The first cultivar of 'ōhelo berry, a popular native Hawaiian fruit, has been released by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and their university and industry cooperators. 'Ōhelo (Vaccinium reticulatum Smith) is a small, native Hawaiian shrub in the cranberry family, commonly found at high elevations on the islands of Maui and Hawaii. As people scour the landscape to harvest this delectable berry for use in jam, jelly and pie filling, they unfortunately disrupt the fragile habitats where this plant grows. In an effort to reduce damage to the ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new study has determined that teenagers who have abortions are no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem than their peers whose pregnancies do not end in abortion. The study conducted by researchers from Oregon State University and University of California, San Francisco, is the first to use both depression and low self-esteem as outcomes with a nationally representative sample of adolescents. The researchers found that young women in the study who had an abortion were no more likely to become depressed or have low self-esteem within ...

You'd think that people choosing to live near to outdoor recreation amenities would have a lower body mass index or BMI thanks to an increase in all that healthy outdoor activity right on one's doorstep. Yet a new University of Alberta study looking at the relationship between reasons for choosing a neighbourhood to live in, physical activity and BMI, shows that's simply not the case. In fact researchers found that those who said they'd moved to be closer to outdoor recreation opportunities actually showed a marked increase in BMI over the six years of a longitudinal ...

BOSTON—In the quest to arrest the growth and spread of tumors, there have been many attempts to get cancer genes to ignore their internal instruction manual. In a new study, a team led by Dana-Farber Cancer Institute scientists has created the first molecule able to prevent cancer genes from "hearing" those instructions, stifling the cancer process at its root. The study, published online by the journal Nature, demonstrates that proteins issuing stop and start commands to a cancer gene – known as epigenetic "reader" proteins – can be targeted for future cancer therapies. ...

With several advanced warfare vehicles and a lineup of exciting technologies, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) will showcase its latest expeditionary equipment at the 2010 Modern Day Marine Exposition scheduled Sept. 28-30 at Quantico Marine Corps Base, Quantico, Va. Modern Day Marine is one of the world's largest trade shows featuring expeditionary warfare equipment. More than 400 exhibitors and 8,000 attendees are expected to attend the event—now in its 30th year—for an up-close look at equipment and systems that support the U.S. Marine Corps and other allied forces' ...

An instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite noticed increasing colder cloud top temperatures of tropical depression 15 in the south-central Caribbean just before it strengthened into Tropical Storm Matthew late on Sept. 23. The TRMM satellite also spotted heavy rainfall within the system. Matthew is now headed to the western Caribbean and watches and warnings are in place as Matthew may continue to strengthen. Cloud top temperatures indicate the strength of the storm to forecasters. The colder the cloud top temperatures, the stronger the convection and uplift. When cloud top ...

Towering thunderstorms and heavy rainfall are two things that NASA's CloudSat satellite saw as it passed over Typhoon Malakas, and those two factors confirm a strong storm. NASA's CloudSat satellite's Cloud Profiling Radar can basically slice a tropical cyclone in half and take a look at its clouds and rainfall, and that's what it did when it passed over Typhoon Malakas on Sept. 23. CloudSat flew over Typhoon Malakas during the daytime on Sept. 23. At that time, Malakas had a minimum central pressure of 965 millibars, maximum winds of around 115 mph (100 knots), and ...

The GOES-13 satellite has been keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Lisa and watched her birth, graduation to depression then tropical storm and back to depression. Now, Lisa has grown back to tropical storm status, but it may be short-lived. At 11 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 24, Tropical Storm Lisa had maximum sustained winds near 50 mph and she may strengthen and weaken over the weekend, but by Sunday colder waters will zap her energy source and she is forecast to be a depression. Meanwhile, on Sept. 24, she was still frolicking in the eastern Atlantic, about 320 miles ...

How could the current financial crisis have happened? While fingers have been pointing to greedy banks, subprime-loan officers, and sloppy credit card practices, these are not the only contributors to the economic downturn. A new report in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, examines the psychology of financial decision making, including the role of risk in making economic choices, how individuals behave in stock and credit markets, and how financial crises impact people's well-being. Risk taking is a ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Sept. 22, 2010) – Candida albicans, a fungus that kills more than 10,000 people with weakened immune systems each year, grows more dangerous as it forms and extends long strands of cells called hyphal filaments. In a paper published this month, UT Health Science Center San Antonio microbiologists describe a key factor involved in this damaging growth. This finding may eventually lead to targets for antifungal strategies, the scientists said. Patricia Carlisle, a Ph.D. student at the Health Science Center, and David Kadosh, Ph.D., assistant ...

AURORA, Colo (Sept. 22, 2010) Antisocial boys who abuse drugs, break laws, and act recklessly are not just "bad" kids. Many of these boys may have malfunctioning brains, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. "Brain responses to everyday rewards and punishments gradually guide most youngsters' decisions to conform with society's rules. However, when these seriously troubled kids experience rewards and punishments, and make decisions, their brains apparently malfunction," said Thomas Crowley, MD, a professor of Psychiatry ...

WASHINGTON, DC (September 22, 2010) -- One-year data from the PARTNER clinical trial, published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, demonstrate that transcatheter aortic-valve implantation, compared with standard therapy, resulted in significantly lower rates of death among patients who cannot undergo surgery for aortic stenosis. The results will be presented tomorrow as a Late Breaking Trial at the 22nd annual Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) scientific symposium. Transcatheter aortic-valve implantation (TAVI) is a new procedure in which a bioprosthetic ...

