In the spring of 1835, Charles Darwin was bitten in Argentina by a "great wingless black bug," he wrote in his diary. "It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over one's body," Darwin wrote, "before sucking they are quite thin, but afterwards round & bloated with blood." In all likelihood, Darwin's nighttime visitor was a member of Reduviid family of insects — the so-called kissing bugs because of their habit of biting people around the mouth while they sleep. From this attack, some infectious disease experts have speculated, ...

Mothers who financially struggle to provide food for their families tend to put themselves at risk for obesity while trying to feed their children, according to Penn State sociologists. Mothers who do not have enough money to provide adequate food for their families -- food-insecure -- are more likely to be obese or overweight than fathers who face food shortages, as well as food-insecure, childless women and men, said Molly Martin, assistant professor of sociology and demography. Over time, these food-insecure mothers also gain more weight compared to all food-insecure ...

Researchers at Winship Cancer Institute are developing a technique to remove cancer cells' defenses against radiation. Radiation primarily kills cells by inducing DNA damage, so the aim of the technique is to sensitize cells to radiation by disabling their ability to repair DNA. The technique sneaks RNA molecules into cells that shut down genes needed for DNA repair. The still-experimental method could potentially allow oncologists to enhance the tumor-killing effects of radiation, while using lower doses and reducing damage to healthy tissues. In the laboratory, ...

LOS ANGELES (March 15, 2012) - In the past decade, results from large prospective cohort studies and the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) randomized placebo-controlled hormone therapy trials have substantially changed thoughts about how estrogen alone and estrogen plus progestin influence the risk of breast cancer, according to a review published TK in the Journal of The National Cancer Institute. Although hormone therapy is currently used by millions of women for menopausal symptoms, there is still concern about hormone therapy–induced breast cancer risk. In addition, ...

Fraser Yachts has a fantastic portfolio of luxury yachts for sale, four of which can be viewed at this year's Antibes Yacht Show (April 12-15th). Fraser Yachts brokers will, of course, be in attendance with M/Y LIVIA, M/Y BEYOND, M/Y VOYAGER and S/Y ALIA 82. Built in 2009 by the respected Moonen shipyard, the motor yacht LIVIA is a 30m yacht for sale exclusively through Fraser Yachts. Exquisitely appointed throughout she can accommodate up to eight guests and four crew in modern, spacious living quarters. Sail round the Mediterranean this summer at a comfortable 12 ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Wild orangutans that have come into contact with eco-tourists over a period of years show an immediate stress response but no signs of chronic stress, unlike other species in which permanent alterations in stress responses have been documented, new research from an Indiana University anthropologist has found. IU anthropologist Michael P. Muehlenbein can't say yet what makes the wild orangutans of Borneo deal with stress differently than other species in other locations, but an analysis of orangutan stress hormone levels recorded before, during and ...

Electrochemical capacitors (ECs), also known as supercapacitors or ultracapacitors, differ from regular capacitors that you would find in your TV or computer in that they store substantially higher amounts of charges. They have garnered attention as energy storage devices as they charge and discharge faster than batteries, yet they are still limited by low energy densities, only a fraction of the energy density of batteries. An EC that combines the power performance of capacitors with the high energy density of batteries would represent a significant advance in energy storage ...

MADISON – Odds are, you're not going to make it all the way through this article without thinking about something else. In fact, studies have found that our minds are wandering half the time, drifting off to thoughts unrelated to what we're doing – did I remember to turn off the light? What should I have for dinner? A new study investigating the mental processes underlying a wandering mind reports a role for working memory, a sort of a mental workspace that allows you to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously. Imagine you see your neighbor upon arriving home one ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Just as a chameleon changes its color to blend in with its environment, Duke University engineers have demonstrated for the first time that they can alter the texture of plastics on demand, for example, switching back and forth between a rough surface and a smooth one. By applying specific voltages, the team has also shown that it can achieve this control over large and curved surface areas. "By changing the voltage applied to the polymer, we can alter the surface from bumpy to smooth and back again," said Xuanhe Zhao, assistant professor of mechanical ...

Infants with Batten disease, a rare but fatal neurological disorder, appear healthy at birth. But within a few short years, the illness takes a heavy toll, leaving children blind, speechless and paralyzed. Most die by age 5. There are no effective treatments for the disease, which can also strike older children. And several therapeutic approaches, evaluated in mouse models and in young children, have produced disappointing results. But now, working in mice with the infantile form of Batten disease, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis ...

Motor yacht IONIAN PRINCESS is a luxury yacht for charter based in Athens and can be chartered in Greece or anywhere on the Mediterranean this summer. Able to accommodate 12 guests in elegant yet comfortable quarters the motor yacht IONIAN PRINCESS is an exceptional vessel to sail upon. Charter guests can choose to dine in one of three designated areas. One option is the sundeck, complete with barbeque; alternatively the aft deck of the sky lounge offers fantastic views or, for more formal dining there is the main salon. Appointed with only the finest of materials throughout ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Brain-tumor cells that are infected with a cancer-killing virus release a protein "alarm bell" that warns other tumor cells of the impending infection and enables them to mount a defense against the virus, according to a study led by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James). The infected tumor cells release a protein called CCN1 into the narrow space between cells where it initiates an antiviral response. The response limits the spread ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 15, 2012 – Over the last few decades there has been an explosion in the discovery of biomarkers for diagnosis, disease monitoring, and prognostic evaluation. In the April issue of Translational Research, entitled "Biomarkers: New Tools of Modern Medicine," an international group of medical experts explores the promise and challenges of biomarker discovery and highlights the latest advances in the use of biomarkers in various diseases. In a commentary introducing this single-topic issue, Nikolaos G. Frangogiannis, MD, The Wilf Family Cardiovascular ...

