New Orleans, LA – Dr. Rohan Walvekar, Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Director of Clinical Research and the Salivary Endoscopy Service at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has reported the first use of a surgical robot guided by a miniature salivary endoscope to remove a 20mm salivary stone and repair the salivary duct of a 31-year-old patient. Giant stones have traditionally required complete removal of the salivary gland. Building upon their success with the combination of salivary endoscopic guidance with surgery, Dr. Walvekar and his ...

Living in a deprived area increases the risk of violence more sharply for girls than boys, according to a Cardiff University study of former industrial areas. The new results suggest violence prevention strategies need to focus more on local inequalities, especially to protect vulnerable adolescent girls. The survey was conducted by the Violence and Society Research Group at Cardiff University. The team studied nearly 700 young people, aged 11 to 17, who attended casualty departments in South Wales with injuries from violence. The researchers matched the patients against ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A potent anti-tumor gene introduced into mice with metastatic melanoma has resulted in permanent immune reconfiguration and produced a complete remission of their cancer, according to an article to be published in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The online version is now available. Indiana University School of Medicine researchers used a modified lentivirus to introduce a potent anti-melanoma T cell receptor gene into the hematopoietic stem cells of mice. Hematopoietic stem cells are the bone marrow cells that produce all ...

Many studies support the assertion that moderate drinking is beneficial when it comes to cardiovascular health, and for the first time scientists have discovered that a well-known molecule, called Notch, may be behind alcohol's protective effects. Down the road, this finding could help scientists create a new treatment for heart disease that mimics the beneficial influence of modest alcohol consumption. "Any understanding of a socially acceptable, modifiable activity that many people engage in, like drinking, is useful as we continue to search for new ways to improve ...

Scientists have simulated, for the first time, the merger of two black holes of vastly different sizes, with one mass 100 times larger than the other. This extreme mass ratio of 100:1 breaks a barrier in the fields of numerical relativity and gravitational wave astronomy. Until now, the problem of simulating the merger of binary black holes with extreme size differences had remained an unexplored region of black-hole physics. "Nature doesn't collide black holes of equal masses," says Carlos Lousto, associate professor of mathematical sciences at Rochester Institute ...

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon (19 November 2010) – A new study finds a lack of transparency and corruption are reducing the impact of an initiative in Cameroon that channels a portion of national timber levies to rural forest communities. The study highlights the challenges of using a climate change pact to do something similar in forested regions around the world. In an article published in the peer-reviewed journal International Forestry Review, scientists at the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) examined how revenues from a tax paid by logging companies in Cameroon, ...

Researchers from the Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), in collaboration with researchers from the Institute of Microelectronics of Barcelona (IMB-CNM) of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), have developed an identification system for oocytes and embryos in which each can be individually tagged using silicon barcodes. Researchers are now working to perfect the system and soon will test it with human oocytes and embryos. The research, published online in Human Reproduction, represents a first step ...

Successfully treating and reversing the effects of multiple sclerosis, or MS, may one day be possible using a drug originally developed to treat chronic pain, according to Distinguished Professor Linda Watkins of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Watkins and her colleagues in CU-Boulder's department of psychology and neuroscience discovered that a single injection of a compound called ATL313 -- an anti-inflammatory drug being developed to treat chronic pain -- stopped the progression of MS-caused paralysis in rats for weeks at a time. Lisa Loram, a senior research ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– In nature, it's a dog-eat-dog world, even in the realm of bacteria. Competing bacteria use "toxic darts" to disable each other, according to a new study by UC Santa Barbara biologists. Their research is published in the journal Nature. "The discovery of toxic darts could eventually lead to new ways to control disease-causing pathogens," said Stephanie K. Aoki, first author and postdoctoral fellow in UCSB's Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology (MCDB). "This is important because resistance to antibiotics is on the rise." Second ...

Employee wellness programs have often been viewed as a nice extra, not a strategic imperative. But the data demonstrate otherwise, according to a team of researchers led by Leonard L. Berry of Texas A&M University, Ann M. Mirabito of Baylor University and William B. Baun of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Their research shows that the return on investment on comprehensive, well-run employee wellness programs is impressive — sometimes as high as six to one. The findings are compiled in a comprehensive piece in the December issue of Harvard Business ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- On its recent trip by comet Hartley 2, the Deep Impact spacecraft took the first pictures of, and flew through, a storm of fluffy particles of water ice being spewed out by carbon dioxide jets coming from the rough ends of the comet. The resulting images and data shed new light on the nature and composition of comets, according to the University of Maryland-led EPOXI science team, which today announced its latest findings and released the first images of this comet created snowstorm. See images at: http://epoxi.umd.edu/index.shtml "When we visited ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 18, 2010 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions," focuses on development and successful initial tests of an inexpensive new filtering technology that kills up to 98 percent of disease-causing bacteria in water in just seconds without clogging. The technology could aid many of the almost one billion people lacking access to clean, safe drinking water. A report on the work appears in the American Chemical Society's monthly journal Nano Letters. Most water purifiers ...

