In the most comprehensive study to date to examine the effects of soy on menopause, researchers have found that two daily servings of soy can reduce the frequency and severity of hot flashes by up to 26 percent, compared to a placebo. The findings, published in Menopause: The Journal of the North American Menopause Association, reviewed 19 previous studies that examined more than 1,200 women. Although the effectiveness of soy in alleviating hot flashes has been inconclusive, with some studies suggesting soy to be beneficial and others suggesting otherwise, much of ...

Tropical Storm Daphne has become an extra-tropical storm and is fading fast in the South Pacific Ocean, but not before making its mark on the Fuji Islands. NASA's TRMM satellite compiled rainfall data that revealed flooding rains fell in Fiji. The low pressure area called System 95P strengthened into Tropical cyclone Daphne ( known in Fiji as 19F) at 0300 UTC on April 2, 2012. At that time, Daphne was near 19.8 South and 172.7 East, about 340 miles west-southwest of Suva, Fiji and bringing heavy rains to the islands. By April 2, those heavy rains had claimed at least ...

A powerful weather system moved through eastern Texas and dropped at least 15 tornadoes in the Dallas suburbs. NASA created an animation of data from NOAA's GOES-13 satellite that shows the frontal system moving through the region yesterday. NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13, captures visible and infrared images of weather over the eastern U.S. every 15 minutes, and captured the movement of the weather system that generated the Texas twisters. The 23 second movie runs from April 2 at 1615 UTC through April 4 at 1615 UTC (11:15 a.m. CDT), ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A protocol for controlling quantum information pioneered by researchers at UC Santa Barbara, the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in Delft, the Netherlands, and the Ames Laboratory at Iowa State University could open the door to larger-scale, more accurate quantum computations. Their findings, in a paper titled "Decoherence-protected quantum gates for a hybrid solid-state spin register," are published in the current issue of the journal Nature. "Although interactions between a quantum bit ('qubit') and its environment tend to corrupt the information ...

Watts Water Technologies and HomeSphere, Inc. announced today they have entered into a joint agreement to offer Watts Water Technologies brands BLUCHER, BRAE, Dormont, Watts and Watts Radiant to HomeSphere's network of builders using HomeSphere's technology-driven solutions. Watts Water Technologies, based in North Andover, Mass., joins more than 75 manufacturing brands currently using HomeSphere's BRI lead generation and marketing program to produce new builder leads and strengthen existing business, thus growing their market share through increased homebuilder sales. ...

AURORA, Colo. (April 4, 2012) - Men experience a marked drop in their testosterone levels when taking a targeted therapy to control a specific type of lung cancer. That's according to a University of Colorado Cancer Center study published in the April issue of Cancer, the official journal of the American Cancer Society. Investigators at CU Cancer Center looked at the hormone levels in men with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) positive advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) taking crizotinib, after a 35-year-old man on the drug reported symptoms that are often attributed ...

An international group of researchers has helped to determine that dinosaurs have shaped the Easter eggs we buy in the high street. Scientists investigating whether 70 million-year-old fossil eggs found in the Pyrenees were laid by birds, or their dinosaur ancestors, have published their findings in the current issue of the journal Palaeontology. And researchers from the University of Leicester have extended the study further by comparing Easter egg shapes to those of birds' and dino eggs. The authors of the Pyrenees research, Nieves Lopez-Martinez of the Universidad ...

With over 20,000 Stealth 1.0 e cigarette kits already delivered to active duty troops in combat with no LED at the end, so as to not give position away in a combat situation. The Stealth makes life a little safer from snipers and other dangers of war and police actions. The new Stealth 2.0 battery, announced on the My 7's Blog, comes with a patent pending switch that is as simple as "Tap & Hold", to switch from stealth mode to regular so that you can see your charge information from your batteries. The Stealth battery gives the user the option to have an ...

In 2011, flood damage in the United States caused economic losses of more than $8 billion. In 2010, fires caused more than $11.6 billion in property damage. Each year, floods, fires and other natural disasters combine to create catastrophic financial problems for home and property owners across the country. This expense can be greatly increased if the wrong contractor or restoration specialist is chosen. In some cases, poor restoration can cause irreparable damage to possessions and homes. Superior Restoration, a San Diego-based water damage, fire and mold remediation ...

Scientists could produce new antibacterial treatments by disarming the molecular pumps bacteria use to bring disease causing molecules in contact with animals and humans. Research published today in Nature Structure and Molecular Biology showed a protein complex called the Translocation and Assembly Module (TAM), forms a type of molecular pump, allowing bacteria to shuttle key disease causing molecules from inside the bacterial cell where they are made, to the outside surface, priming the bacteria to infect other organisms. The international research collaboration, ...

There is little argument among experts that autism spectrum disorders (ASD), complex developmental disabilities that vary widely in their severity, are caused by both genetic and environmental factors. Advances in genome sequencing now permit scientists to uncover specific mutations in DNA that are associated with ASD at unprecedented resolution. Such data are vital to understanding the genetic basis of the disorder. A new study co-authored by UCLA researchers has led to a better understanding of the genetic contribution to autism using this new approach. By comparing ...

Researchers reporting in the April Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press publication, have found a way to stop leukemia stem cells in their tracks. The advance in mice suggests that a combination approach to therapy might stamp out chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) for good. That's in contrast to the vast majority of CML patients taking drugs like imatinib (aka Gleevec) today, who often go into remission only to see their cancer return again. It is those lingering leukemia stem cells, which stubbornly resist existing therapies, that fuel the cancer's comeback. "Imatinib inhibits ...

