Scientists have discovered the origin of a unique type of cell known for its ability to support regeneration in the central nervous system. Their findings, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA (PNAS), raise the possibility of obtaining a more reliable source of these cells for use in cell transplantation therapy for spinal cord injuries. Olfactory ensheathing cells (OECs), as the name suggests, ensheath and protect the nerve fibres in the olfactory nerve, which transmit olfactory (smell) information to the brain from ...

The study, by researchers from Imperial College London, involves a new class of materials called metamaterials, which can be artificially engineered to distort light or sound waves. With conventional materials, light typically travels along a straight line, but with metamaterials, scientists can exploit a wealth of additional flexibility to create undetectable blind spots. By deflecting certain parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, an image can be altered or made to look like it has disappeared. Previously, a team led by Professor Sir John Pendry at Imperial College ...

Mums who smoke heavily while pregnant run the risk of having kids who grow up to become repeat criminal offenders, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The findings held true, even after taking account of a comprehensive range of family and social factors, such as mental ill health and deprivation, which are likely to influence behaviours, the research showed. The authors base their findings on just under 4000 adults aged between 33 and 40, who were part of the Rhode Island cohort of the Collaborative Perinatal Project. ...

Non-smokers who regularly breathe in others' tobacco smoke are at increased risk of some degree of hearing loss, reveals research published online in Tobacco Control. Previous research indicates that former and current smokers are more likely to lose some of their full range of hearing, but it's not been known whether passive smokers are also prone to this. The authors drew on 1999-2004 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a yearly household survey combined with a physical examination of a representative sample of the US population. ...

US scientists are significantly more likely to publish fake research than scientists from elsewhere, finds a trawl of officially withdrawn (retracted) studies, published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. Fraudsters are also more likely to be "repeat offenders," the study shows. The study author searched the PubMed database for every scientific research paper that had been withdrawn—and therefore officially expunged from the public record—between 2000 and 2010. A total of 788 papers had been retracted during this period. Around three quarters of these papers ...

According to recent research the color, shape, taste and even name of a tablet or pill can have an effect on how patients feel about their medication. Choose an appropriate combination and the placebo effect gives the pill a boost, improves outcomes and might even reduce side effects. Now, researchers at the University of Bombay, New Mumbai, India, have surveyed users of over-the-counter (OTC) medication to find out just how much the color of a tablet influences patient choice. Writing in the International Journal of Biotechnology, R.K. Srivastava and colleagues report ...

Evidence from Disneyland suggests that human creativity may have evolved not in response to sexual selection as some scientists believe but as a way to help parents bond with their children and to pass on traditions and cultural knowledge, a new study published in the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Tourism Anthropology suggests. Evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller of the University of New Mexico has suggested that human creativity, storytelling, humor, wit, music, fantasy, and morality, all evolved as forms of courtship behavior. He used evidence ...

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 15, 2010) -- Rice University scientists have found a way to predict rapidly whether a new strain of the influenza virus should be included in the annual seasonal flu vaccine. While it sometimes takes new flu strains up to three years to become dominant worldwide, the new method can predict whether they will become dominant as little as two weeks after the sequence first appears in the GenBank database, the National Institutes of Health's collection of all publicly available DNA sequences. "We studied a new strain of the virus that evolved in British Columbia ...

(Boston) - Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have found that both physical and sexual abuse history were positively associated with a higher incidence of uterine fibroids later in life. These findings currently appear on-line in the journal Epidemiology. Uterine leiomyomas, also known as fibroids or myomas, are benign, hormone-dependent tumors that are clinically symptomatic in 20󈞅 percent of reproductive age women. Fibroids contribute to a third of hysterectomies in the US, increase risk of infertility, spontaneous abortion and pelvic ...

Annoyed by how long it took his computer to boot up, Kläui began to think about an alternative. Hard disks are cheap and can store enormous quantities of data, but they are slow; every time a computer boots up, 2-3 minutes are lost while information is transferred from the hard disk into RAM (random access memory). The global cost in terms of lost productivity and energy consumption runs into the hundreds of millions of dollars a day. Like the tried and true VHS videocassette, the proposed solution involves data recorded on magnetic tape. But the similarity ends there; ...

A new study on gaming and health in adolescents, conducted by researchers at Yale School of Medicine, found some significant gender differences linked to gaming as well as important health risks associated with problematic gaming. Published today in the journal Pediatrics, the study is among the first and largest to examine possible health links to gaming and problematic gaming in a community sample of adolescents. Rani Desai, associate professor of psychiatry and epidemiology and public health at Yale, and colleagues anonymously surveyed 4,028 adolescents about their ...

Arlington, Va. — A new inhalable dry powder treatment for lung cancer shows a significant increase in survival rates and is far less invasive than current treatment options, which frequently include radiation and surgery. This research is being presented at the 2010 International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) Pharmaceutical Sciences World Congress (PSWC) in association with the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans, La., Nov. 14-18. Lung cancer is the second most common type of cancer in the U.S., accounting ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a sensor that allows engineers to assess the scour potential of soils at various depths and on-site for the first time – a technology that will help evaluate the safety of civil infrastructure before and after storm events. Scour, or erosion of soil around structures due to water flow, is responsible for a wide range of critical infrastructure failures – from unstable bridges to the levees that gave way in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. "The 'in situ scour evaluation probe' (ISEP) is the first technology ...

