JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Physicians at Mayo Clinic's Florida campus are among the first in the nation to use a technique known as MRI-guided laser ablation to heat up and destroy kidney and liver tumors. So far, five patients have been successfully treated — meaning no visible tumors remained after the procedure. They join their colleagues at Mayo Clinic's site in Rochester, Minn., who were the first to use laser ablation on patients with recurrent prostate tumors. Although the treatment techniques are in the development stage, the physicians say the treatment is potentially ...

Personalized medicine — improving the fit between patient and treatment — has become a major focus of research in fields from cancer treatment to the psychopharmacology of mental disorders. Genetic studies have suggested that an individual's genetic makeup renders him either more or less sensitive to stressful social environments — but can an individual's unique genotype also determine the effectiveness of preventative or therapeutic behavioral interventions? The current issue of Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, ...

Athens, Ga. – A new long-term study published by researchers at the University of Georgia, the Menzies Research Institute in Hobart, Australia and the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia suggests that waist circumference, rather than the commonly used body mass index measure, is the best clinical measure to predict a child's risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes later in life. The researchers, whose results appear in the early online edition of the International Journal of Obesity, found that children with high waist circumference values ...

Instruments designed by a UT Dallas professor to measure atmospheric components on the surface of Mars have uncovered important clues about the planet's atmosphere and climate history. The findings, published in a recent issue of the journal Science, reveal how carbon dioxide isotopes have reacted to volcanic activity, water and weathering – thus forming a more complete picture of the current Martian atmosphere. The NASA mission in which this work was accomplished was the Phoenix Lander, an unmanned spacecraft deployed to Mars in 2008. UT Dallas Physics Professor ...

CHAPEL HILL – Two years ago, a study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers found that an anti-vomiting drug called ondansetron helps reduce vomiting, the need for intravenous fluids and hospital admissions in children with acute gastroenteritis. Now a new economic analysis led by Canadian researchers, in collaboration with Michael J. Steiner, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at UNC, concludes that routinely giving ondansetron to children with gastroenteritis-induced vomiting would prevent thousands of hospitalizations and save millions of dollars ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A potent drug derived from an evergreen tree may soon save the lives of some patients with the deadliest form of breast cancer. According to the National Cancer Institute, breast cancer will claim approximately 40,000 lives in the U.S. this year. Scientists at UC Santa Barbara, in cooperation with scientists in the pharmaceutical industry, have discovered the mechanism by which this drug kills cancer cells. The team has isolated the drug's action in the test tube as well as in cancer cells. The results are reported in two studies published ...

DALLAS – Oct. 14, 2010 – Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that fluctuations in internal body temperature regulate the body's circadian rhythm, the 24-hour cycle that controls metabolism, sleep and other bodily functions. A light-sensitive portion of the brain called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) remains the body's "master clock" that coordinates the daily cycle, but it does so indirectly, according to a study published by UT Southwestern researchers in the Oct. 15 issue of Science. The SCN responds to light entering the eye, and so is sensitive ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — In as many as 8 percent of pregnancies worldwide, women who seem fine for months develop preeclampsia, a serious complication causing symptoms including high blood pressure, severe swelling, and problems with placental development. The untreatable and unpredictable condition, with no known cause, often requires premature delivery, and can sometimes kill the mother and the fetus. In a new study, researchers led by a team at Brown University and Women & Infants Hospital describe two major advances: a well-defined animal model of preeclampsia ...

Human blood is famously fraught with fats; now researchers have a specific idea of just how numerous and diverse these lipids actually are. A national research team, led by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has created the first "lipidome" of human plasma, identifying and quantifying almost 600 distinct fat species circulating in human blood. "Everybody knows about blood lipids like cholesterol and triglycerides," said Edward A. Dennis, PhD, distinguished professor of pharmacology, chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego and ...

It could happen to students cramming for exams, people working long hours or just about anyone burning the candle at both ends: Something tells you to take a break. Watch some TV. Have a candy bar. Goof off, tune out for a bit and come back to the task at hand when you're feeling better. After all, you're physically exhausted. But a new study from Stanford psychologists suggests the urge to refresh (or just procrastinate) is – well – all in your head. In a paper published this week in Psychological Science, the researchers challenge a long-held theory that willpower ...

New research by University of British Columbia physicists indicates that high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides is linked to what they term 'incoherent excitations'--a discovery that sheds light on the electronic response of these materials before they become superconducting. The study marks the first time researchers have been able to directly measure when electrons in a super conductor behave as independent well-defined particles, and when they evolve into ill-defined many-body entities. "We've never been able to directly quantify the nature of electron ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Buy something online, enter your credit card number and mailing address. Simple. Then you come to the box with the CAPTCHA, the Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. Here, the website attempts to confirm that you're a human, not some robot about to commit a cybercrime. You dutifully copy down the warped, watery-looking letters. Incorrect. Another captcha appears. You try again. Also incorrect. A third captcha appears. You start rethinking your purchase. University at Buffalo computer scientist Venu Govindaraju, ...

