Although the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic infected an estimated 60 million people and hospitalized more than 250,000 in the United States, it also brought one significant benefit—clues about how to make a vaccine that could protect against multiple strains of influenza. In the Jan. 10, 2011, issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago and Emory University report that people who were infected with pandemic H1N1 and recovered had an extraordinary immune response, producing antibodies that are protective against a variety of ...

All secondary school students should be required to be trained in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and receive an overview of automated external defibrillators (AEDs), according to an American Heart Association science advisory. The advisory, published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, calls for state legislatures to mandate that CPR and AED training be required for graduation, and to provide funding and other support to ensure the educational standard is met. Last school year, 36 states had a law or curriculum standard encouraging CPR training ...

If you smoke around your children, they could have high blood pressure or be headed in an unhealthy direction before learning their ABC's, according to research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. The study is the first to show that breathing tobacco smoke increases the blood pressure of children as young as 4 or 5 years old. "The prevention of adult diseases like stroke or heart attack begins during childhood," said Giacomo D. Simonetti, M.D., first author of the study at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and currently assistant ...

Teenagers who consume a lot of added sugars in soft drinks and foods may have poor cholesterol profiles — which may possibly lead to heart disease in adulthood, according to first-of-its-kind research reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Added sugars" are any caloric sweeteners added to foods or beverages by the manufacturer during processing or the consumer. The National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) of 2,157 teenagers (ages 12 to 18) found the average daily consumption of added sugars was 119 grams (28.3 tsp or 476 calories), ...

According to an Emory University study, teenagers with high sugar diets may be in store for heart problems as adults. A study published in the Jan. 10 online issue of the journal Circulation finds teens who consume elevated amounts of added sugars in drinks and foods are more likely to have poor cholesterol and triglyceride profiles now which may lead to heart disease later in life. The study also finds that overweight or obese teens with the highest levels of added sugar intake had increased signs of insulin resistance, often a precursor to diabetes. According to ...

Melt off from small mountain glaciers and ice caps will contribute about 12 centimetres to world sea-level increases by 2100, according to UBC research published this week in Nature Geoscience. The largest contributors to projected global sea-level increases are glaciers in Arctic Canada, Alaska and landmass bound glaciers in the Antarctic. Glaciers in the European Alps, New Zealand, the Caucasus, Western Canada and the Western United Sates--though small absolute contributors to global sea-level increases--are projected to lose more than 50 per cent of their current ice ...

A Spanish study has challenged the long-held belief that people in the Mediterranean all enjoy more healthy diets and lifestyles, after discovering alarmingly high cardiovascular risk factors similar to those found in the UK and USA. Research published in the January issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice, also found strong links between low levels of education and increased risk. "Cardiovascular diseases account for 33 per cent of deaths in Spain, making it the main cause of mortality in the country" says Dr Ricardo Gómez-Huelgas from the Internal ...

A strange, glowing green cloud of gas that has mystified astronomers since its discovery in 2007 has been studied by Hubble. The cloud of gas is lit up by the bright light of a nearby quasar, and shows signs of ongoing star formation. One of the strangest space objects ever seen is being scrutinised by the penetrating vision of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. A mysterious, glowing green blob of gas is floating in space near a spiral galaxy. Hubble uncovered delicate filaments of gas and a pocket of young star clusters in the giant object, which is the size of the ...

Hope for new ways of treating devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington's disease has been raised by a trans-Atlantic team of researchers thanks to the use of cutting-edge genetic techniques. Led by the University of Leicester, scientists from the University of Lisbon (led by Dr Tiago Outeiro) and University of California at San Francisco (led by Dr Paul Muchowski) collaborated to generate novel approaches for tackling the diseases. Their work, funded by the Medical Research Council, is published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. At Leicester, ...

New research published today, shows how light can be used to control the electrical properties of graphene, paving the way for graphene-based optoelectronic devices and highly sensitive sensors. This year's Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for research into graphene, recognising its potential for many applications in modern life, from high-speed electronics to touchscreen technology. The UK's National Physical Laboratory, along with a team of international scientists, have further developed our understanding of graphene by showing that when this remarkable material ...

A team of researchers has demonstrated that the brain predicts consequences of our eye movements on what we see next. The findings, which appear in the journal Nature Neuroscience, have implications for understanding human attention and applications to robotics. The study was conducted by researchers at University Paris Descartes, New York University's Department of Psychology, and Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. Our eyes jump rapidly about three times each second to capture new visual information, and with each jump a new view of the world falls onto the retina—a ...

The federal peer review system, by which research proposals are judged worthy for funding, may be "over stretched" and "susceptible to error," said Elmer Yglesias, a researcher at the Science and Technology Policy Institute and author of "Improving Peer Review in the Federal Government," published in the current issue of TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION, Proceedings of the National Academy of Inventors ™, (www.academyofinventors.org) now available on-line at: http://www.cognizantcommunication.com/filecabinet/Technology/techinnovation.html According to Yglesias, the federal ...

The number and scale of forest fires has increased dramatically in recent decades. Who can forget last summer's television images of blazing infernos devouring miles and miles of forest in Russia, Australia and California? In Germany, too, several regions are under threat precipitated by climate change – Brandenburg, for example, is one of the areas of Europe that are most at risk. Often, fires can only be contained from the air. In order to fight them in a targeted way, firefighting planes need to be given precise information on where the flames are at their worst. Infrared ...

