(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have for the first time shown that reduced vitamin D absorption in patients with quiescent Crohn's disease (CD) may be the cause for their increased risk for vitamin D deficiency. The findings, which currently appear on-line in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, also showed that the only way to determine absorption efficiency is to perform a vitamin D bioavailability test. Vitamin D is ingested in the diet as well as synthesized in the skin from UVB irradiation from the sun. People living in areas that ...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have brought cancer cells back under normal control — by reactivating their cancer suppressor genes. The discovery could form a powerful new technology platform for the treatment of cancer of the breast and other cancers. Breast cancer is diagnosed in about 1.4 million women throughout the world every year, with half a million dying from the disease. A common cause of cancer is when cells are altered or mutated and the body's tumour suppressor genes are switched off. Research, published today in the Journal Molecular Cancer, ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Jan. 18, 2011 – A study from researchers in Germany showed that magnetic maneuvering of a modified capsule endoscope in the stomach of healthy volunteers under clinical conditions is safe, well-tolerated, and technically feasible. Maneuverability of the capsule within the stomach was excellent and visualization of the gastric mucosa, the inner lining of the stomach, was satisfactory in the majority of subjects. Apart from a single experiment performed with a supervising flexible gastroscope, this was the first study to use the system in the stomach of ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have discovered a molecule that can make brain cells resistant to programmed cell death or apoptosis. This molecule, a tiny strand of nucleotides called microRNA-29 or miR-29, has already been shown to be in short supply in certain neurodegenerative illnesses such as Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. Thus, the discovery could herald a new treatment to prompt brain cells to survive in the wake of neurodegeneration or acute injury like stroke. "There is the real possibility ...

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that women are better than men at figuring out unusual products when they're among competing items. "A lot of times when we look at how consumers respond to innovative change in a product's physical form, we fail to consider that the context where they see the product plays a major role in how they evaluate and interpret it," write authors Theodore J. Noseworthy, June Cotte, and Seung Hwan (Mark) Lee (all University of Western Ontario). The researchers examined consumer reactions to innovative products, like a car ...

You are six times more likely to end up at the doctors with an acute respiratory infection (ARI) if you have recently used a bus or tram — but those who use buses or trams daily might well be somewhat protected compared with more occasional users. These are the findings of a study carried out by experts at The University of Nottingham into the relationship between public transport and the risk of catching an ARI. Their findings have been published in the online Journal BMC Infectious Diseases. Jonathan Van Tam, Professor of Health Protection in the School of Community ...

Recently published in an article of the Astronomy & Astrophysics journal, a group of researchers from the Institute of Space Sciences (IEEC-CSIC) at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona has discovered, for the first time, a delta Scuti pulsating star that hosts a hot giant transiting planet. The study was carried out by the PhD student, Enrique Herrero, the researcher Dr. Juan Carlos Morales, the exoplanet expert, Dr. Ignasi Ribas, and the amateur astronomer, Mr. Ramón Naves. WASP-33 (also known as HD15082) is hotter, more massive than the Sun (1.5 Msun) and is located at ...

People feel closer to businesses and nonprofits that solicit their advice, but soliciting expectations can distance potential customers, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Marketers and nonprofits alike regularly solicit input from customers or donors for myriad reasons, most notably to measure consumers' preferences, expectations, and satisfaction," write authors Wendy Liu (USCD) and David Gal (Northwestern University). Interactive media such as Facebook and Twitter are providing even greater opportunities for interaction with customers. The ...

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research explores why people reject things that can make them safer. "People rely on airbags, smoke detectors, and vaccines to make them safe," write authors Andrew D. Gershoff (University of Texas at Austin) and Johnathan J. Koehler (Northwestern University School of Law). "Unfortunately, vaccines do sometimes cause disease and airbags sometimes injure or kill. But just because these devices aren't perfect doesn't mean consumers should reject them outright." The authors found that people feel betrayed when they learn about the ...

A Letter to the Editor entitled "What should we advise about alcohol consumption?" was recently published by Maurizio Ponz de Leon in Intern Emerg Med.1 Dr. de Leon argues that the message of health benefits of moderate drinking "seems to me hazardous and extremely dangerous to diffuse in the general population." His reasons included (1) many people may be unable to distinguish between low–moderate and high consumption of wine, beer or spirits, and alcohol metabolism may differ remarkably from one subject to another; (2) alcohol remains a frequent cause of car crash, ...

After a rough day at the office, you might opt for a convenient, pretty restaurant over one with a top-notch menu, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "If you've had a tough day at work, how will that affect the decisions you make, like where to eat, what to do, and what to buy?" ask authors Echo Wen Wan (University of Hong Kong) and Nidhi Agrawal (Northwestern University). Their research revealed that people who are tired from a demanding task will tend to pass up the most desirable choices and go for options that seem to have attractive low-level ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – While monogamy is often touted as a way to protect against disease, young couples who say they have discussed monogamy can't seem to agree on what they decided. And a significant percentage of those couples who at least agreed that they would be monogamous weren't. A new study of 434 young heterosexual couples ages 18-25 found that, in 40 percent of couples, only one partner says the couple agreed to be sexually exclusive. The other partner said there was no agreement. Public health researchers Jocelyn Warren and Marie Harvey of Oregon State University ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new analysis of the Northern Hemisphere's "albedo feedback" over a 30-year period concludes that the region's loss of reflectivity due to snow and sea ice decline is more than double what state-of-the-art climate models estimate. The findings are important, researchers say, because they suggest that Arctic warming amplified by the loss of reflectivity could be even more significant than previously thought. The study was published online this week in Nature Geoscience. It was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation, with data also culled ...

