What Media Blog

October 1, 2007, 5:39 AM CT

Extended wakefulness, combined with alcohol

The combination of extended wakefulness and low-dose alcohol has significant adverse effects on a persons ability to drive, and elevates the risk of getting into a vehicular accident, as per a research studyreported in the October 1 issue of the journal SLEEP.

The study, authored by Mark E. Howard, PhD, of the Institute for Breathing and Sleep in Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia, focused on 19 volunteer professional drivers, who participated in a driving simulation and the Psychomotor Vigilance Task. The subjects were measured in a rested state (12-15 hours awake) and after extended wakefulness (18-21 hours awake) during two sessions. Alcohol was administered during one session, with performance measured at blood alcohol concentrations (BAC) of 0.00 percent, 0.03 percent and 0.05 percent in a non-sleep deprived state, and at 0.03 percent after extended wakefulness (at 1 a.m. and at 3 a.m.). During the second session, tests were performed at the same times without alcohol.

As per the results, extended wakefulness, combined with low-dose alcohol (0.03 percent BAC), resulted in more lapses and greater variation in lane position and speed than did a BAC of 0.05 percent in a rested state.

In addition to alcohol, sleepiness also increases the risk of road crashes. It is estimated that 15 to 30 percent of traffic accidents are directly correlation to driver sleepiness, as determined by crash circumstances. Eventhough there are conclusive data regarding the separate effects of alcohol and sleepiness on driving, in real-life situations it is common for these two conditions to occur simultaneously (alcohol-related accidents occur more usually in the early hours of the morning). The combination of legal low-dose alcohol and extended wakefulness results in impairment worse than that at an alcohol level known to increase accident risk. Avoiding alcohol when driving after extended wakefulness may reduce accident risk, said Dr. Howard......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

September 12, 2007, 6:36 PM CT

Secret Of Bone's Strength

New research at MIT has revealed for the first time the role of bone's atomistic structure in a toughening mechanism that incorporates two theories previously proposed by scientists eager to understand the secret behind the material's lightweight strength.

Past experimental studies have revealed many different mechanisms at different scales of focus, rather than a single theory. The combination mechanism uncovered by the MIT scientists allows for the sacrifice of a small piece of the bone in order to save the whole, helps explain why bone tolerates small cracks, and seems to be adapted specifically to accommodate bone's need for continuous rebuilding from the inside out.

"The newly discovered molecular mechanism unifies controversial attempts of explaining sources of the toughness of bone, because it illustrates that two of the earlier explanations play key roles at the atomistic scale," said the study's author, Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Professor Markus Buehler of MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

"It's quite possible that each scale of bone--from the molecular on up--has its own toughening mechanism," said Buehler. "This hierarchical distribution of toughening may be critical to explaining the intriguing properties of bone and laying the foundation for new materials design that includes the nanostructure as a specific design variable"......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

June 27, 2007, 7:03 PM CT

Pairing Nanoparticles with Proteins

In groundbreaking research, researchers have demonstrated the ability to strategically attach gold nanoparticles - particles on the order of billionths of a meter - to proteins so as to form sheets of protein-gold arrays. The nanoparticles and methods to create nanoparticle-protein complexes can be used to help decipher protein structures, to identify functional parts of proteins, and to "glue" together new protein complexes. Applications envisioned by the scientists include catalysts for converting biomass to energy and precision "vehicles" for targeted drug delivery.

The research, which was conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory, would be reported in the July 2, 2007 issue of the journal Angewandte Chemie.

"Our study demonstrates that nanoparticles are appealing templates for assembling functional biomolecules with extensive potential impact across the fields of energy conversion, structural biology, drug delivery, and medical imaging," said lead author Minghui Hu, a postdoctoral student working with James Hainfeld, Raymond Brinas, Luping Qian, and Elena Lymar in the Biology Department at Brookhaven Lab.

