New Rochelle, NY, August 8, 2012—For more than 1 million people in the U.S. living with spinal cord injury, the frightening days and weeks following the injury are filled with uncertainty about their potential for recovery and future independence. A new model based on motor scores at admission and early imaging studies may allow clinicians to predict functional outcomes and guide decision-making for therapy and care-giving needs, as described in an article published in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is ...

A new study is the first to find a difference between how boys and girls respond to prenatal exposure to the insecticide chlorpyrifos. Researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at the Mailman School of Public Health found that, at age 7, boys had greater difficulty with working memory, a key component of IQ, than girls with similar exposures. On the plus side, having nurturing parents improved working memory, especially in boys, although it did not lessen the negative cognitive effects of exposure to the chemical. Results are published ...

As US President Barack Obama turns 51 this month, new research suggests imagery of one of his most iconic predecessors, JFK, helped Obama on his way to the White House. Similarities between the imagery of President Kennedy and President Obama have been highlighted in a new University of Warwick paper, due to be published in the August issue of Comparative American Studies Journal. Researcher Greg Frame, from the University of Warwick's Film and Television department , has explored how Obama, whose birthday is Saturday August 4, has shaped himself in Kennedy's image. He ...

(Washington) – The American College of Physicians (ACP) today released a paper, Statement of Principles on the Role of Governments in Regulating the Patient-Physician Relationship, which recommends principles for the role of federal and state governments in health care and the patient-physician relationship. "The physician's first and primary duty is to put the patient first," David L. Bronson, MD, FACP, president of ACP, said. "To accomplish this duty, physicians and the medical profession have been granted by government a privileged position in society." Dr. Bronson ...

In an advance that could be used in masks to protect against nerve gas, scientists are reporting development of proteins that are up to 15,000 times more effective than their natural counterpart in destroying chemical warfare agents. Their report appears in ACS' journal Biochemistry. Frank Raushel, David Barondeau and colleagues explain that a soil bacterium makes a protein called phosphotriesterase (PTE), which is an enzyme that detoxifies some pesticides and chemical warfare agents like sarin and tabun. PTE thus has potential uses in protecting soldiers and others. ...

A new study published in the August 2012 issue of Military Medicine, the journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the U.S., reveals that 22 of 28 NATO nations do not use animal laboratories for military medical training. Researchers from PETA, in collaboration with current and former military medical personnel, surveyed officials in all 28 NATO nations during 2010 and 2011. Twenty-two NATO countries—including Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the ...

Research has shown that older adults display more positive emotions and are quicker to regulate out of negative emotional states than younger adults. Given the declines in cognitive functioning and physical health that tend to come with age, we might expect that age would be associated with worse moods, not better ones. So what explains older adults' positive mood regulation? In a new article in the August issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researcher Derek Isaacowitz of Northeastern University ...

Los Angeles, CA (August 8, 2012) — While it is commonly believed that men who pay for sex are attempting to avoid emotional commitment, a new study finds that men who become regular clients of sex workers often develop feelings of romance and love. This study is published in a recent edition of Men and Masculinities, a SAGE journal. "In recent years, we have come to see a gradual normalization of independent escort prostitution, where sexual encounters have come to resemble quasi-dating relationships," stated study author Christine Milrod. "Our study shows that regular ...

The content of alcohol ads placed in magazines is more likely to be in violation of industry guidelines if the ad appears in a magazine with sizable youth readership, according to a new study from the Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, the study is the first to measure the relationship of problematic content to youth exposure, and the first to examine risky behaviors depicted in alcohol advertising in the past decade. The researchers examined 1,261 ads for ...

Although the qualitative description of evolution – its observed behavior and characteristics – is well-established, a comprehensive quantitative theory that captures general evolution dynamics is still lacking. There are also many lingering mysteries surrounding the story of life on Earth, including the question of why sex is such a prevalent reproductive strategy. A team of scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Jilin University in Jilin, China; and the State University of New York at Stony Brook, led by Prof. Jin Wang, has examined some of these puzzles from ...

CLEMSON — Clemson University researchers are collecting and harvesting enzymes while maintaining the enzyme's bioactivity. Their work, a new model system that may impact cancer research, is published in the journal Small. Enzymes are round proteins produced by living organisms that increase the rate of chemical reactions. "We found a robust and simple way of attracting specific enzymes, concentrating them and reusing them," said Stephen Foulger, professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Clemson. "The enzymes are still functional after being harvested." Isolating ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 8, 2012—Laparoscopic management of gallbladder disease offers a less invasive alternative to open surgery. Surgical outcomes continue to improve as new techniques and tools become available for performing laparoscopic gallbladder surgery, and these advances are highlighted in "Advances in Cholecystectomy Surgery (http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/lap/22/6)," a comprehensive special issue of Journal of Laparoendoscopic & Advanced Surgical Techniques (JLAST), a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). ...

The phenomenon in ferromagnetic nanodisks of magnetic vortices – hurricanes of magnetism only a few atoms across – has generated intense interest in the high-tech community because of the potential application of these vortices in non-volatile Random Access Memory (RAM) data storage systems. New findings from scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) indicate that the road to magnetic vortex RAM might be more difficult to navigate than previously supposed, but there might be unexpected rewards as well. In ...

