow; identified in the study as new or worsening cardiac wall motion ...

According to a small clinical trial reported by investigators from Japan, acupuncture appears to be associated with improvement of dyspnea (labored breathing) on exertion, in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a study published Online First by Archives of Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication. The management of dyspnea is an important target in the treatment of COPD, a common respiratory disease characterized by irreversible airflow limitation. COPD is predicted to be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020, according ...

Among African Americans with type 1 diabetes mellitus, narrower central retinal arteriolar equivalent (average diameter of the small arteries in the retina) is associated with an increased risk of six-year incidence of any cardiovascular disease and lower extremity arterial disease, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, a JAMA Network publication. "Retinal arteriolar narrowing has long been described as one of the characteristic changes associated with hypertension and cardiovascular disease (CVD)," the authors write as background information ...

PITTSBURGH, May 14 - A small, external bioreactor holding human cells pumped out an anti-inflammatory protein to prevent organ damage and other complications in a rat with acute inflammation caused by bacterial products in a model of sepsis, according to a report from researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The findings were published today in the inaugural issue of Disruptive Science and Technology. Inflammation is a necessary biological response that brings cells and proteins to the site of ...

Major depressive episodes can be prevented, and to help ensure that they are, the health care system should provide routine access to depression-prevention interventions, just as patients receive standard vaccines, according to a new article co-authored by UCSF researcher Ricardo F. Muñoz, PhD. The article builds on a 2009 Institute of Medicine report on prevention of mental, emotional and behavioral disorders, which provided presented evidence that mental disorders can be prevented. The article, "Major Depression Can Be Prevented," will appear in a special section ...

DETROIT – Henry Ford Hospital researchers have found that the presence of excess protein in a common urine test is an effective prognostic marker of acute renal failure in patients with severe sepsis. Researchers analyzed data from 328 sepsis patients with no previous history of protein in the urine and found the urine dipstick test predicted the presence of renal failure in 55 percent of these patients. A urine dipstick test is routinely done as part of a urinalysis to help diagnose urinary tract infections, kidney disease, diabetes and sepsis, the deadly bloodstream ...