London, UK (September 6th, 2010) – Discussions about end of life practices in Germany have been almost taboo for over half a century, but now intense debate is underway as professional bodies review their guidelines to physicians caring for the dying. A new study out today in Palliative Medicine, published by SAGE, reveals that German physicians do hasten death in some cases, against current ethical guidelines - sometimes without sufficient patient involvement. In light of the recent publication of a survey on German physicians attitudes towards end of life practices ...

Jerusalem – September 6, 2010 – A researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, together with Israeli and foreign collaborators, has revealed how physical qualities -- and not only chemical ones – may have an influence in determining how adult stem cells from the bone marrow develop into differentiated ones. This represents an important step in understanding the mechanisms that direct and regulate the specialization of stem cells from their undefined state. Scientists around the world are involved in studying, describing and even manipulating the development of ...

GRACE The melting of the ice caps has been charted since 2002 using the measurements produced by the two GRACE satellites. From space they detect small changes in the Earth's gravitational field. These changes are related to the exact distribution of mass on Earth, including ice and water. When ice melts and lands in the sea, this therefore has an effect on the gravitational field. Gigatonnes Based on this principle, previous estimates for the Greenland ice cap calculated that the ice was melting at a rate of 230 gigatonnes a year (i.e. 230,000 billion kg). That would ...

Employees who have control over the design and layout of their workspace are not only happier and healthier — they're also up to 32% more productive, according to new research from the University of Exeter in the UK. Studies by the University's School of Psychology have revealed the potential for remarkable improvements in workers' attitudes to their jobs by allowing them to personalise their offices. The findings challenge the conventional approach taken by most companies, where managers often create a 'lean' working environment that reflects a standardized corporate ...

Children as young as four weeks old are being fed a poor diet of biscuits, ice-cream and soft drinks, according to new Australian research. A study published in the journal Nutrition & Dietetics found some month-old babies had been introduced to high fat, salt and sugar foods, despite health authorities recommending exclusive breastfeeding to six months of age. Researcher Jane Scott and colleagues tracked 587 women from two Perth maternity hospitals through regular phone interviews for 12 months to understand how the new mothers fed their babies. "Almost one in ...

Financial incentives in primary care cut heart disease deaths and hospital admissions, particularly among people from deprived areas, finds research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Current evidence suggests that linking financial incentives to quality improvement has improved the overall quality of primary care in the UK, but so far there has been little evidence to suggest that better quality primary care actually improves health. The authors base their findings on 8,345,353 patients registered in 2006/7 with 1531 general practices ...

At least one in 10 athletes sustained an injury and a further one in 14 fell ill during the 2010 Winter Olympics, held in Canada, reveals research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Relatively little is known about the injury rate during winter Olympics, say the authors, especially as many of the competitive events, such as snowboarding and freestyle skiing, are fairly recent additions. And the findings, which are based on reports from the lead doctors for each of the national Olympic committees, and daily returns from designated medical centres in ...

A BMJ investigation into the top-selling diabetes drug rosiglitazone (Avandia) raises concerns about its safety and the whole system by which drugs are evaluated, regulated, and promoted around the world. BMJ Editor in Chief, Dr Fiona Godlee, believes that the drug should not have been licensed and should now be withdrawn. She also calls for more robust regulatory processes and better access to the raw data used to license drugs to allow scrutiny by the scientific community. The investigation reveals that in July the Commission on Human Medicines advised the MHRA to ...

There may be better ways to engineer the planet's climate to prevent dangerous global warming than mimicking volcanoes, a University of Calgary climate scientist says in two new studies. "Releasing engineered nano-sized disks, or sulphuric acid in a condensable vapour above the Earth, are two novel approaches. These approaches offer advantages over simply putting sulphur dioxide gas into the atmosphere," says David Keith, a director in the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy and a Schulich School of Engineering professor. Keith, a global leader ...

PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have engineered a fundamentally new approach to killing cancer cells. The process—developed by Niles Pierce, associate professor of applied and computational mathematics and bioengineering at Caltech, and his colleagues—uses small RNA molecules that can be programmed to attack only specific cancer cells; then, by changing shape, those molecules cause the cancer cells to self-destruct. In conventional chemotherapy treatments for cancer, patients are given drugs that target cell behaviors typical ...

Palo Alto, CA—Using sophisticated airborne imaging and structural analysis, scientists at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology mapped more than 40,000 termite mounds over 192 square miles in the African savanna. They found that their size and distribution is linked to vegetation and landscape patterns associated with annual rainfall. The results reveal how the savanna terrain has evolved and show how termite mounds can be used to predict ecological shifts from climate change. The research is published in the September 7, 2010, advanced online edition ...

Only 45 percent of the 354 million annual visits for acute care in the United States are made to patients' personal physicians, as Americans increasingly make busy emergency departments, specialists or outpatient care departments their first point of contact for treatment of new health problems or a flare up of a chronic condition like asthma or diabetes. The findings, which appear in the September edition of Health Affairs, do not bode well for the nation's already busy and frequently undermanned emergency rooms. While fewer than five percent of doctors across the ...

UPTON, NY — A brain-scanning study at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, conducted with collaborators from Stony Brook University, reveals that an oral dose of methylphenidate, commonly known as Ritalin, improves impaired brain function and enhances cognitive performance in people who are addicted to cocaine. The study — to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of September 6, 2010 — suggests that methylphenidate, combined with cognitive interventions, may have a role in facilitating recovery from ...

