The ability to find shoes in the bedroom, apples in a supermarket, or a favourite animal at the zoo is impaired among children with autism, according to new research from the University of Bristol. Contrary to previous studies, which show that children with autism often demonstrate outstanding visual search skills, this new research indicates that children with autism are unable to search effectively for objects in real-life situations – a skill that is essential for achieving independence in adulthood. Previous studies have tested search skills using table-top tasks ...

Boston, MA – Scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and collaborators from other institutions have identified a natural substance in dairy fat that may substantially reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes. The compound, trans-palmitoleic acid, is a fatty acid found in milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter. It is not produced by the body and so only comes from the diet. Reporting in the December 21, 2010, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine, investigators led by Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at HSPH and Division of ...

Many trauma patients in Illinois who are transferred to another facility for care are not transported within the state-mandated two-hour window, but the most seriously injured patients appear to reach care more quickly, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Trauma systems have been designed to optimize the outcomes of injured patients by encouraging providers to triage patients to appropriate levels of care, defining pre-hospital and interhospital transport patterns and educating caregivers in the recognition ...

Black patients with early-stage liver cancer appear more likely to die of the disease than Hispanic or white patients with the same condition, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Hepatocellular carcinoma, or cancer of the liver, is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide, according to background information in the article. The five-year rate of survival for patients with advanced-stage disease is 5 percent, but those who are diagnosed at an early stage are more likely to be successfully treated. ...

Individuals with psoriasis have a high prevalence of the metabolic syndrome, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the April 2011 print issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. According to background information in the article, individual features of the metabolic syndrome include obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes and high total cholesterol and triglycerides. Additional background information notes that while past studies have suggested a link between psoriasis and individual components of the metabolic syndrome, ...

Women are more likely to report use of indoor tanning facilities than men, and some characteristics common to indoor tanners differ by sex, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, few tanners—male or female—mention avoiding tanning beds when asked about ways to reduce skin cancer risk. "Skin cancer is the most common form of malignancy in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimated that 1 million new cases of melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer were diagnosed in 2009; 8,650 deaths ...

Most patients do not have ongoing speaking or swallowing difficulties following combined chemotherapy and radiation treatment for advanced head or neck cancer, but several factors may be associated with worse outcomes in these functions, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "Speaking and swallowing deficits are experienced by many survivors of primary cancers of the head and neck," the authors write as background information in the article. "Although it is often difficult to separate ...

Patients who have recurrence of oral squamous cell carcinoma tend to do worse if the new cancer appears at the same site early or if it appears in the lymph nodes six months or longer after initial treatment, according to a report in the December issue of Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Treating recurrences of oral squamous cell carcinoma (cancer in the thin, flat cells that line the lips and mouth) involves balancing the risk of complications against the potential benefit to the patient in terms of survival or controlling ...

GALVESTON, December 17, 2010 – Fasting glucose and insulin levels remain within normal range for women using injectable or oral contraception, with only slight increases among women using depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), commonly known as the birth control shot, according to new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB Health) in Galveston. The study, published in the January 2011 issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology and conducted over three years, is the largest to measure fasting glucose and insulin levels among women using DMPA, oral (desogestrel) ...

DURHAM, NC – Most patients with locally advanced head and neck cancers who successfully complete treatment with chemotherapy and radiation manage to do so without losing the ability to speak clearly and swallow comfortably, according to researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute. "This is good news," said Joseph K. Salama, MD, an assistant professor of radiation oncology at Duke and the corresponding author of the study. "I hope it brings some comfort to newly-diagnosed patients who are understandably worried about what long-term effects treatment might involve." The ...

A virus previously thought to be associated with chronic fatigue syndrome is not the cause of the disease, a detailed study has shown. The research shows that cell samples used in previous research were contaminated with the virus identified as XMRV and that XMRV is present in the mouse genome. XMRV was first linked to chronic fatigue syndrome – also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) – in a study published in October 2009, where blood samples from chronic fatigue syndrome patients were found to have traces of the virus. XMRV had also been identified previously in ...

Researchers from the University of Washington say the Mariana crow, a forest crow living on Rota Island in the western Pacific Ocean, will go extinct in 75 years. The extinction could happen almost twice as soon as previously believed. The crow's extinction can be prevented with a bird management program that focuses on helping fledgling birds reach their first birthday, said James Ha, UW research associate professor in psychology. Ha examined survival rates in 97 Mariana crows – Corvus kubaryi – that had been tracked between 1990 and 2010 by researchers. He found ...

Evidence pointing to the effects of monensin emerged in a project investigating the effects of nearly 5,000 drugs and micromolecules on the growth of prostate cancer cells. The project involved most of the drugs on the market today. Researchers found that small amounts of compounds – disulfiram (Antabus), thiram, tricostatin A, and monensin – can prevent the growth of prostate cancer cells without significant effects on the growth of the normal human prostate epithelial cells. Further studies revealed that monensin caused prostate cancer cell death by reducing the amount ...

