A University of Adelaide study has found no evidence that taking fish oil capsules during pregnancy can help reduce the risk of post-natal depression, contrary to international recommendations. In an article published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Professor Maria Makrides says a study of 2400 pregnant women in five Australian maternity hospitals between 2005 and 2009 supports this finding. Professor Maria Makrides, who is Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of Adelaide and Deputy Director of the Women's and Children's Health Research ...

A child's likelihood of developing food allergies can be traced back to the season during which s/he completes their first three months of life in the womb, suggests research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. The Finnish researchers base their findings on just under 6000 children, all of whom were born between 2001 and 2006 and lived in one area of Finland. Out of the total, just under 1000 were tested for sensitisation to food allergens between the ages of 0 and 4 years, with the likelihood of a positive test result rising sharply ...

Low testosterone levels seem to be linked to a heightened risk of premature death from heart disease and all causes, suggests research published online in Heart. The finding refutes received wisdom that the hormone is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. The researchers base their findings on 930 men, all of whom had coronary artery heart disease, and had been referred to a specialist heart centre between 2000 and 2002. Their heart health was then tracked for around 7 years. On referral, low testosterone was relatively common. One in four of the men was classified ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., October 18, 2010 – Lymphoma is a cancer of the immune system. White blood cells divide again and again, spreading abnormally throughout the body. Lymphomas can arise from two types of white blood cells, T cells or B cells, which divide uncontrollably when the molecular mechanisms that keep them in check go awry. A new study led by Robert Rickert, Ph.D., professor and director of the Inflammatory Diseases Program at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham), explores the roles of two enzymes, called SHIP and PTEN, in B cell growth and ...

Top sports persons must always perform to their maximum capacity, making them the most vulnerable to the effects of dehydration. Now, a new study conducted by researchers from the Universidad de Castilla la Mancha (UCLM) reveals that 91% of professional basketball, volleyball, handball and football players are dehydrated when they begin their training sessions. "Dehydration negatively affects sporting performance, even when the level of dehydration is low (such as a 2% loss of body weight through perspiration)", UCLM researcher and author of the article Ricardo Mora-Rodríguez ...

Two world experts in micro molluscs, Anselmo Peñas and Emilio Rolán, have made an unprecedented description in a scientific publication of a combined total of 209 snail species. Commissioned by the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, the study was unveiled in September in the French capital, and it covers the most new species from a single genus of any study to date. "Never have so many species from a single genus, nor even from a single family, been described in one single study", Anselmo Peñas, lead author of the collaborative monograph between the National ...

In the largest human study to date on the topic, researchers have uncovered evidence of the possible influence of human sex hormones on the structure and function of the right ventricle (RV) of the heart. The researchers found that in women receiving hormone therapy, higher estrogen levels were associated with higher RV ejection fraction and lower RV end-systolic volume — both measures of the RV's blood-pumping efficiency — but not in women who were not on hormone therapy, nor in men. Conversely, higher testosterone levels were associated with greater RV mass and larger ...

Long term exposure to low-level air pollution may increase the risk of severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), according to researcher s in Denmark. While acute exposure of several days to high level air pollution was known to be a risk factor for exacerbation in pre-existing COPD, until now there had been no studies linking long-term air pollution exposure to the development or progression of the disease. The research was published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "Our ...

A research team from Emory University School of Medicine investigated the role between adiponectin and leptin in obesity-related carcinogenesis. Their findings, published in the November issue of Hepatology, suggest that the protein hormone adiponectin has potential for inhibiting the oncogenic actions of leptin, namely in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and could offer a promising therapy for the disease. Obesity is on the rise and is associated with increased risk and progression of a number of cancers including colon, prostate, breast, and liver cancers. The World ...

Researchers at the University of Palermo in Italy provide the evidence that a higher visceral adiposity index score—a new index of adipose dysfunction—has a direct correlation with viral load and is independently associated with both steatosis and necroinflammatory activity in patients with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C (G1 CHC). Details of this study are available in the November issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). According to public health surveillance data gathered ...

Washington, DC (Oct. 19, 2010) The latest research into the health effects and safety of a soy-based compound called S-equol was described in talks and presentations by experts at a special session on Tuesday, Oct. 19 during the Ninth International Symposium on the Role of Soy in Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention and Treatment, held Oct. 16 to 19 in Washington, D.C. S-equol is a compound resulting -- when certain bacteria are present in the digestive track -- from the natural metabolism, or conversion, of daidzein, an isoflavone found in whole soybeans. ...

Analysts examining a firm and the qualifications of its top management team discount the educational background of African American managers who graduated from prestigious universities while accepting the qualifications of white managers with the same college credentials, according to two experiments reported in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). "We found that possessing high educational prestige was less beneficial for firms led by African Americans than for firms with ...

CINCINNATI - A newly identified regulatory process affecting the biology of immune system T cells should give scientists new approaches to explore the causes of autoimmunity and immune deficiency diseases. In findings posted online ahead of publication in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report a novel process of coordinated cellular communications vital to the maintenance of T cells. If the process breaks down, T cells proliferate rapidly and die off. This could disrupt the immune system's ...

