One of the ocean currents which particularly interests oceanographers and climatologists is the Gulf Stream. This current, originating in the Gulf of Mexico, transports enormous amounts of warm tropical waters to the North Atlantic and is the cause of Europe's habitable climate. Climate predictions point to the fact that this will change in the future and affect especially the climate in countries of the Mediterranean region, with more dry spells. As global warming progresses, the North Atlantic will receive more precipitation and a greater amount of water from the melting ...

Fish and marine species are among the most threatened wildlife on earth, due partly to over exploitation by fishing fleets. Yet there are differences in assessing trends in worldwide fishing stocks which, researchers writing in Conservation Biology argue, stem from inappropriate use of time trends in catches. "Estimates of fishery status based on catches suggest that around 30% of fisheries are collapsed and 70% are overexploited or collapsed," said lead author Dr Trevor Branch from the University of Washington in Seattle. "Our assessment shows that the data are seriously ...

People with rare diseases have the same right to high-quality health care in line with current medical knowledge as other patients do. However, relevant and reliable clinical studies on rare diseases are often lacking. Among other things, this makes the development of corresponding guidelines more difficult, but precisely such guidelines could help improve treatment quality. The German Federal Ministry of Health therefore commissioned the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) to answer the following question: What methodological approaches are used ...

Neural tube defects in neonates are common in Germany compared with the rest of Europe. Extensive folic acid fortification of foods in Germany might prevent these in 85-100% of cases, Wolfgang Herrmann and Rima Obeid argue in this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2011; 108[15]; 249-54). A woman's folic acid intake before and during early pregnancy ensures that the fetus does not develop the neural tube defect commonly known as spina bifida. Every year, 800 pregnancies in Germany are diagnosed with a neural tube defect. Most of those pregnancies ...

Montreal, April 28, 2011 – A program which combines interval training and healthy eating practices seems to be perfectly indicated for those suffering from obesity, according to the results of a new study from the Montreal Hearth Institute's centre for preventive medicine and physical activity (ÉPIC Centre). Results of the study were announced at the National Obesity Summit, currently taking place in Montreal. Within the framework of this study, researchers analyzed the track record of 62 participants in Kilo-Actif, a 9-month program intended for obesity sufferers that ...

DETROIT – A new Henry Ford Hospital study takes a closer look at one of the lesser known, but potential most serious side-effects of ACE inhibitor use – facial, tongue and airway swelling – and identifies a successful and less invasive course of treatment. Using a treatment protocol developed by Henry Ford, patients' symptoms were quickly diagnosed and promptly treated to reduce swelling, resulting in no tracheotomies to open the airway or reported deaths, says study author Samer Al-Khudari, M.D. "This side-effect is rare, but when it happens, it can be anxiety-provoking ...

A new study shows for the first time that monkeys can recall and reproduce simple shapes from memory. Identifying this recall ability is critical to our understanding of the evolution of memory and other cognitive abilities, and it could be applied to better diagnosing and treating memory impairments in humans. The finding by Emory University psychologists and Yerkes National Primate Research Center researchers Ben Basile and Robert Hampton was published today (April 28) in the journal Current Biology. The psychologists developed a computer touchscreen method to test ...

Stronger and tougher body armor to shield the chest, abdomen and back may be just what soldiers fighting in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars need to better protect their brains from mild injuries tied to so-called "shell shock," results of a Johns Hopkins study in mice suggest. Such mild trauma, resulting from the initial shock of exploding mines, grenades and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) now accounts for more than 80 percent of all brain injuries among U.S. troops. Some 160,000 American veteran men and women are estimated to have sustained this kind of trauma. "Protecting ...

INDIANAPOLIS – The largest study of its type has found that neither vitamin E, which is an antioxidant, nor the diabetes drug metformin, successfully reduced liver enzymes in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in children or teens, according to a paper published in the April 27, 2011 issue of Journal of the American Medical Association. The study also found that in patients with a severe type of fatty liver disease, a biopsy of the liver showed improvement in the injury pattern with vitamin E therapy. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease is the most common cause of chronic ...

University of Granada researchers have proven that melatonin –a natural hormone produced by the body– helps in controlling weight gain –even without reducing the intake of food–, improves blood lipid profile –as it reduces triglicerids–, increases HDL cholesterol and reduces LDL cholesterol. Melatonin is found in small quantities in some fruits and vegetables as mustard, Goji berries, almonds, sunflower seeds, cardamom, fennel, coriander and cherries. Thus, the intake of this kind of food might help in controlling weight gain and preventing heart diseases associated to ...

(WASHINGTON, April 28, 2011) – Researchers have developed an effective technique that uses gene therapy on stem cells to correct chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) in cell culture, which could eventually serve as a treatment for this rare, inherited immune disorder, according to a study published in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology. CGD prevents neutrophils, a type of white blood cell of the immune system, from making hydrogen peroxide, an essential defense against life-threatening bacterial and fungal infections. Most cases of CGD are a result ...

TORONTO, On – April 28, 2011 – Immigrants living less than five years in Canada are less likely than their Canadian-born counterparts to have premature babies regardless of where they live, according to a new study by St. Michael's Hospital. "Living in poor neighbourhoods has been linked with poor health outcomes, but this study shows that this is not always the case for new Canadians," says Dr. Marcelo Urquia, epidemiologist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael's Hospital. "For new immigrants, while they have an advantage on avoiding premature ...

