[Sedentary behaviour and life expectancy in the USA: a cause-deleted life table analysis doi 10.1136/bmjopen-2012-000828] Restricting the amount of time spent seated every day to less than 3 hours might boost the life expectancy of US adults by an extra 2 years, indicates an analysis of published research in the online journal BMJ Open. And cutting down TV viewing to less than 2 hours every day might extend life by almost 1.4 years, the findings suggest. Several previous studies have linked extended periods spent sitting down and/or watching TV to poor health, ...

Nearly a third of adults with the most common type of brain cancer develop recurrent, invasive tumors after being treated with a drug called bevacizumab. The molecular underpinnings behind these detrimental effects have now been published by Cell Press in the July issue of Cancer Cell. The findings reveal a new treatment strategy that could reduce tumor invasiveness and improve survival in these drug-resistant patients. "Understanding how and why these tumors adopt this invasive behavior is critical to being able to prevent this recurrence pattern and maximizing the benefits ...

Investigators reporting in the July issue of the Cell Press journal Cancer Cell have found that blocking a fundamental process deep within cancer cells can selectively kill them and spare normal cells. For more than a century, clinicians have known that abnormalities of the nucleolus—a small, rounded mass within the cell nucleus—can be diagnostic for cancer. The nucleolus is where certain genes are read to form the components of ribosomes, the cellular machines that make proteins. While abnormalities in the nucleolus are known to be diagnostic for cancer, researchers ...

Stem cells that come from a specific part of the developing brain help fuel the growth of brain tumors caused by an inherited condition, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report. Scientists showed in mice that disabling a gene linked to a common pediatric tumor disorder, neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), made stem cells from one part of the brain proliferate rapidly. But the same genetic deficit had no effect on stem cells from another brain region. The results can be explained by differences in the way stem cells from these regions ...

So far it has seemed an irreparable limitation of human perception that we strain to perceive things in the very rapid succession of, say, less than half a second. Psychologists call this deficit "attentional blink." We'll notice that first car spinning out in our path, but maybe not register the one immediately beyond it. It turns out, we can learn to do better after all. In a new study researchers now based at Brown University overcame the blink with just a little bit of training that was never been tried before. "Attention is a very important component of visual perception," ...

NEW YORK, 9 July 2012—Punitive laws and human rights abuses are costing lives, wasting money and stifling the global AIDS response, according to a report by the Global Commission on HIV and the Law, an independent body of global leaders and experts. The Commission report, "HIV and the Law: Risks, Rights and Health," finds evidence that governments in every region of the world have wasted the potential of legal systems in the fight against HIV. The report also concludes that laws based on evidence and human rights strengthen the global AIDS response - these laws exist and ...

A team of scientists led by Assistant Professor Ganesh S Anand and Professor Linda J. Kenney from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Department of Biological Sciences (DBS) and the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) has discovered how bacteria respond to salts in their environment and the ways in which salts can alter the behaviour of specialised salt sensor bacterial proteins. This novel finding sheds light on how microbes detect levels of salts or sugars in their watery environments – a problem in biology that has been studied for more than 30 years. The NUS ...

Rice consumers concerned about reports that rice is linked to diabetes can rest assured that rice can be part of a healthy diet, with scientists finding that the glycemic index (GI) of rice varies a lot from one type of rice to another, with most varieties scoring a low to medium GI. The findings of the research, which analyzed 235 types of rice from around the world, is good news because it not only means rice can be part of a healthy diet for the average consumer, but it also means people with diabetes, or at risk of diabetes, can select the right rice to help maintain ...

Researchers at the RUB and from Berkeley have used metal complexes to modify peptide hormones. In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they report for the first time on the three-dimensional structure of the resulting metal-peptide compounds. "With this work, we have laid the molecular foundation for the development of better medicines" says Prof. Raphael Stoll from the Faculty of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Ruhr-University. The team examined hormones that influence the sensation of pain and tumour growth. Peptide hormones have many functions in the body Hormones ...

Photographs of faces may not be adequate proof of a person's identity and this could have serious implications for the accuracy of passport photographs in determining identity. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that an image of a person may look strikingly different from one image to the next. We are told not to smile in our passport photos as a smile distorts the face; but the opposite may actually be true, and a poker face may be the one which distorts normal facial features. Dr Rob Jenkins and his team at the University of Glasgow ...

Robust evidence exists for some wound care interventions, but there are still gaps in current knowledge requiring international consensus and further high-level clinical evidence, according to a paper published online by BJS, the British Journal of Surgery. Researchers analysed the findings of 44 Cochrane Systematic Reviews (CSRs) published by the Cochrane Wounds and Peripheral Vascular Disease Groups up to June 2011. The reviews covered CSRs on acute wounds and chronic wounds such as venous, pressure, diabetic and arterial ulcers. This enabled them to identify a number ...

An international team that includes scientists from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has published a reconstruction of the climate in northern Europe over the last 2,000 years based on the information provided by tree-rings. Professor Dr. Jan Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC. In so doing, the researchers have been able for the first time to precisely demonstrate that the long-term trend over the past ...

Jena (Germany) It was one of the gifts of the Magi – in addition to myrrh and gold they offered frankincense to the newly born baby Jesus. Since the ancient world the aromatic fragrance of burning Boswellia resin has been part of many religious ceremonies and is still used as a means to indicate special festive atmosphere in the church today. But frankincense can do much more: "The resin from the trunk of Boswellia trees contains anti-inflammatory substances," Professor Dr. Oliver Werz of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) says. The chair of Pharmaceutical ...

