Hospital team significantly reduced risk of further vascular events after 'mini strokes'

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Patients who had a transient ischaemic attack (TIA), sometimes referred to as a "mini stroke," were much less likely to experience further vascular events in the first year if their care was co-ordinated by a special hospital team. That is the key finding from a study published in the November issue of the European Journal of Neurology.Researchers from the Department of Neurology at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark studied 306 patients admitted to the hospital...

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Testing Guam infants for hearing loss remotely

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Venerannda Leon Guerrero cradled her slumbering infant in her arms in a CEDDERS testing center at the University of Guam as she watched an audiologist in Colorado conduct a diagnostic test to determine whether or not her baby has a hearing loss. The remote test was held on October 19 and marked the first technology-enabled distance diagnostic testing for hearing loss on very young infants on the island.This event was made possible through the Teleaudiology Project,...

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Poorer countries, those spending less on health care have more strokes, deaths

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Poorer countries and those that spend proportionately less money on health care have more stroke and stroke deaths than wealthier nations and those that allocate more to health care, according to new research in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.Poorer countries also had a greater incidence of hemorrhagic stroke -- caused by a burst blood vessel bleeding in or near the brain -- and had more frequent onset at younger ages.Regardless of overall wealth,...

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Hard times during adolescence point to health problems later in life

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Being hard up socially and financially during adolescence and early adulthood takes its toll on the body, and leads to physiological wear and tear in middle aged men and women, irrespective of how tough things have been in the interim. According to Dr. Per E. Gustafsson from Umeå University in Sweden and colleagues, experience of social and material stressors around the time of transition into adulthood is linked to a rise in disease risk factors in middle age, including...

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Yeast model connects Alzheimer's disease risk and amyloid beta toxicity

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — In a development that sheds new light on the pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a team of Whitehead Institute scientists has identified connections between genetic risk factors for the disease and the effects of a peptide toxic to nerve cells in the brains of AD patients.The scientists, working in and in collaboration with the lab of Whitehead Member Susan Lindquist, established these previously unknown links in an unexpected way. They used a very simple cell...

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Curiosity is critical to academic performance

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it's good for the student. That's the conclusion of a new study published in Perspectives in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors show that curiosity is a big part of academic performance. In fact, personality traits like curiosity seem to be as important as intelligence in determining how well students do in school.Intelligence is important to academic performance, but it's...

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Natural killer cells could be key to anthrax defense

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — One of the things that makes inhalational anthrax so worrisome for biodefense experts is how quickly a relatively small number of inhaled anthrax spores can turn into a lethal infection. By the time an anthrax victim realizes he or she has something worse than the flu and seeks treatment, it's often too late; even the most powerful antibiotics may be no help against the spreading bacteria and the potent toxins they generate.Now, though, University of Texas Medical...

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Researchers build largest protein interaction map to date

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Researchers have built a map that shows how thousands of proteins in a fruit fly cell communicate with each other. This is the largest and most detailed protein interaction map of a multicellular organism, demonstrating how approximately 5,000, or one third, of the proteins cooperate to keep life going."My group has been working for decades, trying to unravel the precise connections among the proteins and gain insight into how the cell functions as a whole," says...

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Watermelon reduces atherosclerosis, animal study finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — In a recent study by University of Kentucky researchers, watermelon was shown to reduce atherosclerosis in animals.The animal model used for the study involved mice with diet-induced high cholesterol. A control group was given water to drink, while the experimental group was given watermelon juice. By week eight of the study, the animals given watermelon juice had lower body weight than the control group, due to decrease of fat mass. They experienced no decrease in...

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Three new planets and a mystery object discovered outside our solar system

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer.Using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, astronomers observed the planets' parent stars -- called HD 240237, BD +48 738, and HD 96127 -- tens of light years away from our solar system. One of the massive, dying stars has an additional mystery object orbiting it, according to team leader Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor...

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Planets smashed into dust near supermassive black holes

ScienceDaily (Oct. 28, 2011) — Fat doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that obscure about half of supermassive black holes could be the result of high speed crashes between planets and asteroids, according to a new theory from an international team of astronomers.The scientists, led by Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester, are publishing their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.Supermassive black holes reside in the central parts of most galaxies. Observations...

