Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing a solid composite material to help cool small, powerful microelectronics used in defense systems. The material, composed of silver and diamond, promises an exceptional degree of thermal conductivity compared to materials currently used for this application. The research is focused on producing a silver-diamond thermal shim of unprecedented thinness – 250 microns or less. The ratio of silver to diamond in the material can be tailored to allow the shim to be bonded with low thermal-expansion stress ...

New findings published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, confirm the risk of breast cancer among women who are obese and not physically active, and suggests additional mechanisms beyond estrogen. Scientists from the Women's Health Initiative have found a relationship between obesity, physical activity and triple-negative breast cancer, a subtype of breast cancer characterized by a lack of estrogen, progesterone and HER2 expression. Triple-negative breast cancers account for about 10 to 20 percent ...

SEATTLE – Millions of people worldwide may be at risk of early death from diabetes and related cardiovascular illnesses because of poor diagnosis and ineffective treatment, a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington shows. The study examines diabetes diagnosis, treatment, and management in Colombia, England, Iran, Mexico, Scotland, Thailand, and the United States. In the United States alone, nearly 90% of adult diabetics – more than 16 million adults aged 35 and older – have blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol ...

EDITOR'S PICK - DREADD-ing your next meal In the face of the growing obesity epidemic, much research has focused on the neuronal control of feeding behavior. Agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons express three proteins that have been implicated in changes in energy balance, but the studies linking AgRP neurons to feeding behavior have produced mixed results. To directly analyze the role of AgRP neurons, Bradford Lowell and colleagues, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used DREADD technology (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) ...

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the team have created a microscope which shatters the record for the smallest object the eye can see, beating the diffraction limit of light. Previously, the standard optical microscope can only see items around one micrometre – 0.001 millimetres – clearly. But now, by combining an optical microscope with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the 'microsphere nanoscope', the Manchester researchers can see 20 times smaller – 50 nanometres ((5 x 10-8m) – under normal lights. This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy. This ...

Intensive adherence counseling around the time of HIV treatment initiation significantly reduces poor adherence and virologic treatment failure in sub-Saharan Africa whereas using an alarm device has no effect, according to a study in this week's PLoS Medicine by Michael Chung from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and colleagues. The findings of this study define an adherence counseling protocol that is effective; these findings are relevant to other HIV clinics caring for large numbers of patients in sub-Saharan Africa. As poor adherence to HIV treatment ...

Effectiveness and cost effectiveness of expanding harm reduction and antiretroviral therapy in a mixed HIV epidemic: a modeling analysis for Ukraine A new study from Stanford researchers published in PLoS Medicine makes the case that a combination of methadone substitution therapy and anti-retroviral treatment would have the greatest effect on reducing new infections and improving quality of life in a region where HIV is spreading rapidly among intravenous drug users. In the past decade, an epidemic of HIV has swept through Ukraine, fueled mostly by intravenous drug ...

Despite a long-standing requirement for medical device makers to include women in studies they submit to the Food and Drug Administration for device approval, only a few include enough women or analyze how the devices work specifically in women, according to research reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. "Women and men differ in their size, bleeding tendencies, and other factors that are directly relevant to how the devices will work," said Rita F. Redberg, M.D., M.Sc., senior author of the study and professor of medicine and director of Women's ...

A new study offers critical insight into the biochemistry of a rare and fatal form of epilepsy known as Lafora disease, a genetic condition that typically strikes children in their teens. The disease is characterized by the buildup of a "wrecked" form of glycogen, a stored form of glucose, in the brain and specifically in neurons. It now appears those errors and the structural problems they cause are all because the enzyme that normally builds glycogen is prone to making mistakes, according to the report in Cell Metabolism. That enzyme, known as glycogen synthase, usually ...

SAN FRANCISCO–Teens, children, and even infants sometimes require corneal transplants, although most such surgeries are performed in adults. Australian researchers led by Keryn A. Williams, PhD, tracked transplant success and visual outcomes in 640 young patients who received new corneas between 1985 and 2009 and report on their work in the March issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Williams' team found that the highest rate of transplant success occurred in adolescent patients treated for keratoconus. About 86 percent of transplants ...

In the face of the growing obesity epidemic, much research has focused on the neuronal control of feeding behavior. Agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons express three proteins that have been implicated in changes in energy balance, but the studies linking AgRP neurons to feeding behavior have produced mixed results. To directly analyze the role of AgRP neurons, Bradford Lowell and colleagues, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used DREADD technology (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) to specifically control the activation and ...

For individuals of white European descent, certain variations of the gene HMGA1 are associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common metabolic disorder that affects nearly 250 million people worldwide, and is associated with major diabetes-related complications, including retinopathy, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. Insulin resistance in muscle, liver, and fat tissue is a major feature of most patients with type 2 DM. There is considerable evidence that heredity is a major ...

