Washington, DC, March 9, 2012 -- Hospitals whose infection prevention and control programs are led by a director who is board certified in infection prevention and control have significantly lower rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections (BSI) than those that are not led by a certified professional, according to a new study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC - the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. A team of researchers ...

Desert ants have adapted to a life in a barren environment which only provides very few landmarks for orientation. Apart from visual cues and odors the ants use the polarized sunlight as a compass and count their steps in order to return safely to their home after searching for food. In experiments with ants of the genus Cataglyphis in their natural habitats in Tunisia and Turkey, behavioral scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now discovered that ants can also use magnetic and vibrational landmarks in order to find their way ...

Christian Santangelo, Ryan Hayward and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently employed photographic techniques and polymer science to develop a new technique for printing two-dimensional sheets of polymers that can fold into three-dimensional shapes when water is added. The technique may lead to wide ranging practical applications from medicine to robotics The journal Science publishes the research in its March 9 issue. Researchers used a photomask and ultraviolet (UV) light to "print" a pattern onto a sheet of polymers, a technique called photolithography. ...

Researchers have identified a genetic signature for a severe, often painful food allergy – eosinophilic esophagitis – that could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment for children unable to eat a wide variety of foods. The scientists, from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology that they have pinpointed a dysregulated microRNA signature for eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), a disease that also may cause weight loss, vomiting, heartburn and swallowing difficulties. Interestingly, the dysregulated microRNA ...

The faster a clock ticks, the more precise it can be. Due to the fact that lightwaves vibrate faster than microwaves, optical clocks can be more precise than the caesium atomic clocks which presently determine time. The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is even working on several of such optical clocks simultaneously. The model with one single ytterbium ion caught in an ion trap is now experiencing another increase in accuracy. At PTB, scientists have succeeded in exciting a quantum-mechanically strongly "forbidden" transition of this ion and – in particular – ...

The detailed feather pattern and color of Microraptor--a pigeon-sized, four-winged dinosaur that lived about 120 million years ago--had a glossy iridescent sheen. Its tail was narrow and adorned with a pair of streamer feathers, suggesting the importance of display in the early evolution of feathers, say scientists reporting the findings in this week's issue of the journal Science. By comparing the patterns of pigment-containing organelles from a Microraptor fossil to those in modern birds, the scientists determined that the dinosaur's plumage was iridescent with a ...

NOHO Dental Group and Dr. Afar, North Hollywood dentist, are offering a variety of specials for new and existing patients. For a short time, patients can receive discounts on a wide number of dental procedures, allowing both new patients and those who have been with the NOHO Dental Group for years to save money and try new dental services. These specials include a wide variety of services, such as a $49 dental exam with x-rays for new patients. For patients who need preventative care like dental cleanings, this special allows new patients to try out the services of Dr. ...

Infants and toddlers who have been treated for cancer tend to reach certain developmental milestones later than do their healthy peers, say researchers at the National Institutes of Health and in Italy. The findings show that delays may occur early in the course of treatment and suggest that young children with cancer might benefit from such early interventions as physical or language therapy. Compared to children who had not had cancer, children treated for cancer before age 4 progressed more slowly in vocabulary, cognitive functions such as attention and memory, and ...

Amsterdam, NL, 9 March 2012 – The number of people with neurological and psychiatric disorders in Spanish-speaking countries has increased over the past two decades. The February issue of NeuroRehabilitation assesses important factors that should be considered in rehabilitating Spanish-speaking individuals suffering from these disorders. "Though much work has been done in this area for Anglo-Saxon populations, very little work has focused on Spanish-speaking individuals," says Guest Editor Juan Carlos Arango-Lasprilla, PhD, of the Department of Physical Medicine and ...

How do we recognize a face? To date, most research has answered "holistically": We look at all the features—eyes, nose, mouth—simultaneously and, perceiving the relationships among them, gain an advantage over taking in each feature individually. Now a new study overturns this theory. The researchers—Jason M. Gold and Patrick J. Mundy of the Indiana University and Bosco S. Tjan of the University of California Los Angeles—found that people's performance in recognizing a whole face is no better than their performance with each individual feature shown alone. "Surprisingly, ...

An international team of physicists has determined a key parameter, which governs how neutrinos behave. This discovery measures a critical linchpin in the study of the tiny particles and in advancing the understanding of how these building blocks of all things, from galaxies to tea cups, came to be. The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration including a team from Virginia Tech, discovered a new type of neutrino oscillation in which the particles appear to vanish as they travel. The researchers found that the rate of oscillations was much larger ...

Dr. Afar, Los Angeles dentist at Wilshire Dental Care, is offering a variety of sedation dentistry techniques to make patient's experiences relaxing and pain-free. Sedation dentistry is the use of various techniques to reduce stress and pain during a dental procedure. Dr. Afar offers various types of sedation dentistry techniques to meet a variety of patient needs. Oral sedation is the use of oral medications such as pills and liquids and is used when patients require only a small degree of sedation, and for procedures like dental crown preparation or fillings that do ...

