A large study in people at risk of diabetes has found a direct association between the presence of a small genetic alteration in a hormone receptor and increased body fat and insulin resistance. The results, to be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston, suggest an adverse role for a previously described genetic variant, the BclI polymorphism. "Our findings support the idea that even small variations in hormone receptor sensitivity can have metabolic implications, such as obesity or diabetes," said co-author Bastiaan Havekes, MD, PhD, ...

A picture may be worth a thousand calories, a new study suggests. Looking at images of high-calorie foods stimulates the brain's appetite control center and results in an increased desire for food, according to the study, which will be presented Monday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "This stimulation of the brain's reward areas may contribute to overeating and obesity," said the study's senior author, Kathleen Page, MD, assistant professor at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "We thought this was a striking finding, because ...

Calcium and vitamin D supplements are associated with high calcium levels in the blood and urine, which could increase the risk of kidney stones, a new study finds. The results will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "The use of calcium and vitamin D supplementation may not be as benign as previously thought," said principal investigator J. Christopher Gallagher, M.D., professor and director of the Bone Metabolism Unit at Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, NE. "Pending further information, people should not exceed ...

Women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) who also have obstructive sleep apnea have at least three times the risk of having prediabetes compared with women who do not have PCOS, according to a new study. The results will be presented Tuesday at The Endocrine Society's 94th Annual Meeting in Houston. "In the last few years, sleep apnea has been found to be a frequent comorbidity [coexisting condition] with PCOS, and our study shows that women who have both conditions are at greatest risk of metabolic disturbances such as prediabetes," said the study's senior author, ...

A more accurate, faster diagnostic test for Group B Streptococcal infection in babies has been reported in the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The new test could allow better treatment and management of the disease and reduce the risk of mortality among newborns. Group B streptococcus (GBS) infections, caused by the bacterium Streptococcus agalactiae, are the most common cause of meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia in newborns. In 2010 there were 506 cases of GBS infections in infants across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Health Protection Agency (HPA) researchers ...

A rare kind of mineral which scientists hope could be used to remove toxic metals and radioactive species from the environment played a similar, crucial role early in Earth's history. Research carried out by an international team of leading biogeochemists suggests for the first time that 'green rust' was likely widespread in ancient oceans and may have played a vital role in the creation of our early atmosphere. Led by Newcastle University, UK, the study shows that during the Precambrian period, green rust 'scavenged' heavy metals such as nickel out of the water. Nickel ...

Women who have a fear of childbirth spend longer in labour than women who have no such fear, suggests new research published today (27 June) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. Between 5 and 20% of pregnant women have a fear of childbirth. Various factors have been associated with increased prevalence of fear of childbirth, including young maternal age, being a first-time mother, pre-existing psychological problems, lack of social support and a history of abuse or adverse obstetric events. This Norwegian study looked at 2206 women with ...

Women who regularly eat a low carbohydrate, high protein diet are at greater risk of cardiovascular disease (such as heart disease and stroke) than those who do not, a study published on bmj.com today suggests. Although the actual numbers are small (an extra 4-5 cases of cardiovascular disease per 10,000 women per year) the authors say that this is a 28% increase in the number of cases and that these results are worrying in a population of young women who may be exposed to these dietary patterns and face the excess risk for many years. Low carbohydrate-high protein ...

Teaching new mums about healthy eating and active play can help cut the risk of their child being overweight or obese, a study published today on bmj.com finds. Childhood obesity is a serious health challenge affecting more than 43 million preschool children worldwide (6.7%) with studies showing it could have adverse effects on later health. Preschool children who are obese or overweight have a high chance of carrying this into adulthood and it has been argued that efforts to prevent this should start earlier in life. Methods of feeding children, when they start eating ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- You could say that the odds of seeing it were astronomical. Yet there it was, 10 billion light-years from Earth, the most massive galaxy cluster ever seen at such a distance – with a gravity field so strong that it distorted the light of the galaxy behind it in a rare display called gravitational lensing. "When I first saw it, I kept staring at it, thinking it would go away," said University of Florida astronomer Anthony Gonzalez, lead author of the study announcing the discovery. "The galaxy behind the cluster is a typical run-of-the-mill galaxy ...

Chevy Chase, MD— In a Statement of Principles unveiled today, The Endocrine Society proposes a streamlined definition for endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) and offers recommendations that will strengthen the ability of current screening programs to identify EDCs. An endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) is a chemical or mixture of chemicals in the environment, that can interfere with any aspect of hormone action. The Endocrine Society's Scientific Statement published in 2009 provided an exhaustive summary of the scientific background that justifies concern for the effects ...

A multicenter trial showed that nearly half of young patients with early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma can be cured without undergoing either irradiation or intensive chemotherapy that would leave them at risk for second cancers, infertility, heart and other problems later. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators led this multi-institution study, which focused on pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma patients without widespread disease or symptoms such as weight loss, fever and night sweats. The findings will likely spur efforts to identify patients with even more advanced ...

A lifestyle that features fresh foods and limited use of products likely to contain environmental chemicals has been shown to reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as BPA and phthalates, in a small population study. EDCs are linked to a number of adverse health complications including neuro-developmental delays, behavioral issues and fertility problems. They are produced by the millions of pounds per year and found extensively in a range of products that contain certain plastics. Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine and University of ...

