STANFORD, Calif. — Despite concerted efforts, no decreases in patient harm were detected at 10 randomly selected North Carolina hospitals between 2002 and 2007, according to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Since a 1999 Institute of Medicine report sounded the alarm about high medical error rates, most U.S. hospitals have changed their operations to keep patients safer. The researchers wanted to assess whether these patient-safety efforts reduced harm. They studied hospitals ...

The new results, from a team led by Grzegorz Pietrzyński (Universidad de Concepción, Chile, Obserwatorium Astronomiczne Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, Poland), appear in the 25 November 2010 edition of the journal Nature. Grzegorz Pietrzyński introduces this remarkable result: "By using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6-metre telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile, along with other telescopes, we have measured the mass of a Cepheid with an accuracy far greater than any earlier estimates. This new result allows us to immediately see which of the two competing ...

By cooling Rubidium atoms deeply and concentrating a sufficient number of them in a compact space, they suddenly become indistinguishable. They behave like a single huge "super particle." Physicists call this a Bose-Einstein condensate. For "light particles," or photons, this should also work. Unfortunately, this idea faces a fundamental problem. When photons are "cooled down," they disappear. Until a few months ago, it seemed impossible to cool light while concentrating it at the same time. The Bonn physicists Jan Klärs, Julian Schmitt, Dr. Frank Vewinger, and Professor ...

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. -- Researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering have reported the first successful production of the antibiotic erythromycin A, and two variations, using E. coli as the production host. The work, published in the November 24, 2010, issue of Chemistry and Biology, offers a more cost-effective way to make both erythromycin A and new drugs that will combat the growing incidence of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Equally important, the E. coli production platform offers numerous next-generation engineering opportunities for other natural ...

Palo Alto, CA— Infestation by bacteria and other pathogens result in global crop losses of over $500 billion annually. A research team led by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology developed a novel trick for identifying how pathogens hijack plant nutrients to take over the organism. They discovered a novel family of pores that transport sugar out of the plant. Bacteria and fungi hijack the pores to access the plant sugar for food. The first goal of any pathogen is to access the host's food supply to allow them to reproduce in large numbers. This is the ...

Researchers with UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that melanoma patients whose cancers are caused by mutation of the BRAF gene become resistant to a promising targeted treatment through another genetic mutation or the overexpression of a cell surface protein, both driving survival of the cancer and accounting for relapse. The study, published Nov. 24, 2010, in the early online edition of the peer-reviewed journal Nature, could result in the development of new targeted therapies to fight resistance once the patient stops responding and the cancer ...

The past year has brought to light both the promise and the frustration of developing new drugs to treat melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. Early clinical tests of a candidate drug aimed at a crucial cancer-causing gene revealed impressive results in patients whose cancers resisted all currently available treatments. Unfortunately, those effects proved short-lived, as the tumors invariably returned a few months later, able to withstand the same drug to which they first succumbed. Adding to the disappointment, the reasons behind these relapses were unclear. Now, ...

Researchers appear to have an explanation for a longstanding question in HIV biology: how it is that the virus kills so many CD4 T cells, despite the fact that most of them appear to be "bystander" cells that are themselves not productively infected. That loss of CD4 T cells marks the progression from HIV infection to full-blown AIDS, explain the researchers who report their findings in studies of human tonsils and spleens in the November 24th issue of Cell, a Cell Press publication. "In [infected] primary human tonsils and spleens, there is a profound depletion of CD4 ...

Researchers at the Faculty of Life Sciences (LIFE), University of Copenhagen, can now unveil the results of the world's largest diet study: If you want to lose weight, you should maintain a diet that is high in proteins with more lean meat, low-fat dairy products and beans and fewer finely refined starch calories such as white bread and white rice. With this diet, you can also eat until you are full without counting calories and without gaining weight. Finally, the extensive study concludes that the official dietary recommendations are not sufficient for preventing obesity. ...

They are the largest fish species in the ocean, but the majestic gliding motion of the whale shark is, scientists argue, an astonishing feat of mathematics and energy conservation. In new research published today in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology marine scientists reveal how these massive sharks use geometry to enhance their natural negative buoyancy and stay afloat. For most animals movement is crucial for survival, both for finding food and for evading predators. However, movement costs substantial amounts of energy and while this is true ...

An international team led by researchers from the Universities of Leicester and Cambridge has announced a breakthrough in identifying people at risk of developing potentially fatal blood clots that can lead to heart attack. The discovery, published this week (25 November) in the leading haematology journal Blood, is expected to advance ways of detecting and treating coronary heart disease – the most common form of disease affecting the heart and an important cause of premature death. The research led by Professor Alison Goodall from the University of Leicester and Professor ...

A new treatment has been developed for sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSHL), a condition that causes deafness in 40,000 Americans each year, usually in early middle-age. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Medicine describe the positive results of a preliminary trial of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1), applied as a topical gel. Takayuki Nakagawa, from Kyoto University, Japan, worked with a team of researchers to test the gel in 25 patients whose SSHL had not responded to the normal treatment of systemic gluticosteroids. He said, "The results indicated ...

Every 5°C rise in maximum temperature pushes up the rate of hospital admissions for serious injuries among children, reveals one of the largest studies of its kind published online in Emergency Medicine Journal. Conversely, each 5° C drop in the minimum daily temperature boosts adult admissions for serious injury by more than 3%, while snow prompts an 8% rise, the research shows. The authors base their findings on the patterns of hospital treatment for both adults and children in 21 emergency care units across England, belonging to the Trauma Audit and research Network ...