About ICAP ICAP at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health is a global leader in public health, with a broad portfolio of research, training, health system strengthening, and service delivery programs in the United States and around the world. Founded in 2004, ICAP is committed to addressing critical health issues and to bettering lives by improving access to high-quality, equitable, and affordable health services. Working hand-in-hand with in-country partners, ICAP has supported more than 1,200 health facilities across 21 countries, including the US. More ...

AURORA, Colo. -- As scientists continue making breakthroughs in personalized cancer treatment, delivering those therapies in the most cost effective manner has become increasingly important. Now researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine have identified new ways of doing just that, allowing more patients to benefit from this revolution in cancer care. In a paper published in the British Journal of Cancer, health economist Adam Atherly, PhD, of the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and medical oncologist D. Ross Camidge, MD, PhD, of the University ...

A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. In October 2010, a neutron star near the center of our galaxy erupted with hundreds of X-ray bursts that were powered by a barrage of thermonuclear explosions on the star's surface. NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) captured the month-long fusillade in extreme detail. Using this data, an international team of astronomers has been able to bridge a long-standing gap between theory and observation. "In ...

Cyclone Irina has lived a long life and caused a lot of trouble, damages and death over the course of its life, and it appears to be finally fading over the Mozambique Channel. On March 8 at 1500 UTC (10 a.m. EST), Irina's winds had finally dropped below 45 knots (51.7 mph/83.3 kph) to 35 knots (40.2 mph/64.8 kph) making it a minimal tropical storm. Irina was still in the southern Mozambique Channel, centered near 29.5 South and 37.8 East. That is about 350 miles southeast of Maputo, Mozambique. Irina is moving to the west at 8 knots (9.2 mph/14.8 kph). The Moderate ...

Hot towers, or towering thunderclouds that give off an excessive amount of latent heat, usually indicate a tropical cyclone will strengthen in six hours, and NASA's TRMM satellite saw some of them as it passed by Tropical Storm Koji. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed directly above an intensifying tropical storm in the South Indian Ocean called Koji on March 8, 2012 at 2053 UTC (3:53 p.m. EST). A rainfall analysis was made from TRMM Microwave Imager (TMI) and Precipitation Radar (PR) data. Those TRMM data reveal that Koji was getting organized ...

At the law offices of Michael T. Norris, Ltd. and John W. Callahan, Ltd., we know how to fight for the rights of the accused. After his arrest by the Hanover Park Police Department, our client was facing a difficult situation. The officers who stopped him claimed they could smell a strong odor of alcohol coming from his breath. They noted that his eyes were watery, glassy and bloodshot. Our client admitted to police that he had consumed alcohol at a local bar over the course of the evening. He later took a breath test which yielded a blood alcohol content of 0.17. Upon ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified a regulator protein that plays a crucial role in kidney fibrosis, a condition that leads to kidney failure. Finding this regulator provides a new therapeutic target for the millions of Americans affected by kidney failure. The research is published in the March 11 issue of Nature Medicine. Led by John Cijiang He, MD, PhD, Professor of Nephrology and Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics; and Avi Ma'ayan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmacology and Systems Therapeutics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the ...

MARSEILLES, FRANCE -- As food and energy production intensify around the world, their demands on dwindling water resources have prompted the search for an innovative and collaborative solution. On Friday, March 16, a High Level Panel convened by the EDF Group and the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) will gather in Marseilles at the Sixth World Water Forum (WWF6) to share experiences and results. The panel will discuss how to embrace a "nexus" approach to water management, in which projects that tap water resources are planned and executed with input from ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A team of researchers at Duke University has determined the structure of a key molecule that can carry chemotherapy and anti-viral drugs into cells, which could help to create more effective drugs with fewer effects to healthy tissue. "Knowing the structure and properties of the transporter molecule may be the key to changing the way that some chemotherapies, for example, could work in the body to prevent tumor growth," said senior author Seok-Yong Lee, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry at Duke. The article was published in Nature online on ...

A team of Australian scientists has bred salt tolerance into a variety of durum wheat that shows improved grain yield by 25% on salty soils. Using 'non-GM' crop breeding techniques, scientists from CSIRO Plant Industry have introduced a salt-tolerant gene into a commercial durum wheat, with spectacular results shown in field tests. Researchers at the University of Adelaide's Waite Research Institute have led the effort to understand how the gene delivers salinity tolerance to the plants. The research is the first of its kind in the world to fully describe the improvement ...

The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, shows a new study by scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Today, already 0.8 degrees global warming has been observed. Substantial melting of land ice could contribute to long-term sea-level rise of several meters ...

In a study released today in Nature Genetics, researchers have found that Chlamydia has evolved more actively than was previously thought. Using whole genome sequencing the researchers show that the exchange of DNA between different strains of Chlamydia to form new strains is much more common than expected. The team highlights that current clinical testing methods do not capture the variation between Chlamydia strains. Changes to the genome structure are not the aim of current diagnostics for Chlamydia. The researchers are working with hospitals to use their results ...

Hospitals in Arizona and across the country are burying their mistakes, according to a new study recently released by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson. The study found that 15,000 Medicare patients die every month in part due to inadequate treatment in hospitals. The types of medical malpractice detailed in the study are gruesome and include surgical fires, objects left inside patients after surgery and surgeries performed on the wrong patients. If your loved one has died due to hospital negligence, you need to speak with ...