In the results of a new study, scientists explain how they used DNA to identify microbes present in the Gulf of Mexico following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill -- and the particular microbes responsible for consuming natural gas immediately after the spill. Water temperature played a key role in the way bacteria reacted to the spill, the researchers found. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the results in this week's journal. David Valentine and Molly Redmond, geochemists at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) conducted ...

AURORA, Colo. -- Researchers studying the first national quality measure for hospitalized children have found that no matter how strictly a health care institution followed the criteria, it had no actual impact on patient outcomes. The scientists examined 30 hospitals with 37,267 children admitted for asthma from 2008 to 2010 and discovered that the quality of discharge planning made no difference to the rate of return to the hospital for another asthma attack in 7, 30 or 90 days. "Our research concluded that there is no relationship between compliance with this measure ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- According to the Pew Research Center, one in one hundred American adults is currently in prison. U.S. Department of Justice statistics show that 67 percent of those inmates will recidivate, or re-offend and return to prison after they are released. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has found that educating inmates and preparing them to find jobs upon their release from prison greatly reduces their recidivism rate. Jake Cronin, a policy analyst with the Institute of Public Policy in the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, ...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Patients at Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center Clinical Trials at Scottsdale Healthcare were the first in the nation to participate in a clinical trial to determine the safety, tolerability and effectiveness for usage of a new drug combination consisting of a standard drug called gemcitabine and a drug called nab-paclitaxel for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. The results of this study, headed by renowned pancreatic cancer expert Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, were published online Oct. 3, 2011, in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Oncology. Nab-paclitaxel ...

Fox Chase Researchers Develop a New Tool That Helps Identify Prostate Cancer Patients with the Highest Risk of Death MIAMA BEACH, FL (October 4, 2011)––After a prostate cancer patient receives radiation treatment, his doctor carefully monitors the amount of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, in his blood. An increase in PSA, called biochemical failure, is the first detectable sign of the cancer's return to the prostate. Fox Chase Cancer Center researcher have found that the time between the last radiation treatment and biochemical failure can accurately predict a patient's ...

MIAMA BEACH, FL (October 4, 2011)––In a new study led by Fox Chase Cancer Center radiation oncologist Natasha Townsend, M.D., researchers have found that Gleason scores determined by pathologists at Fox Chase Cancer Center more accurately predict the risk of recurrence than Gleason scores from referring institutions. She presented the new research at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology on Monday, October 3. When a man is diagnosed with prostate cancer, his tumor is assigned a Gleason score – a number between 2 and 10 indicating the ...

DENVER (Oct. 5, 2011) – A new study shows that using the Internet to look for a job reduces the time spent unemployed by an average of 25 percent. The discovery directly contradicts a 2004 study showing that using the Internet actually prolonged unemployment. "In 2004 the researchers came up with two scenarios for their findings – the Internet was not an effective tool or that people who looked on-line for jobs were not as qualified," said Hani Mansour, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado Denver who conducted the new study with Peter ...

More than 100 artefacts from the First World War have been uncovered in an archaeological fieldwork survey on the Gallipoli battlefield, leading to some interesting theories about life on the frontline according to University of Melbourne survey archaeologist Professor Antonio Sagona. The discoveries were made as part of a second season of fieldwork undertaken as part of the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey – the only systematic survey of the battlefields of Gallipoli since the First World War. The survey covered the northern frontline areas on the Turkish ...

A new insight into global photosynthesis, the chemical process governing how ocean and land plants absorb and release carbon dioxide, has been revealed in research that will assist scientists to more accurately assess future climate change. In a paper published today in Nature, a team of US, Dutch and Australian scientists have estimated that the global rate of photosynthesis, the chemical process governing the way ocean and land plants absorb and release CO2, occurs 25% faster than previously thought. From analysing more than 30 years of data collected by Scripps Institution ...

Interactive video games, already known to improve motor function in recovering stroke patients, appear to safely enhance physical therapy for patients in intensive care units (ICU), new research from Johns Hopkins suggests. In a report published online in the Journal of Critical Care, researchers studied the safety and feasibility of using video games to complement regular physical therapy in the ICU. "Patients admitted to our medical intensive care unit are very sick and, despite early physical therapy, still experience problems with muscle weakness, balance ...

"Too busy," and "too complicated." These are the typical excuses one might expect when medical professionals are asked why they fail to use online error-reporting systems designed to improve patient safety and the quality of care. But, Johns Hopkins investigators found instead that the most common reason among radiation oncologists was fear of getting into trouble and embarrassment. Investigators e-mailed an anonymous survey to physicians, nurses, radiation physicists and other radiation specialists at Johns Hopkins, North Shore- Long Island Jewish Health System in New ...

A team of scientists, led by Johns Hopkins researchers, say they may have found a way to predict how quickly patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) will lose cognitive function by looking at ratios of two fatty compounds in their blood. The finding, they say, could provide useful information to families and caregivers, and might also suggest treatment targets for this heartbreaking and incurable neurodegenerative disorder. Past research has shown that cognitive function declines at different rates in AD patients, with roughly one-third not declining at all in five years, ...