For children with dyslexia, the trouble begins even before they start reading and for reasons that don't necessarily reflect other language skills. That's according to a report published online on April 5 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that for the first time reveals a causal connection between early problems with visual attention and a later diagnosis of dyslexia. "Visual attention deficits are surprisingly way more predictive of future reading disorders than are language abilities at the prereading stage," said Andrea Facoetti of the University of Padua ...

Obesity is increasing worldwide in adults and children and is currently viewed by many as one of the most serious threats to public health. It is likely that solutions to the obesity pandemic will require changes in public policy and that scientific insight into obesity will be invaluable for guiding those changes. Now, a new review of human brain imaging studies published by Cell Press in the journal Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism suggests that a major reason for the dramatic increase in obesity may be a heightened sensitivity to heavily advertised and easily accessible ...

In a study examining the relationship between physical activity and physical function, researchers from Australia discovered that older adults who experienced any level of psychological distress were more than four times more likely to experience functional limitation than those who did not. This study is published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Led by Gregory Kolt, PhD, of the University of Western Sydney, School of Science and Health, researchers analyzed data from nearly 100,000 Australian men and women, aged 65 and older, who participated in the ...

Researchers have generated a new type of human stem cell that can develop into numerous types of specialized cells, including functioning pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin. Called endodermal progenitor (EP) cells, the new cells show two important advantages over embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells: they do not form tumors when transplanted into animals, and they can form functional pancreatic beta cells in the laboratory. "Our cell line offers a powerful new tool for modeling how many human diseases develop," said study leader Paul J. Gadue, ...

April 5, 2012, New York, NY—Consumers nationwide would have received an estimated $2 billion in rebates from health insurers if the new medical loss ratio (MLR) rules enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act had been in effect in 2010, according to a new study from The Commonwealth Fund. The MLR rules, which went into effect in 2011, aim to control private insurance costs for consumers and government by requiring a minimum percentage of premium dollars to be spent on medical care and health care quality improvement, as opposed to administrative costs and corporate profits. ...

The discovery of how a vital immune cell recognises dead and damaged body cells could modernise vaccine technology by 'tricking' cells into launching an immune response, leading to next-generation vaccines that are more specific, more effective and have fewer side-effects. Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have identified, for the first time, how a protein found on the surface of immune cells called dendritic cells recognises dangerous damage and trauma that could signify infection. Dendritic cells are critical for raising the alarm about the presence ...

Internet users from countries with a higher per capita gross domestic product (GDP) are more likely to search for information about the future than information about the past, a quantitative analysis of Google search queries has shown. The findings, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, suggest there may be a link between online behaviour and real-world economic indicators. "The Internet is becoming ever more deeply interwoven into the fabric of global society", said Helen Susannah Moat, research associate in UCL's Department of Mathematics and one of ...

- Yale researchers show in detail how three genes within human embryonic stem cells regulate development, a finding that increases understanding of how to grow these cells for therapeutic purposes. This process, described in the April 6 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, is different in humans than in mice, highlighting the importance of research using human embryonic stem cells. "It is difficult to deduce from the mouse how these cells work in humans," said Natalia Ivanova, assistant professor of genetics in the Yale Stem Cell Center and senior author of the study. ...

Harvard scientists are helping to paint the fullest picture yet of how a handful of factors, particularly world-wide increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, combined to end the last ice age approximately 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. As described in a paper published April 5 in Nature, researchers compiled ice and sedimentary core samples collected from dozens of locations around the world, and found evidence that while changes in Earth's orbit may have touched off a warming trend, increases in CO2 played a far more important role in pushing the planet out of the ice ...

University of British Columbia researchers have identified a gene in balsam fir trees that could facilitate cheaper and more sustainable production of plant-based fixatives and scents used in the fragrance industry and reduce the need for ambergris, a substance harvested from whale barf. When sperm whales consume sharp objects, such as seashells and fish bones, their gut produces a sticky substance to protect their digestive organs. They then regurgitate the mixture – much like cats throwing up fur balls – and the vomit, reacting with seawater, turns into rock-like objects ...

WELLESLEY, Mass.—New research reveals the surprising economics behind the high U.S. teen birth rates, and why Texas teens are giving birth at triple the rate of Massachusetts youth: high income inequality and low opportunity cost. For the first time, Wellesley College economist Phillip B. Levine and University of Maryland economist Melissa Schettini Kearney conducted a large-scale empirical investigation to study the role that income inequality plays in determining early, non-marital childbearing. Using econometric analysis of large-scale data sets, Levine and Kearney ...

International scientists have shown that a dramatic sea-level rise occurred at the onset of the first warm period of the last deglaciation, known as the Bølling warming, approximately 14,600 years ago. This event, referred to as Melt-Water Pulse 1A (MWP-1A), corresponds to a rapid collapse of massive ice sheets 14,600 years ago and resulted in global sea-level rise of ~14 m. These findings are published in the 29 March 2012 issue of the journal Nature (Volume 483, Issue 7391). Collaboration between CEREGE (UMR Aix-Marseille Univ. - CNRS - IRD - College de France) and ...

People who are diagnosed with cancer have a markedly increased risk of suicide and cardiovascular death during the period immediately after being given the diagnosis. This has been shown in a new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in the prestigious scientific journal The New England Journal of Medicine. Being diagnosed and living with a life-threatening illness such as cancer inevitably causes great distress and may result in other health problems in addition to the disease itself. Previous studies have shown that cancer patients are at higher risk ...