CHICAGO – The use of statins in postmenopausal women is associated with increased diabetes risk, according to a study published Online First by the Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. But researchers note statins address the cardiovascular consequences of diabetes and current American Diabetes Association guidelines for primary and secondary prevention should not change. Likewise, researchers write that guidelines for statin use in nondiabetic populations also should not change. Annie L. Culver, B. Pharm, Rochester Methodist Hospital, Mayo ...

CHICAGO – A substantial proportion of emergency department eye care in Florida is reimbursed through Medicaid or paid for out of pocket by patients, and those findings may help in strategic planning as the debate over how best to implement the nation's new health care reform law progresses, according to a study published in the Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will increase insurance coverage in large part by expanding eligibility for Medicaid, "an already stressed and underfunded system ...

CHICAGO – Replacing visual acuity screenings for new Medicare enrollees with coverage of a dilated eye exam for healthy patients entering the government insurance program for the elderly "would be highly cost-effective," suggests a study being published Online First by the Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. People can enroll in Medicare after they turn 65 and are supposed to receive a visual acuity screening and other preventive health checks as part of a Welcome to Medicare health evaluation within 12 months of enrollment. In 2009, the U.S. ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research shows that infectious disease-fighting drugs could be designed to block a pathogen's entry into cells rather than to kill the bug itself. Historically, medications for infectious diseases have been designed to kill the offending pathogen. This new strategy is important, researchers say, because many parasites and bacteria can eventually mutate their way around drugs that target them, resulting in drug resistance. In this study, scientists showed that using an experimental agent to block one type of an enzyme in cell cultures and mice prevented ...

Wearing a nicotine patch may help improve memory loss in older adults with mild cognitive impairment, according to a study published today in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at individuals with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), the stage between normal aging and dementia when others begin to notice that an individual is developing mild memory or thinking problems. Many older adults with MCI go on to develop Alzheimer's disease. The study looked at 74 non-smokers with MCI and an average age of 76. Half of the patients ...

Over the past 10 years, Americans drank more sugar-sweetened beverages than ever—as much as 13 billion gallons a year—making these drinks the largest source of added sugar and excess calories in the American diet and, arguably, the single largest dietary factor in the current obesity epidemic. While many states have a sales tax on soda, experts believe they are too low to impact consumption. In a study conducted at Columbia University Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco, researchers estimated that if a higher, penny-per-ounce tax were imposed ...

CHICAGO -- A 2010 outbreak of Legionnaires' disease in Wisconsin has been linked to a decorative fountain in a hospital lobby, according to a study published in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. When the outbreak of Legionnaires' disease was detected among eight people in southeast Wisconsin, state and local public health officials worked closely with hospital staff to launch an investigation to determine the source of the outbreak. Legionnaires' disease is a severe and ...

ALBANY, Calif. -- An interactive tool developed by researchers from the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) will help wind energy facility operators make informed decisions on efficient ways to reduce impacts on migratory bats. Fatalities of migratory bats at wind energy facilities have become a frequent occurrence. Bat migration patterns are poorly understood and the relationship between fatalities at wind energy facilities and migratory behavior are still being studied. Previous research has shown that adjusting the operations of turbines ...

Rice University researchers have figured out what gives armchair nanotubes their unique bright colors: hydrogen-like objects called excitons. Their findings appear in the online edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Armchair carbon nanotubes – so named for the "U"-shaped configuration of the atoms at their uncapped tips – are one-dimensional metals and have no band gap. This means electrons flow from one end to the other with little resistivity, the very property that may someday make armchair quantum wires possible. The Rice researchers show armchair ...

A new study from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, shows that MAL3-101, a recently developed inhibitor of the heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70), appears to have potent anti-tumor effects on multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer. Despite aggressive modes of treatments, myeloma ultimately remains incurable. The disease has a high incidence in the communities served by SUNY Downstate. The findings, published in a recent issue of Journal of Oncology, are the result of a collaborative effort among researchers working in the laboratory of Olcay Batuman, MD, ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn -- The prospect of electronics at the nanoscale may be even more promising with the first observation of metallic conductance in ferroelectric nanodomains by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Ferroelectric materials, which switch their polarization with the application of an electric field, have long been used in devices such as ultrasound machines and sensors. Now, discoveries about ferroelectrics' electronic properties are opening up possibilities of applications in nanoscale electronics and information storage. In a paper published in ...

BATAVIA, Illinois, and BERKELEY, California –Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter using new methods that, in turn, will remove key hurdles for understanding dark energy with ground-based telescopes. The teams' measurements look for tiny distortions in the images of distant galaxies, called "cosmic shear," caused by the gravitational influence of massive, ...

BOSTON, MA -- Honing chemotherapy delivery to cancer cells is a challenge for many researchers. Getting the cancer cells to take the chemotherapy "bait" is a greater challenge. But perhaps such a challenge has not been met with greater success than by the nanotechnology research team of Omid Farokhzad, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain Medicine and Research. In their latest study with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital, the BWH team created a drug delivery ...

