Aston University in Birmingham, UK has announced a new and unique course specifically for audiologists and other NHS workers. Comprising of six workshops, the course will begin on 4 May 2006. It is the only one of its kind that specifically teaches practitioners how to use new cognitive techniques on patients with the hearing deficiency, tinnitus.
Within the UK tinnitus is a relatively common condition, affecting approximately five per cent of the adult population. The most common sym
Researchers have predicted how effective public health and medical interventions will prove in the event of an influenza pandemic.
The letter published today in Nature shows how the team from Imperial College London, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and RTI International used computer modelling to predict how a variety of interventions, including travel restrictions, school closures and antiviral treatment, would affect the spread of flu.
Professor Neil Fer
A study led by UCL (University College London) scientists has designed a new drug that inhibits the adverse effects of C reactive protein (CRP), a protein that contributes to tissue damage in heart attacks and strokes. The findings, published in the journal Nature, suggest that targeting CRP may produce both immediate and long-term clinical benefits following a heart attack.
CRP is normally present at trace levels in the blood but its concentration increases sharply in almost all diseas
Researchers have identified a new way to promote recovery after spinal cord injury with an advance in stem-cell technology. A study conducted by members of the New York State Center of Research Excellence in Spinal Cord Injury and published today in the open access journal Journal of Biology reveals that rats recover from spinal cord injury following transplantation with immature support cells of the central nervous system generated from stem cells. Transplanting immature support cells called astro
MIT scientists have just learned another lesson from nature. After years of wondering how organisms managed to create self-medications, such as anti-fungal agents, chemists have discovered the simple secret. Scientists already knew that a particular enzyme was able to coax a reaction out of stubborn chemical concoctions to generate a large family of medically valuable compounds called halogenated natural products. The question was, how do they do it? Chemists woul
Selenium does not protect against cardiovascular disease, despite its documented antioxidant and chemopreventive properties, analysis of a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial covering 13 years has shown.
The selenium-CVD association was a secondary endpoint in the Nutritional Prevention of Cancer Trial, which was designed primarily to determine if selenium supplementation could prevent the recurrence of non-melanoma skin cancer.
Results of the trial, the only la
Prenatal exposure to air pollutants in New York City can adversely affect child development, according to the results of a study released today by the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Previous studies have shown that the same air pollutants can reduce fetal growth (both weight and head circumference at birth), but this study, which examined a group of the same children at three years of age, is the first
Find is first to identify specific mechanism by which invasive plants harm native species
An invasive weed that has spread across much of the U.S. harms native maples, ashes, and other hardwood trees by releasing chemicals harmful to a soil fungus the trees depend on for growth and survival, scientists report this week in the Public Library of Science. The tree-stifling alien, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata), first introduced into the U.S. in the 1860s, has since spread to Can
A rare gene variant in humans helps to protect against two of the country’s top killers — type 2 diabetes and heart disease — as well as against hypertriglyceridemia, a condition that increases the risk of heart disease, obesity, and pancreatitis. A team of researchers from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Channing Laboratory published their findings in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Individuals who had the gene
A promising new technique to ensure complete tumor removal at breast cancer excision is introduced in the May issue of Radiology.
Researchers used light waves in a newly explored region of the electromagnetic spectrum–the terahertz region–to examine excised breast tissue and determine if the removed tissue margins were clear of cancer, with good results. This technology has the potential to eliminate the need for multiple surgeries and tissue samples to get clear surgical margins.
Nanotechnology may one day help physicians detect the very earliest stages of serious diseases like cancer, a new study suggests.
It would do so by improving the quality of images produced by one of the most common diagnostic tools used in doctors’ offices – the ultrasound machine.
In laboratory experiments on mice, scientists found that nano-sized particles injected into the animals improved the resulting images. This study is one of the first reports showing that ultr
A new internet-based mapping program is helping truckers find truck stops with idle reduction facilities—on-site systems that can substantially cut fuel use while reducing air emissions.
Idle reduction systems hold great promise for the approximately 500,000 long-haul trucks with sleeper cabs currently operating in the United States. Estimates show idle reduction technologies could reduce diesel fuel use by about 800 million gallons annually, with a potential savings to the trucking
Although the odds that DNA evidence found at a crime scene will match by chance the DNA of a person who was not there are infinitesimal, controversy continues about DNA identification and its use in criminal investigations, says Carnegie Mellon University Statistics Professor Kathryn Roeder. Roeder will present a historical overview of the use of DNA identification on Tuesday, April 25, during the Annual Symposia of the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Almost 28,000 cases na
The Binary Research Institute (BRI) has found that orbital characteristics of the recently discovered planetoid, “Sedna”, demonstrate the possibility that our sun might be part of a binary star system. A binary star system consists of two stars gravitationally bound orbiting a common center of mass. Once thought to be highly unusual, such systems are now considered to be common in the Milky Way galaxy.
Walter Cruttenden at BRI, Professor Richard Muller at UC Berkeley, Dr. Daniel Whitmire
Data gathered from last year’s NASA hurricane research mission and a NASA satellite have improved tropical storm landfall and storm strength forecasts in computer models.
Ocean surface wind data gathered from NASA’s QuikSCAT satellite were combined with data from aircraft sensors dropped into tropical storms and fed into a new generation weather research and forecasting (WRF) computer model used to predict weather. The researchers in this study also used data from the Nationa
Developed at the University of Southern California, test based on genomic data avoids pitfalls of older methods
Biologists seeking elusive proof of natural selection at the single-gene level have a powerful new tool at their disposal. Chris Toomajian, postdoctoral researcher in molecular and computational biology in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, led a group that sought to replace the standard neutral model, a common but unrealistic test for natural selection, wit
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