In the field of energy conversion, researchers have been searching for efficient ways to convert organic fuels such as ethanol into electricity using catalytic electrodes. But making single layers of densely packed enzymes, the functional part of such catalytic electrodes, has been a challenge. This new research shows that precisely engineered gold nanoparticles can be used to "glue" enzymes together to form oriented and ordered single layers, and that these monolayers are mechanically stable enough to be transferred onto a solid surface such as an electrode......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

June 27, 2007, 7:00 PM CT

Computerized Physician Order Entry System

The occurence rate of medicine errors can be reduced by implementing a computerized doctor order entry (CPOE) system, as per a review of several studies conducted by scientists at the University of Minnesota.

The review, recently reported in the online journal Health Services Research, analyzed 12 studies conducted between 1990 and 2005 that compared the number of handwritten and computerized medicine errors made by hospital physicians. Medication errors, which include prescribing the wrong drug, ordering an inaccurate dosage, or administering a drug at the wrong time, dropped by as much as 66 percent in United States hospitals that switched to a CPOE system. Illegible handwriting and transcription errors account for more than 60 percent of medicine errors.

Patient safety is our final goal, said Tatyana Shamliyan, lead review author and a research associate at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. Evidence from these studies show that computerized systems can reduce mistakes, but unfortunately less than 50 percent of hospitals have implemented these systems. There is a lot of work to be done in the future.

The rate of medicine errors experienced by hospitals has skyrocketed from only 5 percent in 1992 to nearly 25 percent today. The review observed that of these hospitals, CPOE systems were most beneficial when the rate of medicine errors was more than 12 percent......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

June 15, 2007, 11:18 AM CT

Doctoral research without borders

The enabling of structured doctoral research within a collaborative scientific network has been the declared objective of the Research Training Group Programme, offered by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation), since its inception in 1990. How important the internationalisation of this programme is to the DFG is also shown by the International Research Training Group programme, founded in 1997, in which German groups together with groups from abroad offer structured doctoral programmes. The DFG also expects Research Training Groups not belonging to this category to have an international orientation, and it supports efforts to establish international contacts. At its meeting on 1 June 2007 in Bonn, for example, the committee responsible for Research Training Groups allocated additional funds to seven projects for cooperation with the graduate schools funded by the Academy of Finland.

The committee also resolved to provide funding for the travel mandatory to prepare International Research Training Groups and to bring the foreign allowances for doctoral students in Research Training Groups into line with the higher rates available to postdoctoral researchers, from 1 July 2007.

However, international cooperation is only one of the options that doctoral students will be offered in future from the DFG. New approaches and forms of cooperation, such as collaboration between higher education institutions and business enterprises or universities of applied science, which impart additional experience to doctoral students and improve their carrier prospects, are particularly encouraged......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

May 22, 2007, 10:02 PM CT

A new wrinkle in evolution

Nature, through the trial and error of evolution, has discovered a vast diversity of life from what can only presumed to have been a primordial pool of building blocks. Inspired by this success, a new Biodesign Institute research team, led by John Chaput, is now trying to mimic the process of Darwinian evolution in the laboratory by evolving new proteins from scratch. Using new tricks of molecular biology, Chaput and co-workers have evolved several new proteins in a fraction of the 3 billion years it took nature.

Their most recent results, reported in the May 23rd edition of the journal PLoS ONE, have led to some surprisingly new lessons on how to optimize proteins which have never existed in nature before, in a process they call synthetic evolution.

"The goal of our research is to understand certain fundamental questions regarding the origin and evolution of proteins," said Chaput, a researcher in the institutes Center for BioOptical Nanotechnology and assistant professor in Arizona State Universitys department of chemistry and biochemistry. "Would proteins that we evolve in the lab look like proteins we see today in nature or do they look totally different from the set of proteins nature ultimately chose" By gaining a better understanding of these questions, we hope to one day create new tailor-made catalysts that can be used as therapeutics in molecular medicine or biocatalysts in biotechnology"......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

May 15, 2007, 11:14 PM CT

Thymus Transplants Gives Hope To Babies

"My baby is doing what other babies her age are doing -- she's feeding herself, putting on her own clothes and she loves to dance".