(Boston) - Five U.S. federal agencies recently cosponsored a set of expert work groups to formulate common data elements for research related to psychological adjustment and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Danny G. Kaloupek, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience at Boston University School of Medicine, chaired the work group on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr. Kaloupek's work at the National Center for PTSD at VA Boston Healthcare helped to guide identification of key PTSD-related characteristics and evidence-based measures that might ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Taking time off from certain osteoporosis drugs may be beneficial to bone health, according to a study conducted at Loyola University Health System. Researchers found that bone density remained stable for three years in patients who took a drug holiday from bisphosphonates, a popular class of osteoporosis drugs that can cause fractures in the thigh bones and tissue decay in the jaw bone. "These drugs are potentially harmful when taken for long durations, yet little has been known until now about the length of time osteoporosis patients should go without ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Residents of the Middle East who are heavy viewers of Arab television news networks like Al Jazeera are more likely to view their primary identity as that of Muslims, rather than as citizens of their own country, a new study suggests. Because networks like Al Jazeera are transnational – focusing on events of interest across the region rather than those in any one country – they may encourage viewers to see themselves in broader terms than simply residents of a particular nation, the researchers said. "The goal of these relatively new networks is not ...

A treatment model designed to accommodate the beliefs and concerns of Chinese immigrants appears to significantly improve the recognition and treatment of major depression in this typically underserved group. In a report in the December American Journal of Public Health, a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team describes how their model for screening and assessing patients for depression in a primary care setting increased the percentage of depressed patients entering treatment nearly sevenfold. "Ours is the first study to incorporate a culturally sensitive ...

PITTSBURGH—Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, news about 20-somethings becoming billionaires from the sale of their software companies flooded the media, giving the impression that a good idea was all it took to succeed in the software industry. Jennifer Shang, an associate professor of business management in the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, along with colleagues Shanling Li of McGill University and Sandra Slaughter of the Georgia Institute of Technology, investigated what caused software companies to succeed or fail. Their research study, titled "Why Do Software ...

What are borders these days? When travel was local, borders and communities were easy to define, but now our connectivity is more complex. It's time to think of borders differently, according to Northwestern University researchers. To reflect today's reality, they have taken a look at human mobility and redrawn the borders within the United States, showing areas of the country that are most connected. Some of the borders in this new map are familiar, but many are not. The research team, led by professor Dirk Brockmann, used the wealth of data generated by Wheres's George? ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Patients undergoing plastic or reconstructive surgery should receive a risk assessment before their procedure to predict whether they'll develop potentially fatal blood clots in the legs or lungs, according to research at the University of Michigan Medical School. Researchers also found that 1 in 9 patients at highest risk based on that assessment will develop clots if not given clot-preventing medications after surgery. Published in the November 2010 Journal of the American College of Surgeons, the study evaluated the Caprini Risk Assessment Model, a ...

Athens, Ga. ¬¬-- New University of Georgia research, published this week in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has found that blocking the action of an enzyme called GnT-V significantly delays the onset and spread of tumors in mice with cancer very similar to many cases of human breast cancer. When the GnT-V enzyme activity in the cells was increased in mammary gland cells, they increased proliferation and began to take on many characteristics of cancer cells. Using a mouse model of human breast cancer, tumors appeared ...

Physical activity promotes changes in the brain that may protect high-risk individuals against cognitive decline, including development of Alzheimer's disease, according to a new study done at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). J. Carson Smith, an assistant professor of health sciences, included in the study both people who carry a high-risk gene for Alzheimer's disease, and other healthy older adults without the gene. "Our study suggests that if you are at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease, the benefits of exercise to your brain function might be even ...

Months of volcanic restlessness preceded the eruptions this spring of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, providing insight into what roused it from its centuries of slumber. An international team of researchers analyzed geophysical changes in the long-dormant volcano leading up to its eruptions in March and April 2010. In a study published in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal Nature, the scientists suggest that magma flowing beneath the volcano may have triggered its reawakening. "Several months of unrest preceded the eruptions, with magma moving around downstairs in ...

College students participating in a new study on online courses said they felt less connected and had a smaller sense of classroom community than those who took the same classes in person – but that didnt keep online students from performing just as well as their in-person counterparts. The study by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln gauged students' perception and performance in three undergraduate science courses that had both online and face-to-face class versions. It found that online students did not feel a sense of cohesion, community spirit, trust or interaction, ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Nine supercomputers have been tested, validated and ranked by the new "Graph500" challenge, first introduced this week by an international team led by Sandia National Laboratories. The list of submitters and the order of their finish was released Nov. 17 at the supercomputing conference SC10 meeting in New Orleans. The machines were tested for their ability to solve complex problems involving random-appearing graphs, rather than for their speed in solving a basic numerical problem, today's popular method for ranking top systems. "Some, whose supercomputers ...

A recent study (1) suggesting that amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) may be attributed to "repetitive head trauma experienced in collision sports" lacks scientific epidemiological evidence to support this claim. In a review of the 12-patient study, several experts specializing in motor neuron diseases challenge the findings as entirely pathological and without clinical merit. Their editorial, which aims to dispel doubts of Lou Gehrig's ALS diagnosis, is now available online in the peer-reviewed journal Muscle & Nerve. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive ...