According to theoretical physicists João da Cruz and Pedro Lind from Lisbon University, Portugal, imposing minimum capital levels for banks may not prevent the insolvency of a minority of banks from triggering a widespread banking system collapse. In a study recently published in EPJ B1, the researchers explain why this measure could instead lead to larger crises. The authors created a model of banks' behaviour to assess the conditions needed to avoid "avalanches" of insolvent banks. Their model is based on a physical system of particles representing how banks are attracted ...

Los Angeles, CA (August 09, 2012) Poorly-performing medical implants have hit the headlines recently, and the trend looks set to continue: the September issue of the Journal of Hand Surgery (JHS) homes in on the unacceptable performance of hand implants for osteoarthritis patients. Citing several recent studies, the editorial asks why these implants – which perform worse that certain hip replacement implants now deemed unacceptable – are still widely used. JHS is an online and print, orthopedic surgery journal published by SAGE. The issue reports on a number of thumb ...

Fresno, Calif. – Consuming grapes may help protect heart health in people with metabolic syndrome, according to new research published in the Journal of Nutrition. Researchers observed a reduction in key risk factors for heart disease in men with metabolic syndrome: reduced blood pressure, improved blood flow and reduced inflammation. Natural components found in grapes, known as polyphenols, are thought to be responsible for these beneficial effects. The randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study, led by principal investigator Dr. Maria Luz Fernandez and Jacqueline ...

Researchers from Munich and Naples have shown that minimal modification of a synthetic peptide with anti-HIV activity results in a new compound with more than two orders of magnitude higher binding affinity to the chemokine receptor CXCR4 and greatly improved anti-HIV activity. This could be a step toward the design of new, more effective drugs against AIDS, inflammatory diseases, and some forms of cancer. Different strains of HIV-1 use either the chemokine receptor CCR5 or CXCR4 for entry into immune cells. While drugs that block usage of CCR5 by the virus are already ...

PITTSBURGH—Pine trees are one of the biggest contributors to air pollution. They give off gases that react with airborne chemicals – many of which are produced by human activity – creating tiny, invisible particles that muddy the air. New research from a team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Neil Donahue shows that the biogenic particles formed from pine tree emissions are much more chemically interesting and dynamic than previously thought. The study provides the first experimental evidence that such compounds are chemically transformed by free radicals, the same compounds ...

During the Neolithic Age (approximately 10000 BCE), early man evolved from hunter-gatherer to farmer and agriculturalist, living in larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. This transition brought about significant changes in terms of the economy, architecture, man's relationship to the environment, and more. Now Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations has shed new light on this milestone in human evolution, demonstrating a direct connection between the development ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A Rhode Island Hospital researcher has found that the majority of bariatric surgery patients being treated for obesity have clinically significant obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but report fewer symptoms than other sleep disorders patients. The study by Katherine M. Sharkey, M.D., Ph.D., of the department of medicine, division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, and University Medicine, is published online in advance of print in the journal Sleep and Breathing. "Patients with obstructive sleep apnea frequently complain ...

ARLINGTON, VA, August 9, 2012—The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (JPIDS) today released the largest and most rigorous evaluation to date of the impact on reducing the days of antibiotic therapy in a children's hospital using a prospective-audit-with-feedback antibiotic stewardship program (ASP). The study utilized a control group of the 25-member children's hospitals of the Child Health Corporation of America. A companion article describes how the ASP was created within this 317-bed tertiary care children's hospital and clinicians' attitudes toward ...

This press release is available in German.Energy storage systems are one of the key technologies for the energy turnaround. With their help, the fluctuating supply of electricity based on photovoltaics and wind power can be stored until the time of consumption. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), several pilot plants of solar cells, small wind power plants, lithium-ion batteries, and power electronics are under construction to demonstrate how load peaks in the grid can be balanced and what regenerative power supply by an isolated network may look like in the future. "High-performance ...

Scientists at Tulane University School of Medicine, led by Dr. James Antoon and Dr. Barbara Beckman, have characterized two drugs targeting sphingosine kinase (SK), an enzyme involved in cancer growth and metastasis. New treatments specifically attacking cancer cells, but not normal ones, are critical in the fight against cancer. The results, which appear in the July 2012 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, demonstrate the role of SK in drug resistance and therapeutic potential of SK inhibitors. "Sphingosine kinase is a relatively new molecular target," says ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 9, 2012—Women comprise nearly half of the HIV-infected population worldwide, but these 15.5 million women tend to be under-represented in clinical trials of anti-HIV drug therapies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has created a database from 40 clinical studies to assess gender differences in the efficacy of antiretroviral treatments. The results of this study are presented in an article in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Patient Care ...

Researchers have successfully tested a vaccine for the deadly Nipah virus in monkeys, raising hopes that it could provide similar protection for humans. With greater than a 75 percent fatality rate and the ability to be transmitted directly from person to person, Nipah has long been a significant concern for infectious-disease experts. The virus, which is carried naturally by fruit bats, was first discovered in Malaysia in 1998. Outbreaks have occurred in nearly every year since, in Singapore, Bangladesh and India. "This vaccine is based on a protein from Hendra virus, ...