Columbus, Ohio (Oct. 14, 2010) – An Ohio State University astronomer is working to unlock some of the mysteries surrounding the formation of vast galaxies and the evolution of massive black holes with his own large constellation of silicon wafers. Over the last year, two research teams led by Stelios Kazantzidis, a Long-Term Fellow at the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics (CCAPP) at The Ohio State University, have used what would average out to nearly 1,000 computing hours each day on the parallel high performance computing systems of the Ohio Supercomputer ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have succeeded in combining laser light with trapped electrons to detect and control the electrons' fragile quantum state without erasing it. This is an important step toward using quantum physics to expand computing power and to communicate over long distances without the possibility of eavesdropping. The work appears online today at Science Express. The research, led by David Awschalom, professor of physics, electrical and computer engineering, and director of UCSB's Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation, ...

Little kids believe the darnedest things. For example, that a fat man in a red suit flies through the air on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. A new study on three-year-olds, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that they aren't just generally trusting. They're particularly trusting of things people say to them. Previous research has found that three-year-olds are a credulous bunch; they believe most things they're told, and skepticism doesn't kick in until later. Vikram K. Jaswal, of the University of Virginia, ...

Stem cells, the prodigious precursors of all the tissues in our body, can make almost anything, given the right circumstances. Including, unfortunately, cancer. Now research from Rockefeller University shows that having too many stem cells, or stem cells that live for too long, can increase the odds of developing cancer. By identifying a mechanism that regulates programmed cell death in precursor cells for blood, or hematopoietic stem cells, the work is the first to connect the death of such cells to a later susceptibility to tumors in mice. It also provides evidence of ...

CHICAGO –For nearly 40 years a class of drugs known as beta blockers have been proven to increase patients' survival prospects following a heart attack by decreasing the cardiac workload and oxygen demand on the heart. In a breakthrough study released in the American Heart Journal, Northwestern Medicine cardiologist Jeffrey J. Goldberger found the majority of patients are frequently not receiving a large enough dose of these drugs, which can put their recovery from heart attacks and overall health into peril. "Only 46% of patients studied were taking 50% or more of the ...

NEW YORK -- Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide. The study, conducted by Andrew Lacis and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, examined the nature of Earth's greenhouse effect and clarified the role that greenhouse gases and clouds play in absorbing outgoing infrared radiation. Notably, the team identified non-condensing greenhouse gases -- ...

A potential solution for global energy demands is the use of Poplar, a fast-growing tree with high yields, for biofuels. To get the most out of Poplar plantations, varieties that are the best fit for the conditions—ones with disease resistance or higher yields, for example—are desired. But do these plantations of new, non-native (exotic) species impact nearby native populations of Poplar? In particular, is the genetic makeup of the native populations being altered by interactions with the exotic species? In the October issue of the American Journal of Botany (http://www.amjbot.org/cgi/reprint/97/10/1688), ...

Human adhesives are famed for their fallibility. Gooey glues soon lose their grip, are easily contaminated and leave residues behind. But not gecko feet. Geckos can cling on repeatedly to the smoothest surfaces thanks to the self-cleaning microscopic spatula-shaped hairs (setae) that coat the soles of their feet. Back in 2002, Kellar Autumn found that these dry hairs are in such intimate contact with surfaces that the reptiles 'glue' themselves on by van der Waals forces with no need for fluid adhesives. More recent studies had suggested that geckos might benefit from additional ...

DARIEN, IL – A study in the Oct. 15 issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that adults with fibromyalgia had a much higher prevalence and risk of restless legs syndrome than healthy controls. The study suggests that treating RLS may improve sleep and quality of life in people with fibromyalgia. Results show that the prevalence of restless legs syndrome was about 10 times higher in the fibromyalgia group (33 percent) than among controls (3.1 percent). After statistical adjustments for potential confounders such as age, gender and ethnicity, participants ...

This week's PMI (Project Management Institute) Global Congress 2010 in Washington DC marked the official launch of BeMo - Project Intelligence, a specialized online marketplace for Enterprise Project Management (EPM) solutions and related services. BeMo founders Bruno Lecoq and Joel Lachance have created the business to help individuals or companies of any size, manage any and all of their projects online - quickly and easily. While a few key players like ProjectHosts, EPM Live are already in the burgeoning Microsoft Project Server 2010 hosting market, the BeMo - Project ...

My911, a SmartPhone application, has recently been marketed to bicyclists, offering them additional safety when things go bad. The app utilizes both the accelerometer and GPS technologies in order to automatically notify an ambulance when the user gets into an accident. One user claimed the app is "like having OnStar on your bike". The GPS location is given to the ambulance, allowing help to come quickly, without requiring any description of where the accident occurred. If you were biking in the mountains or in some national park, how long would it take to describe to ...

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"Multi-generational holidays are becoming an increasingly popular travel option amongst Kiwis," says Melissa Rendell, marketing manager at leading New Zealand travel company, Adventure World, who says that New Zealanders are beginning to pick up on what has become a huge international trend in travel. "People live very busy lives these days, and are spending less and less time together as a family. Multi-generational holidays provide the perfect opportunity for families to spend quality time together." While there was a time when multi-generational travel was limited ...