Boston, Mass. - In a paper that suggests a new strategy to prevent asthma, scientists at Children's Hospital Boston and their colleagues report that the influenza virus infection in young mice protected the mice as adults against the development of allergic asthma. The same protective effect was achieved by treating young mice with compound isolated from the bacterium Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori), a bacterium that colonizes the stomach and is best known for causing ulcers and increasing the risk of gastric cancers. The findings, published online December 13 in the ...

BOZEMAN, Mont. -- New research indicates that the speed of early forest clearance following human colonisation of the South Island of New Zealand was much faster and more intense than previously thought. Charcoal recovered from lake-bed sediment cores show that just a few large fires within 200 years of initial colonization destroyed much of the South Island's lowland forest. Grasslands and shrubland replaced the burnt forest and smaller fires prevented forests from returning. The findings - by an international team led by Dave McWethy and Cathy Whitlock from Montana ...

WASHINGTON – Losing a job is a profoundly distressing experience, but the unemployed may be more resilient than previously believed – the vast majority eventually end up as satisfied with life as they were before they lost their jobs, according to a new analysis published by the American Psychological Association. "Unemployment rates continue to be historically high in the United States and other countries," said the study's lead author, Isaac Galatzer-Levy, PhD, who is now at New York University School of Medicine. "There's a real concern that this will have long-term ...

For the first time ever, scientists have found a difference in the way males and females of the same species of vertebrate see things – and that sexes likely use that difference to select their mates. Queen's PhD candidate Shai Sabbah, a Vanier Scholar, led a team of researchers who found that male and female cichlid fishes not only see things differently, but detect light in different ways as well. "It is difficult to say what colour attracts the female the most, but we know that if we manipulate the colour of the fish by changing the light in the environment, the ...

Increased life expectancy in the United States has not been accompanied by more years of perfect health, reveals new research published in the December issue of the Journal of Gerontology. Indeed, a 20-year-old today can expect to live one less healthy year over his or her lifespan than a 20-year-old a decade ago, even though life expectancy has grown. From 1970 to 2005, the probability of a 65-year-old surviving to age 85 doubled, from about a 20 percent chance to a 40 percent chance. Many researchers presumed that the same forces allowing people to live longer, including ...

UCSF researchers have identified an existing medication that restores key elements of the immune system that, when out of balance, lead to a steady decline in immunity and health as people age. The team found that extremely low doses of the drug lenalidomide can stimulate the body's immune-cell protein factories, which decrease production during aging, and rebalance the levels of several key cytokines – immune proteins that either attack viruses and bacteria or cause inflammation that leads to an overall decline in health. The initial study, which was designed to define ...

Early years initiatives for pre-school children are not delivering improvements in language and numeracy development, according to leading education experts. Experts, conducting one of the largest surveys to date of the development of 117,000 children starting primary school in England over eight years, found that despite a raft of early years' initiatives, such as 'Sure Start', basic levels of development in early reading, vocabulary and maths have remained largely unchanged. Researchers from the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) at Durham University who ...

Ann Arbor, Mich.— Expression of a toxic RNA that leads to Fragile X Tremor Ataxia Syndrome is modifiable by genetic or pharmacologic means, according to new research from U-M Medical School scientists. In the study published online today in the journal Public Library Of Science Genetics, U-M's Peter K. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., led a team of researchers who examined the expression of a toxic messenger RNA (mRNA) seen in the brains of those afflicted with the syndrome. Fragile X Tremor Ataxia Syndrome (FXTAS) is usually found in older adults, who often have grandchildren afflicted ...

Mexican-Americans who are most integrated into the culture -- including those born in the United States, and not recent immigrants -- appear less healthy and more likely to require resources to manage their health conditions than more recent, less-integrated migrants, according to a new study from Rice University, Duke University and the University of Colorado Denver. In particular, the research reveals that this pattern of declining health among immigrants who are in the U.S. the longest holds more strongly for men than women. Conversely, the research indicates that, ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Face-to-face workplace interactions may be the best way to educate and encourage people to consider becoming organ donors, according to new research from Purdue University. "Workplaces are a key location for people to learn about health and wellness issues, but how information is distributed in this setting can make a difference for sensitive health topics such as organ donation," said Susan E. Morgan, a professor of communication. "There is an incredible amount of misinformation and medical mistrust surrounding the organ donation process, which ...

A one-year follow-up study on seniors who participated in a strength training exercise program shows sustained cognitive benefits as well as savings for the healthcare system. The research, conducted at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility at Vancouver Coastal Health and the University of British Columbia, is published today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study is the first to examine whether both cognitive and economic benefits are sustained after formal cessation of a tailored exercise program. It builds on the Brain Power Study, published in the January ...

Results from a government-sponsored clinical trial of inactivated 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine in people with asthma indicate that a single dose of vaccine was safe and induced a strong immune response predictive of protection. The findings also suggest that individuals over the age of 60 who have severe asthma may require a larger dose of vaccine. The study was cosponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), two components of the National Institutes of Health, and appears online ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Changes in diet have been linked to a reduction of abnormal behaviors in mentally ill people or animals, but a Purdue University study shows that diet might also trigger the onset of mental illness in the first place. Joseph Garner, an associate professor of animal sciences, fed mice a diet high in sugar and tryptophan that was expected to reduce abnormal hair-pulling. Instead, mice that were already ill worsened their hair-pulling behaviors or started a new self-injurious scratching behavior, and the seemingly healthy mice developed the same abnormal ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – The Obama administration's decision to maintain a ban on oil drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts is a mistake, according to a University of Illinois expert who wrote a six-volume book series on marine pollution. "It's a ridiculous decision on the part of the Interior Department," said John W. Kindt, a professor of business and legal policy at Illinois. "The previous 180-day moratorium really hurt a lot of businesses. Well, a seven-year ban is going to sting even more." Kindt says giving the oil companies a ...