VIDEO: How would you like to experience the effects of running three miles or staving off Type 2 diabetes without making drastic changes in your lifestyle? With nutrition supplements developed by... Click here for more information. How would you like to experience the effects of running three miles or staving off type two diabetes without making drastic changes in your lifestyle? With nutrition supplements developed by a professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, ...

SALINA, KAN. -- The type of relationship a woman has with her ex-partner is a factor in how the couple shares custody of children, according to a Kansas State University expert on postdivorce and co-parenting relationships. In a study of divorced or separated mothers sharing physical custody of their children with their former partners, Mindy Markham, assistant professor of family studies and human services on the university's Salina campus, identified three patterns of co-parenting -- continuously contentious, always amicable and bad to better -- as well as negative ...

Women with uterine fibroids larger than 10 cm have a new nonsurgical treatment choice –hormone acting drugs followed by uterine artery embolization, a new study shows. The new treatment option can replace hysterectomy, which leaves women infertile. The study, conducted at the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul South Korea, included 40 women with 10 cm or larger uterine fibroids. Twelve of the women received gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists to shrink their fibroids before undergoing uterine artery embolization, said Man Deuk Kim, MD, PhD, lead ...

Breast cancers that depend on the hormones estrogen and progesterone are susceptible to treatments targeting these hormones. Take away this dependence and you lose a valuable treatment option. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published as a featured article in the journal Oncogene shows how progesterone does just this – by suppressing a key microRNA, progestins return breast cancer cells to a stem-cell-like state in which they haven't yet differentiated, and are thus more resistant to chemotherapies and more likely to carry a poor prognosis. "The reason we ...

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest-ever three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes, helping astronomers better explain the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up 96 percent of the universe. According to SDSS-III scientific spokesperson and University of Pittsburgh assistant professor of physics and astronomy Michael Wood-Vasey, scientists using the map—titled Data Release 9 (DR9)— can retrace the Universe's history over the last seven billion years. Wood-Vasey cowrote the DR9 summary paper featured ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Chronic exposure to even small amounts of staph bacteria could be a risk factor for the chronic inflammatory disease lupus, Mayo Clinic research shows. Staph, short for Staphylococcus aureus, is a germ commonly found on the skin or in the nose, sometimes causing infections. In the Mayo study, mice were exposed to low doses of a protein found in staph and developed a lupus-like disease, with kidney disease and autoantibodies like those found in the blood of lupus patients. The findings are published online this month in The Journal of Immunology. ...

VIDEO: This is an animated flight through the universe as seen by SDSS. There are close to 400,000 galaxies in the animation, which places zoomed-in images of nearby galaxies at the... Click here for more information. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes ever created. The new map pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. It covers a total volume equivalent ...

Do corporate wikis work? Two University of Alberta researchers say they can, providing they fit the corporation's culture and provide for the needs and interests of their users and editors. PhD candidate Lisa Yeo and Ofer Arazy, an assistant professor in the Alberta School of Business, say that using wikis as a form of corporate knowledge management can be beneficial. However, some concessions need to be made in terms of how wiki "knowledge" is posted to support people's needs for recognition with their company. If companies want their wiki to work, it cannot be held ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The brain has billions of neurons, arranged in complex circuits that allow us to perceive the world, control our movements and make decisions. Deciphering those circuits is critical to understanding how the brain works and what goes wrong in neurological disorders. MIT neuroscientists have now taken a major step toward that goal. In a new paper appearing in the Aug. 9 issue of Nature, they report that two major classes of brain cells repress neural activity in specific mathematical ways: One type subtracts from overall activation, while the other divides ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Innovative problem solving requires trying many different solutions. That's true for humans, and now Michigan State University researchers show that it's true for hyenas, too. The study, published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, presented steel puzzle boxes with raw meat inside to wild spotted hyenas in Kenya. To get the meat, the hyenas had to slide open a bolt latch. Even though most of the animals had many opportunities to open the box, only nine out of 62 hyenas succeeded. The successful hyenas tried more solutions, ...

For more than 45 years, the poor in this country have been identified by the U.S. Census Bureau's Official Poverty Measure — a tool that determines America's poverty rate based on pretax money income, which does not reflect all the resources at a family's disposal. That method of calculating who is poor and who is not has been under fire by researchers for years because it doesn't calculate the benefits of anti-poverty programs — such as food stamps and housing subsidies — into its formula. In response to the criticism, the Census Bureau released in fall 2011 the Supplemental ...

Bethesda, Md. (Aug. 8, 2012)—Adolescence is an important time not only for growing but for acquiring healthy habits that will last a lifetime, such as choosing foods rich in vitamins and minerals, and adopting a regular exercise regimen. Unfortunately, several studies have shown that adolescents' intake of important nutrients, as well as their performance on standard physical fitness tests, has fallen in recent years. Because nutrition and fitness are intertwined—for example, iron forms part of hemoglobin, which carries oxygen to muscles, and antioxidants such as vitamin ...

AURORA, Colo. – (Aug. 8. 2012) - A recent study by University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers shows that it is very common for adolescents in substance abuse treatment to use medical marijuana recommended to someone else (also known as "diverted" medical marijuana). Stacy Salomonsen-Sautel, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the CU School of Medicine's Department of Pharmacology and her colleagues in the Department of Psychiatry looked at two adolescent substance abuse treatment programs in the Denver metropolitan area. The study participants were asked questions ...