Boston, MA—A new study finds that perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), widely used in manufactured products such as non-stick cookware, waterproof clothing, and fast-food packaging, were associated with lowered immune response to vaccinations in children. It is the first study to document how PFCs, which can be transferred to children prenatally (via the mother) and postnatally from exposure in the environment, can adversely affect vaccine response. The study appears in the January 25, 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). "Routine childhood ...

Wetland restoration is a billion-dollar-a-year industry in the United States that aims to create ecosystems similar to those that disappeared over the past century. But a new analysis of restoration projects shows that restored wetlands seldom reach the quality of a natural wetland. "Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal assemblage of plants or its rich stores of organic soil carbon, which both affect natural cycles of water and nutrients, for many years," said David Moreno-Mateos, a University of California, Berkeley, postdoctoral fellow. "Even after ...

TeamSupport.com (http://www.TeamSupport.com) - the popular provider of web-based customer support and help desk software solutions - today announced the release of a powerful new screen capture capability. It gives users the ability to record audio and video of a discrepancy and embed it in tickets submitted to a TeamSupport-enabled customer portal. Available to users of both TeamSupport's basic and advanced ticket submission portals, the option offers an "Add Screen Recording" button below the description box when filling-out a new support request. Users ...

Asthma and gastroesophageal reflux (GER) are both common illnesses in children. GER in children often occurs without the typical symptoms of heartburn, and physicians frequently prescribe the acid reflux drug lansoprazole to supplement the standard inhaled steroid treatment for children with uncontrolled asthma regardless of GER symptoms. However, a randomized clinic trial conducted by the American Lung Association's Asthma Clinical Group found that the addition of lansoprazole does not improve asthma symptoms or the control of asthma in children and may increase the risk ...

A new method for identifying bacteria that cause urinary tract infections (UTIs) will lead to much faster, more effective treatment as well as a reduction in costs. The procedure, described in the Journal of Medical Microbiology, could eventually be used for the identification of micro-organisms in other bodily fluids, including blood and spinal fluid. Scientists at the University Hospital Essen in Germany tested urine samples from in-house patients and were able to effectively separate and accurately identify bacteria using a technique called Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption ...

Teaching children with autism to 'talk things through in their head' may help them to solve complex day-to-day tasks, which could increase the chances of independent, flexible living later in life, according to new research. The study, led by Durham University, found that the mechanism for using 'inner speech' or 'talking things through in their head' is intact in children with autism but not always used in the same way as typically developing children do. The psychologists found that the use, or lack of, thinking in words is strongly linked to the extent of someone's ...

The mating habits of marine turtle may help to protect them against the effects of climate change, according to new research led by the University of Exeter. Published today (25 January 2012) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study shows how the mating patterns of a population of endangered green turtles may be helping them deal with the fact that global warming is leading to a disproportionate number of females being born. The gender of baby turtles is determined by the temperature of the eggs during incubation, with warmer temperatures leading to ...

New Jersey families continue to suffer through the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. Many unemployed workers still cannot find work and their debt only "snow-balls" - often to the point where it is impossible to get out from underneath it. For many of these struggling families, the only option they can turn to for assistance during these dire times is bankruptcy. Often individuals consider bankruptcy as a response to mounting credit card debt. Generally, credit card debt is one of the largest unsecured debts held by most people filing for ...

Los Angeles, CA – Experts from the International Headache Society (IHS) have developed new recommendations for conduct of acute and preventive migraine clinical trials. The third edition of Migraine Clinical Trials Guidelines is now available in the IHS journal Cephalalgia, which is published by SAGE. The new guidelines represent an expert consensus summary, and recommend a contemporary, standardized, and evidence-based approach to investigators conducting and reporting randomised, controlled migraine clinical trials. Migraine clinical research has increased exponentially ...

– A pair of studies by The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and State Farm® identify factors that may lead teens to drive with multiple peer passengers and, then, how those passengers may affect their driver's behavior just before a serious crash. The studies were published today in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Experts have long known that peer passengers increase teen driver crash risk. What hasn't been well understood was how they increase crash risk. "These studies help us understand the factors that may predispose teens to drive with multiple friends ...

New software has significant benefits for primary school children and their understanding of elementary physics, research shows. Studies funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) focused on what primary school children know when they begin studying physics, and how much they still have to learn. The studies looked at how much children understand about the movement of objects such as direction and speed. The studies show that the tasks used in schools to assess how children understand the movement of objects seriously underestimate how much they know already. ...

Eating food fried in olive or sunflower oil is not linked to heart disease or premature death, finds a paper published on bmj.com today. The authors stress, however, that their study took place in Spain, a Mediterranean country where olive or sunflower oil is used for frying and their results would probably not be the same in another country where solid and re-used oils were used for frying. In Western countries, frying is one of the most common methods of cooking. When food is fried it becomes more calorific because the food absorbs the fat of the oils. While ...

Scientists have traced the origin of the 'speed gene' in Thoroughbred racehorses back to a single British mare that lived in the United Kingdom around 300 years ago, according to findings published in the scientific journal Nature Communications. The origin of the 'speed gene' (C type myostatin gene variant) was revealed by analysing DNA from hundreds of horses, including DNA extracted from the skeletal remains of 12 celebrated Thoroughbred stallions born between 1764 and 1930. "Changes in racing since the foundation of the Thoroughbred have shaped the distribution ...

