Thousands more American senior citizens with kidney disease are good candidates for transplants and could get them if physicians would get past outdated medical biases and put them on transplant waiting lists, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins researchers. The Hopkins investigators estimate that between 1999 and 2006, roughly 9,000 adults over 65 would have been "excellent" transplant candidates and approximately 40,000 more older adults would have been "good" candidates for new kidneys. None, however, were given the chance. "Doctors routinely believe and tell ...

New Orleans, LA – A study led by Russell R. Russo, MD, a third-year Orthopaedic Surgery resident at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans School of Medicine, has identified a new source of life-threatening necrotizing fasciitis – "bath salts." The study, describing the first known case of necrotizing fasciitis from an intramuscular injection of the street drug known as "bath salts," is published in the January 2012 issue of Orthopedics, now available online. Necrotizing fasciitis is an orthopedic emergency. The ability to quickly and accurately diagnose this rapidly ...

TORONTO, Ont., Jan. 12, 2012—Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have published the first detailed figures showing the risk of using the prescription drug Rasilez in combination with certain other blood pressure-lowering medications. The pharmaceutical company Novartis terminated a large, international clinical trial of the drug last month after finding an increased incidence after 18-24 months of non-fatal strokes, renal complications, high levels of potassium in the blood and low blood pressure. As a result, Health Canada said on Dec. 22 that it would review the ...

A new study published in the journal Nature Medicine by NYU Cancer Institute researchers, shows how the cancer causing gene Notch, in combination with a mutated Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) protein complex, work together to cause T- cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL). T-ALL is an aggressive blood cancer, predominately diagnosed in children. It occurs when one lymphoblast, an immature white blood cell, turns malignant, multiplying uncontrollably and spreading rapidly throughout the body. If left untreated, the disease can be fatal in a few weeks. Cancer-causing ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Honeybee populations have been in serious decline for years, and Purdue University scientists may have identified one of the factors that cause bee deaths around agricultural fields. Analyses of bees found dead in and around hives from several apiaries over two years in Indiana showed the presence of neonicotinoid insecticides, which are commonly used to coat corn and soybean seeds before planting. The research showed that those insecticides were present at high concentrations in waste talc that is exhausted from farm machinery during planting. The ...

"If it bleeds, it leads," goes the cynical saying with television and newspaper editors. In other words, most news is bad news and the worst news gets the big story on the front page. So one might expect the New York Times to contain, on average, more negative and unhappy types of words — like "war," " funeral," "cancer," "murder" — than positive, happy ones — like "love," "peace" and "hero." Or take Twitter. A popular image of what people tweet about may contain a lot of complaints about bad days, worse coffee, busted relationships and lousy sitcoms. Again, it might ...

TAMPA, Fla. (Jan. 12, 2012) – Using two cell surface markers found to be highly expressed in breast cancer lymph node metastases, researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center, working with colleagues at other institutions, have developed targeted, fluorescent molecular imaging probes that can non-invasively detect breast cancer lymph node metastases. The new procedure could spare breast cancer patients invasive and unreliable sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsies and surgery-associated negative side effects. Their study was published in a recent issue of Clinical Cancer Research ...

For years, researchers seeking new therapies for traumatic brain injury have been tantalized by the results of animal experiments with stem cells. In numerous studies, stem cell implantation has substantially improved brain function in experimental animals with brain trauma. But just how these improvements occur has remained a mystery. Now, an important part of this puzzle has been pieced together by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In experiments with both laboratory rats and an apparatus that enabled them to simulate the impact of ...

Researchers at the University of Oviedo (Spain) have come up with a way of tagging gunpowder which allows its illegal use to be detected even after it has been detonated. Based on the addition of isotopes, the technique can also be used to track and differentiate between wild fish and those from a fish farm, such as trout and salmon. A new method for tagging and identifying objects, substances and living beings has just been presented in this month's issue of the Analytical Chemistry journal. Its creators are scientists at the University of Oviedo who have patented the ...

A new study on African bats provides a vital clue for unravelling the mysteries in Australia's battle with the deadly Hendra virus. The study focused on an isolated colony of straw-coloured fruit bats on islands off the west coast of central Africa. By capturing the bats and collecting blood samples, scientists discovered these animals have antibodies that can neutralise deadly viruses known in Australia and Asia. The paper is published today, 12 January, in the journal PLoS ONE, and is a collaboration of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of ...

Polymer nano-films and nano-composites are used in a wide variety of applications from food packaging to sports equipment to automotive and aerospace applications. Thermal analysis is routinely used to analyze materials for these applications, but the growing trend to use nanostructured materials has made bulk techniques insufficient. In recent years an atomic force microscope-based technique called nanoscale thermal analysis (nanoTA) has been employed to reveal the temperature-dependent properties of materials at the sub-100 nm scale. Typically, nanothermal analysis ...

BOSTON, January 12, 2012: A research collaboration between the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston has developed "smart" injectable nanotherapeutics that can be programmed to selectively deliver drugs to the cells of the pancreas. Although this nanotechnology will need significant additional testing and development before being ready for clinical use, it could potentially improve treatment for Type I diabetes by increasing therapeutic efficacy and reducing side effects. The approach was found to increase ...