UCLA researchers discovered that a diet enriched with a popular omega-3 fatty acid and an ingredient of curry spice preserved walking ability in rats with spinal-cord injury. Published June 26 in the Journal of Neurosurgery: Spine, the findings suggest that these dietary supplements help repair nerve cells and maintain neurological function after degenerative damage to the neck. "Normal aging often narrows the spinal canal, putting pressure on the spinal cord and injuring tissue," explained principal investigator Dr. Langston Holly, associate professor of neurosurgery ...

A new video article in JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments, describes a novel procedure to monitor brain function and aid in functional mapping of patients with diseases such as epilepsy. This procedure illustrates the use of pre-placed electrodes for cortical mapping in the brains of patients who are undergoing surgery to minimize the frequency of seizures. This technique, while invasive, provides real-time analysis of brain function at a much higher resolution than current technologies. Typically, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography ...

June 26, 2012 – The promise of ultrafast quantum computing has moved a step closer to reality with a technique to create rewritable computer chips using a beam of light. Researchers from The City College of New York (CCNY) and the University of California Berkeley (UCB) used light to control the spin of an atom's nucleus in order to encode information. The technique could pave the way for quantum computing, a long-sought leap forward toward computers with processing speeds many times faster than today's. The group will publish their results on June 26 in Nature Communications. ...

PASADENA, Calif.—Imagine if doctors could perform surgery without ever having to cut through your skin. Or if they could diagnose cancer by seeing tumors inside the body with a procedure that is as simple as an ultrasound. Thanks to a technique developed by engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), all of that may be possible in the not-so-distant future. The new method enables researchers to focus light efficiently inside biological tissue. While the previous limit for how deep light could be focused was only about one millimeter, the Caltech team ...

Researchers in Finland and Germany have developed an open-source software that will make it significantly easier to process bioimaging data. The software, named BioImageXD, will help in analysing cell and tissue functions. The work to develop the software has been funded by the Academy of Finland (through the FinNano Research Programme), the European Union and Tekes – the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation. Version 1.0 of BioImageXD has been accepted for publication in Nature Methods, the top journal in the field. Among other things, the BioImageXD software ...

According to a study by the Rey Juan Carlos University, data on objective corruption in Spain are higher in politics than in administrative-official institutions. However, the perception of Spaniards is a lot higher. Researchers at the Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC) have analysed how corruption is perceived in Spain. They believe that the "echo phenomenon" is fundamental when trying to understand the origin of corruption because it creates social attitudes which lead to the unfulfillment of civic duties. "As citizens not only do we act according to our own interests, ...

Understanding how a species battles to sustain itself in a challenging habitat is a cornerstone of ecological research; now scientists have applied this approach to science itself to discover why women are being driven out of academia. Their results, published in Oikos, reveals how a gender imbalance in science and academia is maintained by institutional barriers. "In ecology a species can only establish itself and develop if the population exceeds a certain threshold," said Dr Katherine O'Brien from the University of Queensland, Australia. "It's similar for researchers ...

Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have invented a new toilet system that will turn human waste into electricity and fertilisers and also reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90 per cent compared to current toilet systems in Singapore. Dubbed the No-Mix Vacuum Toilet, it has two chambers that separate the liquid and solid wastes. Using vacuum suction technology, such as those used in aircraft lavatories, flushing liquids would now take only 0.2 litres of water while flushing solids require just one litre. The existing conventional ...

Nanodiamonds, pieces of carbon less than ten-thousandths the diameter of a human hair, have been found to help loosen crystallized fat from surfaces in a project led by research chemists at the University of Warwick that transforms the ability of washing powders to shift dirt in eco friendly low temperature laundry cycles. These new findings tackle a problem that forces consumers to wash some of their laundry at between 60 and 90 degrees centigrade more than 80 times a year. Even with modern biological washing powders, some fats and dirt cannot be removed at the lower ...

For companies in Germany, web accessibility has never been a compelling issue until now – this was also confirmed by a series of tests conducted in 2011 by the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT in Sankt Augustin. The scientists at the Web Compliance Center used their analysis tools to test the "web compliance" – or adherence to international web standards – among the Internet sites of German companies listed on the DAX. The outcome: 90 percent of the websites exhibited substantial flaws. For instance, important data could only be found after much ...

Physicists investigating a recent crowd disaster in Germany found that one of the key causes was that at some point the crowd dynamics turned turbulent, akin to behaviour found in unstable fluid flows. The study, led by Dirk Helbing from the Risk Center at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, Switzerland, is published in EPJ Data Science¹. Never before have crowd disasters been studied by relying on a qualitative analysis of large public data sets. These include media and public authority reports, YouTube videos, Google Earth maps, 360˚ photographs, ...

Aircraft turbulence guidelines should be rewritten after new research revealed thunderstorms could produce unexpected turbulence more than 100km away from storm cells. The research by University of Melbourne and the Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science researcher, Dr Todd Lane, has highlighted the impact of atmospheric gravity waves caused by thunderstorms and how air safety guidelines have not taken them into account. "It is likely that many reports of encounters with turbulence are caused by thunderstorm generated gravity waves, making them far more ...