As the one-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi reactor accident is marked on March 11, a new paper by Peter C. Burns, Henry Massman Professor of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and colleagues from the University of Michigan and the University of California, Davis, stresses that we need much more knowledge about how nuclear fuel interacts with the environment during and after an accident.
Culture
COLUMBIA, Mo. –Veterans are almost twice as likely as the general public to have chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and heart failure. Therefore, veterans may require more assistance from informal caregivers, especially as outpatient treatment becomes more common. A University of Missouri researcher evaluated strain and satisfaction among informal caregivers of veterans with chronic illnesses.
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Though women are better represented in the workforce and in higher education institutions, they still face barriers in employment, education and health care access and are more likely to live in poverty. Now, a University of Missouri expert says new research highlighting current issues affecting Missouri women provides insights that could significantly improve the lives of women throughout the state.
Forty years ago, LSD was used in the treatment of alcoholics - with good results. Perhaps it's time to look at it again?
In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, researchers in many places in the world experimented with LSD in the treatment of various disorders, including alcoholism. Not all experiments were scientifically tenable by today's standards, but some were. Now Teri Krebs and Pål-Ørjan Johansen, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), have taken a closer look at these experiments.
The tiny island of St Helena, 1,000 miles off the coast of south-west Africa, acted as the landing place for many of the slaves, captured by the Royal Navy during the suppression of the slave trade between 1840 and 1872. During this period a total of around 26,000 freed slaves were brought to the island, most of whom were landed at a depot in Rupert's Bay. The appalling conditions aboard the slave ships meant that many did not survive their journey, whilst Rupert's Valley – arid, shadeless, and always windy – was poorly suited to act as a hospital and refugee camp for such large numbers.
BERKELEY, Calif. – March 8, 2012 – XOMA Corporation (Nasdaq: XOMA) announced that its study of XMetA, the company's fully-human allosteric monoclonal antibody to the insulin receptor, is available online and will be published in the May issue of the American Diabetes Association's journal Diabetes. XMetA is the first antibody specific for the insulin receptor shown to correct hyperglycemia in a mouse model of diabetes.
Sophia Antipolis, 5 March 2012: Women with chronic heart failure survive longer than their male counterparts, according to a large analysis of studies comprising data on more than 40,000 subjects.(1) The analysis represents the largest assessment of gender and mortality risk in heart failure - and provides evidence which many randomised trials have failed to do because they have been dominated by male patients.
BEIJING; BERKELEY, CA; and UPTON, NY – The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a multinational collaboration operating in the south of China, today reported the first results of its search for the last, most elusive piece of a long-standing puzzle: how is it that neutrinos can appear to vanish as they travel? The surprising answer opens a gateway to a new understanding of fundamental physics and may eventually solve the riddle of why there is far more ordinary matter than antimatter in the universe today.
A new investigational drug significantly reduced urinary cortisol levels and improved symptoms of Cushing's disease in the largest clinical study of this endocrine disorder ever conducted. Results of the clinical trial conducted at centers on four continents appear in the March 8 New England Journal of Medicine and show that treatment with pasireotide cut cortisol secretion an average of 50 percent and returned some patient's levels to normal.
Suicides among US army personnel rose 80 per cent between 2004 and 2008, finds research by US Army Public Health Command and published online in Injury Prevention.
Around 40% of these suicides might be associated with military events following US involvement in Iraq, say the authors.
The US committed a substantial number of troops to Iraq, starting in 2003, and it continues to be involved in military operations in Afghanistan.
A belief that the seasonal flu jab really works is far more likely to sway healthcare professionals to get vaccinated than the potential to protect at risk patients from infection, finds research published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Healthcare systems in many developed countries have struggled to persuade clinicians on the frontline to have the seasonal flu jab to prevent the spread of the virus to patients.
The dementia drug donepezil (Aricept), already widely used to treat mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, can also help in moderate to severe patients, according to a report funded by the UK Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Alzheimer's Society. The study suggests that extending treatment to this group could help treat twice as many sufferers worldwide. Encouragingly, the drug has greater positive benefits for patients more severely affected than for those in the earlier stages of dementia.
Doctors at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, working with Shriners Hospital for Children and other institutions, have identified a promising new treatment for a rare and sometimes life-threatening bone disorder that can affect infants and young children.
Known as hypophosphatasia, the condition upsets bone metabolism, blocking important minerals such as calcium from depositing in the skeleton.
Treatment with the common diabetes drug metformin appears to prevent progression of coronary atherosclerosis in patients infected with HIV. In a presentation today at the 19th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers reported that study participants receiving daily doses of metformin had essentially no progression of coronary artery calcification during the year-long study period, while participants receiving a placebo had calcium increases of up to 50 percent.
PUYALLUP, Wash.—A Washington State University toxicologist has found that three commonly used herbicides can dramatically reduce butterfly populations.
The research was aimed at possible effects on the Lange's metalmark, an endangered species in northern California, but it has implications for other at-risk and endangered butterflies wherever herbicides are used, says John Stark, an ecotoxicologist and director of the WSU Puyallup Research and Extension Center.