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 ...

A pioneering program by one of the world's largest cities to switch its vehicle fleet to clean fuel has not significantly improved harmful vehicle emissions in more than 5,000 vehicles – and worsened some vehicles' climate impacts – a new University of British Columbia study finds. The study – which explores the impacts of New Delhi, India's 2003 conversion of 90,000 buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws to compressed natural gas (CNG), a well-known "clean" fuel – provides crucial information for other cities considering similar projects. Of the city's more than 5,000 auto-rickshaws ...

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown in a new study on mice, that cell therapy can be used to reverse the effect of 'bad' LDL cholesterol and reduce the inflammation that leads to atherosclerosis. The new cell therapy, which is presented in the prestigious scientific journal Circulation, can open the way for new therapies for stroke and myocardial infarction if the results prove translatable to humans. Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammation of the blood vessels. Cholesterol is transported in the blood in particles called LDL ('bad' cholesterol) that can ...

A new non-surgical post-mortem technique that has the potential to revolutionise the way autopsies are conducted around the world has been pioneered by forensic pathologists and radiologists at the University of Leicester in collaboration with the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. The technique developed by a team in the East Midlands Forensic Pathology Unit, at the University of Leicester, has been published today (1 March) in International Journal of Legal Medicine. This paper presents the development of the methodology and protocol for this technique from ...

There are already systems that detect ships at sea, but a group of engineers from the UAH, led by the researcher Raúl Vicen, has introduced a new development, involving "the use of artificial intelligence techniques and improvements in the templates used to select input data". The team has come up with a new detection method "that outperforms the one that has generally been used until now, as well as offering the advantages of low computational costs, and which can also be used in real time". The new system, the details of which are published in the journal IET Radar, ...

Pioneering technology by scientists at Queen's University Belfast, which is transforming the lives of millions of people in Asia, is now being used to create safer drinking water in the United States. The award-winning system – Subterranean Arsenic Removal – removes arsenic from groundwater without using chemicals. It was developed by a team of European and Indian engineers led by Dr Bhaskar Sen Gupta in Queen's University School of Planning, Architecture and Civil Engineering. The technology, based on the principle of oxidation and filtration processes, is already ...

Scientists have discovered a new way to generate human motor nerve cells in a development that will help research into motor neurone disease. A team from the Universities of Edinburgh, Cambridge and Cardiff has created a range of motor neurons – nerves cells that send messages from the brain and spine to other parts of the body – from human embryonic stem cells in the laboratory. It is the first time that researchers have been able to generate a variety of human motor neurons, which differ in their make-up and display properties depending on where they are located in ...

By examining historical data, statisticians in the College of Science at Virginia Tech have quantified biases that play a role in granting Division I at-large basketball teams inclusion in the NCAA March Madness Tournament. Assistant professors Leanna House and Scotland Leman found that in addition to the standard Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) used by the 10-member selection committee, biases such as the team's marquee and the strength of its schedule are also factors. "We wanted to quantify how much bias there is for bubble teams," Leman said. So-named "bubble teams" ...

New Haven, Conn.—Imagine a material that's stronger than steel, but just as versatile as plastic, able to take on a seemingly endless variety of forms. For decades, materials scientists have been trying to come up with just such an ideal substance, one that could be molded into complex shapes with the same ease and low expense as plastic but without sacrificing the strength and durability of metal. Now a team led by Jan Schroers, a materials scientist at Yale University, has shown that some recently developed bulk metallic glasses (BMGs)—metal alloys that have randomly ...

Scientists have discovered how tendons – the fibrous tissue that connects muscle to bone – become damaged through injury or the ageing process in what could lead to new treatments for people with tendon problems. The University of Manchester team, working with colleagues at Glasgow University, have been investigating 'adhesions', which are a build up of unwanted fibrous tissue on internal organs that have been damaged as a result of surgery or injury. Adhesions cause organs to stick together and are extremely painful and distressing for patients, who often have to undergo ...

Only in very few life phases do individuals face as many life transitions in such a short time as young adults at the age of 19-30. The transition from adolescence to adulthood is characterised by frequent changes in status or social roles, such as leaving the parental home, starting a career, entering into working life, forming a partnership and becoming a parent. Assuming civic and social responsibility is also an integral part of the lives of young adults at this particular life phase. Professor Katariina Salmela-Aro's research team has investigated the transition ...

Scientists have unravelled the shape of the protein that gives human tissues their elastic properties in what could lead to the development of new synthetic elastic polymers. University of Manchester researchers, working with colleagues in Australia and the United States, used state-of-the-art techniques to reveal the structure of tropoelastin, the main component of elastin. Elastin allows tissues in humans and other mammals to stretch, for example when the lungs expand and contract for respiration or when arteries widen and narrow over the course of a billion heart ...

A spongy substance that could be mistaken for packing material has the nanotechnology world buzzing. University of Central Florida Associate Professor Lei Zhai and postdoctoral associate Jianhua Zou have engineered the world's lightest carbon material in such a way that it could be used to detect pollutants and toxic substances, improve robotic surgery techniques and store energy more efficiently. The new material belongs to the family of the lightest solid, also known by its technical name of aerogel or its common nickname of "frozen smoke." Zhai's team worked with ...

AMES, Iowa – Invasive plant species have long had a reputation as being bad for a new ecosystem when they are introduced. Stan Harpole, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Iowa State University, is founding organizer of a team of more than 70 researchers working at 65 sites worldwide that tested that assumption. They wanted to know if it is true that problematic invasive species often spread widely in their new habitats because they don't encounter predators or diseases that help keep them in check in their home ranges. "There is this ...

Robotic surgery offers the same or better results than minimally invasive laparoscopic procedures for treating kidney disease, and can potentially help more patients because it is not as difficult for surgeons to learn, according to a new study led by Henry Ford Hospital specialists. The findings come at a time both when chronic kidney disease is becoming more common, and while occult – or hidden – damage to kidney function has been overlooked in more than a fourth of patients with small kidney tumors, according to earlier studies. This chronic renal insufficiency – ...