Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a safe and effective option for the treatment of dysplastic Barrett's esophagus that attains lasting response, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Progression of disease, which can precede cancer, was rare in patients who underwent RFA treatment, and there was no procedure- or cancer-related mortality. "This study reports the longest duration of follow-up of patients undergoing radiofrequency ablation for pre-cancerous Barrett's esophagus," said Nicholas J. ...

A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist is trying to learn what is causing the decline in bumble bee populations and also is searching for a species that can serve as the next generation of greenhouse pollinators. Bumble bees, like honey bees, are important pollinators of native plants and are used to pollinate greenhouse crops like peppers and tomatoes. But colonies of Bombus occidentalis used for greenhouse pollination began to suffer from disease problems in the late 1990s and companies stopped rearing them. Populations of other bumble bee species are also ...

CINCINNATI – A biochemical pathway long associated with diarrhea and intestinal function may provide a new therapeutic target for treating ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) other neuropsychiatric disorders, according to a team of scientists from China and the United States reporting Aug. 11 in Science. Scientists have for the last quarter century studied the intestinal membrane receptor protein, guanylyl cyclase-C (GC-C) for its role in diarrheal disease and other intestinal functions, according to Mitchell Cohen, M.D., U.S. author on the study and director ...

COLLEGE STATION – Though it may not sound very glamorous, a new method of extracting ammonium from liquid animal manure could be exciting news for both confined animal operations and environmental groups, according to a Texas AgriLife Extension Service engineer. The method uses gas-permeable membrane technology that tests have shown could remove 50 percent of the dissolved ammonium in liquid manure in 20 days. The removed ammonium is "not scrubbed but captured," said Dr. Saqib Mukhtar, AgriLife Extension engineer and interim associate department head of the Texas A&M ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 11—The steady improvement in speed and power of modern electronics may soon hit the brakes unless new ways are found to pack more structures into microscopic spaces. Unfortunately, engineers are already approaching the limit of what light—the choice tool for "tweezing" tiny features—can achieve. But there may be a way of reaching beyond this so-called "diffraction limit" by precisely steering, in real time, a curve-shaped beam of weird "virtual particles" known as surface plasmons. This technique, described in the Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics ...

Dr. Bateman, dentist in South Charlotte, of Bateman Family Dental is now offering patients special offers for more affordable dental care. From complimentary consultations to Invisalign, patients can receive a variety of specials to best fit their dental needs and budget. Patients can visit the practice website for Dr. Bateman, dentist in South Charlotte, NC, to view and print various dental specials that are currently available. From the homepage, patients can simply click on the "special offers" link to find available dental deals. For those who are coming ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A visiting researcher from Sweden in the Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences' Biology Department has led an international team in culturing, characterizing and formally naming a new class of fungi that previously had only been identified through DNA sequencing from environmental samples. Structures on Roots The new fungal class Archaeorhizomyces, previously known as Soil Clone Group 1 (SCG1), has now been found in more than 50 ecological studies of soil fungi. Prior to the work reported by the team led by Swedish biologist Anna Rosling, ...

BOULDER—Although Arctic sea ice appears fated to melt as the climate continues to warm, the ice may temporarily stabilize or somewhat expand at times over the next few decades, new research indicates. The computer modeling study, by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, reinforces previous findings by other research teams that the level of Arctic sea ice loss observed in recent decades cannot be explained by natural causes alone, and that the ice will eventually disappear during summer if climate change continues. But in an unexpected new result, ...

The sex hormone oestrogen could help protect women from cardiovascular disease by keeping the body's immune system in check, new research from Queen Mary, University of London has revealed. The study has shown that the female sex hormone works on white blood cells to stop them from sticking to the insides of blood vessels, a process which can lead to dangerous blockages. The results could help explain why cardiovascular disease rates tend to be higher in men and why they soar in women after the menopause. The researchers compared white blood cells from men and pre-menopausal ...

Astronomers have discovered the darkest known exoplanet - a distant, Jupiter-sized gas giant known as TrES-2b. Their measurements show that TrES-2b reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any planet or moon in our solar system. "TrES-2b is considerably less reflective than black acrylic paint, so it's truly an alien world," said astronomer David Kipping of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), lead author on the paper reporting the research. In our solar system, Jupiter is swathed in bright clouds ...

When a research team asked cocaine addicts to choose, hypothetically, between money now or cocaine of greater value later, "preference was almost exclusively for the money now," said Warren K., Bickel, professor in the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute, director of the Advanced Recovery Research Center, and professor of psychology in the College of Science at Virginia Tech. This result is significantly different from previous studies where a subject chooses between some money now or more money later. Hollywood portrays cocaine addicts as people who will do anything ...

The work of molecular biologist Joseph M. Miano, Ph.D., and clinician Craig Benson, M.D., seems worlds apart: Miano helps head the Aab Cardiovascular Research Institute and Benson is chief resident of the combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics program at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Though the chance of their professional paths crossing was highly unlikely, shared enthusiasm, intense curiosity and a little detective work led to a unique collaboration and important new insights on the inner workings of the human genome. Together, Miano and Benson created ...