Philadelphia, PA, 15 November 2010 - A family history of Alzheimer's disease significantly increases the risk for developing this disorder, but a new study in Biological Psychiatry suggests that which of your parents has the disease is very important. Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia in late-life, affecting over 5 million elderly in the United States alone. In order to develop preventative treatments, it is necessary to identify those individuals who are at highest risk for developing Alzheimer's. Although individuals with a parental history of Alzheimer's ...

Employees who telecommute the majority of the work week are more satisfied with their jobs compared to those working mostly in the office because working remotely alleviates more stress than it creates, according to a new study by a communication researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM). The study, conducted by Kathryn Fonner, UWM assistant professor of communication, and Michael Roloff, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, compared the advantages and disadvantages of each work arrangement. A paper outlining the results appears ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Men treated with hormone-based therapy for prostate cancer faced a 30 percent to 40 percent higher risk of colorectal cancer, compared to patients who did not receive this treatment, according to a new study. The study looked at use of androgen deprivation therapy, a common type of treatment for prostate cancer that involves blocking the male hormone testosterone through either surgical removal of the testicles or a series of injections. It's been shown to benefit men with advanced cancers, but its benefit for less-advanced disease is unclear. Still, ...

The world's first remote heart procedure, using a robotic arm alongside 3-D mapping, is due to take place at Glenfield Hospital in Leicester. It comes six months after Dr Andre Ng carried out the first ever remote catheter ablation procedure using the Amigo Robotic Catheter System. Dr Ng, is senior lecturer at the University of Leicester and consultant cardiologist and electrophysiologist at Glenfield Hospital. On Tuesday 16 November, Dr Ng will be carrying out another "world first" using the robotic arm in combination with advanced 3-dimensional mapping to fix ...

Emotional prosperity in Europe is falling, and this troubling fact needs to be faced by the European governments. That is the conclusion from a new research report from the University of Warwick which documents cross-country evidence on psychological health and mental well-being. The study, by Andrew Oswald, professor of behavioural science at Warwick Business School, draws together the latest statistical evidence from a range of social-science, science and medical journals. The study is to be published in the December issue of the British Journal of Industrial Relations. ...

A pediatric immunologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia collaborated with European gene therapy researchers who achieved marked clinical improvements in two young children with Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a very rare but often severe immunodeficiency disorder. Jordan S. Orange, M.D., Ph.D., an expert in Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome (WAS), performed sophisticated cell imaging and analysis for the study, led by German researcher Christoph Klein, M.D., Ph.D., of Hannover Medical School. Orange was a senior co-author, and Children's Hospital was the only U.S. institution ...

New evidence that homeopathic consultations can reduce the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis has been revealed by scientists from the University of Southampton. In a study published today in the journal Rheumatology, researchers found that arthritis patients significantly benefited when they received homeopathy alongside conventional treatment over a period of 6 months, but this improvement was due to homeopathy's consultation process and not its remedies. "Although previous trials have shown homeopathy may help patients with rheumatoid arthritis, this is the first ...

INDIANAPOLIS – A new national survey conducted by researchers from Indiana University and the Regenstrief Institute has found that while palliative care may be available for those with dementia, there are significant barriers to providing or receiving services to relieve the pain, eating difficulties and other symptoms associated with dementia. The survey findings are reported in the Nov. 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. "Although the general public and many physicians do not associate palliative or hospice care with dementia, dementia is ...

Pinpointing the exact genetic cause of inherited deafness has always involved sequencing one gene at a time, a process that can take up to a year and cost roughly $1,000 per gene. It would cost around $75,000 to test all known deafness causing genes using this approach. Now University of Iowa researchers working with colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine have developed a test that can screen all of the genes known to cause deafness in a single run, in one to three months and for about $2,000. It means quicker answers for families anxious to determine treatment options ...

Human childhood is considerably longer than chimpanzees, our closest-living ape relatives. A multinational team of specialists, led by researchers from Harvard University, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA) and the ESRF, applied cutting-edge synchrotron X-ray imaging to resolve microscopic growth in 10 young Neanderthal and Homo sapiens fossils. They found that despite some overlap, which is common in closely-related species, significant developmental differences exist. Modern humans are the slowest to the finish line, stretching out their maturation, ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A new supercomputer rating system will be released by an international team led by Sandia National Laboratories at the Supercomputing Conference 2010 in New Orleans on Nov. 17. The rating system, Graph500, tests supercomputers for their skill in analyzing large, graph-based structures that link the huge numbers of data points present in biological, social and security problems, among other areas. "By creating this test, we hope to influence computer makers to build computers with the architecture to deal with these increasingly complex problems," ...

WASHINGTON — A new National Research Council report requested by Congress finds "several major shortcomings" in a U.S. Department of Homeland Security assessment of risks associated with operating the proposed National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kan. The laboratory would study dangerous foreign animal diseases -- including the highly contagious foot-and-mouth disease (FMD), which affects cattle, pigs, deer, and other cloven-hoofed animals -- and diseases deadly to humans that can be transmitted between animals and people. Based on the DHS risk ...