Despite having more leisure time overall, stressed-out Americans report having less 'quality time' to enjoy themselves, particularly those with little or no education. This is according to the findings of a new paper entitled Leisure Inequality in the US: 1965-2003, from Queen Mary, University of London, the University of Oxford and the University of Zaragoza. The research offers insights on how leisure inequality across educational groups has evolved in the last four decades in the United States in contrast with the inequality in wages and expenditure over the same ...

Satellite measurements show that nitrogen dioxide in the lower atmosphere over parts of Europe and the US has fallen over the past decade. More than 15 years of atmospheric observations have revealed trends in air quality. As the world's population increases, economies in many countries are also growing and populations are concentrating in large cities. With the use of fossil fuels still on the rise, pollution in large cities is also increasing. Nitrogen dioxide is an important pollutant in the troposphere, the lowest portion of our atmosphere. Satellite observations ...

The northern part of the North Island of New Zealand is marked at approximately 38° S latitude by a distinct ecological boundary known as the "kauri line". This region forms the southern distributional limit of many plants and is the warmest part of New Zealand. A number of endemic plants are found there. Ecologists have recently discovered a new species of wirerush from peatlands north of the "kauri line". Wetlands serve vital ecological functions by providing wildlife habitat, carbon storage, nutrient regulation and water balance. New Zealand has a number of wetland ...

For the first time, researchers at Aalto University in Finland have located where the sounds associated with the northern lights are created. The auroral sounds that have been described in folktales and by wilderness wanderers are formed about 70 meters above the ground level in the measured case. Researchers located the sound sources by installing three separate microphones in an observation site where the auroral sounds were recorded. They then compared sounds captured by the microphones and determined the location of the sound source. The aurora borealis was seen at ...

During a meeting in Banaue, The Philippines, scientists from 21 research institutions from Germany, Vietnam, The Philippines, Thailand, UK, Bulgaria and Spain raised several concerns on the future of the rice ecosystems in South East Asia. The meeting was organized within the framework of the international project LEGATO that deals with the multiple risks for rice ecosystems arising from various aspects of global change. "Threats to sustainable rice production are diverse and come from different directions. Global change is a very important threat, but certainly not the ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A lipid that helps lotion soften the skin also helps cells find and stay in the right location in the body by ensuring they keep their "antennae" up, scientists report. Each cell has an antenna, or cilium, that senses the environment then determines where to go and what to do when it arrives, said Dr. Erhard Bieberich, biochemist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Health Sciences University. "A cell is blind; it does not see, it does not feel; it doesn't know where it is," Bieberich said. "It needs to have an organelle that senses where it ...

A new study published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine reveals that handlebar position is associated with changes in genital sensation in female cyclists. Led by Marsha K. Guess, MD, MS, of Yale University School of Medicine, researchers evaluated bicycle set-up in terms of the relationship between the seat and the handlebars. 48 competitive women cyclists were studied. Researchers measured saddle pressures and sensation in the genital region to see if placing handlebars in different positions affects pressure and sensation in the genital region. Results showed that ...

BOSTON (July 9, 2012) -- A growing number of studies imply that children born to obese mothers face health problems stemming from the womb. New research from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and The Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center suggests that low iron status is among these health problems, according to an analysis of maternal hepcidin, a hormone that is key in keeping iron levels balanced. The study enrolled 15 obese pregnant women with body mass index (BMI) greater than 30 and 15 healthy weight ...

An analysis of published data in the medical literature has found that vertebroplasty can provide more pain relief and better function for patients with osteoporotic vertebral compression fractures than nonoperative treatments. Vertebroplasty, a medical procedure for reducing pain caused by this type of fracture, involves the injection of an acrylic cement into the body of the fractured vertebrae for stabilization. According to Ming-Min Shi and colleagues from Zhejiang University in the People's Republic of China, this therapy can have similar or additional benefits over ...

HOUSTON – (July 9, 2012) – Research teams from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and Paris, France have discovered a gene defect linked to a cluster of systemic complications, including life-threatening thoracic aortic disease and intracranial aneurysms. The new syndrome is similar, but distinct from known syndromes such as Marfan and Loeys-Dietz syndrome. Genome-wide analysis of two unrelated families, one in the United States and one in France, identified mutations in transforming growth factor beta-2 (TGFB2), which plays a key role ...

(July 9, 2012) — After 10 years of debate regarding the risks and benefits of hormone therapy, 15 top medical organizations have come together to issue a statement of agreement regarding the benefits of hormone therapy for symptomatic menopausal women. It was July 9, 2002, when the controversial, highly publicized Women's Health Initiative (WHI) published its assessment of hormone therapy for the prevention of chronic disease and concluded that risks exceeded benefits. The new joint statement, prepared by The North American Menopause Society (NAMS), the American Society ...

MAYWOOD, IL. -- A Loyola study of high school students provides new evidence that a person's circle of friends may influence his or her weight. Students were more likely to gain weight if they had friends who were heavier than they were. Conversely, students were more likely to get trimmer -- or gain weight at a slower pace -- if their friends were leaner than they were. Results of the study by David Shoham, PhD, and colleagues are published in the journal PLoS ONE. Shoham is an assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine & Epidemiology of Loyola ...