Awards have an impact on Spanish movie productivity, since they increase internal and external distribution demand, but subsidies have no effect whatsoever on the productivity of the Spanish film industry. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Granada (UGR), who have studied the production of films in Spain. "Awards increase the amount of films produced by increasing productivity. In other words film industry workers and companies are more productive and efficient. However, we did not detect that subsidies had any such effect on productivity", Henry ...

Horses are prone to develop genital cancer, especially as they grow older. Male horses are more commonly affected than mares but both sexes suffer from the condition, which is extremely difficult to treat and may result in the animals' death. Because of the similarity of the disease to human genital cancer it seemed possible that a similar agent might be responsible. Several human genital cancers, including cervical tumours, are known to be caused by a papillomavirus infection, so Brandt and her coworkers used genetic techniques to look for papillomavirus DNA in tissue ...

The reproductive success of men and women is influenced by the food they receive at an early stage in life, according to new research by the University of Sheffield. The research, which was published online this month (17 December 2010) in the journal Ecology, is the first study of its kind to show that early life food can have a serious influence on the life-long fertility of individuals. The research team, led by Dr Ian Rickard from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University, used a combination of church record data on births in 18th century Finland ...

Plastics-based materials have been in use for decades. But manufacturers are facing a serious hurdle in their quest for new developments: Substantial influences of the microscopic material structure on mechanical material properties cannot be observed directly. The synthetic polymer molecules are simply too small for microscopic observation in mechanical experiments. A team of physicists led by professor Andreas Bausch of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has now developed a method that allows just these kinds of measurements. They present their results in Nature ...

Milan, Italy, 20 December 2010 – The capacity to remember that a zebra has stripes, or that a giraffe is a four-legged mammal, is known as semantic memory. It allows us to assign meaning to words and to recall general knowledge and concepts that we have learned. The deterioration of these capacities is a defining feature of semantic dementia and can also occur in Alzheimer's disease. A group of French neurologists and neuropsychologists have now identified the elements of semantic memory which are the first to deteriorate and may have thus explained why a surprising phenomenon ...

A study among almost 50,000 people worldwide has identified DNA sequence variations linked with the heart's electrical rhythm in several surprising regions among 22 locations across the human genome. The variants were found by an international consortium, including Johns Hopkins researchers, and reported Nov. 14 in the Nature Genetics advance online publication. Among the notable discoveries were variations in two side-by-side genes that regulate electrically charged particles to produce signals that start contraction of the heart and register as pulsing waves seen on ...

A survey conducted by Johns Hopkins faculty found strong support among their peers for working more closely with the minority, inner-city community that surrounds the institution. Overall, 91 percent of faculty responders said closer ties make research more relevant to those it ultimately serves, and 87 percent said it improves the quality of research. "This is a huge, stunning finding," says Nancy Kass, Sc.D., deputy director for public health at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. "Faculty are giving a ringing endorsement of how important working with ...

New software developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding (NGSB) may lead to a less expensive and less time consuming method to detect corrosion or other defects in a ship's pipes. The copyrighted software, which is used to analyze digitized x-ray images to determine loss of wall thickness in pipes, was developed as the result of a six-month cooperative research and development agreement between SRNL and NGSB. SRNL has granted NGSB a license to commercialize and continue maturing the software ...

Maritime transport causes about 4% of global man-made CO2 emissions which makes its carbon footprint approximately as high as Germany's. There is no regulation of international maritime transport emissions yet, but this is currently under discussion in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In respect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, shipping is the most environmentally-friendly mode of transport. However, if no action is taken, it is estimated that emissions from ships will increase by ...

One issue confronting the efficiency of wind as a promising renewable energy source is the wind itself—specifically, its changeability. While the aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine is best under steady wind flow, the efficiency of the blades degrades when exposed to conditions such as wind gusts, turbulent flow, upstream turbine wakes and wind shear. Now, a new type of air-flow technology may soon increase the efficiency of large wind turbines under many different wind conditions. Researchers from Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and ...

A collaborative team of scientists and physicians at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin uses genetic sequencing to identify and treat an unknown disease. For the one of the first times in medical history, researchers and physicians at The Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin sequenced all the genes in a boy's DNA to identify a previously-unknown mutation. The team was able not only to identify the mutation, but to develop a treatment plan using a cord blood transplant, and stop the course of the disease. This ...

Most Massachusetts physician groups are using results from a statewide patient survey to help improve patient experiences, but a significant number are not making use of the information or are making relatively limited efforts, according to a new RAND Corporation study. Although physician communication skills are thought to be crucial to patient-centered care, the physician groups studied rarely pursued strategies that focused on improving physicians' ability to communicate with patients, according to the study published online by the Journal of General Internal Medicine. Instead, ...