PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Freshmen on the eve of finals and graduate students staring down a thesis committee may not feel this way, but the privilege of obtaining an advanced education correlates with decades of lower blood pressure, according to a study led by a public health researcher at Brown University. The benefit appears to be greater for women than for men.
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One of the reasons often given by people for not attempting first aid in emergency situations is a lack of confidence and a fear of doing more harm than good. Yet a Norwegian study on four and five year olds published in BioMed Central's open access journal Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine shows that even young children are able to learn and perform basic first aid.
Famed especially for the excellence of its peacekeepers and ice hockey players, Canada's water experts are now increasingly needed to help countries elsewhere brace for drought, flood and unsafe water problems looming on a 15 to 20 year horizon.
The targeted cancer drug erlotinib has comparable efficacy to chemotherapy, and is better tolerated, in hard-to-treat cases where a patient's cancer has progressed quickly after treatment with first-line therapy, the results of a new phase III trial show.
Dr Tudor Ciuleanu from the Institute of Oncology Ion Chiricuta, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, reported this finding from the international TITAN study at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology (EMCTO), 24-26 February 2011, Lugano, Switzerland.
Hawaii growers can now export more fruits and vegetables to the U.S. mainland, thanks to technology advanced by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists and cooperators.
HOUSTON - Like a bounty hunter returning escapees to custody, a cancer-fighting gene converts organ cells that change into highly mobile stem cells back to their original, stationary state, researchers report online at Nature Cell Biology.
This newly discovered activity of the p53 gene offers a potential avenue of attack on breast cancer stem cells thought to play a central role in progression and spread of the disease, according to scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
Acute viral infection does not appear to be a primary cause of acute exacerbation of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive, deadly disease resulting in thickening and scarring of the lungs, according to a study conducted by researchers from the U.S., Korea and Japan. Previous studies had suggested viral infection might cause exacerbation of IPF in a majority of patients who have the condition, which occurs most often in people between 50 and 70 years of age.
Botulism is a rare disease and recurrent botulism even more rare. However, in California, recurrent wound botulism among injection drug users has been on the rise and makes up three-quarters of reported cases in the United States. A new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and currently available online (http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/02/07/cid.cir005.full) examines this problem.
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Feb. 25, 2011) — The death of insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas is a core defect in diabetes. Scientists in Italy and Texas now have discovered a new way that these cells die — by toxic imbalance of a molecule secreted by other pancreatic cells.
Scientists are unravelling the environmental changes that took place around the Arctic during an exceptional episode of ancient global warming. Newly published results from a high-resolution study of sediments collected on Spitsbergen represent a significant contribution to this endeavour. The study was led by Dr Ian Harding and Prof John Marshall of the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES), based at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
New Rochelle, NY, February 25, 2011—Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT), an inflammatory disorder of the thyroid, is the most common cause of hypothyroidism, but a study has suggested that even when thyroid function is normal, HT may increase symptoms and decrease quality of life, as described in an article in Thyroid, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. (www.liebertpub.com). Thyroid is the Official Journal of the American Thyroid Association (ATA).
The world watched in horror as Taliban fanatics ten years ago blew up the two gigantic Buddha statues that had since the 6th century looked out over the Bamiyan Valley in what is now Afghanistan. Located on the Silk Road, until the 10th century the 55 and 38 meter tall works of art formed the centerpiece of one of the world's largest Buddhist monastic complexes. Thousands of monks tended countless shrines in the niches and caves that pierced a kilometer-long cliff face.
Despite innumerable studies on lung cancer, many aspects of the disease have yet to be understood, including the role played by the retinoblastoma-related protein Rb2/p130 in the evolution of the disease.
Boston, MA – The World Bank and World Health Organization have voiced fears that policymakers will break their commitments to support desperately needed global health services in low- and middle-income countries because of the ongoing global economic downturn. Yet, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health, there is surprisingly little historical evidence to justify reversing these commitments.
New research enhances the current knowledge of how human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1), which causes AIDS, controls the cell cycle of cells that it infects. The new findings may shed light on how the virus reactivates after entering a dormant state, called latency.
"As we better understand the biological events that revive HIV from latency, we hope to devise ways to eventually intervene in this process with better treatments for people with HIV infection," said study leader Terri H. Finkel, M.D., Ph.D., chief of Rheumatology at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.