Among patients with sickle cell disease, treatment of a vaso-occlusive crisis (characterized by episodes of severe pain) in the hospital with inhalation of nitric oxide gas for up to 3 days did not result in a shorter time to resolution of the pain, compared to patients who received placebo, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA. Vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) is common among patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), with an average length of hospitalization during VOC of 4.5 days for children ages 10 to 14 years. As many as 20 percent of patients hospitalized ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research has identified a small subset of normal white blood cells in the body that gives rise to a rare incurable form of leukemia. The study, led by investigators at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James), shows that large granular lymphocyte leukemia can occur in a small subset of white blood cells called NKT cells. NKT cells share features of immune cells called T lymphocytes and features of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells. ...

New research on the genomics of autism confirms that the genetic roots of the disorder are highly complicated, but that common biological themes underlie this complexity. In the current study, researchers have implicated several new candidate genes and genomic variants as contributors to autism, and conclude that many more remain to be discovered. While the gene alterations are individually very rare, they mostly appear to disrupt genes that play important functional roles in brain development and nerve signaling. While an association between genomic variants in certain ...

Some shark species are able to navigate to specific locations up to 50km away, a new study published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Animal Ecology has found. Re-analysing tracking data from tagged sharks, ecologists found that while some species such as blacktip reef sharks swim in a pattern known as a "random walk", others such as tiger sharks can at times hunt for prey or mates by using "directed walks", accurately navigating long distances across open ocean, often at night. To maximise lifetime fitness, animals should optimise search patterns for finding ...

A research group led by scientists from the University of Bristol has demonstrated the quantum operation of new components that will enable compact circuits for future photonic quantum computers. Quantum computers, holding the great promise of tremendous computational power for particular tasks, have been the goal of worldwide efforts by scientists for several years. Tremendous advances have been made but there is still a long way to go. Building a quantum computer will require a large number of interconnected components – gates – which work in a similar way to the ...

Inhaling nitric oxide gas does not reduce pain crises or shorten hospital stays in people living with sickle cell disease, according to the results of a new study sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. "Nitric Oxide for Inhalation in the Acute Treatment of Sickle Cell Pain Crisis," will be published in the March 2 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Sickle cell disease is an inherited disorder affecting between 70,000 and 100,000 Americans. The disease causes red blood cells, which ...

Cannabis use during adolescence and young adulthood increases the risk of psychotic symptoms, while continued cannabis use may increase the risk for psychotic disorder in later life, concludes a new study published on bmj.com today. Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in the world, particularly among adolescents, and is consistently linked with an increased risk for mental illness. However, it is not clear whether the link between cannabis and psychosis is causal, or whether it is because people with psychosis use cannabis to self medicate their symptoms. So ...

Postmenopausal women who smoke or used to smoke have up to a 16% higher risk of developing breast cancer compared to women who have never smoked, finds research published on bmj.com today. The study also says that women who have had extensive exposure to passive smoking, either as children or in adulthood, may also have an excess risk of developing breast cancer. While some previous studies have indicated that smoking increases the risk of breast cancer, the theory that passive smoking is also a risk factor, remains controversial. The researchers, led by Dr Juhua ...

Have the suspension of central performance management of the 18 week referral to treatment target, and a relaxation of the four hour Accident and Emergency target, changed waiting times asks John Appleby, Chief Economist at the King's Fund in this week's BMJ? The English National Health Service was once notorious for its excessive waiting times. In December 1999, nearly 160,000 patients were still waiting over six months for their first outpatient appointment and over 50,000 were still waiting over a year for a bed in hospital. But since 2000, tough targets imposed ...

In the case of post-traumatic stress disorder, not all symptoms are created equal. In an effort to better treat PTSD, a study published March 1 in the journal Psychiatric Services is the first to examine which problems associated with PTSD actually correspond to lower quality of life, as indicated by the patient's willingness to die sooner or to risk life-threatening treatment to relieve their symptoms. PTSD is more costly than any other anxiety disorder. As many as 300,000 veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan currently have PTSD, with costs for their care estimated ...

DARIEN, IL – A new study in the March 1 issue of the journal Sleep indicates that the ability of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to remain vigilant and attentive deteriorated significantly after losing less than one hour of nightly sleep for a week. The study suggests that even moderate reductions in sleep duration can affect neurobehavioral functioning, which may have a negative impact on the academic performance of children with ADHD. Results of multivariate analyses of variance show that after mean nightly sleep loss of about 55 minutes for ...

Scientists at the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute have discovered how a change in growth hormone activity in mice leads to fatty liver disease, a condition whose human counterpart is of rising concern worldwide. Disruption of a key protein in the pathway that responds to growth hormone could explain how fatty liver disease develops, the researchers said, but may also offer insights into how our bodies regulate fat in general. The team's findings and the first reports of a mouse model to study the pathway will appear in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., March 1, 2011 – When patients receive a bone marrow transplant, they are getting a new population of hematopoietic stem cells. Fresh stem cells are needed when a patient is low on red blood cells, as in anemia, or white blood cells, which can be caused by cancer or even cancer treatments such as irradiation or chemotherapy. The problem is that a bone marrow transplant might not succeed because the transplanted stem cells don't live long enough or because they proliferate too well, leading to leukemia. To help determine how long a bone marrow (stem ...