June 1, 2016: Aortic disease, including aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection, is an important cause of cardiovascular morbidity and death. There have been exciting developments in caring for patients with aortic aneurysm and dissection, including great advances in diagnosis and endovascular therapies. Despite this, there remains significant gaps in knowledge of the understanding of mechanisms of aortic pathology and opportunity to further improve patient care. With this in mind, Vascular Medicine, the official journal of the Society for Vascular Medicine, dedicated its June, 2016 issue to this important topic.

The majority of patients prefer their dermatologists to be dressed in professional attire with a white coat, according to an article published online by JAMA Dermatology.

Patient perceptions of their physicians may affect outcomes so it is possible that physician attire may affect those outcomes.

Robert S. Kirsner, M.D., Ph.D., of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, and coauthors surveyed the attitudes of dermatology patients (261 were surveyed and 255 participated and completed enough questions to be included).

Scientists from RIKEN in Japan have discovered that acrolein--a toxic substance produced in cells during times of oxidative stress--in fact may play a role in preventing the process of fibrillation, an abnormal clumping of peptides that has been associated with Alzheimer's disease and other neural diseases. The key to this new role is a chemical process known as 4+4 cycloaddition, where two molecules with "backbones" made up of four-atom chains come together to form a ring-like structure with eight atoms. The group found that in some circumstances, acrolein can combine with a class of molecules called polyamines, which themselves are important biological players, to make substances that can prevent the fibrillation of Aβ40 peptides.

The earth's magnetic field has been existing for at least 3.4 billion years thanks to the low heat conduction capability of iron in the planet's core. This is the result of the first direct measurement of the thermal conductivity of iron at pressures and temperatures corresponding to planetary core conditions. DESY scientist Zuzana Konôpková and her colleagues present their study in the scientific journal Nature. The results could resolve a recent debate about the so-called geodynamo paradox.

WASHINGTON, DC, May 25, 2016 -- A new study suggests that psychotherapists discriminate against prospective patients who are black or working class.

"Although I expected to find racial and class-based disparities, the magnitude of the discrimination working-class therapy seekers faced exceeded my grimmest expectations," said Heather Kugelmass, a doctoral student in sociology at Princeton University and the author of the study.

Among middle-class people who contacted a therapist to schedule an appointment, Kugelmass found that 28 percent of whites and 17 percent of blacks received appointment offers. Appointment offer rates for both black and white working-class therapy seekers were 8 percent.

The imperial dominance of the ancient Wari Empire at the Huaca Pucllana site in Lima, Peru, was likely not achieved through population replacement, according to a study published June 1, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Guido Valverde from the University of Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues.

Acupuncture, like most other alternative therapies, is particular popular for indications that are:

1. chronic

2. associated with a high burden of suffering,

3. not easily treatable with conventional therapies,

4. are frequently resolved without any intervention.

Infertility or subfertility tick most of these boxes. It is therefore not surprising that acupuncturists the world over claim that acupuncture can cure infertility. But is this claim based on evidence or on wishful thinking?

Aerosol particles generated by human activity counteract the warming of the earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gases. However, this effect might be smaller than first thought, as many particles were already generated from tree emissions in pre-industrial times. This was the finding of a simulation carried out as part of the international CLOUD experiment, in which researchers from the Goethe University played a major role. The results are published in the form of three papers in the renowned journals "Science" and "Nature".

Crystals are solid materials composed of microscopic building blocks arranged in highly ordered patterns. They have countless applications, ranging from metallurgy to jewellery to electronics. Many of the properties that make crystals useful depend on the detailed pattern of arrangement of their constituents, which, in turn, is highly sensitive to the details of the interaction between the building blocks. In molecular and atomic crystals the interparticle forces are fixed by Nature, and the only way of tuning the microscopic arrangement is to either vary the external conditions (temperature, pressure, etc.) or change the particles themselves.

Higher dimensional spaces allow configurations that are unexpected from lower dimensions. For example, four-dimensional topology escapes full classification. Since complexity is related to dimensionality, there is a certain “magic” to it. Increasing complexity is advantageous generally for adaptation. We can give examples from nanotechnology. With catalysts, starting with mono-metallic ones, the desired catalytic prowess increases almost geometrically with the number of different substances involved.[2] Bimetallic catalysts multiply the catalytic rate constants of mono metallic compounds.