New Rochelle, NY, June 29, 2011—Sophisticated genetic tools and techniques for achieving targeted gene delivery and high gene expression levels in bone marrow will drive the successful application of gene therapy to treat a broad range of diseases. Examples of these cutting-edge methods are presented in a series of five provocative articles in the latest issue of Human Gene Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). The articles are available free online at www.liebertpub.com/hum Barese and Dunbar highlight the advances ...

June 29, 2011 (Toronto) - The recurrence of an employee's medical leave of absence from work tends to happen much sooner with a mental health leave than a physical one, a Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) study shows. Most workers who take a mental health leave from their jobs do not have another disability leave for at least two years, according to a new study from CAMH. In contrast, most who have had a physical health disability leave have almost four years before a second episode. Mental health disability leaves cost approximately $51 billion a year ...

A powerful new class of therapeutics, known as recombinant attenuated Salmonella vaccines (RASV), holds great potential in the fight against fatal diseases including hepatitis B, tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, AIDS and pneumonia. Now, Qingke Kong and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University, have developed a technique to make such vaccines safer and more effective. The group, under the direction of Dr. Roy Curtiss, chief scientist at Biodesign's Center for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, demonstrated that a modified strain of Salmonella ...

Current or heavy smokers who were screened with low-dose spiral computed tomography (CT) scanning had a 20 percent reduction in deaths from lung cancer than did those who were screened by chest X-ray, according to results from a decade-long, large clinical trial that involved more than 53,000 people. The study, called the National Lung Screening Trial (NLST), was conducted in individuals at high risk of developing lung cancer to compare the differences in death rates between smokers aged 55 to 74 who were screened annually with low-dose helical (or spiral) CT, versus ...

NASA's Genesis mission crash-landed back on Earth in 2004. The spacecraft spent more than two years in orbit around the sun collecting solar wind, which consists of charged particles, on various ultra-pure collector materials. Fortunately, the collector with the greatest scientific value survived the crash almost intact. Its primary purpose was to measure the relative abundances of the three isotopes of oxygen: 16O, 17O and 18O. Despite the length of the mission, the solar wind is so rarefied that the small number of atoms collected required a dedicated mass spectrometer, ...

Milan, Italy, 29 June 2011 – Children with dyslexia often find it difficult to count the number of syllables in spoken words or to determine whether words rhyme. These subtle difficulties are seen across languages with different writing systems and they indicate that the dyslexic brain has trouble processing the way that sounds in spoken language are structured. In a new study published in the June issue of Elsevier's Cortex, researchers at Cambridge have shown, using a music task, that this is linked to a broader difficulty in perceiving rhythmic patterns, or metrical ...

Atmospheric aerosol particles (otherwise known as Particulate Matter) have been masking the true rate of greenhouse gas induced global warming during the industrial period. New investigations show that the aerosol cooling effect will be strongly reduced by 2030, as air pollution abatements are implemented worldwide and the presently available advanced control technologies are utilized. These actions would increase the global mean temperature by ca. 1 degree Celsius. This is one of the main research outcomes of the recently concluded EU EUCAARI (European Integrated project ...

Research carried out by scientists from the Peninsula Medical School at the University of Exeter and the National University of Singapore has analysed the complex 'cross talk' between hydrogen sulphide (H2S ) and nitric oxide (NO), both gasses that occur naturally in the body, and found that the interaction may offer potential strategies in the management of heart failure. The research is published in the leading international journal Antioxidants and Redox Signaling. Both gases interact naturally with each other within the body and the balance between the two and ...

Researchers looked at changes in the behaviour of bluetongue – a viral disease of cattle and sheep - from the 1960s to the present day, as well as what could happen to the transmission of the virus 40 years into the future. They found, for the first time, that an outbreak of a disease could be explained by changes to the climate. In Europe, more than 80,000 outbreaks of bluetongue were reported to the World Animal Health Organisation between 1998 and 2010, and millions of animals died as a result of the disease. Bluetongue was previously restricted to Africa and Asia, ...

New research shows significantly higher osteoarthritis (OA) incidence rates in military populations than among comparable age groups in the general population. The magnitude of the difference in OA rates between military service members and the general population also increased with advancing age category. Black service members had higher OA rates than white military personnel or those in other race categories according to the study findings published in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Close to 27 million ...

Scientists who pioneered a revolutionary 3-D microscope technique are now describing an extension of that technology into a new dimension that promises sweeping applications in medicine, biological research, and development of new electronic devices. Their reports on so-called 4-D scanning ultrafast electron microscopy, and a related technique, appear in two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Chemistry Nobel Laureate Ahmed H. Zewail and colleagues moved high-resolution images of vanishingly small nanoscale objects from three dimensions to four dimensions ...

That axiom of sustainability — "recycle and reuse" — could help ease concerns about a reliable supply of substances, indispensible for a modern technological society, that are produced almost exclusively in the Peoples' Republic of China. That's the conclusion of a study on these so-called "rare earth" elements in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Xiaoyue Du and Thomas E. Graedel note that the dozen-plus rare earth elements (REEs) have unique physical and chemical properties making them essential for defense applications, computers, cell phones, electric ...

