Monthly blood transfusions combined with daily medication to remove the resulting excess iron remains the best approach for reducing the risk of recurrent strokes in young patients with sickle cell anemia, according to a preliminary analysis of a multicenter trial that includes St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The study compared the efficacy of two treatments for the potentially life-threatening problem of iron overload caused by chronic transfusion therapy. The transfusions are used to guard against additional strokes in young sickle cell anemia patients. The trial, ...

An international team of researchers led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) have developed a new kind of endoscope to aid the early detection and diagnosis of inflammatory bowel disease. The Confocal Laser Endomicroscope (CLE) contains a powerful microscope which allows clinicians to view the bacteria that are thought to trigger diseases of the bowel such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. "Bacteria within the wall of the gut are already believed to play an important role in the development of inflammatory bowel disease and we now have a powerful new tool ...

Quebec City, December 6, 2010—Researchers at Université Laval, in collaboration with Nova Scotia Agricultural College, have discovered what causes Christmas tree needles to drop off, and how to double the lifespan of Christmas trees in homes. The authors presented their findings in a recent issue of the scientific journal Trees. The researchers have identified a plant hormone—ethylene—responsible for needle loss in balsam fir. They made the discovery by placing fir branches in containers of water inside a growth chamber. After ten days the branches began to produce ethylene ...

Brand named hotels fare better than independently operated properties in economic downturns, according to a team of international researchers. A study of the performance of hotels during both economic recessions and expansions indicates that brand named hotels are more profitable than independent hotels under all economic conditions, but the difference is particularly significant during recessions, said John O'Neill, associate professor of hospitality management, Penn State. "There has been a lot of debate in the hotel industry about the advantages of brand affiliation ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Good news for control freaks! New research confirms that having some authority over how one takes in new information significantly enhances one's ability to remember it. The study, in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also offers a first look at the network of brain structures that contribute to this phenomenon. "Having active control over a learning situation is very powerful and we're beginning to understand why," said University of Illinois psychology and Beckman Institute professor Neal Cohen, who led the study with postdoctoral researcher Joel Voss. ...

COLLEGE STATION — A team of Texas AgriLife Research engineers has developed a way to cut by as much as half the amount of irradiation needed to kill 99.999 percent of salmonella, E. coli and other pathogens on fresh produce. By packing produce in a Mylar bag filled with pure oxygen, Dr. Carmen Gomes, AgriLife Research food safety engineer, and her colleagues found they could significantly reduce the amount of radiation needed to kill those pathogens. Reducing the amount of radiation is not so much a safety measure as it is a way to preserve quality of the produce, she ...

PITTSBURGH—Computer-related technology is increasingly driving the U.S. economy, yet computer science education is scant in most American elementary and secondary school classrooms and the number of introductory and Advanced Placement courses in computer science has actually declined in the last five years, according to a report released this fall. "Some states and some schools are offering some really excellent courses," said Mark Stehlik, co-author of the report, "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age," http://www.acm.org/runningonempty/. ...

How do ecosystems develop? No one really knows, yet. There is however one project, unique in the world, seeking to answer this question. In a former open-pit coal mining area in Brandenburg, Germany, a surface of six hectares was partitioned off and then left to its own resources. Scientists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM), in collaboration with researchers from other institutions, are studying the development of soil, flora, and fauna there. With this research they aim to establish the factors that have a particularly strong influence on developing ecosystems. Young ...

CHICAGO --- Post-traumatic stress syndrome – when a severely stressful event triggers exaggerated and chronic fear – affects nearly 8 million people in the United States and is hard to treat. In a preclinical study, Northwestern Medicine scientists have for the first time identified the molecular cause of the debilitating condition and prevented it from occurring by injecting calming drugs into the brain within five hours of a traumatic event. Northwestern researchers discovered the brain becomes overly stimulated after a traumatic event causes an ongoing, frenzied ...

New research at Rice University could ultimately show scientists the way to make batches of nanotubes of a single type. A paper in the online journal Physical Review Letters unveils an elegant formula by Rice University physicist Boris Yakobson and his colleagues that defines the energy of a piece of graphene cut at any angle. Yakobson, a professor in mechanical engineering and materials science and of chemistry, said this alone is significant because the way graphene handles energy depends upon the angle -- or chirality -- of its edge, and solving that process for ...

Investigators report no evidence of toxicity in the four hemophilia B patients enrolled to date in a gene therapy trial using a vector under development at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and UCL (University College London) to correct the inherited bleeding disorder. This trial was designed primarily as a safety test, with low and intermediate doses of the vector expected to produce little detectable Factor IX. The Factor IX protein helps the blood form clots. Individual with hemophilia B lack adequate levels of this clotting factor. The first participant in the ...

People with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, are 12 times more likely to commit suicide than average, according to research released today by King's Health Partners. The research found that the rate of suicide was highest in the first year following diagnosis (12 times national average) and that high risk persisted – remaining four times greater than the general population ten years after diagnosis, a time when there may be less intense clinical monitoring of risk. Neither the risk of suicide nor the long-term risk of suicide, as compared ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – It's illegal for businesses and law enforcement to profile a person based on their race, gender, or ethnicity, yet millions of Americans are being profiled every day based on their online consumer behavior and demographics. Known as consumer profiling for behavioral advertising purposes, this type of profiling is largely unregulated. The result, according to two recent articles in the journal of Computer Law & Security Review, is that consumers have less privacy and are being targeted by advertisers using increasingly sophisticated measures, which ...

