A novel therapy that reduces elevated blood levels of a potentially toxic protein in women with preeclampsia, a dangerous complication of pregnancy, may someday address the therapeutic dilemma posed by the condition – balancing life-threatening risks to the mother with the dangers that early delivery poses to an immature fetus. In a paper receiving online release in the journal Circulation, a team of U.S. and German researchers report promising results from their pilot study of a filtration technology that reduces reduce excess blood levels of soluble Flt-1, a protein ...

GALVESTON, Texas — Hydrogen sulfide is a foul-smelling gas with an odor resembling that of rotten eggs. Sometimes called "swamp gas," this toxic substance is generally associated with decaying vegetation, sewers and noxious industrial emissions. And — as odd as it may seem — it also plays a critical role in protecting blood vessels from the complications of diabetes, according to a new study from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. In the last few years, work from several laboratories has shown that hydrogen sulfide is produced by the body in small amounts, ...

Older women who live in a lower socioeconomic status neighborhood are more likely to exhibit lower cognitive functioning than women who live in more affluent neighborhoods, according to a new RAND Corporation study. The study, published online by the American Journal of Public Health, is the largest of its type to examine whether living in a poor neighborhood is associated with lower cognitive function. The study found that potential confounders such as vascular health, health behaviors and psychosocial factors such as depressive symptoms explained only a portion ...

MANHATTAN, KAN. -- Nearly half of the Earth's heat comes from the radioactive decay of materials inside, according to a large international research collaboration that includes a Kansas State University physicist. Glenn Horton-Smith, associate professor of physics, was part of a team gathering some of the most precise measurements of the Earth's radioactivity to date by observing the activity of subatomic particles -- particularly uranium, thorium and potassium. Their work appears in the July issue of Nature Geoscience in the article "Partial radiogenic heat model for ...

This release is available in Spanish. Detergent-like compounds called saponins are best known for their cleansing properties, but U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are studying these compounds' potential for helping protect plants from insect attack. In studies at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research, operated in Peoria, Ill., by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), scientists Pat Dowd, Mark Berhow and Eric Johnson are "spiking" laboratory diets fed to corn earworms and fall armyworms with saponins from soybeans, switchgrass, ...

ST. LOUIS, MO August 2, 2011— Researchers working at The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have made an another advancement in their efforts to improve the root crop cassava which is a major source of calories to 700 million people worldwide, primarily living in the developing world. A study conducted by Dr. Narayanan N. Narayanan and Dr. Uzoma Ihemere, research scientists working in the lab of Dr. Richard T. Sayre, have developed an approach that not only accelerates the reduction of cyanogen during food processing, resulting in a safer food product, but also lead ...

They make up less than one-hundredth of 1 percent of the microbes that live in the colon, but the bacteria and archaea that sop up hydrogen in the gut are fundamental to colon health. In a new study, researchers take a first look at these "hydrogenotrophic" microbes, mapping where they live and how abundant they are in different parts of the lower intestine. The findings are reported in the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal. This is the first study to sample these – or any other – microbes at specific locales in the colon, said University of Illinois ...

A Franklin University professor recently developed an evolutionary computation approach that offers researchers the flexibility to search for models that can best explain experimental data derived from many types of applications, including economics. To test the algorithm underlying that approach, Esmail Bonakdarian, Ph.D., an assistant professor of computing sciences and mathematics at Franklin, leveraged the Glenn IBM 1350 Opteron cluster, the flagship system of the Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC). "Every day researchers are confronted by large sets of survey or experimental ...

PITTSBURGH—Ever since the Nobel Prize for nerve growth factor was awarded more than 30 years ago, researchers have been searching for ways to use growth factor clinically. University of Pittsburgh Professor Yadong Wang has developed a minimally invasive method of delivering growth factor to regrow blood vessels. His research, which could be used to treat heart disease, the most common cause of death in the Western world, is published this week in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Wang is a professor in the Department of ...

Personal photos occupy an ever-expanding amount of hard drive space. Baby, family and vacation photos can now number in the thousands. While some poke fun at the digital glut, others see a unique opportunity. Researchers at the University of Washington have created a way to take hundreds or thousands of digital portraits and in seconds create an animation of the person's face. The tool can make a face appear to age over time, or choose images from the same period to make the person's expression gradually change from a smile to a frown. The researchers were inspired, ...

COPD PATIENTS WITH SENSE OF HUMOR FEEL BETTER, BUT LAUGHTER MAY BE BAD FOR LUNGS COLUMBUS, Ohio – Having a sense of humor is associated with improved emotional functioning and an enhanced quality of life among patients with a chronic lung illness, but the actual act of laughing out loud can reduce lung function, at least in the short term, research suggests. The study evaluated humor and laughter in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Participants who exhibited a greater sense of humor were more likely to report fewer symptoms of depression ...

Tel Aviv — Eggs, one of the most commonly consumed breakfast foods in the United States, have long been a subject of controversy. Are they healthy or are they a high-cholesterol trap? The answer depends on what the hen eats, says a Tel Aviv University researcher. Dr. Niva Shapira of Tel Aviv University's School of Health Professions says that all eggs are not created equal. Her research indicates that when hens are fed with a diet low in omega-6 fatty acids from a young age — feed high in wheat, barley, and milo and lower in soy, maize and sunflower, safflower, and maize ...

