A new cognitive assessment tool with 16 items appears potentially useful for identifying problems in thinking, learning and memory among older adults, according to a report posted online today that will be published in the March 14 print issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. An estimated 3.4 million older adults in the United States have dementia, and an additional 5.4 million have milder forms of cognitive impairment, according to background information in the article. "For many older adults, cognitive impairment contributes to loss ...

Patients with stroke who experience improvement within one hour of receiving the clot-dissolving medication tissue plasminogen activator appear more likely to do well three months later, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Only one effective therapy has been approved for acute ischemic stroke (in which blood flow to an area of the brain is blocked or reduced), according to background information in the article. Within 4.5 hours of developing symptoms, patients receive an intravenous (IV) dose of the ...

Long-term, regular use of vitamins E and C has no apparent effect on the risk of age-related cataract in men, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. "An estimated 20.5 million persons 40 years and older in the United States show some evidence of age-related cataract," the authors write as background information in the article. "Because oxidative damage is a prominent feature of cataracts, one focus of nutrition research has been the link between dietary intake of nutrients with antioxidant potential, ...

Corneal arcus, a condition in which a ring of lipids builds up around the cornea, appears common among middle-age and older adults and may be associated with elevated eye pressure, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Intraocular pressure (the pressure inside the eye) is the only treatable risk factor for glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide, according to background information in the article. "The accuracy of intraocular pressure measurement is crucial in the diagnosis ...

MIAMI - A new study led by scientists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science suggests that over the next century recruitment of new corals could drop by 73 percent, as rising CO2 levels turn the oceans more acidic. The research findings reveal a new danger to the already threatened Caribbean and Florida reef Elkhorn corals. "Ocean acidification is widely viewed as an emerging threat to coral reefs," said Rosenstiel School graduate student Rebecca Albright. "Our study is one of the first to document the impacts of ocean acidification ...

A new solar-powered device to measure blood pressure may help slow the worldwide increase in cardiovascular disease by providing affordable and reliable blood pressure testing in low income countries, according to research published in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association. The solar powered device — 94 percent in agreement with the standard blood pressure testing method for systolic blood pressure — is in field testing in Uganda and Zambia, Africa. "The incidence of hypertension is rising dramatically in these countries," said Eoin O'Brien, M.D., ...

A small study suggests women with multiple sclerosis have lower vitamin D levels during pregnancy and breastfeeding, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the March 2011 print issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. However, these vitamin D levels were not associated with a greater risk of multiple sclerosis relapse after childbirth. "During the last decade, low level of vitamin D, a potent immunomodulator, has emerged as an important risk factor for multiple sclerosis (MS) as well as other autoimmune diseases and certain ...

Chemists at UC San Diego have uncovered a new chemical reaction on tiny particulates in the atmosphere that could allow scientists to gain a glimpse from ancient rocks of what the atmospheres of the Earth and Mars were like hundreds of millions years ago. Their discovery also provides a simple chemical explanation for the unusual carbonate inclusions found in a meteorite from Mars that was once thought by some scientists to be evidence of ancient Martian life. "We never knew before how the atmosphere could be trapped in carbonate," said Mark Thiemens, dean of UC San ...

Philadelphia – November 8, 2010 – New research shows a gene-based test for lung cancer risk assessment motivates smokers to quit or cut down, according to results of a clinical study presented today at the American Association of Cancer Research's Ninth Annual Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research. Six months after taking the Respiragene test to identify susceptibility for lung cancer risk, 32% of the randomly recruited smokers in the study had quit smoking altogether and a further 48% had reduced their intake of cigarettes. More than half of the smokers ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Suppressing cancer cells' ability to replicate damaged DNA could dramatically enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy drugs such as cisplatin, according to a new pair of papers from MIT biologists. In studies of mice, the researchers found that slowing down a specific system for tolerating DNA damage not only prolonged survival but also prevented relapsed tumors from becoming resistant to chemotherapy, and made tumors much less likely to spread to other parts of the body. Two enzymes that play key roles in a cell's response to DNA damage could ...

New Orleans, LA – Research led by Dr. Nicolas Bazan, Boyd Professor, Villere Chair, and Director of the Neuroscience Center of Excellence at LSU Health Sciences Center, has shown that Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), a component of fish oil, is a powerful therapeutic agent that can protect brain tissue and promote recovery in an experimental model of acute ischemic stroke, even when treatment is delayed by up to five hours. These findings not only target a new stroke treatment approach, but also provide vital information about the length of the therapeutic window. The NIH-funded ...

The preservation of a protein found in particular synapses in the brain plays a key role in protecting against vascular dementia after a stroke, say researchers at King's College London. The study, funded by the Dunhill Medical Trust, is published today in the 9 November issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers say the study findings increase understanding of vascular dementia, and highlight a possible target for future diagnoses and treatment of the condition. Professor Paul Francis, King's College London, said: 'Vascular ...

