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New Bacterial Family May Become A Weapon In The Fight Against Malaria

New Bacterial Family May Become A Weapon In The Fight Against Malaria

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

A new family of bacteria that are common in malaria mosquitoes has been described by researchers at Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Uppsala University in Sweden, Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, Germany, and the Veterinärmedizinische Universität, Austria. Now, attempts are made to use these bacteria in the fight against malaria.

New Therapeutic Strategy For Ovarian Cancer

New Therapeutic Strategy For Ovarian Cancer

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest of all cancers affecting the female reproductive system with very few effective treatments available. Prognosis is even worse among patients with certain subtypes of the disease. Now, researchers at The Wistar Institute have identified a new therapeutic target in a particularly aggressive form of ovarian cancer, paving the way for what could be the first effective targeted therapy of its kind for the disease.

The findings were published online by the journal Nature Medicine.

Menopause: Hot Flashes, Night Sweats Last For 7 Years In Many Women

Menopause: Hot Flashes, Night Sweats Last For 7 Years In Many Women

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Frequent menopausal vasomotor symptoms (VMS), including hot flashes and night sweats, lasted for more than seven years during the transition to menopause for more than half of the women in a large study and African American women reported the longest total VMS duration, according to a new study.

VMS are the hallmark of the menopausal transition and they can affect the quality of women's lives. Up to 80 percent of women experience VMS during the transition to menopause and, despite the pervasiveness of these symptoms, robust estimates about how long VMS last are lacking.

And The 2015 Science 2.0 Best Science Picture Award Goes To...

And The 2015 Science 2.0 Best Science Picture Award Goes To...

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

It's Academy Awards time, which means the science community is aflame with debates about whether Hollywood elites are racist, sexist, bigoted or not liberal enough...okay, no one in science actually debates any of that the way Hollywood does, but we do get to think about how science did in film in 2014.

Science is big in culture these days - everyone loves it. You can't watch a blurb about a superhero movie where a character jumps out of a building and into a helicopter because the helicopter turns on its side without someone making the movie claiming they are grounded in science. 
What Antidepressants Do To Healthy People

What Antidepressants Do To Healthy People

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Picture this: For the past two weeks you have felt continuously dejected. You have lost interest in what normally makes you happy. Perhaps you’ve slept poorly or lost your appetite. There is a risk that you have one of the most common maladies in the world: Depression.

You decide to see a doctor. She considers different treatments and finally she gives you a prescription for a small box of antidepressants. Whether they will help you is unclear. Some patients report an effect after two or three weeks, others don’t notice any change at all. Some even get even more depressed.

More depressed? If it is actually a healthy person who doesn't have clinical depression, it's certainly possible. 
Insight Into Inner Magnetic Layers

Insight Into Inner Magnetic Layers

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Measurements at BESSY II have shown how spin filters forming within magnetic sandwiches influence tunnel magnetoresistance - results that can help in designing spintronic components. In doing so, the teams enhanced our understanding of processes that are important for future TMR data storage devices and other spintronic components.

Convective Initiation: Bigger Cities Are Affecting How Thunderstorms Occur

Convective Initiation: Bigger Cities Are Affecting How Thunderstorms Occur

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

A study that assessed the impact of urban land use on the initiation of thunderstorms from 1997 to 2013 in the humid subtropical region of the southeast United States found that isolated convective initiation events occur more often over the urban area of Atlanta compared with its surrounding rural counterparts.

The findings confirm that human-induced changes in land cover in tropical environments lead to more thunderstorm initiation events.

Nicotine Metabolite Amplifies Action Of The Primary Chemical Messenger For Learning And Memory

Nicotine Metabolite Amplifies Action Of The Primary Chemical Messenger For Learning And Memory

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Nicotine's primary metabolite supports learning and memory by amplifying the action of a primary chemical messenger involved in both, researchers report.

"This is the first hint of what the mechanism of the metabolite cotinine might be," said Dr. Alvin V. Terry, Chairman of the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University and corresponding author of the study in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

While the findings show therapeutic promise for a metabolite once thought to be inactive, cotinine's benefits don't hold up across all learning and memory systems so Terry is already looking at analogues that would be even more broadly effective and equally safe.

Would You Take Dieting Advice From A Friend?

Would You Take Dieting Advice From A Friend?

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Is a new diet or exercise program working for a friend? If so, there's a good chance that you will try it, too.

A person who finds success in a wellness program is more influential in getting friends to sign up than a charismatic, but less successful pal, according to a study by University at Buffalo occupational health researcher Lora Cavuoto.

The study, "Modeling the Spread of an Obesity Intervention through a Social Network," was published in the Journal of Healthcare Engineering.

Airbnb For Washing Machines: How To Achieve A Circular Economy

Airbnb For Washing Machines: How To Achieve A Circular Economy

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Image:Brad Perkins,CC BY-SA

Every year massive amounts of valuable resources are deemed “waste” and consigned to landfill. Take the UK – around 540 million tonnes of products and materials enter the country annually, but only 117 million tonnes are recycled.

Microalgae Pay Their Coral Reef Rent With Sugar And Fat

Microalgae Pay Their Coral Reef Rent With Sugar And Fat

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Scientists have revealed how coral-dwelling microalgae harvest nutrients from the surrounding seawater and shuttle them out to their coral hosts, sustaining a fragile ecosystem that is under threat.