Researchers at the Center for Translational Social Neuroscience (CTSN) at Emory University are focusing on prairie voles as a new model to screen the effectiveness of drugs to treat autism. They are starting with D-cycloserine, a drug Emory researchers have shown enhances behavioral therapy for phobias and also promotes pair bonding among prairie voles. Giving female voles D-cycloserine, which is thought to facilitate learning and memory, can encourage them to bond with a new male more quickly than usual. The results are published online and will appear in a future ...

WASHINGTON — Structural Integrity of Offshore Wind Turbines: Oversight of Design, Fabrication, and Installation, a new report from the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board, examines standards and practices that could be used to design U.S. offshore wind installations. In order to develop offshore wind energy in the United States, a clear set of requirements is needed, the report says. As the U.S. currently lacks standards, the committee that wrote the report recommends that the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, ...

At the end of a long day on the job, the warehouse employee wants to deposit the last palettes quickly before heading home. With a little too much momentum he steers his forklift toward the shelf and collides with a shelf support. This is an every- day situation in large warehouses in which employees often have to maneuver goods through the narrow aisles, often under time pressure. Even harmless-seeming collisions are not really safe though, because over time they may in fact destabilize the shelf supports. In the worst case, the high-rack storage can come crashing down ...

Researchers are reporting results from the first year of a two-year clinical trial that Avastin, a drug approved to treat some cancers and that is commonly used off-label to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD), is as effective as the Food and Drug Administration-approved drug Lucentis for the treatment of AMD. The report, from the Comparison of AMD Treatments Trials (CATT), was published online in the New England Journal of Medicine on Sunday, May 1, 2011. CATT is funded by the National Eye Institute (NEI), a part of the National Institutes of Health. "Over ...

Only when you are standing beside a wind turbine can you appreciate the immense size of the wind turbine and its rotor blades. The largest wind turbines operating in the world today have rotor blades over 60 meters long – roughly equivalent to three truck-and-trailer units end-to-end. Within the next ten years, manufacturers of high-output wind turbines for offshore wind farms plan to produce blades up to 90 meters long. The prototypes of these new blades have to be tested and certified before they can go into production, and that requires equally as large testing facilities. The ...

A year after the BP explosion and oil spill, those trying to find someone to blame are misguided, says psychological scientist E. Scott Geller, Alumni Distinguished professor at Virginia Tech, and author of a new paper published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Geller has spent much of his 42-year career developing interventions to keep people safe, particularly helping companies develop a culture that promotes occupational safety. There's almost never one person to blame for an injury; instead, companies ...

Nanoparticles will soon be used as tiny shuttles to deliver genes to cells and drugs to tumors in a more targeted way than was possible in the past. But as the scientists prepare to use the nanoparticles in medicine, concerns have arisen about their potential toxicity. Studies of both the applications of nanoparticles and their toxicity rely on the ability of scientists to quantify the interaction between the nanoparticles and cells, particularly the uptake (ingestion) of nanoparticles by cells. In the standard laboratory tests of the biological activity of nanoparticles, ...

The fishing industry usually discards fish livers, but a team of researchers from the University of Almeria (Spain) has confirmed that they are a good source of polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are beneficial to health. Anchovies are one of the fish whose livers contain the highest levels of these substances. Fish livers have hardly been used to date, with exceptions such as cod livers, which are used to produce the well-known medicinal oil. In general, fishermen tend to throw fish entrails away into the sea, and if they make it to processing plants they are one of ...

Dr. Michael Collins, Naval Research Laboratory scientist and bird watcher, has published an article titled "Putative audio recordings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker (Campephilus principalis)" which appears in the March issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The audio recordings were captured in two videos of birds with characteristics consistent with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker. This footage was obtained near the Pearl River in Louisiana, where there is a history of unconfirmed reports of this species. During five years of fieldwork, Collins had ten ...

One of the most critical tasks that a dividing cell must accomplish is the successful delivery of a complete set of genetic information to each new daughter cell. Now, a study published by Cell Press in the April 29th issue of the journal Cell, provides fascinating new insight into the complex of proteins that orchestrates the proper segregation of human chromosomes during cell division. During the process of mitosis, DNA and its associated packing proteins are arranged into structures called chromosomes that are duplicated and then segregated. Duplicated chromosomes ...

It's common knowledge that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but in the nanoscale world, perfection can act as the enemy of the best. In the workaday world, engineers and scientists go to great lengths to make the devices we use as perfect as possible. When we flip on a light switch or turn the key on the car, we expect the lights to come on and the engine to start every time, with only rare exceptions. They have done so by using a top-down design process combined with the application of large amounts of energy to increase reliability by suppressing natural variability. However, ...

The 25-story construction crane used since 1995 to investigate such things as how Pacific Northwest forests absorb carbon dioxide, obtain sufficient water and resist attacks by pests and diseases is being pruned back to just the tower. The Wind River Canopy Crane, located in a 500-year-old forest near Stevenson in southwest Washington, has been operated cooperatively by the University of Washington, the Forest Service's Pacific Northwest Research Station and the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The partners say the jib – the arm of the crane – is being removed because ...

A study of H1N1 and seasonal influenza vaccination in a sample of black and Hispanic children in Atlanta found a low rate of vaccine acceptance among parents and caregivers. Only 36 percent of parents and caregivers indicated they would immunize children against H1N1, and 22 percent indicated their children received the seasonal influenza vaccine in the previous three months. The majority of children in the sample (71 percent) were from households with less than $40,000 in annual income. Researchers say this low level of vaccine coverage and acceptance highlights the ...