Workplace asthma costs the UK at least £100 million a year, and may be as high as £135 million, reveals research published online in Thorax. An estimated 3,000 new cases of occupational asthma are diagnosed every year in the UK, but the condition is under diagnosed, say the authors. They reviewed published data on the costs of all asthma and workplace asthma, as well as the impact costs. The evidence was then used to calculate the costs of workplace asthma on an individual's ability to work and their wider life, including their use of health services, based on a ...

New research from the Emory University School of Medicine offers reassurance for nursing mothers with epilepsy. According to a study published in the November 24 online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, breastfeeding a baby while taking a seizure medication may have no harmful effect on the child's IQ later in life. "Our results showed no difference in IQ scores between the children who were breastfed and those who were not," says study author Kimford Meador, MD, professor of neurology, Emory University School of Medicine and ...

Chronic jet lag alters the brain in ways that cause memory and learning problems long after one's return to a regular 24-hour schedule, according to research by University of California, Berkeley, psychologists. Twice a week for four weeks, the researchers subjected female Syrian hamsters to six-hour time shifts – the equivalent of a New York-to-Paris airplane flight. During the last two weeks of jet lag and a month after recovery from it, the hamsters' performance on learning and memory tasks was measured. As expected, during the jet lag period, the hamsters had trouble ...

Toronto, ON – November 24 – It's never fun riding the bench – but could it also make you less likely to be physically active in the future? That's one of the questions being explored by Mark Eys, an associate professor of kinesiology and physical education at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Canada Research Chair in Group Dynamics and Physical Activity. Eys is presenting his work as part of this week's Canada Research Chairs conference in Toronto. Eys, who also teaches out of the university's psychology department, is studying group cohesion – which, in sporting ...

Bonn, 24th November 2010. Metformin, a drug used in type 2-diabetes might have the potential to also act against Alzheimer's disease. This has been shown in a study from scientists of the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), the University of Dundee and the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics. The researchers have found out that the diabetes drug metformin counteracts alterations of the cell structure protein Tau in mice nerve cells. These alterations are a main cause of the Alzheimer's disease. Moreover, they uncovered the molecular mechanism of ...

You may think of your love for your mate as the noble emotion of a pure heart, but some primitive parts of your brain are taking a decidedly more pragmatic approach to the subject, according to Stanford biologists. In experiments with African cichlid fish, the scientists discovered that when a female shows a preference for a particular male, but then witnesses him losing a fight with another male, her feelings toward him change. Areas of the female's brain associated with anxiety showed increased activity after witnessing an altercation. "It is the same as if a woman ...

An international team of immunologists studying the effects of cannabis have discovered how smoking marijuana can trigger a suppression of the body's immune functions. The research, published in the European Journal of Immunology, reveals why cannabis users are more susceptible to certain types of cancers and infections. The team, led by Dr Prakash Nagarkatti from the University of South Carolina, focused their research on cannabinoids, a group of compounds found inside the cannabis plant, including THC (delta-9 tetahydrocannabinol) which is already used for medical ...

As the eurozone continues to wobble, new analysis of countries' economic interconnectedness finds that some of the countries with the greatest potential to cause a global crash have surprisingly small gross domestic production. Using data from Bureau Van Dijk - the company information and business intelligence provider - to assess the reach and size of different countries' economies, and applying the Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model, physicists from universities in Greece, Switzerland and Israel have identified the twelve countries with greatest power to spread ...

Fifty-seven laboratories from 29 countries volunteered to put their measuring competence to the test. Each laboratory received a sample without knowing the levels of heavy metals present, and was asked to measure and report the values back to the JRC. The good results should enhance consumers' confidence, as maximum levels of lead, cadmium and total mercury in seafood are regulated by EU law and it has been proven that most participants are able to correctly measure them. In addition, this comparison has highlighted other issues, such as the apparent dependency of the ...

About 30% of breast cancer patients have tumours that show rapid growth and invasion through the body. A common denominator in all of these cases is the presence of a large number of Her2 proteins in tumour cellular membranes. Consequently, these aggressive tumours are referred to as HER2+. Scientists working in the Metastasis Laboratory (MetLab) at IRB Barcelona headed by ICREA researcher Roger Gomis, have described the molecular mechanism that induces HER2+ tumours to ignore the signals that protect cells from excessive growth. The study is published this week in the ...

In the wake of devastating cholera outbreaks in refugee camps in earthquake-wracked Haiti, a group of leading experts from Harvard Medical School, George Washington University, and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) have urged the United States to create an emergency stockpile of cholera vaccines for future humanitarian use. "The costs to the U.S. of creating and maintaining a stockpile of several million doses of cholera vaccine would be low," said the experts in an article published online first on November 24 in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). "But ...

A new process for creating a personalized vaccine may become a crucial tool in helping patients with colorectal cancer develop an immune response against their own tumors. This dendritic cell (DC) vaccine, developed at Dartmouth and described in a research paper published this week in the journal Clinical Cancer Research, was used after surgical resection of metastatic tumors to try to prevent the growth of additional metastases. "The results of the study suggest a new way to approach cancer treatment," said Richard Barth Jr., MD, Chief of General Surgery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock ...