GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- University of Florida researchers have described a new species of land crab that documents the first crab extinction during the human era. The loss of the crab likely greatly impacted the ecology of the Hawaiian Islands, as land crabs are major predators, control litter decomposition and help in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal. Their disappearance was caused by the arrival of humans to the islands and resulted in large-scale changes in the state's ecosystem. Researchers said the full impact of the extinction on Hawaii is unknown, but they are ...

Contact: Jeff Haskins jhaskins@burnesscommunications.com ILRI Scientists identify livestock genes to unlock protection against one of Africa's oldest animal plagues NAIROBI, KENYA (16 May 2011)—An international research team using a new combination of approaches has found two genes that may prove of vital importance to the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers in a tsetse fly-plagued swathe of Africa the size of the United States. The team’s results were published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The research, aimed at ...

Intensive care units (ICUs) that implemented a telemedicine intervention that included offsite electronic monitoring of processes and detection of nonadherence to best practices had lower hospital and ICU mortality, lower rates of preventable complications, and shorter hospital and ICU lengths of stay, according to a study that will appear in the June 1 issue of JAMA. The study is being published early online to coincide with its presentation at a meeting of the American Thoracic Society "Patient needs and societal costs of adult critical care have increased as predicted ...

BOSTON – May 16, 2011 – The road to type 2 diabetes is paved with insulin resistance, a condition often associated with obesity in which the hormone begins to fail at its job helping to convert sugars to energy. Researchers at Joslin Diabetes Center have now identified an enzyme called PKC-delta as an important molecular modifier for development of insulin resistance, diabetes and fatty liver in mice. They also have found evidence suggesting a similar role for the enzyme in humans, making PKC-delta a promising new target for drugs for diabetes and related ailments. Investigators ...

By analyzing complex interactions of the immune system in an animal study, pediatric researchers have found potential tools for controlling a life-threatening condition called a cytokine storm that may strike children who have juvenile arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. In a cytokine storm, the body's immune system rages out of control, resulting in overwhelming inflammation, rapid organ failure and death if not quickly diagnosed and treated. In addition to children with juvenile arthritis, patients with lupus or Epstein-Barr virus infection may also suffer this ...

T'ai chi has particular health benefits for older people, including helping to prevent falls and improving mental wellbeing, reveals a review published ahead of print in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. But the Chinese martial art widely practised for its health benefits does not help improve the symptoms of cancer or rheumatoid arthritis and the evidence is contradictory for many other health conditions and symptoms. The effectiveness of t'ai chi for a variety of medical conditions and symptoms has been assessed in several studies and reviews, but their findings ...

Most medical students feel they lack the skills and legal knowledge required to challenge poor clinical practice and promote better patient care, reveals research published ahead of print in the Journal of Medical Ethics. This suggests more time and emphasis needs to be put on legal skills in the formal medical curriculum and that these need to be practised and honed during clinical training, the authors say. The authors surveyed 1,154 first, second and final year medical students at two UK medical schools on their knowledge and understanding of medico-legal rules and ...

Young adults who take risks when driving are more likely to experience psychological distress, including mental health problems such as anxiety and depression, reveals research published ahead of print in Injury Prevention. Young drivers have more accidents and are more likely to be involved in a crash in which someone dies than older drivers, and risky behaviour is known to contribute to crashes involving young novice drivers. Psychological distress, such as depression and anxiety, has been linked to risky behaviour in adolescents, including unprotected sex, smoking ...

Obese patients undergoing colon surgery are 60 percent more likely to develop dangerous and costly surgical-site infections than their normal-weight counterparts, new Johns Hopkins research suggests. These infections, according to findings published in the journal Archives of Surgery, cost an average of $17,000 more per patient, extend hospital stays and leave patients at a three-times greater risk of hospital readmission. "Obesity is a leading risk factor for surgical-site infections, and those infections truly tax the health care system," says Elizabeth C. Wick, M.D., ...

Obese patients appear to have a significantly increased risk of developing a surgical site infection after colectomy (procedure involving either partial or full removal of the colon), and the presence of infection increases the cost associated with the procedure, according to a report published online today that will appear in the September issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Surgical site infection (SSI) is considered to be one of the best available measures of quality in surgery, and health care centers are starting to be financially penalized ...

Among patients referred by non-dermatologists to dermatologists for evaluation of skin lesions suspected of being malignant, only apparently one-fifth were found to be cancerous, although dermatologists identified and biopsied other incidental lesions, approximately half of which were malignant, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "More than one million skin cancers are diagnosed annually in the United States , with one in five Americans developing skin cancer during their lifetime," the authors write as ...

Surgical house staff and attending physicians who are reminded about the charges for ordering daily blood drawing for routine blood work appear to reduce the amount of routine blood tests ordered and the charges for these laboratory tests, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "The use of laboratory tests has been rapidly increasing over the past few decades to the point where phlebotomy is a substantial proportion of hospital expenditure, and much of it is unwarranted," state the authors. As background, they ...

