A Swedish study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET confirms that people admitted to hospital with an acute heart attack are at an increased risk of having undiagnosed diabetes or increased glucose intolerance. Findings of the new study suggest that the fasting glucose of patients or high glucose concentrations immediately after heart attack could be a marker of patients at high risk of subsequent cardiovascular disease.
People with diabetes who have myocardial infarction (heart attack) are
Babywalkers are associated with significant delay in achieving normal locomotor milestones in infants, such as crawling, standing, and walking, and should be discouraged, concludes a study in this week’s BMJ.
Researchers in Ireland surveyed parents of 190 normal healthy infants (83 boys and 107 girls), born at term and attending registered day care centres. They asked parents to record the age at which their child reached various developmental milestones including rolling over, sitting alone
Philips has demonstrated the world’s first fully functional miniature optical disc drive using blue laser technology. Up to 1 Gbyte of data can be stored on a single-sided optical disc of just 3 cm in diameter, matching the size constraints of portable devices such as digital cameras, mobile phones, PDAs and portable Internet devices. This prototype illustrates Philips’ leadership in optical storage technology, which is driven by superb media robustness and the low cost per Mbyte of the storage me
Siemens Automation and Drives (A&D) presents new electronic components in the Delta switches and socket outlets range for the retrofit market in the area of lighting and shutters. The new products include universal dimmer and shutter control inserts, conventional and wireless operator pushbuttons, and a battery-operated wall-mounted transmitter.
The “sys universal dimmer insert” is suitable for all types of lighting to 420 watts/volt-ampere connected load. The dimmer can be easily retrofitt
A newly established national biomedical center at Cornell University is reporting its first major advance: a new way of measuring, or “visualizing,” proteins. The new technique will hasten the transformation of the human genome project’s blueprints of life into a comprehensive view of the biochemical and physiological circuitry that interconnect to form entire organisms.
The technique, which determines the structure of a protein by measuring the distances between atoms in the molecule at g
Patterns of genes that are active in tumor cells can predict whether patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) are likely to be cured by chemotherapy, scientists reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Researchers analyzed thousands of genes in lymphoma biopsy samples from patients with DLBCL and determined that the activity of as few as 17 genes could be used to predict patients’ response to treatment. “We’re able to reliably predict the survival of these patients
A Medical College of Georgia researcher is tracing the pathway that leads people with hypertension to kidney damage and possible kidney destruction.
He’s found a key vasodilator that is degraded in hypertension and the potential for developing drugs that prevent organ damage in these patients.
“In every form of hypertension, except pulmonary hypertension, which is limited to the lungs, there is a change in kidney function so the kidneys cannot excrete the proper amount of sal
A short course of hormone therapy appears to increase older men’s strength and may help seniors continue their everyday activities throughout the aging process, according to a study released today at the Endocrine Society’s 84th Annual Meeting.
Men over age 60 who took the androgen oxandrolone daily for 12 weeks had significantly stronger muscles in their upper and lower body than men who took a placebo, according to E. Todd Schroeder, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in the Department
A new way to assemble complex, three-dimensional structures from specially formulated colloidal inks could find use in advanced ceramics, sensors, composites, catalyst supports, tissue engineering scaffolds and photonic materials.
As will be reported in the July 9 issue of the journal Langmuir, scientists have developed colloidal, gel-based inks that form self-supporting features through a robotic deposition process called robocasting. A computer-controlled robot squeezes the ink out of a s
In a discovery that could greatly reduce the size and cost of computer chips, Princeton researchers have found a fast method for printing ultrasmall patterns in silicon wafers.
The method, described in the June 20 issue of Nature, could allow electronics manufacturers to increase the density of transistors on silicon chips by 100-fold while dramatically streamlining the production process. Packing more transistors onto chips is the key to making more powerful computer processors and memory c
A manikin called Walter that can be used to test new clothes for extreme environments is described in research published today in the Institute of Physics publication Journal Measurement Science and Technology. Jintu Fan and Yisong Chen of the Institute of Textiles and Clothing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, in Kowloon, explain in the journal how Walter`s special skin can simulate perspiration while his motorised limbs can be moved to make the manikin walk, for a more realistic test.
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Physicists have to tread carefully when it comes to fertiliser, but the first tentative steps to a better understanding of the ancient art of fertilising the soil are described in a paper published today in the Institute of Physics publication, The Journal of Measurement Science and Technology.
Frederic Cointault, Philippe Sarrazin and Michel Paindavoine of the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France show how to take a snapshot of particles of fertiliser as a centrifugal spreader spits them
A WCS scientist working in southeastern Tanzania has rediscovered a carnivore that has remained undetected for the last 70 years. Photographed by a camera trap on the eastern side of Udzungwa Mountain National Park, the Lowe’s servaline genet – a three-foot-long relative of the mongoose family – was previously known only from a single skin collected in 1932.
“This is the first ever photograph of Lowe’s servaline genet and confirms the animal’s existence after seventy years,”
Aio! is a new Finnish diagnostic method for rapidly diagnosing an acute myocardial infarct when a patient with chest pains arrives at the hospital or consults a doctor.
The diagnostic system Aio! has been developed by Innotrac Diagnostics Oy with the goal of rapidly and accurately identifying in a patient-friendly way the markers secreted into the blood in connection with a myocardial infract. On the basis of the test result, the patient suffering from a myocardial infract can immediately b
Research at Georgetown University Medical Center has led to a deeper understanding of the role that elevated cholesterol plays in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.
APP, a protein found in several major organs including the brain and heart, is present in all people. Its normal function in the body is unknown, but in people with Alzheimer’s, APP is abnormally processed and converted to beta amyloid protein. When fragments of this protein break off, they become entangled, leadi
Were the first macromolecules created on a primitive beach?
In order for life to emerge both peptides and nucleic acids must have appeared under “prebiotic” conditions. Despite numerous efforts, the formation of these macromolecules without the help of modern synthetic reagents has not been achieved in a laboratory. Now for the first time researchers have proposed a mechanism by which the formation of peptides could have occurred under prebiotic conditions. Reporting their findings in
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