New technology providing the first view of DNA damage throughout the entire human genome developed by Cardiff University scientists could offer a valuable new insight into the development and treatment of conditions like cancer. Professor Ray Waters, Dr Simon Reed and Dr Yumin Teng from Cardiff University's Department of Genetics, Haematology and Pathology have developed a unique way of measuring DNA damage frequency using tiny microarrays. Using the new method Cardiff scientists can, for the first time, examine all 28,000 human genes where previous techniques have ...

Soy protein's ability to lower total and LDL (low-density lipoprotein or "the bad") cholesterol has been extensively studied, but the mechanism whereby soy protein lowers cholesterol remains unresolved. A new study published in the Journal of Clinical Lipidology last month shows that soy protein lowers total cholesterol and non-HDL (non-high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol significantly more than milk protein in patients with moderately high cholesterol levels. "Non-HDL cholesterol has been shown to be a somewhat stronger predictor of cardiovascular disease and mortality ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Researchers have identified how the hormones progesterone and estrogen interact to increase cell growth in normal mammary cells and mammary cancers, a novel finding that may explain why postmenopausal women receiving hormone replacement therapy with estrogen plus progestin are at increased risk of breast cancer. The discovery that both estrogen and progesterone must be present for the increased production of the protein amphiregulin, which binds to mammary cells and promotes cell growth, could lead to new treatment methods for the disease, said Sandra ...

CINCINNATI--Emergency medicine researchers with the University of Cincinnati (UC) are advocating a new strategy for diagnosing a common but dangerous condition in the emergency room. Pulmonary embolism, or PE, is a potentially lethal disease in which a blood clot, usually from the legs, travels to the lungs and becomes lodged in a pulmonary artery. But the most common way of testing for PEs, a computed tomography angiography (CTA), comes with so many side effects that researchers in emergency medicine are now looking for ways to reduce use of the test. In a CTA, a contrast ...

Ask your kid what happened to the dinosaurs, and he or she will likely tell you that an asteroid killed them all. But ask how dinosaurs rose to prominence and you'll likely get a blank stare. Even many paleontologists may have little to say about the subject. But now, as EARTH explores in a feature in the February issue, new fossil discoveries are revealing the backstory of the rise of dinosaurs. Learn more about this eye-opening subject in February's article "Triassic Park: On the Origin of Dinosaur Species," and read other analytical stories on topics such as what OPEC's ...

CHICAGO --- When a traffic light at a busy intersection flashes the WALK sign, people with knee osteoarthritis worry they can't walk fast enough to make it across the street in time. New Northwestern Medicine research shows people with this common arthritis are more likely to walk fast enough if they lead physically active lives. "The more active people are, the faster they can walk," said Dorothy Dunlop, associate professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and lead author of the study. "This is strong evidence that even a small increase ...

UNC scientists who study how cells repair damage from environmental factors like sunlight and cigarette smoke have discovered how a "chaperone" enzyme plays a key role in cells' ability to tolerate the DNA damage that leads to cancer and other diseases. The enzyme, known as Rad18, detects a protein called DNA polymerase eta (Pol eta) and accompanies it to the sites of sunlight-induced DNA damage, enabling accurate repair. When Pol eta is not present, alternative error-prone polymerases take its place – a process that leads to DNA mutations often found in cancer cells. ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 18, 2011 -- Physicists and bioengineers have developed an optical instrument allowing them to control the behavior of a worm just by shining a tightly focused beam of light at individual neurons inside the organism. The pioneering optogenetic research, by a team at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is described this week in the journal Nature Methods. Their device is known as the CoLBeRT (Controlling Locomotion and Behavior in Real Time) system for optical control of freely moving ...

A study led by Dr. Tom P. Aufderheide, professor of emergency medicine at The Medical College of Wisconsin, shows an alternative method of cardio-pulmonary resuscitation increases long-term survival of patients. The study, which is published in the January 19th, 2011 online version of Lancet, and will be in an upcoming publication of Lancet, determined that active compression-decompression cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR) with augmentation of negative intrathoracic pressure gave patients a better chance of survival. When the pressure inside the thorax decreases, ...

CHICAGO – January 18, 2011 – Maintaining periodontal health may contribute to a healthy respiratory system, according to research published in the Journal of Periodontology. A new study suggests that periodontal disease may increase the risk for respiratory infections, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia. These infections, which are caused when bacteria from the upper throat are inhaled into the lower respiratory tract, can be severely debilitating and are one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. The study included 200 participants ...

A complex sugar may someday become one of the most effective weapons to stop the spread of cholera, a disease that has claimed thousands of lives in Haiti since the devastating earthquake last year. A technique developed by University of Central Florida scientists would allow relief workers to test water sources that could be contaminated with the cholera toxin. In the test, the sugar dextran is coated onto iron oxide nanoparticles and then added to a sample of the water. If the cholera toxin is present, the toxin will bind to the nanoparticles' dextran. This is because ...

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Researchers at Northwestern University have placed nanocrystals of rock salt into lead telluride, creating a material that can harness electricity from heat-generating items such as vehicle exhaust systems, industrial processes and equipment and sun light more efficiently than scientists have seen in the past. The material exhibits a high thermoelectric figure of merit that is expected to enable 14 percent of heat waste to electricity, a scientific first. Chemists, physicists and material scientists at Northwestern collaborated to develop the material. ...