New research shows 63% of women age 50 and older reported persistent, incident, or intermittent knee pain during a 12-year study period. Predictors for persistent pain included higher body mass index (BMI), previous knee injury, and radiographic osteoarthritis (OA). Details of this longitudinal study are available in Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). According to the ACR more than 27 million Americans over age 25 suffer from OA—a leading cause of disability worldwide—with pain being ...

Drugs that enhance levels of small molecules derived naturally in the body from a major component of animal fats (small molecules known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acids [EETs]) are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of high blood pressure and diabetes. A team of researchers — led by Dipak Panigrahy and Mark Kieran, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Sui Huang, at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle; and Darryl Zeldin, at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, Research Triangle Park — has now generated data in mice that raise concern ...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is among the most common causes of death in the US. It is a smoking-related disease for which there are currently no disease-altering therapies. However, hope that one could be developed is now provided by the work of Enid Neptune and colleagues, at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, in a mouse model of lung disease caused by exposure to cigarette smoke. Neptune and colleagues found that lostartan, a drug used widely in the clinic (e.g., to treat high blood pressure), reduced lung disease in mice caused by exposure to cigarette ...

EDITOR'S PICK: Potential concern about drugs in clinical trial Drugs that enhance levels of small molecules derived naturally in the body from a major component of animal fats (small molecules known as epoxyeicosatrienoic acids [EETs]) are currently in clinical trials for the treatment of high blood pressure and diabetes. A team of researchers — led by Dipak Panigrahy and Mark Kieran, at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston; Sui Huang, at the Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle; and Darryl Zeldin, at the National Institute of Environmental Health Science, Research ...

Overeating may cause brain aging while eating less turns on a molecule that helps the brain stay young. A team of Italian researchers at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Rome have discovered that this molecule, called CREB1, is triggered by "caloric restriction" (low caloric diet) in the brain of mice. They found that CREB1 activates many genes linked to longevity and to the proper functioning of the brain. This work was led by Giovambattista Pani, researcher at the Institute of General Pathology, Faculty of Medicine at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart ...

Cognitive function may be a better indicator of the impact of aging on an economy than age-distribution, with chronological age imposing less of a social and economic burden if the population is "functionally" younger, according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study finds that one standardized indicator of cognitive ability - memory recall - is better in countries where education, nutrition, and health standards are generally higher. Aging populations are of concern to many countries as it is often assumed that ageing ...

A 125-year debate on how nitrogen-fixing bacteria are able to breach the cell walls of legumes has been settled. A paper to be published on Monday by John Innes Centre scientists reports that plants themselves allow bacteria in. Once inside the right cells, these bacteria take nitrogen from the air and supply it to legumes in a form they can use, ammonia. Whether the bacteria breach the cell walls by producing enzymes that degrade it, or the plant does the work for them, has been contested since an 1887 paper in which the importance of the breach was first recognised. "Our ...

Boston – Researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that in low-income neighborhoods, misinformation about access to emergency contraception is a common occurrence. These findings appear as a research letter in the Dec. 19 on-line issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. In 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration facilitated access to emergency contraception among adolescents by making it available over-the-counter to individuals age 17 years and older. From September to December 2010, ...

Boston, Mass. – A group of small molecules called EETs – currently under scrutiny as possible treatment targets for a host of cardiovascular diseases – may also drive the growth and spread of cancer, according to researchers at the Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) and other institutions. Their findings also raise the possibility that drugs that block EETs could serve as a new avenue for cancer treatment. This study, led by Dipak Panigrahy, MD, of DF/CHCC and the Vascular Biology Program at Children's Hospital Boston, appeared online December 19 ...

A North Carolina State University discovery of the unique chemical composition of a cockroach signal – a "Let's hook up" sex pheromone emitted by certain female wood cockroaches to entice potential mates – could have far-ranging benefits, including improved conservation of an endangered woodpecker. Dr. Coby Schal, Blanton J. Whitmire Professor of Entomology at NC State and the corresponding author of a paper describing the discovery, says that the study, published the week of Dec. 19 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, advances the knowledge of fundamental ...

Detroit - A Wayne State University researcher has shown that compounds found in soybeans can make radiation treatment of lung cancer tumors more effective while helping to preserve normal tissue. A team led by Gilda Hillman, Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology at Wayne State University's School of Medicine and the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute, had shown previously that soy isoflavones, a natural, nontoxic component of soybeans, increase the ability of radiation to kill cancer cells in prostate tumors by blocking DNA repair mechanisms and molecular survival ...

This press release is available in Spanish. The main problem associated with measuring the effects of fire on materials lies in the temperature of the flames, which reaches over 1000 ºC and can obscure the actual temperature of the material. In addition, there is the problem of the high concentration of gasses (CO2, H2O and others), which makes it difficult to obtain clear images of the sample being subjected to fire. In order to solve this problem, the UC3M scientists who developed this method used a measurement that utilizes the infrared spectrum. "To do this, ...

This press release is available in German.For years, Mrs. S. suffered from joint pain and headaches. After an odyssey through doctors' waiting rooms, one doctor diagnosed Lyme borreliosis – an infectious disease transmitted by ticks. With its bite, the parasite introduced bacteria that then spread throughout the entire body. Mrs. S. is not alone – very often, the disease is recognized too late or not at all, or is not properly treated. Doctors are provided with no clues if the characteristic redness around the bite area is missing. Left untreated, Lyme borreliosis can cause ...