PHILADELPHIA — The protein transient receptor potential melastatin-like 7 (TRPM7) is a critical determinant of breast cancer cell metastasis, according to study results published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "The most important discovery that we report in this paper is that TRPM7 is required for metastasis, at least in a xenograft model of breast cancer metastasis," said Frank van Leeuwen, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Radbound University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. "While this fundamental biological ...

CHICAGO – In a study involving more than 16,000 U.S. children and adolescents, there has been a decrease in average total cholesterol levels over the past 2 decades, although almost 1 in 10 had elevated total cholesterol in 2007-2010, according to a study in the August 8 issue of JAMA. "The process of atherosclerosis begins during childhood and is associated with adverse serum lipid concentrations including high concentrations of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (non-HDL-C), and triglycerides, and low concentrations ...

CHICAGO – Participants in a study who were normal weight at the time of a diagnosis of diabetes experienced higher rates of total and noncardiovascular death compared with those who were overweight or obese at diabetes diagnosis, according to a study in the August 8 issue of JAMA. "Type 2 diabetes in normal-weight adults is an understudied representation of the metabolically obese normal-weight phenotype that has become increasingly common over time. It is not known whether the 'obesity paradox' that has been observed in chronic diseases such as heart failure, chronic ...

A glass a day of grapefruit juice lets patients derive the same benefits from an anti-cancer drug as they would get from more than three times as much of the drug by itself, according to a new clinical trial. The combination could help patients avoid side effects associated with high doses of the drug and reduce the cost of the medication. Researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine study the effects that foods can have on the uptake and elimination of drugs used for cancer treatment. In a study published in August in Clinical Cancer Research, they show that eight ...

A new disinfectant, Akwaton, that works at extremely low concentrations could be used in healthcare settings to help control persistent hospital-acquired infections such as Clostridium difficile. The study is reported online in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. Researchers from the Université de Saint-Boniface in Winnipeg, Canada tested the new compound, Akwaton, against bacterial spores that attach to surfaces and are difficult to destroy. Previous work by the group has shown Akwaton is also effective at low concentrations against strains of Meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus ...

They say the real crisis stems from current incentives that reward companies for developing large numbers of new drugs with few clinical advantages over existing ones. Since the early 2000s, numerous articles and reports have claimed that the pipeline for new drugs will soon run dry, write Donald Light from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and Joel Lexchin from York University in Toronto. Yet data indicate that the number of new drugs licensed remains at the long term average range of 15-25 a year. The authors argue that telling "innovation crisis" ...

It has recently been suggested that patients should be kept alive using elective ventilation to facilitate the harvesting of organs for donation. But David Shaw, Honorary Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen believes there is a much simpler way to increase the number of donated organs – by ensuring that doctors respect the wishes of the deceased and over-rule any veto. Veto by the family is the main impediment to an increase in organ donation, with at least 10% of families refusing to donate. Yet Shaw points out that families have no legal grounds for over-riding the ...

Balance and strength training is known to reduce falls in older adults. However, less than 10% of older people routinely engage in strength training and it is likely that this is much lower for activities that challenge balance. It has been suggested that integrating exercise into everyday activities may help people stick to it, but this approach has never been investigated in frail older people at risk of falls. So a team of researchers at the University of Sydney designed and tested the Lifestyle integrated Functional Exercise (LiFE) programme, which involves embedding ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A survey of teachers from the United States and Canada found that one out of four educators who used live animals as part of their science curriculum released the organisms into the wild after they were done using them in the classroom. Yet only 10 percent of those teachers participated in a planned release program, increasing the likelihood that the well-intentioned practice of using live organisms as a teaching tool may be contributing to invasive species problems. The study was presented today (Aug. 7) in Portland at the national meeting of the ...

New research published online in the scientific journal Addiction shows that plain packaging (requiring cigarettes to be packaged in standard packages without attractive designs and imagery) may help to draw the attention of some adolescent smokers to the health warnings on the package. If so, this may in turn deter young smokers from continuing to smoke. Researchers asked eighty-seven teenage secondary school (high school) students from the city of Bristol, UK, to look at twenty images of cigarette packs on a computer screen for ten seconds each while a device tracked ...

CHICAGO --- American adults of a normal weight with new-onset diabetes die at a higher rate than overweight/obese adults with the same disease, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study. The study, to be published in the Aug. 7 issue of JAMA, found that normal-weight participants experienced both significantly higher total and non-cardiovascular mortality than overweight/obese participants. Normal-weight adults with type 2 diabetes have been understudied because those who typically develop the disease are overweight or obese. In this study about 10 percent of those ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – August 6, 2012 – When a stroke patient is discharged from the hospital, they often must cope with a new disability or lack of function, so changes in their medications or a new dosing prescription can be particularly confusing. This can lead the patient to overmedicate, take the wrong medication or skip medications entirely and can result in being readmitted to the hospital. But a pilot study that is looking at a new discharge strategy and being led by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, indicates that phone calls and conversations ...