The team used the yolk sac – the first tissue where blood cells are made - from embryos that lacked Scl and within four hours of plating on the culture dish, the tissue had generated beating cardiomyocytes. The team also found similar cardiomyocyte potential in Scl-deficient embryos in the endocardium that lines the heart chambers. They also looked for genetic signatures that would suggest that these endothelial precursors could potentially also make other closely related tissues such as skeletal muscle, bone or kidney, but found no evidence of such plasticity.
Culture
Marrying multiple husbands at the same time, or polyandry, creates a safety net for women in some cultures, according to a recent study by a University of Missouri researcher. Extra husbands ensure that women's children are cared for even if their fathers die or disappear. Although polyandry is taboo and illegal in the United States, certain legal structures, such as child support payments and life insurance, fill the same role for American women that multiple husbands do in other cultures.
New tools have confirmed high rates of misdiagnosis of patients with chronic disorders of consciousness, such as the vegetative state. An increasing number of patients' families wish to use these novel techniques for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. An international team of researchers, including Dr. Éric Racine, researcher at the IRCM, analyzed the clinical, social and ethical issues that clinicians are now facing. Their article is published in the August edition of The Lancet Neurology, a renowned journal in the field of clinical neurology.
Researchers in India have developed an improved expert system for the diagnosis of thyroid disease. They describe details of their approach to screening medical data in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Computational Science and Engineering.
Los Angeles, CA (02 August, 2012) In many restaurants throughout the world, wait staff's income depends largely on the tips received from customers. According to a new study, male restaurant customers give higher tips to waitresses wearing red. This study was published in a recent issue of Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research (published by SAGE, on behalf of the International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education).
Rather than using sophisticated chemical modifications or costly synthetic polymers in preparing the sensing material, UConn scientists prepared their ultra-thin film by simply electrospinning pyrene with polystyrene in the presence of an organic salt (tetrabutylammonium hexafluorophosphate or TBAH). This resulted in a highly porous nanofiberous membrane that absorbs explosive vapors at ultra-trace levels quickly and reliably. The film also has excellent sensitivity against common interferences such as ammonium nitrate and inorganic nitrates.
In a Perspective article appearing in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, public health researchers examine how recommendations in a new report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM)—"Accelerating Progress in Obesity Prevention: Solving the Weight of the Nation"—square with American's opinions about the obesity epidemic.
An economist says that many car race fans do, indeed, watch NASCAR races because they want to see car wrecks, but more of them have been tuning in to see who actually wins the race since the circuit adopted its Chase for the Cup championship series in 2004.
It's peak season for many sports, and with that comes sport-related injuries. Among those injuries is shoulder joint dislocation. According to a literature review in the August 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, most incidences of shoulder joint instability are the result of traumatic contact injuries like force or falling on an outstretched arm; a direct blow to the shoulder area; forceful throwing, lifting or hitting; or contact with another player.
By the Numbers
DETROIT — The Michigan Department of Community Health (MDCH) has unveiled the state's Infant Mortality Reduction Plan, a strategy that includes significant recommendations developed from medical research conducted by the Perinatology Research Branch (PRB) of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, National Institutes of Health (NICHD/NIH), at the Wayne State University School of Medicine.
SEATTLE – Despite the increasing awareness of the problem of obesity in the United States, most Americans don't know whether they are gaining or losing weight, according to new research from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
You're on the bus, and one of the only free seats is next to you. How, and why, do you stop another passenger sitting there? New research reveals the tactics commuters use to avoid each other, a practice the paper published in Symbolic Interaction describes as 'nonsocial transient behavior.'
Medical staff struggle to spot problem drinking in their patients unless they are already intoxicated, according to research by the University of Leicester.
The work led by Dr Alex J Mitchell, consultant at Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust and honorary senior lecturer at the University, reveals that clinical staff often overlook alcohol problems in their patients when they do not present intoxicated.
The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) published the results of a literature search for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines on the treatment of people with heart failure. The aim of the report is to identify those recommendations from current guidelines of high methodological quality that may be relevant for the planned revision of the module "heart failure" in the disease management programme (DMP) for coronary heart disease (CHD). According to the results of the report, there is no compelling need for revision of any part of the DMP module.
DENVER, July 31, 2012 – Most people who have diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol have difficultly managing all three conditions; indeed, success is fleeting for those who do manage all three, according to a Kaiser Permanente Institute for Health Research study that appears online in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.