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing the results of a detailed investigation of how many 'ultra-compact dwarf galaxies' (UCDs) can be found in nearby galaxy clusters. UCDs were recognized as a populous and potentially distinct class of stellar systems about a decade ago. But they are still mysterious objects that are characterized by a compact morphology (30-300 light-years in size) and high masses (more than one million solar masses). More generally, their properties (e.g., their size, shape, or luminosity) are similar to those of both star clusters and dwarf galaxies. ...

Article Catalog, a new article directory, launched today, Thursday, 15 December, 2011. The site offers users free, unlimited submissions of articles to its directory. Articles are categorized by industry and have to be a minimum of 300 words and a maximum of 2000 words in length. The site is available to companies worldwide and is visually appealing, and has an easy-to-use, straightforward login system and an aesthetically pleasing interface design. "The idea behind launching this directory was to offer another article marketing opportunity for companies looking ...

Grand Rapids, Michigan's small business community has many vendors to turn to for business supplies and services such as printing, direct marketing and merchant services, but until recently, no vendor sought to simplify small business operations by offering all these services and supplies under one roof. Dodson Group started operations in 1998 providing office supplies and direct mail marketing solutions to automotive dealerships, but as their client base increased, Dodson Group began offering supplemental services to businesses in other industries. Today, the Grand ...

Copenhagen, Denmark – A new German-based project is setting out to rescue biodiversity data at risk of being lost, because they are not integrated in institutional databases, are kept in outdated digital storage systems, or are not properly documented. The project, run by the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, provides a good example for a GBIF recommendation to establish hosting centres for biodiversity data. This is one of a set of data management recommendations just published by GBIF. The team behind the German project called reBiND (http://rebind.bgbm.org/), ...

In June 2011, a team of Chinese and Swedish researchers rediscovered the breeding area for the poorly known Blackthroat Luscinia obscura, in the Qinling mountains, Shaanxi province, north central China. Seven singing males were observed in Foping and seven more in Changqing National Nature Reserves – which almost equals the total number of individuals observed of this species since its discovery in the late 19th century. Nearly all of the birds were on mountain slopes at 2400 meters above sea level in large, dense expanses of bamboo in open coniferous and mixed coniferous-broadleaved ...

Responding to huge consumer demand for mobile television content, Mobilefilmworks plans to stream to mobile, free reruns of TV sitcoms such as "The Cosby Show", "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", "Everybody Hates Chris", "Soul Train", "Good Times", and "The Jefferson's" in 2012. Mobilefilmworks will stream the popular sitcoms to Brazilian mobile viewers "On the Go", and to desktops. "The more than 70 million Afro Brazilian viewers want relevant, positive, and upward mobile sitcoms, featuring their ...

For the first time, the presence of large bodied herbivorous dinosaurs in Antarctica has been recorded. Until now, remains of sauropoda - one of the most diverse and geographically widespread species of herbivorous dinosaurs - had been recovered from all continental landmasses, except Antarctica. Dr. Ignacio Alejandro Cerda, from CONICET in Argentina, and his team's identification of the remains of the sauropod dinosaur suggests that advanced titanosaurs (plant-eating, sauropod dinosaurs) achieved a global distribution at least by the Late Cretaceous*. Their work has just ...

Chandler's Roofing, Inc. has been awarded the prestigious 2011 Angie's List Super Service Award, an honor bestowed annually on approximately 5 percent of all the businesses rated on the nation's leading provider of consumer reviews on local service and health providers. "It is an honor to have achieved this award for the second year in a row," stated Brian Hicks, CEO of Chandler's Roofing. "Having been awarded the 2011 National Residential Roofing Contractor of the Year Award in November by Roofing Contractor Magazine and now receiving the Super Service ...

Intensive agriculture practices developed during the past century have helped improve food security for many people but have also added to nitrate pollution in surface and groundwaters. New research has looked at water quality measurement over the last 140 years to track this problem in the Thames River basin. The NERC-funded study, led by the University of Bristol's Department of Civil Engineering, has looked at nitrate transport from agricultural land to water in the Thames basin. The team used a simple model to estimate the amount of nitrate able to leach from soils ...

Most commonly used raw materials in butanol production have so far been starch and cane sugar. In contrast to this, the starting point in the Aalto University study was to use only lignocellulose, otherwise known as wood biomass, which does not compete with food production. Another new breakthrough in the study is to successfully combine modern pulp - and biotechnology. Finland's advanced forest industry provides particularly good opportunities to develop this type of bioprocesses. Wood biomass is made up of three primary substances: cellulose, hemicelluloses and ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. -- Using statistical analysis methods to examine rainfall extremes in India, a team of researchers has made a discovery that resolves an ongoing debate in published findings and offers new insights. The study, initiated by Auroop Ganguly and colleagues at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, reports no evidence for uniformly increasing trends in rainfall extremes averaged over the entire Indian region. It does, however, find a steady and significant increase in the spatial variability of rainfall extremes over the region. These findings, published in Nature ...

An increase in female representation in local politics has caused a significant rise in documented crimes against women in India, new research has found. That is good news, say the authors of the study carried out at the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) at the University of Warwick in the UK, Harvard Business School and the IMF, who argue that the increase is down to greater reporting of crimes against women, rather than greater incidence of crimes against them. The research examined the impact of the Panchayati Raj reform passed in 1993, ...