Lolita Harding is describing her daughter Dave'yana, who will turn three in September, thanks in large part to a thymus transplant she received at Duke University Medical Center in April 2005 to reconstitute her absent immune system. Dave'yana was the 31st baby to receive such a transplant at Duke to correct immune system deficiencies caused by a condition called DiGeorge anomaly. Duke is the only center in the world that performs the procedure.

The latest results of Duke's experience with this therapy of DiGeorge anomaly, published Tuesday, May 15, in the journal Blood, show that 75 percent of the babies who received a thymus transplant were alive after one year. The recipient of the first transplant, in 1994, is alive and well.

The current study was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration.

DiGeorge anomaly is marked by the lack of a functioning thymus, a gland that is responsible for "teaching" immune system cells known as T cells how to attack and fight off infections. Babies with DiGeorge anomaly also can have a range of problems including heart defects and unusual facial features. However, about 1 percent of these babies have no thymus at all, a situation that ends in death, commonly by infection. These are the patients who are candidates for thymus transplantation......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

May 7, 2007, 10:56 PM CT

Regulating Californian stem cell research

How is California regulating its $3 billion stem cell research initiative?

Regulations governing human stem cell research must strive to assure strict oversight while simultaneously fostering scientific innovation through collaboration, says a group of researchers from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), one of the world's largest supporters of such research.

In November 2004, California voters approved $3 billion over 10 years for public funding of stem cell research through the CIRM. In their policy paper in PLoS Medicine, Geoffrey Lomax, Zach Hall, and Bernard Lo discuss how CIRM came to adopt its legally binding regulations for the stem cell research it funds.

In addition to the goal of "setting high ethical standards," say the authors, there were five other crucial objectives that guided the regulations:

• Encourage research institutions and scientists to develop best practices for ethical conduct of human stem cell research

• Avoid unnecessary regulatory burdens

• Involve the public in developing regulations

• Be consistent with existing laws, regulations, and ethical guidelines

• Facilitate collaboration to accelerate scientific progress.

Dr Lomax and his colleagues describe two innovative features of the regulations: the informed consent process and the protection of egg (oocyte) donors......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

May 6, 2007, 5:32 PM CT

MRI to determine features of osteoarthrosis

Abnormalities in the ligaments found on the outside of the knee (lateral collateral ligament complex or LCLC) are usually seen on MRI in patients with knee osteoarthrosis (OA), as per a research studyconducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia, PA.

The study consisted of 96 patients (53 women, 43 men), 51 with knee osteoarthrosis, and 44 patients with knee pain following an injury and no history of knee osteoarthrosis who underwent MRI. "The patients were graded on the severity of knee osteoarthrosis on radiographs and the severity of abnormalities of the LCLC components on MRI," said Yung-Hsin Chen, MD, of Johns Hopkins Hospital and lead author of the study.

The study showed that LCLC abnormalities were identified in 88% of the patients with OA in comparison to 12% of patients without OA. The study revealed that lateral compartment osteoarthrosis was significantly linked to abnormalities in the fibular collateral ligament.

Caution should be given to the interpretation of LCLC abnormalities, as they should not be incorrectly attributed to an acute atraumatic injury, say the study authors.

"The results of the findings will help to explain some of the common finding we come across in day to day radiology in patients with osteoarthritis," said Dr. Chen......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 30, 2007, 7:13 PM CT

Strengthening Swallowing Rehabilitation

Just thinking about swallowing makes it harder to do.

Head and neck cancer, a stroke, brain tumor, brain injury or even a tracheostomy tube and mechanical ventilation needed to sustain life can make it impossible.

Dysphagia, or swallowing problems, can also result from aging and accompanying loss of muscle strength.

"We swallow a thousand times or more per day, just our own saliva, without even thinking about it," says Dr. Lori Burkhead, speech-language pathologist and clinical research scientist at the Medical College of Georgia Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery. "We swallow in our sleep. Babies do it in utero. It is something we do without giving it much thought, but it's actually a very complex act that involves an intricate coordination between the brain, muscles and respiratory system".