A new study from the University of Adelaide shows the parents of women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are more likely to have some form of cardiovascular disease. PCOS is a hormonal disorder affecting about 10% of women of reproductive age. It is one of the most common endocrine disorders in women and a leading cause of infertility. The study shows mothers of women with PCOS are more likely to have any form of cardiovascular disease, and almost twice as likely to have high blood pressure, than mothers of other women. Fathers of women with PCOS are more than ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. – People who rate their health as poor or fair appear to be significantly more likely to develop dementia later in life, according to a study published in the October 5, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "Having people rate their own health may be a simple tool for doctors to determine a person's risk of dementia, especially for people with no symptoms or memory problems," said study author Christophe Tzourio, MD, PhD, director of the Inserm unit 708 Neuroepidemiology at the University of Bordeaux ...

STANFORD, Calif. -- North American babies who acquire toxoplasmosis infections in the womb show much higher rates of brain and eye damage than European infants with the same infection, according to new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine. Eighty-four percent of the North American infants studied had serious complications of the parasitic infection, including calcium deposits in the brain, water on the brain and eye disease that caused visual impairment or blindness. By contrast, few European infants had these problems -- for instance, about 17 percent ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists call it LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestor, but they don't know much about this great-grandparent of all living things. Many believe LUCA was little more than a crude assemblage of molecular parts, a chemical soup out of which evolution gradually constructed more complex forms. Some scientists still debate whether it was even a cell. New evidence suggests that LUCA was a sophisticated organism after all, with a complex structure recognizable as a cell, researchers report. Their study appears in the journal Biology Direct. The study ...

(Deerfield, Ill., USA – October 5, 2011) Indoor spraying with the insecticide bendiocarb has dramatically decreased malaria transmission in many parts of Benin, new evidence that insecticides remain a potent weapon for fighting malaria in Africa despite the rapid rise of resistance to an entire class of mosquito-killing compounds, according to a study published today in the October edition of The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. Scientists with Benin's Entomologic Research Center in Cotonou evaluated the effects of two applications of bendiocarb in ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine have developed a novel protocol that allows kidney-transplant recipients to jettison their indispensable immune-suppressing drugs. The protocol could also spell substantial savings to the health-care system. The researchers have reported their progress in a letter that will be published Oct. 6 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Eight of the 12 patients discussed in the small study have now been off of immunosuppressant drugs for at least one year, and in some cases for longer than three ...

New research suggests that small "seed" amounts of diseased brain proteins can be taken up by healthy neurons and propagated within them to cause neurodegeneration. The research, published by Cell Press in the October 6 issue of the journal Neuron, sheds light on the mechanisms associated with Parkinson's disease (PD) and provides a model for discovering early intervention therapeutics that can prevent or slow the devastating loss of neurons that underlies PD. Alpha-synuclein (α-syn) is a brain protein that forms abnormal, neuron-damaging intracellular clumps called ...

Our behavior is often guided by the desire to obtain positive outcomes and avoid negative consequences, and neuroscientists have put a great deal of effort into looking for reward and punishment "centers" in the brain. Now, new research published by Cell Press in the October 6 issue of the journal Neuron reveals that neural signals related to reinforcement and punishment are far more broadly distributed throughout the entire human brain than was previously thought. Understanding the neural basis of reinforcement and punishment processing is of paramount importance to ...

BOSTON –Over the past decade, new technologies have revealed that autism spectrum disorder has a substantial genetic component. But determining exactly which genes are involved has been like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Now a research team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) has created a genetically engineered mouse with increased dosages of the Ube3 gene. And, like the patients who also harbor increased dosages of this single gene, the genetically engineered mice exhibit robust examples of all three traits considered hallmarks of autism: ...

CHICAGO – In contrast to findings of previous studies, patients who experienced an acute lung injury, such as from pneumonia or sepsis, and received dietary supplements including omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants had more days on a ventilator, more days in the intensive care unit (ICU), and a non-statistically significant increase in the rate of death, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine meeting in Berlin. "Patients at risk of developing ...

CHICAGO – Patients with severe 2009 H1N1 influenza who developed respiratory failure and were treated with a system that adds oxygen to the patient's blood had a lower rate of in-hospital death than similar patients who did not receive this treatment, according to a study appearing in JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine meeting in Berlin. Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is a type of life support that circulates blood through a system that adds oxygen. "ECMO may ...

Winning may not be the only thing, but the human brain devotes a lot of resources to the outcome of games, a new study by Yale researchers suggest. The study published in the Oct. 6 issue of the journal Neuron shows that when participants play games, such as rock-paper-scissors, almost the entire brain is engaged, not just the reward centers of the brain, which have been assigned the central role for shaping adaptive human behavior. "Our brain functions to maximize the chance of survival and reproduction, so reward should be important for all cognitive functions, and ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – A new study from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) reports surprising results that suggest that the devastating neuromuscular disease, spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), might not exclusively affect the motor neurons in the spinal cord as has long been thought. The new findings suggest that defects in peripheral tissues such as liver, muscle, heart, etc., might also contribute to the pathology of the disease in severely affected patients. The study, which also paves the way for a potential SMA drug to enter human trials by the end of the year, ...