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New approach to overcome key hurdle for next-generation superconductors

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new computational approach to improve the utility of superconductive materials for specific design applications -- and have used the approach to solve a key research obstacle for the next-generation superconductor material yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO).A superconductor is a material that can carry electricity without any loss -- none of the energy is dissipated as heat, for example. Superconductive...

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Snakes with big hearts may help yours: Fatty acids involved in python heart growth could benefit diseased human heart

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Identification of three fatty acids involved in the extreme growth of Burmese pythons' hearts following large meals could prove beneficial in treating diseased human hearts, according to research co-authored by a University of Alabama scientist and publishing in the Oct. 28 issue of Science.Growth of the human heart can be beneficial when resulting from exercise -- a type of growth known as physiological cardiac hypertrophy -- but damaging when triggered by disease...

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Lower dose of corticosteroids just as effective as higher for shoulder pain, study finds

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Although corticosteroid injections are one of the most common treatments for shoulder pain, there have been relatively few high-quality investigations of their efficacy and duration of action. In a study scheduled for publication in the December issue of the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, researchers report on the first comparative study of the two most commonly corticosteroid doses administered for shoulder pain. They found that lower doses were...

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Astronomers pin down galaxy collision rates by comparing Hubble images to supercomputer simulations

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — A new analysis of images from the Hubble Space Telescope combined with supercomputer simulations of galaxy collisions has cleared up years of confusion about the rate at which smaller galaxies merge to form bigger ones. This paper, led by Jennifer Lotz of Space Telescope Science Institute, is about to be published in The Astrophysical Journal.Galaxies grow mostly by acquiring small amounts of matter from their surroundings. But occasionally galaxies merge with other...

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Children suffer unnecessarily from chronic postoperative pain

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Are children suffering needlessly after surgery? UC Irvine anesthesiologists who specialize in pediatric care believe so.An operation can be one of the most traumatic events children face, and according to a UCI study, many of them experience unnecessary postsurgical pain lasting weeks or months.Such chronic pain is well understood and treated in adults but has been generally overlooked in pediatric patients, said Dr. Zeev Kain, professor and chair of anesthesiology...

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Astronomers pin down galaxy collision rate with Hubble data

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — A new analysis of Hubble surveys, combined with simulations of galaxy interactions, reveals that the merger rate of galaxies over the last 8 billion to 9 billion years falls between the previous estimates.The galaxy merger rate is one of the fundamental measures of galaxy evolution, yielding clues to how galaxies bulked up over time through encounters with other galaxies. And yet, a huge discrepancy exists over how often galaxies coalesced in the past. Measurements...

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Shaken, not stirred: Scientists spy molecular maneuvers

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Stir this clear liquid in a glass vial and nothing happens. Shake this liquid, and free-floating sheets of protein-like structures emerge, ready to detect molecules or catalyze a reaction. This isn't the latest gadget from James Bond's arsenal -- rather, the latest research from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists unveiling how slim sheets of protein-like structures self-assemble. This "shaken, not...

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Fast high precision eye-surgery robot developed

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Researcher Thijs Meenink at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has developed a smart eye-surgery robot that allows eye surgeons to operate with increased ease and greater precision on the retina and the vitreous humor of the eye. The system also extends the effective period during which ophthalmologists can carry out these intricate procedures.Meenink will defend his PhD thesis on Oct. 31 for his work on the robot, and intends later to commercialize his system.Filters-out...

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Strides made toward drug therapy for inherited kidney disease

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that patients with an inherited kidney disease may be helped by a drug that is currently available for other uses. The findings are published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.Over 600,000 people in the U.S., and 12 million worldwide, are affected by the inherited kidney disease known as autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). The disease is characterized by the...

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Less invasive anesthetic methods better for endovascular aneurysm repair

ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2011) — Researchers have identified a safer, more cost effective way to provide anesthesia for patients undergoing endovascular repair of an abdominal aortic aneurysm -- a common, often asymptomatic condition that, if not found and treated, can be deadly.A new study done by investigators at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center found that using less invasive spinal, epidural and local/monitored anesthesia care (MAC) is better than general anesthesia for elective endovascular...

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