Curated News: Staff Picks

• share
• favorite_border

Gravity data captured by satellite has allowed researchers to take a closer look at the geology deep beneath the Tibetan Plateau.

• share
• favorite_border

Other topics include genetics to predict prostate cancer, Facebook and body image, bioengineered immune cell response, and more...

• share
• favorite_border

If there’s one thing advertisers think they know, it is that sex and violence sell. A new analysis, however, provides some of the best evidence to date that this widely accepted adage just isn’t true.

• share
• favorite_border

Unexplained weight loss is often seen in people with dementia, which can lead to further complications, including mental and physical deterioration. New research from Bournemouth University, funded by the Burdett Trust for Nursing, has revealed the challenges of providing good nutrition and hydration in people with dementia who live in care homes.

• share
• favorite_border

It’s a tale of two tests: one for early signs of cervical cancer, the other for the sexually transmitted disease chlamydia. But a change in the recommended schedule for one may have dramatically lowered the chances that young women would get the other, a new study finds.

• share
• favorite_border

Compared to Caucasians, African-Americans face twice the rate of sudden cardiac arrest, according to a new study from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute.

• share
• favorite_border

Individuals with new-onset type 1 diabetes who took two courses of alefacept (Amevive®, Astellas Pharma Inc.) soon after diagnosis show preserved beta cell function after two years compared to those who received a placebo.

• share
• favorite_border

Hereditary colorectal cancers, caused by inherited gene mutations, are relatively rare for most patients.

• share
• favorite_border

A set of genes could help stratify African American men in need of more aggressive treatment for prostate cancer.

• share
• favorite_border

Angelina Jolie received widespread media attention in 2013 when she told the public that she’d tested positive for BRCA1, a gene associated with an increased risk of breast cancer, and subsequently had a double mastectomy. Now research shows this publicity did influence some women’s intentions to seek similar testing.

• share
• favorite_border

College women who are more emotionally invested in Facebook and have lots of Facebook friends are less concerned with body size and shape and less likely to engage in risky dieting behaviors. But that’s only if they aren’t using Facebook to compare their bodies to their friends’ bodies, according to the authors of a surprising new study at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study, published July 20 in JAMA Pediatrics, provides even more compelling evidence that growing up in poverty has detrimental effects on the brain. In an accompanying editorial, child psychiatrist Joan L. Luby, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, writes that “early childhood interventions to support a nurturing environment for these children must now become our top public health priority for the good of all.”

• share
• favorite_border

In recent years, immunotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment for certain cancers. Now this strategy, which uses patients’ own immune cells, genetically engineered to target tumors, has shown significant success against multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells that is largely incurable. The results appeared in a study published online today in Nature Medicine.

• share
• favorite_border

New research reported in The Journal of Pain, published by the American Pain Society (www.americanpainsociety.org, shows that inhaled cannabis reduces diabetic neuropathy and the analgesic effect is dose-dependent.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, advanced technologies made it possible to read parts of a damaged scroll that is at least 1,500 years old, discovered inside the Holy Ark of the synagogue at Ein Gedi in Israel. High-resolution scanning and UK Professor Brent Seales' revolutionary virtual unwrapping tool revealed verses from the Book of Leviticus.

• share
• favorite_border

Over a 35-year period, the length of forest fire seasons worldwide increased by 18.7 percent due to more rain-free days and hotter temperatures, according to South Dakota State University professor Mark Cochrane, a senior scientist at the Geospatial Sciences Center of Excellence. The wildfire expert is part of a team of researchers led by W. Matt Jolly of the U.S. Forest Service Fire Science Laboratory that examined weather data from 1979 through 2013 to determine how a changing climate impacts forest ecosystems.

• share
• favorite_border

A new drug acts as a roadblock for malaria, curing mice of established infection, according to researchers. Treatment was not associated with obvious side effects, suggesting that the drug may also be safe and effective in humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Other topics include limb lengthening, Alzheimer's research, medical licensing, and more.

• share
• favorite_border

The National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) will join in the most powerful, comprehensive, and intensive scientific search ever for signs of intelligent life in the Universe.

• share
• favorite_border

Marine species that already roam far and wide throughout our oceans are extending their territories further and faster in response to climate change, according to new research involving the University of Southampton and an international team of biodiversity experts.

• share
• favorite_border

Anyone who’s ever noticed a water puddle drying in the sun has seen an environment that may have driven the type of chemical reactions that scientists believe were critical to the formation of life on the early Earth.

• share
• favorite_border

The Larantuka District Police, the Government of Indonesia, and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)’s Wildlife Crimes Unit (WCU) announced today the arrest of a trader of sharks and rays in Indonesia, home to the largest shark fisheries on earth.

• share
• favorite_border

How clouds form and how they help set the temperature of the earth are two of the big remaining questions in climate research. Now, a study of clouds over the world's remotest ocean shows that ocean life is responsible for up to half the cloud droplets that pop in and out of existence during summer.

• share
• favorite_border

Christopher Colbert, NDSU assistant professor of biochemistry, has received a $348,000 grant award from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health to conduct research on structure-function relationships of iron transport and transcriptional regulation in Gram-negative bacteria.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Missouri Health Care’s University Hospital has received the American College of Cardiology’s ACTION Registry–Get with the Guidelines (GWTG) Silver Performance Achievement Award for 2015. University Hospital is one of only 91 hospitals nationwide to receive the honor for high performance in caring for heart attack patients. The Silver Performance Achievement Award recognizes hospitals that have sustained performance measure score composites of 90 percent or better in the treatment of heart attack over a 12-month period.