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Robotics experts at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Washington (UW) have completed a set of seven advanced robotic surgery systems for use by major medical research laboratories throughout the United States. After a round of final tests, five of the systems will be shipped to medical robotics researchers at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, University of Nebraska, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, while the other two systems will remain at UC Santa Cruz and UW. "We decided to follow an open-source model, because if all ...

University of Illinois researchers have shown that by tuning the properties of laser light illuminating arrays of metal nanoantennas, these nano-scale structures allow for dexterous optical tweezing as well as size-sorting of particles. "Nanoantennas are extremely popular right now because they are really good at concentrating optical fields in small areas," explained Kimani Toussaint, Jr., an assistant professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "In this work, we demonstrate for the first time the use of arrays ...

Racial discrimination may be harmful to your health, according to new research from Rice University sociologists Jenifer Bratter and Bridget Gorman. In the study, "Is Discrimination an Equal Opportunity Risk? Racial Experiences, Socio-economic Status and Health Status Among Black and White Adults," the authors examined data containing measures of social class, race and perceived discriminatory behavior and found that approximately 18 percent of blacks and 4 percent of whites reported higher levels of emotional upset and/or physical symptoms due to race-based treatment. ...

The perception that women are scarce leads men to become impulsive, save less, and increase borrowing, according to new research from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management. "What we see in other animals is that when females are scarce, males become more competitive. They compete more for access to mates," says Vladas Griskevicius, an assistant professor of marketing at the Carlson School and lead author of the study. "How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and ...

Why do we like fatty foods so much? We can blame our taste buds. Our tongues apparently recognize and have an affinity for fat, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. They have found that variations in a gene can make people more or less sensitive to the taste of fat. The study is the first to identify a human receptor that can taste fat and suggests that some people may be more sensitive to the presence of fat in foods. The study is available online in the Journal of Lipid Research. Investigators found that people with ...

SEATTLE – Continuing a series of groundbreaking discoveries begun in 2010 about the genetic causes of the third most common form of inherited muscular dystrophy, an international team of researchers led by a scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has identified the genes and proteins that damage muscle cells, as well as the mechanisms that can cause the disease. The findings are online and will be reported in the Jan. 17 print edition of the journal Developmental Cell. The discovery could lead to a biomarker-based test for diagnosing facioscapulohumeral muscular ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. --There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research. In a new paper appearing in the Jan. 12 edition of the journal, Nature, astrophysicist Kem Cook as part of an international collaboration, analyzed microlensing data that bridges the gap between a recent finding of planets further away from their parent stars and observations of planets extremely close to their parent star. The results point to more planetary systems resembling our solar system rather than being significantly ...

The ability to catch international smugglers and terrorists just got upgraded with a Jan. 12 demonstration of collaborative software funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The Mission-Focused Autonomy (MFA) program was put into practice for the Joint Interagency Task Force (JIATF) South in Key West, Fla., during an exercise dubbed "Marathon." The collaborative information discovery and knowledge-sharing tools sift through government agency databases to support efforts by federal law enforcement for information on foreign nationals intent on harming national security ...

Paris/ Leipzig. Wandering albatrosses have altered their foraging due to changes in wind fields in the southern hemisphere during the last decades. Since winds have increased in intensity and moved to the south, the flight speed of albatrosses increased and they spend less time foraging. As a consequence, breeding success has improved and birds have gained 1 kilogram. These are the results of the study of an international research team published in the latest issue of the Science journal. However, these positive consequences of climate change may last short if future wind ...

A Rice University laboratory has found a way to turn common carbon fiber into graphene quantum dots, tiny specks of matter with properties expected to prove useful in electronic, optical and biomedical applications. The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, in collaboration with colleagues in China, India, Japan and the Texas Medical Center, discovered a one-step chemical process that is markedly simpler than established techniques for making graphene quantum dots. The results were published online this month in the American Chemical Society's journal Nano ...

Deaf people who use sign language are quicker at recognizing and interpreting body language than hearing non-signers, according to new research from investigators at UC Davis and UC Irvine. The work suggests that deaf people may be especially adept at picking up on subtle visual traits in the actions of others, an ability that could be useful for some sensitive jobs, such as airport screening. "There are a lot of anecdotes about deaf people being better able to pick up on body language, but this is the first evidence of that," said David Corina, professor in the UC ...

A new UC Davis study shows how the brain reconfigures its connections to minimize distractions and take best advantage of our knowledge of situations. "In order to behave efficiently, you want to process relevant sensory information as fast as possible, but relevance is determined by your current situation," said Joy Geng, assistant professor of psychology at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain. For example, a flashing road sign alerts us to traffic merging ahead; or a startled animal might cue you to look out for a hidden predator. When concentrating on a specific ...

PITTSBURGH—Determining the evolution of pigmentation patterns on mollusk seashells—which could aid in the understanding of ancient nervous systems—has proved to be a challenging feat for researchers. Now, however, through mathematical equations and simulations, University of Pittsburgh and University of California, Berkeley, researchers have used 19 different species of the predatory sea snail Conus to generate a model of the pigmentation patterns of mollusk shells. "There is no evolutionary record of nervous systems, but what you're seeing on the surface of seashells ...