College Park, Md. (August 2, 2011) -- Researchers have developed a new method to probe the fundamental workings of photosynthesis. The new experimental technique could help scientists better understand the nitty-gritty details of nature's amazingly efficient sunlight-to-fuel conversion system. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms grow by harvesting the sun's energy and storing it in chemical bonds. Antenna proteins, which are made up of multiple light-absorbing pigments, capture sunlight over a large surface area and then transfer the energy through a series of molecules ...

A relatively simple and inexpensive method may be used to determine whether a lung cancer patient is a candidate for crizotinib therapy, according to research published in the August issue of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, the official monthly journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Lung cancer patients with ALK rearrangement have been found to respond well to crizotinib, an ALK inhibitor currently in clinical trials. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) has been considered the gold standard method for detecting ALK rearrangement. "However, ...

DURHAM, N.H. – Soil-dwelling bacteria of the genus Frankia have the potential to produce a multitude of natural products, including antibiotics, herbicides, pigments, anticancer agents, and other useful products, according to an article in the June 2011 issue of the journal "Applied and Environmental Microbiology." University of New Hampshire professor of microbiology and genetics Louis Tisa, a Frankia expert, contributed the genomic analysis to this study. "We were able to use cutting-edge techniques to identify unexpected compounds in this organism, Frankia," Tisa says. ...

For many people, Fido and Fluffy are more than just pets, they're true and equal members of the family. And it's not hard to see why. Our pets greet us at the door after a long day of work, settle in our laps while we're watching TV, or 'sing' along when we hum a tune. They provide companionship and even a sense of comfort. We like to believe that our pets are good for us, that they enrich our lives and make us happier, and messages in media and advertising reinforce these beliefs. But is there really a universal 'pet effect' on human mental and physical health? According ...

Woe to the clueless predator trying to make a meal of the African crested rat, a rodent that applies poisonous plant toxin to sponge-like hairs on its flanks, a discovery recently made by Jonathan Kingdon and colleagues from the National Museums of Kenya, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and University of Oxford. In the only known instance of a mammal acquiring a lethal toxin from a plant for defense, the researchers have discovered where the African crested rat (or maned rat) gets its poison: the Acokanthera tree, the same source used by East African hunters for ...

High-calorie, high-sodium choices were on the menu when parents purchased lunch for their children at a San Diego fast-food restaurant. Why? Because both children and adults liked the food and the convenience. However, the study of data compiled by researchers in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Diego, appearing this week in the new journal, Childhood Obesity, showed that convenience resulted in lunchtime meals that accounted for between 36 and 51 percent of a child's daily caloric needs. In addition, 35 to 39 percent of calories came ...

NEW YORK (Aug. 2, 2011) -- HIV epidemics are emerging in several countries in the Middle East and North Africa among men who have sex with men, a term that encompasses gay, non-gay identified homosexual men, and transgendered and bisexual men. Though HIV infection levels were historically very low in the Middle East and North Africa, substantial levels of HIV transmission have been found, beginning in 2003, among men who have sex with men, a hidden and stigmatized population in this part of the world. These findings are published today in PLoS Medicine and represent the ...

When it comes to broadband speeds, U.S. Internet service providers (ISPs) largely deliver on their promises, says a report issued today by the Federal Communications Commission, but "throughput" is only one of several metrics listed in the report that affect network performance. ISPs should provide a broadband "nutrition label"—easy-to-understand information about service-limiting factors—and users need better ways of measuring the performance their ISPs are delivering, concludes a study from the Georgia Tech College of Computing. Out of some 2 billion Internet users ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, August 2, 2011– A multidisciplinary team at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has developed a new training method using a desktop webcam to improve ergonomic posture and reduce the risk of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) among office workers using computers. According to an article in Applied Ergonomics in the forthcoming issue, a group of 60 workers received both office training and an automatic frequent-feedback system that displayed a webcam photo of a worker's current sitting posture alongside the correct posture photo taken during office training. ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- When an animal gets too hot or too cold, or feels pangs of hunger or thirst, it tends to relocate – to where it's cooler or hotter, or to the nearest place where food or water can be found. But what about vegetative life? What can a plant do under similar circumstances? Plants can't change the climate and they can't uproot themselves to move to a more favorable spot. Yet they do respond successfully to changes in environmental conditions in diverse ways, many of which involve modifications of the way they grow and develop. Plant biologists ...

Boulder, Colorado, USA - The August GSA TODAY science article is now online at http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/21/8/. The modification of Earth's surface by erosion is one of the most important geological processes in terms of its impact on society, as well as its influence on the geological record, but geologists have been lacking a well-determined compilation of pre-human rates of erosion. In a groundbreaking compilation of 1528 calculations of surface erosion rates from 80 study areas from all over the world, authors Eric Portenga and Paul Bierman of the ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — In the first nationwide study of stray-bullet shootings, Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, quantifies mortality and injury among victims of these unexpected events. His research is published as a letter in the August 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Stray-bullet shootings create fear and insecurity in many communities," said Wintemute. "People stay indoors, don't let their children play outside, and ...

In August of 2016, when NASA's Juno Mission begins sending back information about the atmosphere of the planet Jupiter, research done by Georgia Institute of Technology engineers using a 2,400-pound pressure vessel will help scientists understand what the data means. The Juno probe is scheduled to be launched August 5 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Because Jupiter has been largely unchanged since its formation at the birth of our solar system, scientists hope Juno will resolve unanswered questions not only about the massive planet, but also about how ...