• share
• favorite_border

Yoko Ono’s participatory artwork “Wish Tree for Washington, DC” (2007) is open for the summer at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. For most of the year, visitors are invited to whisper their wishes to the tree, a white flowering dogwood in the museum’s collection. But during the summer through Labor Day, they may write their wishes on paper tags and tie them to the tree’s branches.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Mayo Clinic have developed and are testing an alternative to liver transplantation called the Spheroid Reservoir Bioartificial Liver that can support healing and regeneration of the injured liver, and improve outcomes and reduce mortality rates for patients with acute liver failure.

• share
• favorite_border

The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) has announced a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that will support state medical and osteopathic boards in establishing a Commission to administer the new Interstate Medical Licensure Compact and to develop requirements for its technical infrastructure.

• share
• favorite_border

Satya Gedela, MD, MRCP(UK), pediatric neurologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, has recently been named medical director of the Epilepsy Surgery Program.

• share
• favorite_border

A highly specialized procedure that lengthens bones can prevent the need for amputations in selected patients who have suffered severe fractures. And now a new study has found that an alternative limb-lengthening technique makes the long recovery process less cumbersome -- while still providing good-to-excellent outcomes.

• share
• favorite_border

In the fight against childhood obesity, summer is one of the most challenging times of the year. Many children finish the school year in June fitter and leaner than when they go back to school in August

• share
• favorite_border

University of Virginia Health System and The MITRE Corporation are partnering to develop better health data analysis tools to help prevent patients from getting sick and improving care while reducing healthcare costs.

• share
• favorite_border

University of Chicago Professor Emeritus Yoichiro Nambu, who received a share of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics for his theory about the workings of the subatomic world, died July 5 in Osaka, after an acute heart attack. He was 94.

• share
• favorite_border

“SINGLE” is a new imaging technique that provides the first atomic-scale 3D structures of individual nanoparticles in solution. This is an important step for improving the design of colloidal nanoparticles for catalysis and energy research applications.

• share
• favorite_border

Salk and Carnegie Mellon researchers uncover how the brain prunes back synapses in development

• share
• favorite_border

A new analysis by University of Utah researcher Nick Wolfinger finds those who tie the knot after their early 30s are now more likely to divorce than those who marry in their late 20s. Past the early 30s, the odds of divorce increase by 5 percent per year of age at marriage—but it's not clear why.

• share
• favorite_border

Studying mice, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine​ in St. Louis have identified two signaling molecules that are required for the proper development of a part of the inner ear called the cochlea. Without both signals, the embryo does not produce enough of the cells that eventually make up the adult cochlea, resulting in a shortened cochlear duct and impaired hearing.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of NYU neuroscientists has identified the “acoustic signature” of screams, a study that points to the unique attributes of this form of expression and suggests we are able to generate sounds reserved exclusively for signaling distress.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study in Developmental Cell, from Stowers Institute for Medical Research Associate Investigator Tatjana Piotrowski, Ph.D., zeros in on an important component in fish: the support cells that surround centrally-located hair cells in each garlic-shaped sensory organ, or neuromast.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of researchers, including neuroscientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has developed a wireless device the width of a human hair that can be implanted in the brain and activated by remote control to deliver drugs to brain cells. The technology, demonstrated for the first time in mice, one day may be used to treat pain, depression, epilepsy and other neurological disorders in people by targeting therapies to specific brain circuits.

• share
• favorite_border

Workers with high job demands and job strain are at increased risk of sick leave due to mental disorders, reports a study in the August Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

• share
• favorite_border

While Congress considers repealing a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry, marketing researchers at the University of Arkansas have found that such labels influence consumer perceptions about food safety and quality.

• share
• favorite_border

Rudeness in the workplace isn’t just unpleasant: it’s also contagious.

• share
• favorite_border

"No swimming" signs have already popped up this summer along coastlines where fecal bacteria have invaded otherwise inviting waters. Some vacationers ignore the signs while others resign themselves to tanning and playing on the beach. But should those avoiding the water be wary of the sand, too? New research in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology investigates reasons why the answer could be "yes."

• share
• favorite_border

It’s been two months since you walked across the stage with your diploma. You scour the want ads and send out your resume, but no one is calling you back. Frustration is setting in. What should you be doing right now?

• share
• favorite_border

Alzheimer’s disease may cause different changes in the brain, or pathologies, in African-Americans than in white Americans of European descent, according to a study published in the July 15, 2015, online issue of the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center and in Australia have shown that a drug currently in testing shows potential to cure malaria in a single dose and offers promise as a preventive treatment as well.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) have found that key parts of the human brain network that give us the power to control and redirect our attention—a core cognitive ability—may be unique to humans.

• share
• favorite_border

Salk scientists have created mutation-free lines of stem cells from human patients with mitochondrial diseases.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at the University of Georgia have developed new tools to study and genetically manipulate cryptosporidium. Their discoveries, published in the journal Nature, will ultimately help researchers find new treatments and vaccines for cryptosporidium, a major cause of disease and death in children under 2 years old.