Within the €3.6 million EU research project PROMESS1 (PROfiles across MEditerranean Sedimentary Systems), with an EU contribution of €2.7 million, European scientists have collected 500 000 year-old sediment cores from the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. These samples will allow researchers to reconstruct climate variations since pre-historic times, thus providing keys for understanding what is happening to Earth’s climate now. Ocean drilling is crucial in understanding changes in climate, as the s
“Neither Olympians nor weekend warriors are immune to tendonitis, ankle sprains, low back problems and concussions. While these injuries are common to both professional and amateur athletes alike, they can often be prevented with proper conditioning,” according to Dr. Jo Hannafin, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee Medical Staff and orthopedic surgeon at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) as well as a former competitive rower.
Dr. Scott Rodeo, a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee Me
More and more common antibiotics are losing their effectiveness because they are used too often, allowing bacteria to develop resistance to the drugs. A University of Rhode Island researcher has found a solution to this problem with a natural compound that boosts antibiotic strength from 100 to 1,000 times.
While conducting research on infection prevention, URI Microbiology Professor Paul Cohen stumbled upon a compound — lysophosphatidic acid — that is naturally produced in the human body
Heart failure is the leading cause of hospitalization among persons 65 and older, and admissions for its symptoms have increased by 155 percent over the last 20 years. This raises concerns about an epidemic that involves more new cases of heart failure. But improved survival with heart failure, not an increase in disease rates, is responsible for this epidemic of hospital admissions, according to findings of a Mayo Clinic study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
A study conducted by Mayo Clinic found that fears surrounding a connection between coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) and dementia are unwarranted.
The link between CABG surgery and development of long-term cognitive decline has been controversial in medical literature.
“What we found is that in an observational study of residents of Rochester, Minn., CABG surgery was not a risk factor for dementia,” says David Knopman, M.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist and the study’s lead invest
Two years of therapy with the cholesterol-lowering drug pravastatin induced significant regression of carotid artery wall thickness, and significantly reduced “bad” cholesterol among children with an inherited type of high cholesterol, with no apparent adverse effects on growth, sexual maturation, hormone levels, or liver and muscle tissue, according to a study in the July 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
According to background information in the article,
New research on specific sample groups shows some organic produce may have an added health benefit over conventionally grown counterparts, according to researchers presenting at the Institute of Food Technologists Annual Meeting and Food Expo. But inherent inconsistencies associated with organic farming make general comparisons inappropriate.
In her study of organic and conventionally grown tomatoes, Alyson Mitchell, a food chemist at University of California at Davis, found organic tomato
The lowermost region of the earth’s mantle, the D” layer, has presented great problems to geophysicists for a long time. This irregularly bounded layer, which is about 150 kilometres thick on average, shows very different physical properties to those lying above. The reason why the Earth’s mantle at the interface to the core should have such anomalous structure and properties could not be convincingly explained until now. Artem R. Oganov from the Laboratory for Cristallography at ETH Zurich and Shig
To aid orthodontists in use of new orthoscrew
The newly Food and Drug Administration-approved orthoscrew–so tiny it is dwarfed by a fingertip–is difficult to place between the narrow spaces of teeth roots and bone.
Young Jin Jeon, a visiting assistant professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine and an orthodontist from Pusan National University in Korea, developed a new grid device during his yearlong residency at Case that will help orthodonti
One expert questions the acceptability of the current level of acetaminophen-related injury and death, while another suggests that acetaminophen overdoses are misunderstood
Acetaminophen overdose causes more than 450 deaths due to acute liver failure each year in the United States and this number appears to be on the rise. In 2001, the U.S. Acute Liver Failure (ALF) Study found acetaminophen responsible for 39 percent of cases. In 2003, the number had risen to 49 percent.
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Can doping athletes be stopped? With the Athens Olympics about to open, scientists are increasingly concerned that sophisticated techniques for evading drug tests will make it difficult for testers to catch athletes using steroids and other drugs, especially at future athletic competitions when genetic-based enhancements are expected to be prevalent.
In the August/September issue of Update, the magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences, writer Diane Kightlinger documents how advances in
For patients with invasive bladder cancer, treatment has typically meant an operation to remove the bladder and nearby organs. This requires up to a week in the hospital and leaves patients with a reconstructed bladder or urostomy bag.
Minimally invasive surgery combined with chemotherapy and radiation therapy has potential in some patients to cure the cancer but preserve the bladder. A new pilot study by University of Michigan Health System researchers found combining radiation therapy an
West Nile virus has become a widespread human health concern, yet little attention is given to the grave situation facing certain wildlife species dying from the deadly disease, says a University of Alberta scientist. Cameron Aldridge is part of a research team to have shown that the West Nile Virus represents a significant new stressor on the sage-grouse—a species already on the endangered list in Canada and under current consideration for federal listing in the United States. “We don’t yet kn
A University of California scientist working at Los Alamos National Laboratory with collaborators from the University of Cambridge (England) and the World Health Organization National Influenza Center at Erasmus Medical Center, (Rotterdam, Netherlands) have developed a computer modeling method for mapping the evolution of the influenza virus. The method could soon help medical researchers worldwide develop a better understanding of certain mutations in influenza and other viruses that allow diseases
A study in the July 2004 issue of the medical journal Cancer Cell provides scientists with new insights into a rare genetic disorder known as Peutz-Jeghers Syndrome (PJS), and suggests that a class of drugs called mTOR inhibitors may be useful for the treatment of the condition, which has been linked to cancers of the gastrointestinal tract, lung, breast, uterus and ovaries. Caused by a mutation that inactivates the tumor suppressor gene, LKB1, PJS is characterized by the development of pigmented sp
While rovers and orbiting spacecraft scour Mars searching for clues to its past, researchers have uncovered another piece of the red planet in the most inhospitable place on Earth — Antarctica.
The new specimen was found by a field party from the U.S. Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET) on Dec. 15, 2003, on an ice field in the Miller Range of the Transantarctic Mountains, roughly 750 kilometers from the South Pole. This 715.2-gram black rock, officially designated MIL 03346, w
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