In the United States, friends often share intimate details of their lives and problems. However, such self-disclosure is much less common in Japan. A new study by an American researcher living in Japan finds that this may be because of the different social systems in the two countries, and in particular the extent to which there are opportunities to make new friends. "At first, it seemed strange that in Japan, people didn't open up and share a lot about themselves with each other," says Joanna Schug of Hokkaido University. "But Japanese often look at Americans and think, ...

TORONTO, October 19, 2010 – Pharmaceutical promotion may cause doctors to prescribe more expensively, less appropriately and more often, according to a new study co-authored by York University professor Joel Lexchin. The findings, published today in the journal, PLoS Medicine, offer a broad look at the relationship between doctors' prescribing habits and their exposure to information provided by drug companies. Researchers analyzed 58 separate studies of this phenomenon from Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, dating from the 1960s. "Many doctors claim ...

An international collaboration led by academics at the University of Sheffield, has shed new light into Parkinson's disease, which could help with the development of cures or treatments in the future. The collaboration, which was led by Professor Peter Redgrave from the University's Department of Psychology, suggests that many of the problems suffered by patients with Parkinson's disease - difficulties in initiating actions, slow laboured movements and tremors – can be understood in terms of damage to control circuits in the brain responsible for habits. The analysis, ...

Mobile phone-based games could provide a new way to teach basic knowledge of Chinese language characters that might be particularly helpful in underdeveloped rural areas of China, say researchers in Carnegie Mellon University's Mobile & Immersive Learning for Literacy in Emerging Economies (MILLEE) Project. Earlier this year, researchers reported that two mobile learning games, inspired by traditional Chinese games, showed promise during preliminary tests with children in Xin'an, an underdeveloped region in Henan Province, China. The researchers from Carnegie Mellon, ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Inhaling nitric oxide appears to safely and effectively reduce pain crises in adults with sickle cell disease, researchers report. A study of 18 patients in Atlanta, Chicago and Detroit showed that the nine inhaling nitric oxide for four hours had better pain control than those receiving only the standard self-administered morphine, said Dr. C. Alvin Head, chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology at the Medical College of Georgia School of Medicine. "This study shows that you can breathe the gas and have less pain, which is the major reason sickle cell ...

Scientists at the University of Adelaide have discovered new cases of herbicide resistance in annual ryegrass, one of the world's most serious and costly weeds. For the first time, researchers have found that annual ryegrass has developed resistance to paraquat, the second most important "knockdown" herbicide used by cropping farmers. Weed management experts Dr Peter Boutsalis and Associate Professor Christopher Preston, from the University's Waite Research Institute, made the discovery in samples taken from two separate farming properties near the South Australian ...

Williamsburg, VA —October 19, 2010— Corporations and individuals alike are increasingly focused on "going green," in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint and impact on the environment. It is questionable whether higher education institutions are adopting sustainable practices at the same rate, despite large consumption rates of energy and water, among other resources. In the first study of its kind, Contemporary Economic Policy presents an article which compares the factors that drive colleges to adopt sustainable practices to the factors that motivate for-profit ...

ATLANTA—October 19, 2010—A rare and deadly form of breast cancer that often goes unrecognized by clinicians and patients alike is the focus of a new report from leading researchers. Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) has made headlines as an unrecognized and misunderstood form of breast cancer. It has a younger age of onset, progresses rapidly, and has lower overall survival compared to other breast cancers. For the new report, leading researchers led by Massimo Cristofanilli, M.D., of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia outline IBC's unique clinical presentation, pathology, ...

Montreal, October 19, 2010 – Dogs may not only be man's best friend, they may also have a special role in the lives of children with special needs. According to a new Université de Montreal study, specifically trained service dogs can help reduce the anxiety and enhance the socialization skills of children with Autism Syndrome Disorders (ASDs). The findings published this year in Psychoneuroendocrinology may be a relatively simple solution to help affected children and their families cope with these challenging disorders. "Our findings showed that the dogs had a clear ...

Flexible circuits can be found in many devices where space and weight considerations are dominant in the design of electronics: in cars, in cameras and video equipment, in mini-computers for athletes or in inkjet printers. And the market continues to grow: according to the business consultancy Frost & Sullivan, sales in this area will grow to more than $16 billion by the year 2014. At K 2010, the trade fair for plastics in Düsseldorf, Germany, scientists from the IST in Braunschweig will unveil a new reel-to-reel technology for the production of flexible circuits and ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – In the battle of egos, Donald Trump vs. Hugo Chavez might be a draw. But as symbols of power, each resonates differently with different cultures, as cultures nurture different views of what is desirable and meaningful to do with power, according to new research by a University of Illinois marketing expert. Sharon Shavitt says the relation between culture and one's concepts of power emerge from one's cultural orientation, and how that culture shapes one's beliefs, attitudes and goals. "People's views of powerful people and what powerful people are supposed ...

HOUSTON -- (Oct. 19, 2010) -- Some bacteria react to the cold by subtly changing the chemistry of their outer wall so that it remains pliable as temperatures drop. Scientists identified a key protein in this response mechanism a few years ago, but the question of how bacteria sense cold in the first place remained a mystery. Based on a study by scientists at Rice University and Argentina's National University of Rosario, the answer is: They use a measuring stick. The study, published in the September issue of Current Biology, involved a series of intricate experiments ...