A group of researchers from EPFL's Global Health Institute (GHI) and Inserm (Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, the French government agency for biomedical research) has discovered that a class of chemotherapy drugs originally designed to inhibit key signaling pathways in cancer cells also kills the parasite that causes malaria. The discovery could quickly open up a whole new strategy for combating this deadly disease. The research, published online in the journal Cellular Microbiology, shows that the malaria parasite depends upon a signaling pathway ...

TORONTO, ON., March 8, 2011—Homeless patients cost about $2,500 more per hospital stay than the average patient, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital. Homeless people with medical or surgical problems arrive at the hospital with underlying health issues and stay longer than others, often because there is no place to send them after their initial medical crisis has been treated, the study found. Those with psychiatric illness arrive at the hospital much sicker than others. The findings suggest the cost of hospitalizing people who are homeless ...

This release is available in German. Magnetic Random Access Memories (MRAM) are the most important new modules on the market of computer storage devices. Like the well known USB-sticks, they store information into static memory, but MRAM offer short access times and unlimited writing properties. Commercial MRAMs have been on the market since 2005. They are, however, still slower than the competitors they have among the volatile storage media. An invention made by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) changes this situation: A special chip connection, in association ...

Getting someone's attention can be easy with a loud noise or a shout, but what if the situation calls for a little more tact? How can a robot use subtle cues to attract a human's notice and tell when it has captured it? In a preliminary study, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that they can program a robot to understand when it gains a human's attention and when it falls short. The research is being presented today at the Human-Robot Interaction conference in Lausanne, Switzerland. "The primary focus was trying to give Simon, our robot, the ...

Alexandria, VA – In 1993, "Jurassic Park" thrilled the world with the idea that dinosaurs could be resurrected from bits of DNA preserved in mosquitoes trapped in ancient amber. In the 18 years since the movie came out, scientists have been finding that parts of this scenario are closer to reality than anyone ever imagined: Researchers have found microbes living for tens of thousands - and maybe millions - of years inside salt crystals. These findings raise exciting questions, as EARTH explores in "Bacteria Back From the Brink" in the April issue. Could these hibernating ...

This release is available in Spanish and French. The incidence of eating disorders was found to be 2.3-fold higher among Muslim adolescents than among their Christian classmates. Similarly, body dissatisfaction was 1.8-fold higher in the former group. Finally, as a general conclusion, an average of one in four adolescents suffers some type of eating disorder, and 15% suffers body dissatisfaction. These were the conclusions drawn of a research conducted at the University of Granada. The sample was taken from a Spanish multicultural city, Ceuta, where different religious ...

A study published today (09 March) in Proceedings of the Royal Society B by researchers at Rothamsted Research (an institute of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council), and the universities of Lund (Sweden), Greenwich and York, reports the surprising finding that night-flying moths are able to match their songbird counterparts for travel speed and direction during their annual migrations but they use quite different strategies to do so - information that adds to our understanding of the lifestyle of such insects, which are important for maintaining ...

A study into the effects of Sanfilippo Syndrome type B (MPS III B) has found that the barrier responsible for protecting the brain from the entry of harmful blood-borne substances is structurally and functionally damaged by the devastating disease. University of South Florida researchers identified damage in specific brain structures involved in the pathology of MPS III B, one of four Sanfilippo syndromes, all of which are inherited diseases of metabolism. The study, using a mouse model of MPS III B, has been published online in the journal PLoS One. Before this study, ...

Most HIV-positive patients die of cancer. In the latest issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[8]: 117󈞂), Manfred Hensel's research group presents epidemiological data. The authors surveyed all German hospital outpatient clinics and ambulatory care centers specializing in the treatment of HIV patients in the period from 2000 to 2007 and were thus able to analyze the largest collection of data on the incidence of cancer in HIV patients ever assembled in Germany. It first became clear in the early 1980s that HIV infection is associated ...

Boston, Mass. – Through a grant from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School have developed a first-of-its kind platform architecture to support a flexible health information technology (IT) environment and promote innovation. The SMArt (Substitutable Medical Applications, reusable technologies) platform and interface are being made publicly available today to kick off the start of a $5,000 competition challenging developers to create web applications that provide ...

Globally the sale of health care information systems is a multibillion dollar industry. The vast costs, frequent failed systems, and inability of systems to talk to each other regularly attract media comment. However policy makers still shy away from a class of software, Open Source, that could address many of these problems, because of worries about the safety and security of Open Source systems. Now new research by the University of Warwick's Institute for Digital Healthcare, and the Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education at UCL Medical School, ...

Montreal, March 8, 2011 – A team of researchers from Concordia University has developed an effective new technique to determine the authorship of anonymous emails. Tests showed their method has a high level of accuracy – and unlike many other methods of ascertaining authorship, it can provide presentable evidence in courts of law. Findings on the new technique are published in the journal Digital Investigation. "In the past few years, we've seen an alarming increase in the number of cybercrimes involving anonymous emails," says study co-author Benjamin Fung, a professor ...

People visiting Spain have a high opinion of the price-quality ratio of Spanish hotels. Spanish tourists, on the contrary, complain about the quality of hotels, cleanliness and hospitality in countries such as Italy, Greece and France. This is one of the conclusions of a study carried out by the University of Cádiz (UCA) on tourism in southern Mediterranean countries. "The five aspects most-highly rated by tourists travelling in the countries of the European Mediterranean are the leisure-spectacle activities, organised routes-excursions, cultural activities, the weather ...