Smoking, the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, continues to disproportionately impact lower income members of racial and ethnic minority groups. In a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jason Q. Purnell, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how perceived discrimination influences smoking rates among these groups. "We found that regardless of race or ethnicity, the odds of current smoking were higher among individuals who perceived that they were treated differently ...

NEW YORK (March 15, 2012)—New evidence on the link between suicide and the economy shows that the monthly suicide rate in New York City from 1990 to 2006 was 29% higher at the economic low point in 1992 than at the peak of economic growth in 2000. The study, conducted by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, the McGill Institute for Health and Social Policy, the University of California San Francisco School of Nursing, and Weill Cornell Medical College, appears in the February 22 American Journal of Epidemiology and is available online. "The ...

Cap and trade programs to reduce emissions do not inherently provide incentives to induce the private sector to develop innovative technologies to address climate change, according to a new study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In fact, said author Margaret Taylor, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) who conducted the study while an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, the success of some cap and trade programs in achieving predetermined pollution ...

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several examples of galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplifying and distorting images of galaxies aligned behind them. Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes. To find these rare cases of galaxy-quasar combinations acting as lenses, a team of astronomers led by Frederic Courbin at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland) selected 23,000 ...

GREENBELT, Md. -- Researchers and flight crew with NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in polar ice, began another season of science activity with the start of the 2012 Arctic campaign on March 13. From mid-March through mid-May, a modified P-3 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., will conduct daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland —with one flight to Fairbanks, Alaska and back—to measure sea and land ice. The campaign will also feature instrument tests, continued international collaboration and educational ...

Warnings are in effect and evacuations have taken place along the northern Australia coast near Port Hedland. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Lau as it strengthened into a Cyclone today, March 15, 2012. On March 15, 2012 at 02:31 UTC, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument onboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Cyclone Lua when it was about 400 nautical miles northwest of Port Hedland, Australia. In the image, the bulk of clouds and showers appear to be over the northern and western quadrants of the storm. Satellite imagery ...

The risk of type 2 diabetes is significantly increased if white rice is eaten regularly, claims a study published today on bmj.com. The authors from the Harvard School of Public Health look at previous studies and evidence of the association between eating white rice and the risk of type 2 diabetes. Their study seeks to determine whether this risk is dependent on the amount of rice consumed and if the association is stronger for the Asian population, who tend to eat more white rice than the Western world. The authors analysed the results of four studies: two in Asian ...

Distinct patterns of activity—which may indicate a predisposition to care for infants-- appear in the brains of adults who view an image of an infant face—even when the child is not theirs, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Seeing images of infant faces appeared to activate in the adult's brains circuits that reflect preparation for movement and speech as well as feelings of reward. The findings raise the possibility that studying this activity will yield insights into care giving behavior, but ...

In what became known as the 'Scotch tape technique," researchers first extracted graphene with a piece of adhesive in 2004. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb, hexagonal pattern. It looks like chicken wire. Graphene is a wonder material. It is one-hundred-times better at conducting electricity than silicon. It is stronger than diamond. And, at just one atom thick, it is so thin as to be essentially a two-dimensional material. Such promising physics have made graphene the most studied substance of the last decade, particularly in nanotechnology. ...

The addition of changes in inflammatory biomarkers to established clinical variables improves the prediction of mortality in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to a new study. "COPD is characterized by low-grade inflammation, so we hypothesized that the addition of inflammatory biomarkers to established predictive factors would improve the prediction of mortality," said lead author Bartolome Celli, lecturer in medicine at Harvard Medical School and member of the Pulmonary and Critical Care Division of Brigham and Women's Hospital in ...

Copenhagen, 16 March 2012: Stroke survivors who like art have a significantly higher quality of life than those who do not, according to new research. Patients who appreciated music, painting and theatre recovered better from their stroke than patients who did not. The research was presented at the 12th Annual Spring Meeting on Cardiovascular Nursing, 16-17 March, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Stroke is the third cause of death in the western world and the first cause of disability in adults. More and more older people are having strokes and undergoing recovery. "We know ...

Copenhagen, 16 March 2012: Depression increases the risk of death in patients who have a coronary stent implanted. After seven years of follow up, depressed patients were 1.5 times more likely to have died than non-depressed patients. The findings were independent of age, gender, clinical characteristics, anxiety and the distressed (Type D) personality. The research was presented at the 12th Annual Spring Meeting on Cardiovascular Nursing, 16-17 March, in Copenhagen, Denmark. Depression has been associated with poor outcomes in coronary artery disease but previous ...