Jerusalem, November 8, 2010 – Research carried out in Mali, West Africa, has demonstrated that a new, safe and uncomplicated insect control method, developed at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, can bring about a serious decline in malaria-bearing mosquitoes in afflicted regions in the world. The research in Africa was based on work carried out earlier in Israel by researchers at the Kuvin Center for the Study of Tropical and Infectious Diseases at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that showed how attractants of plant origin (fruit or flowers) with a toxic sugar bait ...

Scientists have found that the fat cells and tissues of morbidly obese people and animals can reach a limit in their ability to store fat appropriately. Beyond this limit several biological processes conspire to prevent further expansion of fat tissue and in the process may trigger other health problems. Research funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the European Union Sixth Framework Programme, shows that a protein called secreted frizzled-related protein 1 (SFRP1) is produced by fat cells ...

Do you like to do good things for other people? If so, your genes might be responsible for this. At least, the results of a study conducted by researchers of the University of Bonn suggest this. According to the study, a minute change in a particular gene is associated with a significantly higher willingness to donate. People with this change gave twice as much money on average to a charitable cause as did other study subjects. The results have now been published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience (doi: 10.1093/scan/nsq083). The researchers working ...

Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in storing quantum information using two 'entangled' light beams. Quantum memory or information storage is a necessary element of future quantum communication networks. The new findings are published in Nature Physics. Quantum networks will be able to protect the security of information better than the current conventional communication networks. The cornerstone of quantum communication is a phenomenon called entanglement between two quantum systems, for example, two light beams. ...

Professor Andre Geim, who along with his colleague Professor Kostya Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize for graphene – the world's thinnest material, has now modified it to make fluorographene – a one-molecule-thick material chemically similar to Teflon. Fluorographene is fully-fluorinated graphene and is basically a two-dimensional version of Teflon, showing similar properties including chemical inertness and thermal stability. The results are this week reported in the advanced online issue of the journal Small. The work is a large international effort and involved ...

Many changes in the sensory systems of tetrapods are associated with the water-to-land transition. In hearing, one of the crucial elements in detecting airborne sound is the tympanic ear. Surprisingly, the tympanic ear originated independently in the major tetrapod lineages and relatively late after the terrestrial tetrapods emerged – in the Triassic, more than 100 million years after the origin of tetrapods. The major question raised by the researchers Jakob Christensen-Dalsgaard, Christian Brandt and Magnus Wahlberg, University of Southern Denmark, and Maria Wilson and ...

Privacy legislation and protocols to safeguard the health information of members of the military are lacking, and the head of Canada's military must take action to ensure health privacy for all staff, states an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CAMJ) http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/doi/10.1503/cmaj.101630. Recent violations at Veterans Affairs Canada of privacy regarding sensitive health information raise questions about the military's ability to protect personal health information. "Few of the world's armed forces provide complete confidentiality of personal ...

New evidence has emerged that the use of mild painkillers such as paracetamol, aspirin and ibuprofen, may be part of the reason for the increase in male reproductive disorders in recent decades. Research published in Europe's leading reproductive medicine journal Human Reproduction today (Monday 8 November) shows that women who took a combination of more than one mild analgesic during pregnancy, or who took the painkillers during the second trimester of pregnancy, had an increased risk of giving birth to sons with undescended testicles (cryptorchidism) – a condition that ...

Scientists have made a significant discovery about how the body defends itself against snail fever, a parasitic worm infection common in developing countries. Researchers studied the immune response in mice infected with snail fever parasites. They found that a particular type of immune cell, known as the dendritic cell, is responsible for triggering the immune system's defence against the invading parasite. The development, by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, could point towards new avenues of research into treatments for the condition, which causes long-term ...

A new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health examines the burden of HIV and sexually transmitted disease among male clients of the commercial sex industry in China's Sichuan province. Since 2007, heterosexual transmission has replaced injecting drug use as the primary transmission mode of all HIV infections in China. The study is available online in advance of publication in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections. "We found a large burden of syphilis infection coupled with high-risk sexual and substance use behaviors among male ...

BOSTON – Using a novel, real-time imaging system, scientists have tracked a group of near-infrared fluorescent nanoparticles from the airspaces of the lungs, into the body and out again, providing a description of the characteristics and behavior of these minute particles which could be used in developing therapeutic agents to treat pulmonary disease, as well as offering a greater understanding of the health effects of air pollution. Led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Harvard School of Public Health, the findings are described ...

Glaciers of large mountain regions contribute, to some extent considerably, to the water supply of certain populated areas. However, in a recent study conducted by Innsbruck glaciologists and climatologists it has been shown that there are important regional differences. The results of the study are published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In their recently published study the glaciologists and climatologists, headed by Prof. Georg Kaser and Dr. Ben Marzeion from the Institute of Geography of the University of Innsbruck, ...

Astronomers have discovered a new way of locating a natural phenomenon that acts like a zoom lens and allows astronomers to peer at galaxies in the distant and early Universe. These results are from the very first data taken as part of the "Herschel-ATLAS" project, the largest imaging survey conducted so far with the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, and are published today (November 4 2010) in the prestigious scientific journal Science. The magnification allows astronomers to see galaxies otherwise hidden from us when the Universe was only a few billion ...