Scientists are reporting development and successful testing of a rapid and accurate test to tell the difference between bacterial and viral infections. Those common afflictions often have similar symptoms but vastly different treatments — antibiotics work for bacterial infections but not for viruses. The report appears in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry. Robert Marks, Daria Prilutsky, and colleagues cite the importance of determining the source of an infection in order to quickly start the right treatment. If left untreated until results of a throat culture, for instance, ...

How people choose to consume resources and use contraception influences their responses to climate change, according to a team of psychologists. Janet K. Swim, professor of psychology, Penn State, and her colleagues report that growing consumption and growing population are two significant contributors to human impact on the environment. Both substantially increase carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the researchers report in a special issue of American Psychologist that focuses on how psychology contributes to understanding and addressing global climate change. "Engaging ...

An emerging field of science termed "isoscapes" is making it possible to pinpoint the geographical origins of illegal drugs, trafficked endangered animals, dismembered human body parts at crime scenes, and even pricey scotch whiskey and cheese, according to an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the American Chemical Society's weekly newsmagazine. In the article, Sarah Everts, C&EN European correspondent, explains how isoscapes has even led to development of one of the newest and most unusual maps of the world. It is a map showing the ...

WASHINGTON, June 29, 2011 — Imagine a new genre of tiny implantable sensors, airborne and stationary surveillance cameras and sensors and other devices that operate without batteries on energy collected from the motion of a heart beat and have wireless communications capability. And the power plant for those devices is a "nanogenerator" that could even produce energy to charge an iPod from the movements of a person walking down the street. That's the topic of a new episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions" podcast ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – One-third of immigrant children and more than 70 percent of foreign-born, nonelderly adults living in New Jersey five years or less lack health coverage, a Rutgers statewide survey finds. The report, "Health, Coverage and Access to Care of New Jersey Immigrants," by the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy (CSHP), also concludes immigrants face significant access-to-care barriers and their lack of health insurance is a much larger problem than for New Jerseyans born in the United States. The research describes the health profile, insurance status ...

A team of North Carolina State University researchers has discovered more about how a gene connected to the production of new brain cells in adults does its job. Their findings could pave the way to new therapies for brain injury or disease. Most areas of the brain do not generate new brain cells, or neurons, after we are born. One exception is the olfactory bulb, the brain's scent processor, which continually produces new neurons. Dr. Troy Ghashghaei, assistant professor of neurobiology, had previously found a gene – known as Foxj1–connected to the production of an area ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- So much for tagging photographs with names, locations and activities yourself – a new cell phone application can take care of that for you. The system works by taking advantage of the multiple sensors on a mobile phone, as well as those of other mobile phones in the vicinity. Dubbed TagSense, the new app was developed by students from Duke University and the University of South Carolina (USC) and unveiled at the ninth Association for Computing Machinery's International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys), being held in ...

In 2009, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned the grade "D" to the overall quality of infrastructure in the U.S. and said that ongoing evaluation and maintenance of structures was one of five key areas necessary for improving that grade. Since that time, federal stimulus funds have made it possible for communities to repair some infrastructure, but the field of high-tech, affordable methods for the continual monitoring of structures remains in its infancy. Instead, most evaluation of bridges, dams, schools and other structures is still done by visual ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (June 29, 2011) – American artist Jackson Pollock's paintings often clashed with the rules of the art world. But they couldn't defy the laws of physics, according to a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Boston College and Harvard who give quantitative form to Pollock's methods and genius in the latest edition of the journal Physics Today. Quantitative analysis is a phrase few would associate with Pollock, the abstract expressionist who during the 1940s and 50s adopted the method of pouring paint onto canvas in order to convey his artistic vision ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In 1943, American psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed that all humans seek to fulfill a hierarchy of needs, which he represented with a pyramid. The pyramid's base, which he believed must come first, signified basic needs (for food, sleep and sex, for example). Safety and security came next, in Maslow's view, then love and belonging, then esteem and, finally, at the pyramid's peak, a quality he called "self-actualization." Maslow wrote that people who have these needs fulfilled should be happier than those who don't. In a new study, researchers at ...

WASHINGTON—June 29, 2011—Nearly three-quarters (74%) of Georgia residents think spending money on research to improve health globally is important for economic development in Georgia, according to a new statewide poll commissioned by Research!America. Eighty-one percent say global health is an issue about which Georgia residents should be concerned, and Georgians place a very high value on their state's leadership in research to improve health here and around the world: 96% say it is important for Georgia to be a leader in health research and development, and 81% say ...

Palaeontologists have uncovered half-a-billion-year-old fossils demonstrating that primitive animals had excellent vision. An international team led by scientists from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide found the exquisite fossils, which look like squashed eyes from a recently swatted fly. This discovery will be published tomorrow (Thursday 30 June 2011) in the prestigious journal Nature. The lead author is Associate Professor Michael Lee from the South Australian Museum and the University of Adelaide's School of Earth & Environmental Sciences. Compound ...

PHILADELPHIA - An estimated 18 American military veterans take their own lives every day -- thousands each year -- and those numbers are steadily increasing. Even after weathering the stresses of military life and the terrors of combat, these soldiers find themselves overwhelmed by the transition back into civilian life. Many have already survived one suicide attempt, but never received the extra help and support they needed, with tragic results. A team of researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues found that veterans ...