It is supposed to be cool, colorless, tasteless and odorless. It may not have any pathogens or impair your health. This is the reason why drinking water is put to a whole series of screenings at regular intervals. Now, the AquaBioTox project will be added to create a system for constant real-time drinking water monitoring. At present, the tests required by the German Drinking Water Ordinance are limited to random samples that often only provide findings after hours and are always attuned to specific substances. In contrast, the heart of the AquaBioTox system is a bio-sensor ...

A gene that can cause congenital heart defects has been identified by a team of scientists, including a group from Princeton University. The discovery could lead to new treatments for those affected by the conditions brought on by the birth defect. Princeton researchers focused on identifying and studying the gene in zebrafish embryos, and the team's work expanded to include collaborations with other groups studying the genetics of mice and people. "This work really showcases the use of collaborative science and multiple model systems to better understand human disease," ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – A drug prescribed for Parkinson's disease may also treat restless leg syndrome without the adverse side effects of current therapies, Medical College of Georgia researchers say. Rasagaline works by prolonging the effect of dopamine, a chemical that transmits signals between nerve cells in the brain. The cause of RLS is unknown, but research suggests a dopamine imbalance. Parkinson's is caused by a dopamine insufficiency. "The hope is that Rasagaline, because it prolongs the effect of existing dopamine, instead of producing more, will not come with adverse ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Mayo Clinic researchers studied more than 200 children with epilepsy and found that even if the cause of focal-onset seizures cannot be identified and they do not fit into a known epilepsy syndrome, long-term prognosis is still excellent. This study was presented at the American Epilepsy Society's (http://www.aesnet.org/) annual meeting in San Antonio on Dec. 4. Epilepsy (http://www.mayoclinic.org/epilepsy/) is a disorder characterized by the occurrence of two or more seizures. It affects almost 3 million Americans, and approximately 45,000 children ...

Cleveland - Scientists from South Korea, the United States and Japan analyzed fossil evidence found in South Korea and published research describing a new horned dinosaur. The newly identified genus, Koreaceratops hwaseongensis, lived about 103 million years ago during the late Early Cretaceous period. The specimen is the first ceratopsian dinosaur from the Korean peninsula. The partial skeleton includes a significant portion of the animal's backbone, hip bone, partial hind limbs and a nearly complete tail. Results from the analysis of the specimen were published in ...

PHILADELPHIA - In a study published in the journal Developmental Cell, Sarah Millar PhD, professor of Dermatology and Cell & Developmental Biology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and colleagues demonstrate that a pair of enzymes called HDACs are critical to the proper formation of mammalian skin. The findings, Millar says, not only provide information about the molecular processes underlying skin development, they also suggest a potential anticancer strategy. "Inhibition of these HDAC enzymes might be able to shut down the growth of tumors that ...

Only the fragile chicken egg stands between Americans and a flu pandemic that would claim tens of thousands more lives than are usually lost to the flu each year. Vaccine production hinges on the availability of hundreds of millions of eggs – and even with the vaccine, flu still claims somewhere around 36,000 lives in the United States during a typical year. Now scientists have taken an important step toward ending the dominance of the oval. In a paper published in the Dec. 6 issue of the journal Vaccine, scientists showed that an experimental flu vaccine grown entirely ...

What: Scientists from the National Institutes of Health have discovered how catheter-related bacterial infection develops and disseminates to become a potentially life-threatening condition. The study, which included research on Staphylococcus epidermidis in mice implanted with catheters, could have important implications for understanding many types of bacterial biofilm infections, including those caused by methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA). Biofilms are clusters of microbes that almost always are found with healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) involving medical ...

Madison, WI December 6 2010 -- An expansion of soybean production into areas where soybean has seldom, if ever, been grown can be problematic for some farmers. Soils having high pH values and large amounts of calcium and/or magnesium carbonate are notoriously iron deficient. Iron deficient soils in the North Central United States are estimated to reduce soy bean production by 12.5 million bushels every year. John Wiersma, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Northwest Research and Outreach Center at Crookston, concluded a study examining the effect of nitrogen based ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A new study finds that combining the newer diabetes drug exenatide with insulin provides better blood sugar control in patients with type 2 diabetes than insulin alone and helps promote weight loss. "This study may be the best result ever for patients whose diabetes is inadequately controlled on a combination of pills and insulin," said John Buse, MD, PhD, lead author of the study and chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism in the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. "Until now, it was inconceivable that you ...

(ORLANDO, Fla.) – A personalized vaccine is a powerful therapy to prevent recurrence among certain follicular lymphoma patients, according to the latest results of ongoing research led by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The new findings show that when these patients – whose tumors are marked by a specific protein that may be present in up to half of people with this type of cancer -- receive a vaccine made from their own tumor cells, disease-free survival is improved by nearly two years, compared with patients who receive a placebo. Based on the new analysis, ...

MADISON — Bacteria are among the simplest organisms in nature, but many of them can still talk to each other, using a chemical "language" that is critical to the process of infection. Sending and receiving chemical signals allows bacteria to mind their own business when they are scarce and vulnerable, and then mount an attack after they become numerous enough to overwhelm the host's immune system. This system, called "quorum sensing," is an interesting example of sophistication among microbes, says Helen Blackwell, an associate professor of chemistry at the University ...