Tampa, FL (June 23, 2011) – Education, referrals, support and other interventions by community health workers improve rates of screening mammography in the United States – especially in medical and urban settings and among women whose race and ethnicity is similar to that of the community health workers serving them.
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Biologists worldwide subscribe to the healthy herds hypothesis, the idea that predators can keep packs of prey healthy by removing the weak and the sick. This reduces the chance disease will wipe out the whole herd, but could it be that predators can also make prey populations more susceptible to other predators or even parasites? Biologists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered at least one animal whose defenses against a predator make it a good target for one opportunistic parasite. The research appears online in the journal Functional Ecology.
Parts of Australia's fruit and vegetable industry are under threat, with Queensland University of Technology (QUT) scientists racing to find new ways to control a major horticultural pest before chemical treatments are restricted.
Associate Professor Anthony Clarke, from QUT's Faculty of Science and Technology in Brisbane, is leading Australia's largest team of university researchers examining non-chemical based ways to fight fruit flies, including promising "lure and kill" techniques using ginger essence.
A seminal article on language testing, co-authored by Dr Glenn Fulcher, a Reader in Education at the University of Leicester, argues that some agencies are using unsuitable language tests to achieve policy ends.
Dr Fulcher, and Professor Fred Davidson of the University of Illinois Department of Linguistics, argue that generic tests are being used for multiple purposes because some policy makers go for "cheap and simple solutions" to complex problems, such as immigration.
Anthrax, septicemia and meningitis are some of the planet's most deadly infections. In part because doctors lack basic insights to prevent and cure diseases caused by so called Gram-positive bacteria. Now, a chemist from the University of Copenhagen has revealed the mechanism behind these deadly infections.
SPOKANE, Wash.—Birth defects are significantly more common in areas of mountaintop coal mining and are on the rise as the practice becomes more common, according to a study by researchers at Washington State University and West Virginia University.
The researchers, led by Melissa Ahern, health economist and associate professor in WSU's College of Pharmacy, found 235 birth defects per 10,000 births where mountaintop mining is most common in four central Appalachian states. That's nearly twice the rate of 144 defects per 10,000 in non-mining areas.
A new advance by UCLA biochemists has brought scientists one step closer to developing treatments that could delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease and prevent the sexual transmission of HIV.
The researchers report that they have designed molecular inhibitors that target specific proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease and HIV to prevent them from forming amyloid fibers, the elongated chains of interlocking proteins that play a key role in more than two dozen degenerative and often fatal diseases.
TORONTO, Ont., June 22, 2011 – Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital have put forward a new theory as to what causes sepsis, an often fatal condition that occurs when infection spreads throughout the body.
Leaking blood vessels may actually be a cause of sepsis, rather than a symptom as previously thought, said Dr. Warren Lee.
Dr Lee's hypothesis and a review of recent research on sepsis were published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
It’s well known that drunk driving can have fatal consequences, but anew study suggests that alcohol is not the only drug that’s a danger onthe road.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 23, 2011 – Infants born to mothers who received the influenza (flu) vaccine while pregnant are nearly 50 percent less likely to be hospitalized for the flu than infants born to mothers who did not receive the vaccine while pregnant, according to a new collaborative study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center and colleagues.
Banning fisheries discards in the North Sea will promote fish stock recovery and increase fishermen's incomes, according to new research by scientists at the University of York.
In the North Sea up to 75 per cent of fish are currently dumped after being caught, with the result that many fisheries are now badly overfished. In comparison, discards were banned in Norwegian waters in the late 1980s and their fisheries are now some of the most prosperous in the world.
Vitamin A deficiency does not increase the risk of asthma, according to new research published online in the European Respiratory Journal.
In developing countries, vitamin A deficiency is particularly common and previous research has shown that it harms the development of the lungs.
This study aimed to assess whether vitamin A deficiency influences the development of asthma later in life.
Self-conscious about your age? Careful where you spit. UCLA geneticists now can use saliva to reveal how old you are.
The June 22 advance online edition of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) ONE publishes the findings, which offer a myriad of potential applications. A newly patented test based on the research, for example, could offer crime-scene investigators a new forensic tool for pinpointing a suspect's age.
BOSTON -- June 22, 2011 -- A study led by researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center suggests that adding the amino acid leucine to their diets may help those with pre-diabetes or metabolic syndrome.
NEW YORK (June 23, 2011) -- The drug telaprevir (Incivek) provides a dramatic improvement in the treatment of the most common form of hepatitis C infection, says an international team of investigators led by Dr. Ira M. Jacobson of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
Their study, published in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, led to approval of the agent for patient use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 23.