Erith Industrial Unit Fire

Erith Industrial Unit Fire

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Erith Industrial Unit Fire

A fire in Erith, U.K. at an industrial unit triggered over 50 emergency calls and was attended by 15 fire appliances and 97 firefighters.  The blaze appears to be at Allied Hygiene, manufacturers of various types of wet wipes.  The industrial unit, which was completely destroyed by the fire, is located at the junction of Yarnton Way and Centurion Way.  Although the fire was adjacent to two gas holders they appear to have posed no extra danger: gas holders are no longer part of the U.K.s National Gas Network.
Urban Scaling: Bigger Is More Efficient For Cities, Just Like In Ancient Times

Urban Scaling: Bigger Is More Efficient For Cities, Just Like In Ancient Times

Feb 21 2015 | comment(s)

Cities may not look like they once looked, but those of ancient times and today had a lot in common when it came to intangibles.

Despite notable differences in appearance and governance, ancient human settlements function in much the same way as modern cities, according to new findings by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder.

City planning says that as modern cities grow in population, so do their efficiencies and productivity. A city's population outpaces its development of urban infrastructure, for example, and its production of goods and services outpaces its population. What's more, these patterns exhibit mathematical regularity and predictability, a phenomenon called "urban scaling."
Matching Politics: How To Be Deemed An Education Expert

Matching Politics: How To Be Deemed An Education Expert

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

If you are a scholar and get on The Dr. Oz Show, you automatically become an expert in the minds of the public that watches The Dr. Oz Show - your peers might disagree.

And when it comes to education "experts", it is hard to know if they are just reciting talking points created by education union lobbyists or even if they have a credible background in education and education policy, a new study suggests. We see experts who misrepresent American student test scores every time international standardized tests are taken, and it ends up being no surprise that the solution they advocate involves giving more money to the machine they just said was letting kids down.
Greenland Melting: The Past Might Tell What Our Future Holds

Greenland Melting: The Past Might Tell What Our Future Holds

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

Researchers have quantified how the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to a warm period 8,000-5,000 years ago, when temperatures were 2-4 degrees C warmer than present and so could inform us what might happen if the same occurred now. 

Dr. Nicolaj Krog Larsen, Aarhus University in Denmark and Professor Kurt Kjær, Natural History Museum of Denmark, ventured off to Greenland to investigate how fast the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to past warming. Over six summers, they cored lakes in the ice-free land surrounding the ice sheet. The lakes act as a valuable archive as they store glacial meltwater sediments in periods where the ice is advanced. That way it is possible to study and precisely date periods in time when the ice was smaller than present.
Why Do Patients Who Tried To Commit Suicide Using Medication Get Prescribed More Medication?

Why Do Patients Who Tried To Commit Suicide Using Medication Get Prescribed More Medication?

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

Patients who have tried to commit suicide with medication are prescribed more medication after the attempt, not less, according to an analysis of patients who were admitted to three Norwegian hospitals after deliberate self-poisoning. 

The psychologists behind the work collected information about the patients' medication from The Norwegian prescription database in order to compare the medication load in the year before and after the poisoning episode and say they were surprised to discover that the patients' medication load, which was high in the first place, increased even more after their attempt to poison themselves. This was equally true for medication against both mental and somatic illness.
Silicone On Trial: Bastardization Of Justice

Silicone On Trial: Bastardization Of Justice

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

So, is justice really blind? Who knows? 

But, with the right recipe it can become deaf and dumb rather quickly.Here is the recipe. Mix the following in equal quantities: Junk science and medicine, a misguided and politically-driven regulatory agency, a flawed legal system, predatory trial lawyers, a self-anointed know-nothing consumer "advocate," greed, and a company with deep pockets, and voila: the perfect mix. 
Wikipedia's Unbearable Lightness

Wikipedia's Unbearable Lightness

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

Wikipedia's definition of energy can only be qualified as useless. Here is mine:

A bird that flies, a molecule in a gas possess energy since they move: this is kinetic energy.

A stone you hold still in your hand could move and therefore acquire kinetic energy if you let it fall: this is potential energy.

All forms of energy can transform into each other, their sum remaining always the same: this is the principle of conservation of energy.
23andMe Loses The Attitude And Gets Off The FDA Naughty List

23andMe Loses The Attitude And Gets Off The FDA Naughty List

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

In 2013, the US FDA got tired of being stonewalled when it came to seeing proof of Google-backed 23andMe marketing claims regarding BRCA-related genetic risk and drug response, along with marketing blurbs that they can make it possible to “take steps toward mitigating serious diseases” such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, and breast cancer.
The Tyndall Effect

The Tyndall Effect

Feb 20 2015 | comment(s)

You can use a simple cat toy (laser pointer) to demonstrate the Tyndall effect. “The Tyndall effect, also known as Tyndall scattering,” according to Wikipedia, “is light scattering by particles in a colloid or particles in a fine suspension.” You can use the laser to test three different mixtures: colloids, suspensions, and solutions. I’ll demonstrate Tyndall scattering in a colloid (milk), in a suspension (dirt), and a solution (sugar) with a cat toy (Laser pointer).

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter @SteveSchuler20.

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