Critical Information Network (CiNet), LLC, announces the release of its newly updated Electrical 1 training series designed to help companies improve the electrical maintenance practices of workers and meet the demands of today's busy training manager. According to OSHA and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), electrical accidents and the resulting fires cause millions of dollars in damages, countless injuries and life threatening workplace events every year. The tragedy is that many of these could have been avoided by simple maintenance repairs supported ...

(WASHINGTON, August 11, 2011) – According to a study published in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), researchers have reported that administration of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF), a drug that releases stem cells from the bone marrow into the blood, is unlikely to put healthy stem cell donors at risk for later development of abnormalities involving loss or gains of chromosomes that have been linked to hematologic disorders such as myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) and acute myeloid leukemia (AML). G-CSF therapy is given to healthy ...

While many Britons enjoyed the recent heatwave, taking the chance to lie back and top up their tans, for others it only served to heighten their fears of damp armpits and clammy hands. As a result, Transform Cosmetic Surgery Group recorded a 45% surge in enquiries into use of BOTOX injections a treatment for excessive sweating over a three-day period of the heatwave as the nation become more perspiration-conscious. Known as hyperhidrosis, the condition sees sweat glands become overactive, something often made worse during periods of hot weather. During the procedure, ...

By isolating cells from patients' spinal tissue within a few days after death, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have developed a new model of the paralyzing disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). They found that during the disease, cells called astrocytes become toxic to nerve cells – a result previously found in animal models but not in humans. The new model could be used to investigate many more questions about ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. ALS can run in families, but in the majority of cases, it is sporadic, with no known ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Viruses fill the ocean and have a significant effect on ocean biology, specifically marine microbiology, according to a professor of biology at UC Santa Barbara and his collaborators. Craig A. Carlson, professor with UCSB's Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, is the senior author of a study of marine viruses published this week by the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal, of the Nature Publishing Group. The new findings, resulting from a decade of research, reveal striking recurring patterns of marine virioplankton ...

PASADENA, Calif.— Like scars that remain on the skin long after a wound has healed, earthquake fault lines can be traced on Earth's surface long after their initial rupture. Typically, this line of intersection between the area where the fault slips and the ground is more complicated at the surface than at depth. But a new study of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake in Mexico reveals a reversal of this trend. While the fault involved in the event appeared to be superficially straight, the fault zone is warped and complicated at depth. The study—led by researchers ...

MADISON, WI, JULY 11, 2011 -- Although phosphorus is an essential nutrient for all life forms, essential amounts of the chemical element can cause water quality problems in rivers, lakes, and coastal zones. High concentrations of phosphorus in aquatic ecosystems are often associated with human activities in the surrounding area, such as agriculture and urban development. However, relationships between specific human sources of phosphorus and phosphorus concentrations in aquatic ecosystems are yet to be understood. Establishing these relationships could allow for the development, ...

WHAT:Pyrazinamide has been used in combination with other drugs as a first-line treatment for people with tuberculosis (TB) since the 1950s, but exactly how the drug works has not been well understood. Now, researchers have discovered a key reason why the drug effectively shortens the required duration of TB therapy. The finding potentially paves the way for the development of new drugs that can help eliminate TB in an infected individual even more rapidly. The study was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National ...

In 1991, Carl Lewis was both the fastest man on earth and a profound long jumper, perhaps the greatest track-and-field star of all time in the prime of his career. On June 14th of that year, however, Carl Lewis was human. Leroy Burrell blazed through the 100-meters, besting him by a razor-thin margin of three-hundredths of a second. In the time it takes the shutter to capture a single frame of video, Lewis's three-year-old world record was gone. In a paper just published in the journal Neuron, a team at the Stanford School of Engineering, led by electrical engineers Krishna ...

PITTSBURGH—The transport system inside living cells is a well-oiled machine with tiny protein motors hauling chromosomes, neurotransmitters and other vital cargo around the cell. These molecular motors are responsible for a variety of critical transport jobs, but they are not always on the go. They can put themselves into "energy save mode" to conserve cellular fuel and, as a consequence, control what gets moved around the cell, and when. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University and the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research published in the Aug. 12 issue of Science ...

A federal judge in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Florida has ruled that Florida drug crime laws violated a defendant's due process rights. At issue was whether prosecutors must prove that an accused drug trafficker had knowledge of drug possession, which is a fundamental legal principle in American criminal justice and the common law that preceded it. Amendments to Florida's criminal code in 2002 removed the mens rea requirement from the Drug Abuse Prevention and Control law. The term is Latin for "guilty mind" and is best summed ...

August 11, 2011 (Aurora, CO)--In an article published online this week in Nature Genetics, a University of Colorado Cancer Center team in partnership with universities in China and Denmark reports the first genetic sequencing of urothelial (transitional) carcinoma, the most prevalent type of bladder cancer. Recognizing the genetic mutations that make bladder cancer cells different than their healthy neighbors may allow early genetic screenings for cancer and new therapies targeting cells with these mutations. In addition, the mutations the team found are similar to those ...

PITTSBURGH—A growing number of illegal online pharmacies are flooding the web trying to sell dangerous unauthorized prescriptions, according to a new report from cybersecurity experts at Carnegie Mellon University. Report authors Nicolas Christin, associate director of the Information Networking Institute (INI) and a senior systems scientist at the INI and CyLab along with Nektarios Leontiadis from the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP), and Tyler Moore from Wellesley College, found that rogue websites were redirecting consumers to illicit pharmacies. ...