Los Angeles, CA (APRIL 26, 2011) Despite the fact that nearly one-third of American households have a firearm, studies show that having a gun in the home poses a household a greater health risk than a potential benefit. A new study released in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine (published by SAGE) examined scientific research on both sides of the debate to put hard numbers to this on-going discussion. Author David Hemenway studied the various risks of having a gun in the home, including accidents, suicide, homicide, and intimidation. Additionally, the benefits ...

The antimatter equivalent of helium nuclei has been produced by an international team of physicists working with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. Two University of California, Davis, professors are members of the team. A paper describing their results is published online this week by the journal Nature. "This is the heaviest antimatter anyone has ever created," said Manuel Calderon de la Barca Sanchez, professor of physics at UC Davis and an author of the paper. Authors also include Daniel ...

You may have heard, watched or read the story...a seaside community zoo becomes the first U.S. zoo to perform a full-scale, total evacuation during a hurricane. The Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo made headlines in 2004 when Zoo Director Patti Hall relocated over 270 exotic zoo animals, a staff and their families, to her inland home to wait out Hurricane Ivan (category 4 storm). The zoo was destroyed, and while rebuilding, endured two more unprecedented evacuations ten months later during Hurricanes Dennis and Katrina. If this story doesn't ring a bell, it will... as the Alabama ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. –Group appointments where doctors see several people for a longer time may be feasible for Parkinson's disease, according to a new study published in the April 27, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN). Group visits have shown benefits for people with other chronic conditions, but have not been evaluated for people with Parkinson's disease. Group visits can allow patients more time with their doctor than they might have with individual appointments and more time for doctors to provide education ...

In this month's Physics World, Richard Taylor, professor of physics, psychology and art at the University of Oregon, warns that artificial retinal implants – a technology fast becoming a reality – must adapt to the unique features of the human eye in order to become an effective treatment. The gap between digital camera technology and the human eye is getting ever smaller, in terms of both the number of light-sensitive detectors and the space that they occupy. A human retina typically contains 127 million photoreceptors spread over an area of 1100 mm2. In comparison, ...

Using advanced DNA analysis and extensive field work, an international research team has confirmed the link between leprosy infection in Americans and direct contact with armadillos. In a joint collaboration between the Global Health Institute at EPFL in Switzerland and Louisiana State University, clear evidence was found that a never-before-seen strain of Mycobacterium leprae has emerged in the Southern United States and that it is transmitted through contact with armadillos carrying the disease. The results will be published on April 28th in the New England Journal of ...

Durham, N.C., and New York, N.Y.. – Researchers at Duke University Medical Center and St. Luke's and Roosevelt Hospital Center, Columbia University, have uncovered a new clue for why bariatric surgery is more effective than dietary remedies alone at controlling glucose levels. This discovery, and facts gleaned from their previous studies, provide even more evidence that branched-chain amino acids are biomarkers that deserve careful scrutiny in the development and treatment of diabetes. Physicians have observed that bariatric surgery results in improved blood sugar ...

BOSTON--Like brainy bookworms unprepared for the rough and tumble of post-graduation life, white blood cells trained by scientists to attack tumors tend to fade away quickly when injected into cancer patients. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists, however, have developed a technique that can cause such cells to survive in patients' bloodstreams for well over a year, in some cases, without the need of other, highly toxic treatments, a new study shows. In a paper published in the Apr. 27 issue of Science Translational Medicine, the researchers report the results of a ...

MIAMI – April 27, 2011 – The Agulhas Current which runs along the east coast of Africa may not be as well known as its counterpart in the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream, but researchers are now taking a much closer look at this current and its "leakage" from the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic Ocean. In a study published in the journal Nature, April 27, a global team of scientists led by University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science Associate Professor Lisa Beal, suggests that Agulhas Leakage could be a significant player in global climate variability. ...

Are classic sailing yachts becoming more popular than their motor yacht rivals? Figures are suggesting that maybe owing to economic and environmental conditions people are making a move from motor to sail. William Bishop, Head of YPI Sail explains, "Being at sea on a sailing yacht is an entirely different experience to being on a motor yacht. Sailing yachts allow you to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. There are few people not captivated by the beauty and grace of a sailing yacht gliding into anchorage at sail. They slice through the water so the only ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Scientists have observed a "super-aggregation" of more than 300 humpback whales gorging on the largest swarm of Antarctic krill seen in more than 20 years in bays along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. The sightings, made in waters still largely ice-free deep into austral autumn, suggest the previously little-studied bays are important late-season foraging grounds for the endangered whales. But they also highlight how rapid climate change is affecting the region. The Duke University-led team tracked the super-aggregation of krill and whales during a six-week ...

A team of scientists led by Rice University has figured out why the Colorado Plateau – a 130,000-square-mile region that straddles Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico -- is rising even while parts of its lower crust appear to be falling. The massive, tectonically stable region of the western United States has long puzzled geologists. A paper published today in the journal Nature shows how magmatic material from the depths slowly rises to invade the lithosphere -- Earth's crust and strong uppermost mantle. This movement forces layers to peel away and sink, said lead ...