INDIANAPOLIS – The March 2011 issue of the journal Heath Affairs highlights an evidence-based model of geriatric care management developed, implemented and tested by researchers and clinicians from Indiana University, the Regenstrief Institute and Wishard Health Services. Geriatric Resources for Assessment and Care of Elders (GRACE) optimizes the health and functional status of community dwelling lower income, older adults. GRACE is now in use by Wishard Health Services, the third-largest safety-net health organization in the United States; by HealthCare Partners Medical ...

Graphene Oxide has had a scrum of researchers fall upon it as it retains much of the properties of the highly valued super material pure Graphene, but it is much easier, and cheaper, to make in bulk quantities; easier to process; and its significant oxygen content appears to make it soluble in water. However new research led by University of Warwick Chemist Dr Jonathan P. Rourke and Physicist University of Warwick Physicist Dr Neil Wilson, has found that that last assumption is incorrect and unfortunately Graphene oxide's solubility literally comes out in the wash. Drs ...

Milan, Italy, 8 March 2011 – Research suggests that intelligence in humans is controlled by the part of the brain known as the 'cortex', and most theories of age-related cognitive decline focus on cortical dysfunction. However, a new study of Scottish older adults, reported in the April 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00109452), suggests that grey matter volume in the 'cerebellum' at the back of the brain predicts cognitive ability, and keeping those cerebellar networks active may be the key to keeping cognitive decline at ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – A prolific University of Missouri chemist has discovered a quicker and easier method for pharmaceutical companies to make certain drugs. Jerry Atwood, Curator's Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry in the MU College of Arts and Science, has recently published a paper – his 663rd in a refereed journal – that states that highly pressurized carbon dioxide at room temperature could replace the time consuming and expensive methods currently used to manufacture certain pharmaceutical drugs. In the article, "A New Strategy of Transforming Pharmaceutical ...

This release is available in Spanish. Wheat farmers in eastern Oregon and Washington who use no-till production systems can substantially stem soil erosion and enhance efforts to protect water quality, according to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) hydrologist John Williams led a study that compared runoff, soil erosion and crop yields in a conventional, intensively tilled winter wheat-fallow system and a no-till 4-year cropping rotation system. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, ...

Milan, Italy, 8 March 2011 – The vast majority of humans – over 90% – prefer to use their right hand for most skilled tasks. For decades, researchers have been trying to understand why this asymmetry exists. Why, with our two cerebral hemispheres and motor cortices, are we not equally skilled with both hands? A study from the University of Aberdeen in the UK, published in the April 2011 issue of Elsevier's Cortex (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00109452), suggests that the explanation may stem from actions that require us to use both hands at the same time, ...

URBANA – The way you react to your two-year-old's temper tantrums or clinginess may lead to anxiety, withdrawal and behavior problems down the road, and the effect is more pronounced if the child is a boy who often displays such negative emotions as anger and social fearfulness, reports a new University of Illinois study. "Young children, especially boys, may need their parents' help working through angry or fearful emotions. If you punish toddlers for their anger and frustration or act as if their fears are silly or shameful, they may internalize those negative emotions, ...

An Ohio State University molecular biologist leveraged a supercomputer to help better define the family tree of a group of enzymes that have been implicated in a wide range of human diseases and are important targets for anti-cancer therapies. Along with several OSU colleagues, Rebecca S. Lamb, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Molecular Genetics, recently analyzed the evolutionary history of the poly(ADP-ribose)polymerase (PARP) superfamily. These proteins are found in eukaryotes, a wide range of organisms – animals, plants, molds, fungi, algae and protozoa –whose ...

Scientists have long puzzled over the many hours we spend in light, dreamless slumber. But a new study from the University of California, Berkeley, suggests we're busy recharging our brain's learning capacity during this traditionally undervalued phase of sleep, which can take up half the night. UC Berkeley researchers have found compelling evidence that bursts of brain waves known as "sleep spindles" may be networking between key regions of the brain to clear a path to learning. These electrical impulses help to shift fact-based memories from the brain's hippocampus ...

This release is available in German. From the wooden bars in a xylophone or the head of a drum, to the strings and sound box of a guitar or violin, musical instruments are the most familiar examples of mechanical resonators. The actual mechanical vibrations of these instruments create acoustic waves that we hear as sound. The purity of the emitted tone is intimately related to the decay of the vibration amplitude, that is, the mechanical losses of the system. A figure of merit for mechanical losses is the quality factor, simply called "Q", which describes the number ...

In the first census of its kind, research led by UC Davis and Stanford University found that there are far fewer white sharks off central California than biologists had thought. The study, published today in the journal Biology Letters, is the first rigorous scientific estimate of white shark numbers in the northeast Pacific Ocean. It is also the best estimate among the world's three known white-shark populations (the others are in Australia/New Zealand and South Africa). The researchers went out into the Pacific Ocean in small boats to places where white sharks congregate. ...

Lent in the Christian tradition is a time of sacrifice and penance. It also is a period of purification and enlightenment. Pain purifies. It atones for sin and cleanses the soul. Or at least that's the idea. Theological questions aside, can self-inflicted pain really alleviate the guilt associated with immoral acts? A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, explores the psychological consequences of experiencing bodily pain. Psychological scientist Brock Bastian of the University of Queensland, Australia and ...