AUSTIN, Texas—The source of HIV infection in two separate criminal cases in which men were convicted of intentionally infecting their female sexual partners was confirmed by scientists from The University of Texas at Austin and Baylor College of Medicine using evolutionary forensics. The research shows it's possible to identify the source of a cluster of diseases by analyzing the evolution of a virus within its host and between individuals. This type of research is known broadly as phylogenetic analysis. In the cases, State of Washington vs. Anthony Eugene Whitfield ...

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore report that a new, highly sensitive investigative blood test may help predict the risk of heart failure and cardiovascular death much earlier than previously possible in older people who do not have symptoms of heart failure. Results of a study were presented at the Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association on November 15, 2010, and simultaneously published online in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association. The new test measures troponin T, a marker for the biological process ...

A Queen's University neuroscientist is launching a medical tool at the world's largest neuroscience conference in San Diego on Monday, Nov. 15. The KINARM Assessment Station will greatly improve the way healthcare workers assess patients suffering from brain injuries and disease. The new technology, invented by Stephen Scott, is the only objective tool for assessing brain function, and clinical researchers need this tool to develop better therapies for treating brain injury or disease. "The beauty of this system is it that it captures subtle deficits caused by a ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – If researchers could determine how to send signals to cells responding to a spinal cord injury, they might be able to stop one type of cell from doing additional damage at the injury site and instead, coax it into helping nerve cells grow. That is the theory behind new research at Ohio State University, where scientists are trying to determine how to simultaneously stop damage and promote neuron growth with a single, targeted signal. The cells in question are macrophages, a type of white blood cell found in injured tissue. After a spinal cord injury, ...

Alzheimer's disease is widely believed to be caused by the gradual accumulation in the brain of amyloid-beta peptide which is toxic to nerve cells. Amyloid beta peptide is formed from a protein known as APP, which is found in three forms. Most research into APP – a key area of study for the disease – does not distinguish between the different forms of the protein. The findings, published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, show that amyloid beta peptide is actually created mainly by just one form of APP – known as APP695 for the number of its amino acids. APP695 ...

People who take regular exercise could reduce their risk of developing around two dozen physical and mental health conditions - including some cancers and dementia - and slow down how quickly their body deteriorates as they age. An extensive research review, published in the December issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice, says that apart from not smoking, being physically active is the most powerful lifestyle choice any individual can make to improve their health. Physiotherapist and lecturer Leslie Alford from the University of East Anglia reviewed ...

Drug resistance is a major obstacle in curing ovarian cancer but new research from the Centenary Institute has discovered a treatment that kills ovarian cancer cells in a new way that can break the resistance mechanism. Published today in Autophagy, the researchers found the drug (FTY720) had a potent effect in human ovarian cancer cells, even in those resistant to cisplatin, the most commonly used chemotherapeutic drug currently available for the treatment of ovarian cancer. Centenary Institute Signal Transduction Head Associate Professor Pu Xia described the findings ...

Scientists have discovered the origin of a unique type of cell known for its ability to support regeneration in the central nervous system. Their findings, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), raise the possibility of obtaining a more reliable source of these cells for use in cell transplantation therapy for spinal cord injuries. Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), as the name suggests, ensheath and protect the nerve fibres in the olfactory nerve, which transmit olfactory (smell) information to the brain from ...

The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, involves a new class of materials called metamaterials, which can be artificially engineered to distort light or sound waves. With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight line, but with metamaterials, scientists can exploit a wealth of additional flexibility to create undetectable blind spots. By deflecting certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, an image can be altered or made to look like it has disappeared. Previously, a team led by Professor Sir John Pendry at Imperial College ...

Mums who smoke heavily while pregnant run the risk of having kids who grow up to become repeat criminal offenders, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The findings held true, even after taking account of a comprehensive range of family and social factors, such as mental ill health and deprivation, which are likely to influence behaviours, the research showed. The authors base their findings on just under 4000 adults aged between 33 and 40, who were part of the Rhode Island cohort of the Collaborative Perinatal Project. ...

Non-smokers who regularly breathe in others' tobacco smoke are at increased risk of some degree of hearing loss, reveals research published online in Tobacco Control. Previous research indicates that former and current smokers are more likely to lose some of their full range of hearing, but it's not been known whether passive smokers are also prone to this. The authors drew on 1999-2004 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a yearly household survey combined with a physical examination of a representative sample of the US population. ...

US scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies, published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Fraudsters are also more likely to be "repeat offenders," the study shows. The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn—and therefore officially expunged from the public record—between 2000 and 2010. A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers ...

According to recent research the color, shape, taste and even name of a tablet or pill can have an effect on how patients feel about their medication. Choose an appropriate combination and the placebo effect gives the pill a boost, improves outcomes and might even reduce side effects. Now, researchers at the University of Bombay, New Mumbai, India, have surveyed users of over-the-counter (OTC) medication to find out just how much the color of a tablet influences patient choice. Writing in the International Journal of Biotechnology, R.K. Srivastava and colleagues report ...

