Imagine the vast, empty tundra in Alaska and Canada giving way to trees, shrubs and plants typical of more southerly climates. Imagine similar changes in large parts of Eastern Europe, northern Asia and Scandinavia, as needle-leaf and broadleaf forests push northward into areas once unable to support them. Imagine part of Greenland's ice cover, once thought permanent, receding and leaving new tundra in its wake. Those changes are part of a reorganization of Arctic climates anticipated to occur by the end of the 21st century, as projected by a team of University of Nebraska-Lincoln ...

DALLAS – March 3, 2011 – Patients with end-stage renal disease who opt for peritoneal dialysis experience no greater risk of catheter infection than those who undergo hemodialysis, a retrospective study at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found. Peritoneal dialysis is less costly, easier on the body and provides greater mobility than hemodialysis, the more common procedure in the U.S. "Patients actually survive better on peritoneal dialysis, have a better quality of life and the procedure is cheaper," said Dr. Ramesh Saxena, associate professor of internal medicine ...

Today was the last day of the 18th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, a key HIV/AIDS research meeting being held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from February 27 through March 2. Highlighted below are selected presentations from March 2nd on research supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), both components of the National Institutes of Health. Infant HIV Prevention and Treatment Karin Nielsen-Saines, M.D., ...

DVDNow Kiosks is a company that goes above and beyond in its dedication to the success of its kiosk owner-operators. From April 14th - 16th, 2011, DVDNow will host the first of many 'Boot Camp' Training Seminars at DVDNow headquarters in beautiful Vancouver, BC. The DVDNow Kiosks Boot Camp is a three-day workshop that will fully train kiosk owner-operators on how to most effectively launch, manage, and ultimately maximize the potential of their DVD rental kiosk business. The DVDNow Boot Camp will consist of intensive business training, in depth strategy sessions, and ...

Merkur Investments Corporation launches a new online magazine with a fresh concept. Founded in March 2010, Open Talk Magazine is now online for public viewing with minimal features, categories and articles. The plan is to gradually grow out the magazine being that it is planned to be quite large in size and cover unlimited topics and categories. Open Talk Magazine brings readers something different than most magazines in that its aim is to not be bounded to a specific targeted market, but rather "wide open" to all topics that cover most aspects of human life. It specializes ...

Computational scientists have a new weapon at their disposal. On February 1, the Electronic Simulation Monitoring (eSiMon) Dashboard version 1.0 was released to the public, allowing scientists to monitor and analyze their simulations in real-time. Developed by the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute at the University of Utah, North Carolina State University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), this "window" into running simulations shows results almost as they occur, displaying data just a minute or two behind the simulations themselves. Ultimately, the ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Fans may think of Jimmy Connors as an "old school" tennis player, but according to a new ranking system developed by a Northwestern University researcher, Connors is best player in the history of the game. The rankings are published in PLoS ONE, a journal published by the Public Library of Science. Male tennis players who played in at least one Association of Tennis Professionals match between 1968 and 2010 were evaluated through network analysis, said Filippo Radicchi, author of the study. Ranking tennis players is a novel way to show how complex ...

Low self-esteem is associated with a greater risk of mental health problems such as eating disorders and depression. From a public health perspective, it is important for staff in various health-related professions to know about self-esteem. However, there is a vast difference between the research-based knowledge on self-esteem and the simplified popular psychology theories that are disseminated through books and motivational talks, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg. Current popular psychology books distinguish between self-esteem and self-confidence. ...

Diatoms account for a large proportion of the phytoplankton found in the water, and live both in the open sea and in freshwater lakes. By reviving 100-year-old spores that had laid buried and inactive in bottom sediment, researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown that diatoms are also genetically stable and survival artists. Recent research has shown that diatoms exhibit great genetic differences and that they occur in discrete populations, which means that they multiply sexually to a greater extent than previously believed. What makes diatoms special ...

Los Angeles, CA (February 28, 2011) Eating more tomatoes and tomato products can make people healthier and decrease the risk of conditions such as cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease, according to a review article the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, (published by SAGE). Of all the non-starchy vegetables, Americans eat more tomatoes and tomato products than any others. Researchers Britt Burton-Freeman, PhD, MS, and Kristin Reimers, PhD, RD of the National Center for Food Safety & Technology, Illinois Institute of Technology and ConAgra Foods, Inc., ...

Researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing a solid composite material to help cool small, powerful microelectronics used in defense systems. The material, composed of silver and diamond, promises an exceptional degree of thermal conductivity compared to materials currently used for this application. The research is focused on producing a silver-diamond thermal shim of unprecedented thinness – 250 microns or less. The ratio of silver to diamond in the material can be tailored to allow the shim to be bonded with low thermal-expansion stress ...

New findings published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, confirm the risk of breast cancer among women who are obese and not physically active, and suggests additional mechanisms beyond estrogen. Scientists from the Women's Health Initiative have found a relationship between obesity, physical activity and triple-negative breast cancer, a subtype of breast cancer characterized by a lack of estrogen, progesterone and HER2 expression. Triple-negative breast cancers account for about 10 to 20 percent ...