A new study on living animals has shown for the first time that eating cocoa (the raw material in chocolate) can help to prevent intestinal complaints linked to oxidative stress, including colon carcinogenesis onset caused by chemical substances. The growing interest amongst the scientific community to identify those foods capable of preventing diseases has now categorized cocoa as a 'superfood'. It has been recognised as an excellent source of phytochemical compounds, which offer potential health benefits. Headed by scientists from the Institute of Food Science and ...

To many, planning for their death or the event of incapacitation is simply superstitious or morbid. Passing away without an end of life plan, unfortunately, is all too common. However, in the wake of the aging baby boomer generation (those born between 1946 and 1964), having a living will or plan in place is more important than ever. Unfortunately, according to the Associated Press, it is estimated that roughly 64 percent of boomers do not have one. What is a Living Will? A living will is a document created by individuals who outline specific medical care instructions ...

Philadelphia, PA, January 24, 2012 – Changes in the endocannabinoid system may have important implications for psychiatric and addiction disorders. This brain system is responsible for making substances that have effects on brain function which resemble those of cannabis products, e.g., marijuana. The endocannabinoid system is of particular interest in the field of schizophrenia research because exposure to cannabis products during adolescence and young adulthood appears to increase the risk for developing schizophrenia. Also, in studies examining brain tissue collected ...

Ottawa, Ontario –To fully understand the causes of the obesity epidemic in Aboriginal children requires an understanding of the unique social and historical factors that shape the Aboriginal community. A review article published in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism emphasizes that early childhood obesity prevention efforts should begin focusing with the parents before and during pregnancy and on breastfeeding initiatives and nutrition in the early childhood development stages. "There needs to be a focus on improving the risk factors such as income and education" ...

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), along with other funding agencies, helped a Rice University research team make graphene suitable for a variety of organic chemistry applications—especially the promise of advanced chemical sensors, nanoscale electronic circuits and metamaterials. Ever since the University of Manchester's Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov received the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their groundbreaking graphene experiments, there has been an explosion of graphene related discoveries; but graphene experimentation had been ongoing ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which will contribute to large-scale production of the material for use in a new generation of elastic electronic devices. "We're optimistic that this new approach could lead to large-scale production of stretchable conductors, which would then expedite research and development of elastic electronic devices," says Dr. Yong Zhu, an assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State, and lead author of a paper describing ...

The skeletal structure of the foot and ankle differs significantly between human sprinters and non-sprinters, according to Penn State researchers. Their findings not only help explain why some people are faster runners than others, but also may be useful in helping people who have difficulty walking, such as older adults and children with cerebral palsy. According to Stephen Piazza, associate professor of kinesiology, the research is the first to use magnetic resonance imaging to demonstrate that sprinters have significantly longer bones in their forefeet than non-sprinters ...

Amsterdam, NL, January 24 – Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) are a promising avenue for cell replacement therapy in neurologic diseases. For example, mouse and human iPSCs have been used to generate dopaminergic (DA) neurons that improve symptoms in rat Parkinson's disease models. Reporting in the current issue of the Journal of Parkinson's Disease, a group of scientists from Japan evaluated the growth, differentiation, and function of human-derived iPSC-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs) in a primate model, elucidating their therapeutic potential. "We developed ...

Studies currently available provide indications and a "hint" that precursors of cervical cancer can be detected and treated earlier, and consequently tumours occur less often, in women who underwent testing for human papillomavirus (HPV). In this context, an HPV test can be used alone or in addition to a Papanicolaou test (Pap smear). However, both screening procedures also carry a risk of harm in the form of unnecessary treatments after testing (over-treatment). This is the result of a final report published by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health ...

As 2011 drew to a close, Representative Al Ott led a coalition of his colleagues to introduce a new domestic violence bill in the Wisconsin State Assembly. Assembly Bill 449 is a bi-partisan measure which seeks to increase the penalties for those with multiple domestic abuse convictions, and make felonies out of some offenses that were formerly only misdemeanor charges. At the outset of 2012, Assembly Bill 449 has been referred to the Committee on Criminal Justice and Corrections and a companion bill is similarly situated in the Wisconsin Senate. If the measures pass ...

If your boss is giving you a hard time - lying, making fun of you in public and generally putting you down, he or she may benefit from some exercise, according to a new study by James Burton from Northern Illinois University in the US and his team. Their work shows that stressed supervisors, struggling with time pressures, vent their frustrations on their employees less when they get regular, moderate exercise. The research is published online in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology. In the current economic climate, it is not unusual to come across stressed supervisors. ...

EPFL scientist are among the leaders in the race to develop an industry-ready prototype of a 3D chip as well as a high-performance and reliable manufacturing method. The chip is composed of three or more processors that are stacked vertically and connected together—resulting in increased speed and multitasking, more memory and calculating power, better functionality and wireless connectivity. Developed at the Microelectronics Systems Laboratory (LSM), Director Yusuf Leblebici is unveiling these results to experts on Wednesday the 25th of January in Paris, in a keynote presentation ...