Superior Restoration announced today it has renewed its partnership with Disaster Kleenup International (DKI), LLC, North America's largest disaster restoration contracting organization. Superior Restoration is San Diego's premier disaster cleanup and construction firm, providing 24-hour water damage restoration, fire damage repair and mold remediation services. By renewing its DKI membership, Superior Restoration will continue to utilize DKI's 24-hour call center, its DIAMOND claims tracking technology, and other tools to enhance its ability to serve its insurance and ...

Researchers have discovered that children under the age of two control speech using a different strategy than previously thought. During the study at Queen's University, the researchers changed the vowel sounds that the participants heard over headphones as they talked. They found that while the adults and young children changed their vowel sounds in response to this altered feedback, the toddlers did not. "We were very surprised to find that the two-year-olds do not monitor their own voice when speaking in the same way as adults do," says Ewen MacDonald, a former Queen's ...

Monitoring Internet search traffic about influenza may prove to be a better way for hospital emergency rooms to prepare for a surge in sick patients compared to waiting for outdated government flu case reports. A report on the value of the Internet search tool for emergency departments, studied by a team of researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine over a 21-month period, is published in the January 9 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases. The researchers reported a strong correlation between a rise in Internet searches for flu information, compiled by Google's Flu Trends ...

KLAS reports that while providers are juggling a laundry list of priorities--meaningful use, ICD-10, RAC audits, and accountable care models, HIEs are still of high interest to many providers. In the report, "HIE Perception 2011: Public or Private?" KLAS interviewed 96 healthcare executives to uncover which HIE vendors were selected in 2011 and why. "There's still an ocean of options out there," says Mark Allphin, report author, "and with all the market hype it's still hard to see which vendors are really cresting to the top. What we are really ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Modified probiotics, the beneficial bacteria touted for their role in digestive health, could one day decrease the risk of Listeria infection in people with susceptible immune systems, according to Purdue University research. Arun Bhunia, a professor of food science; Mary Anne Amalaradjou, a Purdue postdoctoral researcher; and Ok Kyung Koo, a former Purdue doctoral student, found that the same Listeria protein that allows the bacteria to pass through intestinal cells and into bloodstreams can help block those same paths when added to a probiotic. "Based ...

BOSTON – A person's risk of suffering a heart attack increases by approximately 21 times in the first 24 hours after losing a loved one, according to a study lead by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The study published Jan. 9 online in the journal Circulation found the risk of heart attack remained eight times above normal during the first week after the death of a loved one, slowly declining, but remaining elevated for at least a month. Researchers interviewed approximately 2,000 patients who suffered myocardial infarctions, or heart attacks, over ...

Superenalotto opened in Italy in late 1997 and hasn't looked back. The lotto game is now considered one of the largest jackpot games in the world, plus it's played by millions of people from many different European countries. The Italy SuperStar estimated jackpot for the upcoming drawing on January 7th is EUR 50,500,000 which is higher than any other country in the world. Because of the popularity of Superenalotto it is now possible for people from other countries to purchase the lottery tickets online through various lottery websites. This lottery game is also one ...

Every year, Americans drink 13.8 billion gallons of soda, fruit punch, sweet tea, sports drinks, and other sweetened beverages—a mass consumption of sugar that is fueling soaring obesity and diabetes rates in the United States. Now a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) and Columbia University have analyzed the effect of a nationwide tax on these sugary drinks. They estimate slapping a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages would prevent nearly 100,000 cases of heart ...

TeamSupport.com (http://www.TeamSupport.com) - the popular provider of web-based customer support and help desk software solutions - today announced the addition of analytics powered by Zoho Reports. Using the collaborative tools, TeamSupport clients can easily filter, sort, view and analyze their business data. An intuitive drag-and-drop interface makes easy work of creating dashboards, graphs and reports to share with all, or selected team members. Once the integration is set up, TeamSupport automatically updates Zoho Reports with Ticket data, Portal Logins, Chat ...

URBANA – Who knew that male fertility depends on sperm-cell architecture? A University of Illinois study reports that a certain omega-3 fatty acid is necessary to construct the arch that turns a round, immature sperm cell into a pointy-headed super swimmer with an extra long tail. "Normal sperm cells contain an arc-like structure called the acrosome that is critical in fertilization because it houses, organizes, and concentrates a variety of enzymes that sperm use to penetrate an egg," said Manabu Nakamura, a U of I associate professor of biochemical and molecular nutrition. The ...

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research finds that the number of guns that were subsequently linked to crime sold by Badger Guns & Ammo, a Milwaukee-area gun shop, increased dramatically after Congress adopted measures likely to reduce the risks gun dealers face if they divert guns to criminals. The study is the first to examine the impact of these amendments on the diversion of guns to criminals and was recently published online in the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Health. The Tiahrt amendments are a series of amendments to ...

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