Among patients with a diagnosis of delusional skin infestation, neither biopsies nor patient-provided specimens provided objective evidence of skin infestation, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the September issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Delusional infestation is a condition in which patients steadfastly yet mistakenly believe that pathogens are infesting their skin. Sometimes, patients believe their skin is literally crawling with bugs, worms, or germs, which is also known as "delusions of parasitosis." ...

The beta-blocker propranolol appears to be associated with reducing the size and color of hemangiomas of the head and neck in a pediatric population, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. According to background information in the article, hemangiomas are tumors that appear by the age of 2 months, affecting up to 10 percent of full-term white infants. These lesions can be benign, or can affect functions such as the ability to see or on occasion can be life-threatening if they occur ...

For patients with eustachian tube dysfunction (ETD), steroids administered by a nasal spray may be ineffective, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The eustachian tubes connect the middle ear, the upper part of the throat and the ends of the nasal passages. Eustachian tube dysfunction may contribute to fluid collection in the middle ear (otitis media with effusion, or OME) or negative middle ear pressure (NMEP). Presently there is no gold-standard single treatment for this condition, ...

Toronto - Why isn't knowledge transfer happening more often in companies spending money on it? Maybe it's because their staff don't always want to share. "We've had years of research in organizations about the benefits of knowledge-sharing but an important issue is the fact that people don't necessarily want to share their knowledge," says David Zweig, a professor of organizational behaviour and human resources management at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and the University of Toronto at Scarborough. His paper, co-authored with Catherine ...

Transferring a segment of muscle from the thigh appears to help restore the ability to smile in children with facial paralysis just as it does in adults, according to a report in the May issue of Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The article is part of a theme issue focusing on facial plastic surgery in the pediatric population. Facial paralysis often disrupts the ability to smile. In pediatric patients, this can be especially problematic, according to background information in the article. Surgery to repair the affected area may generate ...

It's the year 1800. You're a slave in southeast Virginia. You manage to escape. Your freedom is only going to last as long as you can hide. Where do you go? Would you believe the Great Dismal Swamp? According to Dan Sayers, assistant professor of anthropology and an historical archaeologist at American University, that's exactly where you could have gone for immediate sanctuary. "There are interesting parallels. What was once more of a human refuge is now a natural refuge," said Sayers of the swamp, which officially became the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA (May 16, 2011)––Today's anticancer drugs often work wonders against malignancies, but sometimes tumors become resistant to the effects of such drugs, and treatment fails. Medical researchers would like to find ways of counteracting such resistance, but first they must understand why and how it happens. New findings by Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers identify one protein, Abcc10 (also known as Mrp7), as being intimately involved in resistance to certain drugs used to treat breast, ovarian, lung, and other cancers. The results suggest that blunting the ...

Durham, N.C., and Singapore – Mast cells, which can help the body respond to bacteria and pathogens, also apparently sound the alarm around viruses delivered by a mosquito bite, according to researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore. "It appears the mast cells are activated and call immune system cells to the skin where they clear infection, which limits the spread of infection in the host," said lead researcher Ashley St. John, a Research Fellow with Duke-NUS in the Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, and the Duke Department of Pathology in Durham, ...

With an increasingly warmer climate, there is a trend for springs to arrive earlier and summers to be hotter. Since spring and summer are the prime growing seasons for plants—when flowers bloom and trees increase in girth and height—do these climate changes mean greater seasonal growth for plants? This is a critical question for forest management, especially in the boreal region—an area particularly sensitive to the effects of climate change. Dr. Jian-Guo Huang, currently a post-doc at the University of Alberta, and colleagues from the University of Quebec at Montreal ...

Scientists working with Professor Dr. Joachim L. Schultze have identified over 480 molecules whose concentration in the blood changes when a person develops lung cancer. These molecules are present in the blood cells either in increased or decreased quantities. "In lung cancer patients, typical patterns which can be detected with a measuring program thus emerge", explains Prof. Schultze. The molecules are nucleic acids which form in the body when certain genes are transcribed. The changes in the blood also occur if the tumor is still in a very early stage. In lung cancer, ...

Patients with heart disease risks are more likely to be prescribed cardiovascular (CV) drugs if they see a younger doctor and recommended to change their lifestyle if they see an older doctor, according to research in the June issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice. Italian researchers studied the attitudes and prescribing trends of 1,078 family doctors, cardiologists and diabetologists, together with clinical data on 9,904 of their outpatients, after inviting the doctors to take part in an educational training programme on managing CV risk. "While ...

Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, an international research team headed by evolutionary biologist Daniel Rankin from the University of Zurich has demonstrated in a mathematical model. Evolutionary biologists have long debated whether the behavior of the individual is able to influence processes on a population or species level. The possibility of selection at species level is still contro-versial. Using a mathematical model, an international team of researchers ...

These scientists have developed a mathematical model that recreates the behavior of an ecosystem in order to observe its dynamics and its reactions in different situations. And what they have discovered is that the ecosystem reaches a state in which it remains more or less unchanged, in spite of the fact that the species that make it up are continuously substituted by others, even to the point that a complete change takes place, similar to the change that occurs inside a human organism. "In short: the species change, but the structure does not", comments Professor José ...