The so-called "superstreet" traffic design results in significantly faster travel times, and leads to a drastic reduction in automobile collisions and injuries, according to North Carolina State University researchers who have conducted the largest-ever study of superstreets and their impacts. Superstreets are surface roads, not freeways. It is defined as a thoroughfare where the left-hand turns from side streets are re-routed, as is traffic from side streets that needs to cross the thoroughfare. In both instances, drivers are first required to make a right turn and ...

Monday, January 10, 2011 – Cleveland – Researchers have discovered a method for more precise identification of individuals who should undergo testing for genetic mutations of the tumor suppressor gene PTEN, which associates with a variety of conditions including several types of cancers. The research has created a diagnostic scoring system that improves on established criteria. Led by Charis Eng, M.D., Ph.D., Chair of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Lerner Research Institute of Cleveland Clinic, the study – the largest clinical study to date on the identification ...

Since the 50s, formaldehyde has been the basic material for many artificial resins and glues used in particleboards and plywood boards. Estimates indicate that more than 85 percent of all wood materials have adhesives containing formaldehyde. This substance escapes from the materials and, along with other sources, pollutes indoor air. This is why numerous ways have been developed to reduce emissions, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of the World Health Organization WHO has even classified formaldehyde as carcinogenic for humans. Thereupon both ...

A paper describing a dramatic change during the 20th century in England and Wales in the association between social class and mortality from liver cirrhosis features in Alcohol and Alcoholism. While deaths from cirrhosis were more common among higher social classes in the early part of the century, the pattern changed so that deaths from cirrhosis were much more common among the lower social classes by the end of the century. Data on male cirrhosis mortality by social class were obtained from the Registrar General's Decennial Supplements for the years 1921�. The ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 10 – A researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, in collaboration with scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has discovered that the deadly plaques of Alzheimer's disease interact with certain cellular proteins to inhibit normal signals that maintain blood flow to the brain. Their findings, which could lead to new approaches to treat the dementia, were recently published in Public Library of Science One. Levels of nitric oxide (NO) – a signaling molecule that helps regulate blood flow, immune and neurological processes ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The world's oceans are under siege. Conservation biologists regularly note the precipitous decline of key species, such as cod, bluefin tuna, swordfish and sharks. Lose enough of these top-line predators (among other species), and the fear is that the oceanic web of life may collapse. In a new paper in Geology, researchers at Brown University and the University of Washington used a group of marine creatures similar to today's nautilus to examine the collapse of marine ecosystems that coincided with two of the greatest mass extinctions ...

Research by engineers and cancer biologists at Virginia Tech indicate that using specific silicon microdevices might provide a new way to screen breast cancer cells' ability to metastasize. An image of their work provided to Biomaterials was selected as one of the 12 best biomaterials-related images published in the journal's 2010 catalogue. http://www.elsevierscitech.com/pdfs/Biomaterials_2010.pdf The Virginia Tech researchers are: Masoud Agah, director of Virginia Tech's Microelectromechanical Systems Laboratory (MEMS) Laboratory in the Bradley Department of Electrical ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Jan. 4, 2011) − Scientists at the University of Kentucky have discovered that plasminogen, a protein used by the body to break up blood clots, speeds up the progress of prion diseases such as mad cow disease. This finding makes plasminogen a promising new target for the development of drugs to treat prion diseases in humans and animals, says study senior author Chongsuk Ryou, a researcher at the UK Sanders-Brown Center on Aging and professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics in the UK College of Medicine. "I hope that our study ...

Alexandria, VA – Where to next in the search for oil and gas? EARTH examines several possible new frontiers - including the Arctic, the Falkland Islands, the Levant, Trinidad and Tobago and Sudan - where oil and gas exploration are starting to take hold. One of those places, Sudan, is in the news for other reasons: South Sudan voted yesterday on whether to secede from North Sudan. But given that South Sudan holds more than 70 percent of Sudan's 5 billion to 6 billion barrels of proven reserves, a lot in this election hinges on oil. If South Sudan does secede, how will ...

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University researchers have found that within the brain's neocortex lies a subnetwork of highly active neurons that behave much like people in social networks. Like Facebook, these neuronal networks have a small population of highly active members who give and receive more information than the majority of other members, says Alison Barth, associate professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon and a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC). By identifying these neurons, scientists will now be able to study them further ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Firms that outsource aspects of their business to a foreign country may profit by saving money, but the practice tends to soften the competition among industry rivals, exacting a hidden cost on consumers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business administration professor. Yunchuan "Frank" Liu says outsourcing hurts society in two ways – it results in lost jobs for workers, and in consumers paying higher prices than they should for goods. "Outsourcing is a topic that affects just about everyone, and the general consensus is that ...

The mechanism for binding oxygen to metalloporphyrins is a vital process for oxygen-breathing organisms. Understanding how small gas molecules are chemically bound to the metal complex is also important in catalysis or the implementation of chemical sensors. When investigating these binding mechanisms, scientists use porphyrin rings with a central cobalt or iron atom. They coat a copper or silver support surface with these substances. An important characteristic of porphyrins is their conformational flexibility. Recent research has shown that each specific geometric configuration ...