SEATTLE – Millions of people worldwide may be at risk of early death from diabetes and related cardiovascular illnesses because of poor diagnosis and ineffective treatment, a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington shows. The study examines diabetes diagnosis, treatment, and management in Colombia, England, Iran, Mexico, Scotland, Thailand, and the United States. In the United States alone, nearly 90% of adult diabetics – more than 16 million adults aged 35 and older – have blood sugar, blood pressure, and cholesterol ...

EDITOR'S PICK - DREADD-ing your next meal In the face of the growing obesity epidemic, much research has focused on the neuronal control of feeding behavior. Agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons express three proteins that have been implicated in changes in energy balance, but the studies linking AgRP neurons to feeding behavior have produced mixed results. To directly analyze the role of AgRP neurons, Bradford Lowell and colleagues, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used DREADD technology (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) ...

Writing in the journal Nature Communications, the team have created a microscope which shatters the record for the smallest object the eye can see, beating the diffraction limit of light. Previously, the standard optical microscope can only see items around one micrometre – 0.001 millimetres – clearly. But now, by combining an optical microscope with a transparent microsphere, dubbed the 'microsphere nanoscope', the Manchester researchers can see 20 times smaller – 50 nanometres ((5 x 10-8m) – under normal lights. This is beyond the theoretical limit of optical microscopy. This ...

Intensive adherence counseling around the time of HIV treatment initiation significantly reduces poor adherence and virologic treatment failure in sub-Saharan Africa whereas using an alarm device has no effect, according to a study in this week's PLoS Medicine by Michael Chung from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, and colleagues. The findings of this study define an adherence counseling protocol that is effective; these findings are relevant to other HIV clinics caring for large numbers of patients in sub-Saharan Africa. As poor adherence to HIV treatment ...

Effectiveness and cost effectiveness of expanding harm reduction and antiretroviral therapy in a mixed HIV epidemic: a modeling analysis for Ukraine A new study from Stanford researchers published in PLoS Medicine makes the case that a combination of methadone substitution therapy and anti-retroviral treatment would have the greatest effect on reducing new infections and improving quality of life in a region where HIV is spreading rapidly among intravenous drug users. In the past decade, an epidemic of HIV has swept through Ukraine, fueled mostly by intravenous drug ...

Despite a long-standing requirement for medical device makers to include women in studies they submit to the Food and Drug Administration for device approval, only a few include enough women or analyze how the devices work specifically in women, according to research reported in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. "Women and men differ in their size, bleeding tendencies, and other factors that are directly relevant to how the devices will work," said Rita F. Redberg, M.D., M.Sc., senior author of the study and professor of medicine and director of Women's ...

A new study offers critical insight into the biochemistry of a rare and fatal form of epilepsy known as Lafora disease, a genetic condition that typically strikes children in their teens. The disease is characterized by the buildup of a "wrecked" form of glycogen, a stored form of glucose, in the brain and specifically in neurons. It now appears those errors and the structural problems they cause are all because the enzyme that normally builds glycogen is prone to making mistakes, according to the report in Cell Metabolism. That enzyme, known as glycogen synthase, usually ...

SAN FRANCISCO–Teens, children, and even infants sometimes require corneal transplants, although most such surgeries are performed in adults. Australian researchers led by Keryn A. Williams, PhD, tracked transplant success and visual outcomes in 640 young patients who received new corneas between 1985 and 2009 and report on their work in the March issue of Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy of Ophthalmology. Dr. Williams' team found that the highest rate of transplant success occurred in adolescent patients treated for keratoconus. About 86 percent of transplants ...

In the face of the growing obesity epidemic, much research has focused on the neuronal control of feeding behavior. Agouti-related protein (AgRP) neurons express three proteins that have been implicated in changes in energy balance, but the studies linking AgRP neurons to feeding behavior have produced mixed results. To directly analyze the role of AgRP neurons, Bradford Lowell and colleagues, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, used DREADD technology (designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs) to specifically control the activation and ...

For individuals of white European descent, certain variations of the gene HMGA1 are associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM) is a common metabolic disorder that affects nearly 250 million people worldwide, and is associated with major diabetes-related complications, including retinopathy, kidney disease and cardiovascular disease. Insulin resistance in muscle, liver, and fat tissue is a major feature of most patients with type 2 DM. There is considerable evidence that heredity is a major ...

Among patients with sickle cell disease, treatment of a vaso-occlusive crisis (characterized by episodes of severe pain) in the hospital with inhalation of nitric oxide gas for up to 3 days did not result in a shorter time to resolution of the pain, compared to patients who received placebo, according to a study in the March 2 issue of JAMA. Vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) is common among patients with sickle cell disease (SCD), with an average length of hospitalization during VOC of 4.5 days for children ages 10 to 14 years. As many as 20 percent of patients hospitalized ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research has identified a small subset of normal white blood cells in the body that gives rise to a rare incurable form of leukemia. The study, led by investigators at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James), shows that large granular lymphocyte leukemia can occur in a small subset of white blood cells called NKT cells. NKT cells share features of immune cells called T lymphocytes and features of immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells. ...

New research on the genomics of autism confirms that the genetic roots of the disorder are highly complicated, but that common biological themes underlie this complexity. In the current study, researchers have implicated several new candidate genes and genomic variants as contributors to autism, and conclude that many more remain to be discovered. While the gene alterations are individually very rare, they mostly appear to disrupt genes that play important functional roles in brain development and nerve signaling. While an association between genomic variants in certain ...