According to the NOAA Coral Reef Watch monitoring system, coral bleaching is likely in the Caribbean in 2010. With temperatures above-average all year, NOAA's models show a strong potential for bleaching in the southern and southeastern Caribbean through October that could be as severe as in 2005 when over 80 percent of corals bleached and over 40 percent died at many sites across the Caribbean. Scientists are already reporting coral bleaching at several Caribbean sites and severe bleaching has been reported from other parts of the world. The NOAA Coral Reef Watch (CRW) ...

There may be a very good reason that people naturally clutch their hand after receiving an injury. A new report published online on September 23 in Current Biology shows that self-touch offers significant relief for acute pain under experimental conditions. The researchers suggest that the relief comes from a change in the brain's representation of the rest of the body. "Pain is quite an important, but also complicated, experience and can be caused in many different ways," said Patrick Haggard of University College London. "We show that levels of acute pain depend not ...

Scientists have uncovered an alternative source for some of the damage associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), an incurable neuroinflammatory disorder. The research, published online by Cell Press on September 23rd in the journal Immunity, reveals a direct interaction between immune cells and neurons that plays a significant role in neuronal injury and may respond to therapeutic intervention. MS is an autoimmune disease in which a person's own immune system attacks their central nervous system. Symptoms of MS are variable depending on which nerves are affected, but often ...

1. Among HIV-Infected Kidney Disease Patients, African Americans are More Likely to Develop Kidney Failure and Die Prematurely Washington, DC (September 17, 2010) — Because of improved antiretroviral therapies in recent years, HIV-infected individuals are living long enough to develop chronic conditions. Among African Americans, HIV infection is increasingly recognized as an important risk factor for developing chronic kidney disease. African American men and women are more likely to die from the complications of HIV infection compared with Caucasian men and women. To ...

BOULDER, Colo. – Scientists have known for decades that time passes faster at higher elevations—a curious aspect of Einstein's theories of relativity that previously has been measured by comparing clocks on the earth's surface and a high-flying rocket. Now, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have measured this effect at a more down-to-earth scale of 33 centimeters, or about 1 foot, demonstrating, for instance, that you age faster when you stand a couple of steps higher on a staircase. Described in the Sept. 24 issue of Science,* ...

BP’s leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico was conclusively sealed this week, but even now, questions remain about the amount of oil that actually came out of it. Initially after the April 20 explosion, officials claimed that the flow could not be measured. Then, as public pressure for information mounted, they looked for ways to measure it, and started producing estimates: at first, 1,000 barrels a day; then 5,000; then 12,000 to 19,000; then upward from there. Now, in the first independent, peer-reviewed paper on the leak’s volume, scientists have affirmed heightened ...

To understand the health effects of high cholesterol levels, doctors first need to assess malnutrition and inflammation status in their chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). Patients with CKD often develop and die from cardiovascular disease (CVD). While it's well known that high cholesterol puts people at risk for CVD in the general population, the relationship is not so clear in CKD patients. In fact, research has shown that dialysis patients with higher cholesterol ...

STANFORD, Calif. - A simple, inexpensive blood test could soon help doctors halt organ rejection before it impairs transplanted hearts and kidneys. "In the past, we couldn't spot rejection episodes until they harmed the organ," said Atul Butte, MD, PhD, who is co-senior author of the new research and an associate professor of medical informatics and of pediatrics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, in addition to director of the Center for Pediatric Bioinformatics at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "Our goal is to develop blood tests that will keep transplanted ...

Researchers have identified a gene that appears to increase a person's risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer disease (AD), the most common type of the disease. Abbreviated MTHFD1L, a gene on chromosome six, was identified in a genome-wide association study by a team of researchers led by Margaret Pericak-Vance, Ph.D., director of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics (HIHG) at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Details appear September 23 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics. The World Health Organization estimates that there are currently ...

PRINCETON, N.J. (September 23, 2010) — Increasing the costs to consumers of beer, wine, and hard liquor significantly reduces the rates of a wide range of alcohol-related deaths, diseases, injuries, and other problems, according to a new study published in today's online edition of the American Journal of Public Health and scheduled for inclusion in the November print edition. Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) report that public policies that increase the price of alcoholic beverages, such as increases in alcohol excise taxes, not only reduce drinking but also ...

Engineering researchers from Tufts University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Harvard University have demonstrated the low-temperature efficacy of an atomically dispersed platinum catalyst, which could be suitable for on-board hydrogen production in fuel-cell-powered vehicles of the future. An alternative to copper, which under certain conditions can ignite spontaneously, the platinum-based catalyst is highly active and stable. The researchers' understanding of the structure and function of the new catalyst could help manufacturers design highly effective—but ...

Breast cancer incidence declined among postmenopausal women in Canada as their use of hormone therapy declined, according to a study published online September 23 in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial of more than 16,000 postmenopausal women in the United States reported in 2002 that the risks of combined estrogen and progestin hormone replacement therapy outweighed the benefits. As a result, prescriptions for hormone therapy fell dramatically in several countries around the world and so did the incidence of breast ...

Researchers in Germany have gained new insight into how the immune system causes damage associated with multiple sclerosis (MS), an incurable neuroinflammatory disorder. Using imaging tools which enable investigation of processes in living organisms, they were able to show a direct interaction between immune cells and neurons which plays a significant role in neuronal injury. However, this direct interaction may respond to therapeutic intervention. The study by Dr. Volker Siffrin and Professor Dr. Frauke Zipp (formerly Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, MDC, Berlin-Buch, ...