A team made up of members of the University of Oviedo (UO) and the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have gathered together all findings of the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhinoceros and the reindeer in the Iberian Peninsula to show that, although in small numbers, these big mammals, prehistoric indicators of cold climates, already lived in this territory some 150,000 years ago. The presence of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), the woolly rhinoceros (Coelodonta antiquitatis), the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus), and to a lesser extent the wolverine (Gulo gulo), ...

Researchers have developed a new data transmission system that could substantially improve the transmission capacity and energy efficiency of the world's optical communication networks. Transmission of data through optical networks is currently limited by 'phase noise' from optical amplifiers and 'cross talk' induced by interaction of the signal with the many other signals (each at a different wavelength) simultaneously circulating through the network. 'Phase noise' is the rapid, short-term, random fluctuations in the phase of a signal, which affects the quality of the ...

A new study from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet suggests that bipolar disorder – or manic-depressive disorder – does not increase the risk of committing violent crime. Instead, the over-representation of individuals with bipolar disorder in violent crime statistics is almost entirely attributable to concurrent substance abuse. The public debate on violent crime usually assumes that violence in the mentally ill is a direct result of the perpetrator's illness. Previous research has also suggested that patients with bipolar disorder – also known as manic-depressive disorder ...

PHILADELPHIA, PA. (September 7, 2010)—Aurora-A kinase (AurA) is an enzyme that is hyperactive in many cancers and drives tumor cell proliferation. Several AurA inhibitors are currently being tested in clinical trials to see if they slow tumor growth. Now, researchers in the Developmental Therapeutics Program at Fox Chase Cancer Center have identified an activation signal for AurA. They report in the September 7 issue of Nature Communications that a quick increase in the calcium concentration in a cell rapidly triggers AurA kinase activity. The discovery may lead to drug ...

The methodology, which has been used in this research in collaboration with the Universidad Europea de Madrid, is based on the Open-Path FTIR technique which takes advantage of specific properties of gases in order to detect them: they absorb radiation only in certain wave lengths which are always the same and particular to each gas. Many gases have absorption lines or bands in the infrared, for which this area of the electromagnetic spectrum is very useful for the remote detection of gases, according to the authors of this research from the UC3M Department of Physics. ...

The first entire genome of an Irish individual has been sequenced. The sequence is reported in BioMed Central's open access journal, Genome Biology and provides insight into the evolutionary history of this distinct lineage. Led by Professor Brendan Loftus, the research team from UCD Conway Institute used data from a previous genotyping study to select a suitable Irish male representative for sequencing. Then, using pair- and single-ended Illumina short read sequencing, one of the next generation sequencing approaches, the team created 9 DNA sequence libraries, which ...

ESA's GOCE gravity mission has recovered from a glitch that prevented the satellite from sending its flow of scientific data to the ground. News of the recovery comes earlier than expected, thanks to the fervent efforts of a team of experts. The recovery follows a serious communications malfunction on 8 July, when the Gravity field and steady-state Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE) satellite suddenly failed to downlink scientific data to its receiving stations. Extensive investigations by experts from ESA and industry revealed that the issue was almost certainly related ...

Using a moving 3D computer model based on the skull and teeth of a New Zealand reptile called tuatara, a BBSRC-funded team from the University of Hull, University College London and the Hull York Medical School has revealed how damage to dental implants and jaw joints may be prevented by sophisticated interplay between our jaws, muscles and brain. This research will appear in a future edition of the Journal of Biomechanics. The tuatara is a lizard-like reptile that has iconic status in its homeland of New Zealand because its ancestors were widespread at the time of the ...

Not drying your hands thoroughly after washing them, could increase the spread of bacteria and rubbing your hands whilst using a conventional electric hand dryer could be a contributing factor. Frequently people give up drying their hands and wipe them on their clothes instead, but hand-hygiene is a key part of infection control and drying hands after washing is a very important part of the process. A study by researchers at the University of Bradford and published today in the Journal of Applied Microbiology looked at different methods of hand drying, and their effect ...

Patients who have received a new kidney are significantly more likely to develop transplant renal artery stenosis (TRAS) if they are obese or over 50, according to research published in the September issue of the Journal of Renal Care. Researchers from Iran studied 360 recipients who had received kidneys from unrelated donors to discover what factors increased the risk of TRAS, where the renal arteries narrow, impeding blood flow to the kidney. They found that having had a previous transplant, elevated triglyceride (fatty molecule) levels, cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection ...

BOSTON--Patients with colon cancer who used multivitamins during and after being treated with post-surgical chemotherapy did not reduce the risk of the cancer returning or their dying from it, according to researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In a study of patients with stage III colon cancer – characterized as cancer in the large bowel area with some cancer cells in a few nearby lymph nodes -- the researchers found that while multivitamin use had no beneficial effect on patients' outcomes, it also did not have a detrimental effect. The findings are reported online ...

BOSTON, MA (September 7, 2010) – Progeria, also known as Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome (HGPS), is a rare, fatal genetic disease characterized by an appearance of accelerated aging in children. All children with Progeria die of the same heart disease that affects millions of normal aging adults (atherosclerosis), but instead of occurring at 60 or 70 years of age, these children may suffer heart attacks and strokes even before age 10, and the average age of death is 13 years. Finding treatments and a cure for Progeria may provide clues to preventing or treating heart ...