Few conditions are more detrimental to human brains than the one popularly referred to as mad cow disease. But now there’s reason to suspect that the protein which, when malformed, causes bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cows and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in people, might also be necessary for healthy brain function. Researchers from Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research and Harvard Medical School/Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered that the normal form of this det
Development projects designed to improve maternal and child welfare in Africa may incur unexpected costs associated with increases in family size if they do not include a component of family planning, according to new research from the University of Bristol into rural communities in Ethiopia.
The research, published today in Public Library of Science: Medicine, is the first study to demonstrate a link between a single technological development intervention (in this case, a tapped
Some patients with glaucoma appear to have higher pressure in their eyes during sleep at night than during the day when it is usually measured, possibly putting them at higher risk for progression of the disease than previously thought, according to a study in the February issue of Archives of Ophthalmology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Higher intraocular pressure, the force within the eyeball, and greater daily fluctuation in pressure may increase the risk that glaucoma will de
Less than 1 percent of outpatients who received medication in 2002 were prescribed a medication that violated a prescription drug’s black box warning, according to a study in the February 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
“Adverse drug events (ADEs) are believed to be among the leading causes of mortality in the United States, with an estimated 100,000 deaths per year,” according to background information in the article. However, ther
Estrogen therapy does not appear to reduce the risk of heart attack or coronary death in healthy postmenopausal women, although some data suggest a lower coronary heart disease risk in women aged 50 to 59 years, according to a new article in the February 13 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
The Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) included two large clinical trials that evaluated whether hormone therapy with estrogen reduces the risk of coronary he
Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have shown that a blood test previously found useful for diagnosing heart failure and determining prognosis in several cardiovascular conditions can also predict the risk of death among patients coming to hospital emergency departments with shortness of breath. Their report in the Feb. 14 Archives of Internal Medicine describes how measuring levels of a protein called NT-proBNP was the most powerful predictor of whether patients would die w
Researchers studying a water supply programme for Ethiopian villages found that it had many benefits, but one unpredicted result was an increase in the birth rate. The demands on the scarce resources available to the villages therefore increased. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol and University College London, UK, is published in the latest issue of PLoS Medicine.
Improving access to water is one of the most important goals of development pro
Treatment of human cancer is often impeded when cancer cells develop resistance to drugs that are designed to induce a type of programmed cell death called apoptosis. A new study published in the February issue of Cancer Cell identifies compounds and mechanisms that can overcome a specific type of resistance to chemotherapeutic-induced apoptosis. The findings may have application for treatment of cancers that are linked to the human papilloma virus (HPV) oncoprotein E6, such as cervical cance
Basal-like breast cancers (BLC) are highly aggressive tumors with a relatively poor prognosis that account for approximately 15% of sporadic human breast cancer. Sporadic BLC share certain characteristics with most of the breast cancers from patients carrying a germline mutation in the BRCA1 breast cancer suppressor gene. Among their similarities, sporadic BLC and BRCA1 cancers do not express the estrogen receptor and do not overproduce HER2 protein. Thus, therapeutics targeting estrogen receptor
The Use of Irradiation for Food Quality and Safety
The Institute of Food Science and Technology, through its Public Affairs and Technical and Legislative Committees, has authorised the following Information Statement, dated February 2006, replacing that of 11 December 1998.
The following is a summary. The full text may be accessed at www.ifst.org/hottop11.htm
Summary
Irradiation, carried out under conditions of Good Manufacturing Practice, i
The notion of offering a self-test for chlamydia via the Web-unique in the world – is the centerpiece of the dissertation that Daniel Novak will be defending at Umeå University, Sweden, on March 3.
“Testing yourself with the aid of the Internet is something I hope will serve as a major complement to present – day care,” he comments.
Many sexually transmitted diseases present no early symptoms. It is fully possible, for instance, to carry a chlamydia infection with
Digital Healthcare, a Cambridge company that is the UK’s leading supplier of software for diabetic retinal screening programmes and ophthalmology, has scooped a top prize at the Microsoft Healthcare Users Group (MS-HUG) Annual Awards 2006, which recognise outstanding technology innovations that improve patient healthcare.
Digital Healthcare has won the Best in Class Partner Award in the Acute Care – Clinical/Patient Information Systems Category for OptoMize iP its innovative software sys
A Chinese astronomer from the University of St Andrews has fine-tuned Einstein’s groundbreaking theory of gravity, creating a ‘simple’ theory which could solve a dark mystery that has baffled astrophysicists for three-quarters of a century.
A new law for gravity, developed by Dr. Hong Sheng Zhao and his Belgian collaborator Dr. Benoit Famaey of the Free University of Brussels (ULB), aims to prove whether Einstein’s theory was in fact correct and whether the astronomical mystery
A unique solar collector was developed by specialists of the Moscow “ALTEN” company under the guidance of Boris Kazandzhan, Professor, Doctor of Science (Engineering), Moscow Power Engineering Institute. Originality of the novelty lies in its extremely high efficiency. The collector not only manages to entrap the heat of solar beams falling on its surface, but also to utilize it to a great extent for direct purpose – for water heating.
Evidently, the idea of water heating in sunlight is
Oil and oil products spill often and in various places. These are plots in oil production areas and pipeline breaking locations and places of tanker wracks or crashes of consists, which carry oil products. At best, oil spillage falls on hard soil: it can be collected and somehow refined or, at the worst, buried. The case is much worse if the spillage takes place on water.
The oil film spreads out quickly to large distances, and it is very uneasy to collect. A thick film is removed by s
Despite success of molecular genetics that developed efficient methods for educing mitochondrial DNA from fossil bones, anthropologists prefer primary sources as before and keep investigating skulls. Each skull possess multitude of distinctive and well-perceptible signs: these are supplementary and fontanel bones, sutural bones (epactal ossicle), accessory and inconstant orifices, appendices and protuberances.
As peculiarities of the skull structure are genetically determined,
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