From atomic crystals to spiral galaxies, self-assembly is ubiquitous in nature. In biological processes, self-assembly at the molecular level is particularly prevalent. Phospholipids, for example, will self-assemble into a bilayer to form a cell membrane, and actin, a protein that supports and shapes a cell's structure, continuously self-assembles and disassembles during cell movement. Bioengineers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have been exploring a unique phenomenon whereby randomly dispersed microparticles self-assemble into ...

When you dive into that salad full of lettuce grown in the American West, there's a good chance you are enjoying the product of irrigation from an underground water source. These hidden groundwater systems are precious resources that need careful management, but regulatory groups have a hard time monitoring them, owing to a lack of accurate data. Now, scientists at Stanford have found a way to cheaply and effectively monitor aquifer levels in agricultural regions using data from satellites that are already in orbit mapping the shape of Earth's surface with millimeter ...

This past summer saw a revolution in melanoma therapy. Patients whose melanoma lesions contain a mutation in the BRAF gene were successfully treated with a BRAF-specific inhibitor, PLX4032. Reports of the drug trial described shrinking tumors and improved health. Yet seven months after therapy began the tumors returned and resumed growing. Now, scientists at The Wistar Institute explain why: the tumor learns to signal around the blocked gene by adjusting its molecular wiring. They also show how to overcome resistance by simultaneously targeting multiple signaling pathways. The ...

Stanford, CA— Plants are very sensitive to light conditions because light is their source of energy and also a signal that activates the special photoreceptors that regulate growth, metabolism, and physiological development. Scientists believe that these light signals control plant growth and development by activating or inhibiting plant hormones. New research from Carnegie plant biologists has altered the prevailing theory on how light signals and hormones interact. Their findings could have implications for food crop production. It was previously known that a plant ...

GREENBELT, Md. -- The size, background ecology, and development patterns of major northeastern cities combine to make them unusually warm, according to NASA scientists who presented new research today at an American Geophysical Union meeting, in San Francisco, Calif. Summer land surface temperatures of cities in the Northeast were an average of 13°F to 16°F (7°C to 9°C) warmer than surrounding rural areas over a three year period, the new research shows. The complex phenomenon that drives up temperatures of cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. is ...

ALBANY, Calif.—Forests in the southwestern United States are changing and will face reduced growth if temperatures continue to rise and precipitation declines during this century, according to a study conducted by a team of scientists from the U.S. Forest Service; University of California, Santa Barbara; U.S. Geological Survey; and University of Arizona. Their findings were released today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) special issue on climate change. Using tree-ring data and climate models, the team determined that rising temperatures and ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– If current climate projections hold true, the forests of the Southwestern United States face a bleak future, with more severe –– and more frequent –– forest fires, higher tree death rates, more insect infestation, and weaker trees. The findings by university and government scientists are published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Our study shows that regardless of rainfall going up or down, forests in the Southwest U.S. are very sensitive to temperature –– in fact, more sensitive than any ...

It's colds and flu season, and as any parent knows, colds and flu spread like wildfire, especially through schools. New research using human-networking theory may give a clearer picture of just how, exactly, infectious diseases such as the common cold, influenza, whooping cough and SARS can spread through a closed group of people, and even through populations at large. With the help of 788 volunteers at a high school, Marcel Salathé, a biologist at Penn State University, developed a new technique to count the number of possible disease-spreading events that occur in ...

New York, 13 December 2010—A new report from the Women's HIV Prevention Tracking Project (WHiPT), a collaborative initiative of AVAC and the ATHENA Network, features an unprecedented collection of voices from Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland and Uganda reflecting on what male circumcision for HIV prevention means for women. It highlights women's perspectives, advocacy priorities and recommendations on this new prevention strategy. Making Medical Male Circumcision Work for Women is the first report from WHiPT, which was launched in 2009 to bring community perspectives, ...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 8, 2010 — In a country with Jim Crow segregation laws and the "one-drop rule" determining who was black and therefore where and what a person was permitted to be, it's easy to see why those who plausibly could, might pass as white. But new research published in the December issue of Social Psychology Quarterly shows that black-white biracial adults now exercise considerable control over how they identify and the authors find "a striking reverse pattern of passing today," with a majority of survey respondents reporting that they pass as black. Today's ...

WASHINGTON, DC, December 13, 2010 — Those who choose to pray find personalized comfort during hard times, according to a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist. The 75 percent of Americans who pray on a weekly basis do so to manage a range of negative situations and emotions — illness, sadness, trauma and anger — but just how they find relief has gone unconsidered by researchers. Through the course of in-depth interviews with dozens of victims of violent relationships with intimate partners, Shane Sharp, a graduate student studying sociology at UW-Madison, gathered ...