Evidence from Disneyland suggests that human creativity may have evolved not in response to sexual selection as some scientists believe but as a way to help parents bond with their children and to pass on traditions and cultural knowledge, a new study published in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology suggests. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico has suggested that human creativity, storytelling, humor, wit, music, fantasy, and morality, all evolved as forms of courtship behavior. He used evidence ...

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 15, 2010) -- Rice University scientists have found a way to predict rapidly whether a new strain of the influenza virus should be included in the annual seasonal flu vaccine. While it sometimes takes new flu strains up to three years to become dominant worldwide, the new method can predict whether they will become dominant as little as two weeks after the sequence first appears in the GenBank database, the National Institutes of Health's collection of all publicly available DNA sequences. "We studied a new strain of the virus that evolved in British Columbia ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that both physical and sexual abuse history were positively associated with a higher incidence of uterine fibroids later in life. These findings currently appear on-line in the journal Epidemiology. Uterine leiomyomas, also known as fibroids or myomas, are benign, hormone-dependent tumors that are clinically symptomatic in 20󈞅 percent of reproductive age women. Fibroids contribute to a third of hysterectomies in the US, increase risk of infertility, spontaneous abortion and pelvic ...

Annoyed by how long it took his computer to boot up, Kläui began to think about an alternative. Hard disks are cheap and can store enormous quantities of data, but they are slow; every time a computer boots up, 2-3 minutes are lost while information is transferred from the hard disk into RAM (random access memory). The global cost in terms of lost productivity and energy consumption runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Like the tried and true VHS videocassette, the proposed solution involves data recorded on magnetic tape. But the similarity ends there; ...

A new study on gaming and health in adolescents, conducted by researchers at Yale School of Medicine, found some significant gender differences linked to gaming as well as important health risks associated with problematic gaming. Published today in the journal Pediatrics, the study is among the first and largest to examine possible health links to gaming and problematic gaming in a community sample of adolescents. Rani Desai, associate professor of psychiatry and epidemiology and public health at Yale, and colleagues anonymously surveyed 4,028 adolescents about their ...

Arlington, Va. — A new inhalable dry powder treatment for lung cancer shows a significant increase in survival rates and is far less invasive than current treatment options, which frequently include radiation and surgery. This research is being presented at the 2010 International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress (PSWC) in association with the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans, La., Nov. 14-18. Lung cancer is the second most common type of cancer in the U.S., accounting ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a sensor that allows engineers to assess the scour potential of soils at various depths and on-site for the first time – a technology that will help evaluate the safety of civil infrastructure before and after storm events. Scour, or erosion of soil around structures due to water flow, is responsible for a wide range of critical infrastructure failures – from unstable bridges to the levees that gave way in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "The 'in situ scour evaluation probe' (ISEP) is the first technology ...

Philadelphia, PA, 15 November 2010 - A family history of Alzheimer's disease significantly increases the risk for developing this disorder, but a new study in Biological Psychiatry suggests that which of your parents has the disease is very important. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia in late-life, affecting over 5 million elderly in the United States alone. In order to develop preventative treatments, it is necessary to identify those individuals who are at highest risk for developing Alzheimer's. Although individuals with a parental history of Alzheimer's ...

Employees who telecommute the majority of the work week are more satisfied with their jobs compared to those working mostly in the office because working remotely alleviates more stress than it creates, according to a new study by a communication researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). The study, conducted by Kathryn Fonner, UWM assistant professor of communication, and Michael Roloff, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, compared the advantages and disadvantages of each work arrangement. A paper outlining the results appears ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Men treated with hormone-based therapy for prostate cancer faced a 30 percent to 40 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer, compared to patients who did not receive this treatment, according to a new study. The study looked at use of androgen deprivation therapy, a common type of treatment for prostate cancer that involves blocking the male hormone testosterone through either surgical removal of the testicles or a series of injections. It's been shown to benefit men with advanced cancers, but its benefit for less-advanced disease is unclear. Still, ...

The world's first remote heart procedure, using a robotic arm alongside 3-D mapping, is due to take place at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. It comes six months after Dr Andre Ng carried out the first ever remote catheter ablation procedure using the Amigo Robotic Catheter System. Dr Ng, is senior lecturer at the University of Leicester and consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Glenfield Hospital. On Tuesday 16 November, Dr Ng will be carrying out another "world first" using the robotic arm in combination with advanced 3-dimensional mapping to fix ...

Emotional prosperity in Europe is falling, and this troubling fact needs to be faced by the European governments. That is the conclusion from a new research report from the University of Warwick which documents cross-country evidence on psychological health and mental well-being. The study, by Andrew Oswald, professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School, draws together the latest statistical evidence from a range of social-science, science and medical journals. The study is to be published in the December issue of the British Journal of Industrial Relations. ...