Washington, DC — Pain researchers from the Sheikh Zayed Institute for Pediatric Surgical Innovation at Children's National Medical Center have discovered that resiniferatoxin, a drug that has shown early promise as an option for chronic, severe pain sufferers, may decrease the body's ability to fight off bacterial infections, particularly sepsis. The study, which appears in the May 1 edition of the journal Anesthesiology, sheds new light on the role of a pain receptor, transient receptor potential vanilloid-1 (TRPV1), and how medications designed to impact this receptor's ...

Madison, Wis. – If you've ever lost your keys or stuck the milk in the cupboard and the cereal in the refrigerator, you may have been the victim of a tired brain region that was taking a quick nap. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new explanation. They've found that some nerve cells in a sleep-deprived yet awake brain can briefly go "off line," into a sleep-like state, while the rest of the brain appears awake. "Even before you feel fatigued, there are signs in the brain that you should stop certain activities that may require alertness," says ...

DETROIT – Women are at higher risk than men of developing kidney damage after undergoing a coronary angiogram, according to a Henry Ford Hospital study. Researchers found that women are 60 percent more likely than men to develop radiocontrast-induced nephropathy (RCIN), an adverse side effect that causes kidney dysfunction within 24 to 72 hours after patients are administered an iodine contrast dye during the common heart imaging test. This is believed to be the first study in which researchers investigated whether gender played a role in patients developing RCIN after ...

A new study uses creative engineering to unravel brain mechanisms associated with one of the most fundamental subjective human feelings: self-consciousness. The research, published by Cell Press in the April 28 issue of the journal Neuron, identifies a brain region called the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) as being critical for the feeling of being an entity localized at a particular position in space and for perceiving the world from this position and perspective. Recent theories of self-consciousness highlight the importance of integrating many different sensory and ...

A new study reveals a novel gene associated with major depression. The research, published by Cell Press in the April 28 issue of the journal Neuron, suggests a previously unrecognized mechanism for major depression and may guide future therapeutic strategies for this debilitating mood disorder. Major depression is a psychiatric disorder that is responsible for a substantial loss in work productivity and can even lead to suicide in some individuals. "Current treatments for major depression are indispensible but their clinical efficacy is still unsatisfactory, as reflected ...

The number of cases of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) has continued to rise significantly in the first decade of the 21st century and could lead to more deaths than ovarian cancer, lymphoma, leukaemia, or kidney cancer, reveals research published ahead of print in the Thorax journal. IPF is the most common of the pneumonias that happen without an apparent cause and previous studies have shown that incidence and deaths from the disease are rising in the UK and the USA. However, there is currently no mandatory registration of IPF diagnoses in the UK or anywhere ...

They were able to show for the first time that physiologically measurable changes can be observed in the brains of healthy carriers of this risk allele. These changes affect a transporter protein involved in the production of an important neuronal transmitter. Given that traditional drugs interact with similar transporter molecules, the researchers are pinning great hopes on this factor as the target structure of future antidepressant medication.Scientists throughout the world have been trying to identify the genetic causes of depression for many years. The fact that a ...

WALTHAM, Mass., April 27, 2011 – Alkermes, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALKS) today announced that results from the phase 3 clinical study of VIVITROL® (naltrexone for extended-release injectable suspension) in opioid dependence have been published by The Lancet. The six-month, phase 3 trial met its primary endpoint and showed significantly greater opioid-free weeks among patients treated with VIVITROL, compared to placebo. VIVITROL is the first and only non-addictive, non-narcotic, once-monthly medication approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the prevention of ...

The next time you are in Pisa, try looking at its tower from a different perspective. Newton's laws of motion predict that an object will fall when its centre-of-mass lies beyond its base of support. But how does your brain know whether the tower will fall or not? Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany recently reported in the journal PLoS ONE that although the physical laws governing object stability are reasonably well represented by the brain, you are a better judge of how objects fall when you are upright than when ...

Vacationers who are looking for an easy way to plan a trip to Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Fla. can find a wealth of information at a new Website aptly called World of Walt. The comprehensive Website offers accurate, timely, and entertaining information about The Walt Disney Company, as well as the Walt Disney World Resort and Disney Resort Hotels. It provides unbiased information about each of the Disney Resort theme parks: Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, and Disney's Animal Kingdom. It also has useful information on Disney tickets, Disney ...

Using a combination of Facebook-like tools and personally controlled health records, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston have engaged members of an online diabetes social network as participants in public health surveillance. In an article published April 27 in PLoS ONE, Elissa Weitzman, ScD, MSc, and Kenneth Mandl, MD, MPH, of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program (CHIP) show that health-focused social networks can be viable resources for chronic disease surveillance. "There is growing recognition that online communities not only provide a place for members ...

Thousands of members of the public across Europe have taken part in one of the largest evolutionary studies ever, by observing banded snails in their gardens and open public spaces. More than 6,000 people in 15 European countries took part in the Open University's citizen science project between April and October 2009. The project, Evolution MegaLab, is an online mass public experiment aimed at bringing Darwinian theory to life. It was launched in April 2009 to mark the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. People were invited to report their sightings of banded ...

In a recent study to be published on April 27, 2011, in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PLoS ONE, Dr. Elliott Hazen and colleagues found that oceanographic and prey measurements can be used to identify beaked whale foraging habitat. The research team from Duke University, Woods Hole, and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center listened for foraging beaked whales and measured ocean features and distributions of prey off the east coast of Andross Island in the Bahamas. Their manuscript provides evidence that these difficult to study deep-diving creatures use specific ocean ...