An estimated 18 million Americans have difficulty with this routine function that, at worst, can lead to aspiration pneumonia, malnutrition, dehydration and death.

Evidence suggests that the same exercise science principles that strengthen bodies can help restore this fundamental function using mouth and throat muscles. Because swallowing muscles are not easy to access, applying the usual principles of exercise is more difficult. "Physical therapists can put a weight in someone's hand and exercise them or they can give patients external assistance and get them to complete a movement," says Dr. Burkhead. "I can't put weights on throat muscles for strengthening and I can't get at those muscles to help patients finish the movements they cannot do on their own"......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 24, 2007, 10:56 PM CT

Unravel Clue in Cortisol Production

When a person's under stress or injured, the adrenal gland releases cortisol to help restore the body's functions to normal. But the hormone's effects are a number of and varied, lowering the activity of the immune system, helping create memories with short-term exposure, while impairing learning if there's too much for too long. Given the variety of its effects,understanding how cortisol is made is essential to producing medications that can alter its production.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have discovered an important step in cortisol production, finding that eventhough the output of the hormone is continuous, the molecular production is cyclic in nature - involving a rhythmic binding and unbinding of a protein essential to its production. The research, which increases understanding of how the brain and the endocrine system work together to regulate health, appears in the recent issue of the journal Molecular Endocrinology.

Turning cholesterol into the stress hormone cortisol involves a number of reactions and begins when the hypothalamus sends a signal to the adrenal glands. Proteins then flood into the nucleus to bind to the DNA, creating the gene CYP 17. What happens next is well understood; CYP 17, along with a battery of other enzymes, transforms cholesterol into cortisol. But what isn't understood is how this protein binding creates CYP 17, or which proteins are important. So, graduate students Eric Dammer and Adam Leon, along with Marion Sewer, assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Biology, decided to model the events that occur after the adrenal gland receives the signal......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 15, 2007, 8:32 PM CT

Major Susceptibility Gene For Crohn's Disease

A consortium of Canadian and American scientists report in Nature Genetics the results from a search of the entire human genome for genetic risk factors leading to the development of Crohn's disease. Specifically, using a novel approach, the authors identified that the PHOX2B, NCF4 and ATG16L1 genes constitute genetic risk factors for Crohn's disease. In addition, their study identified two regions of the genome where genetic risk factors are located but no known genes were implicated further work will be necessary to identify the causal genes in these regions.

More than 150,000 Canadians suffer from Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, known collectively as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). The study's authors represent the NIDDK IBD Genetics Consortium, which is funded by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The Consortium's member institutions include the University of Toronto, the Universit de Montral, the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, the University of Chicago, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Yale University.

Since IBD tends to run in families and is more frequent in certain ethnic populations, particularly Ashkenazi Jews, researchers have long suspected a significant genetic component. Eventhough prior genetic studies found a link between Crohn's disease and mutations in a gene known as CARD15, those mutations alone are not considered to account for the entire genetic component of disease. To identify additional genes that are linked to IBD, the international team of scientists scanned the genomeall of 22,000 or so genes by testing more than 300,000 single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, in people with Crohn's disease and in healthy controls. The comparison of these SNPs (common genetic variants) between patient and control groups identified multiple SNPs that were strongly linked to Crohn's disease. These findings were then tested in two additional sets of patients and healthy controls in order to confirm their results......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 10, 2007, 6:24 PM CT

Protecting Brains Of Premature Infants

A study of how the brain of a premature infant responds to injury has found vulnerabilities similar to those in the mature brain but also identified at least one significant difference, as per neuroresearchers and neonatologists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

In an animal model of brain injury, scientists showed for the first time that parts of the developing brain are vulnerable to damage from glutamate, a nervous system messenger compound. Glutamate is already well-known for its links to injury in the mature brain. But researchers also found damage in the developing brain that could not be associated with glutamate, suggesting that different therapys are needed to prevent brain injury in premature infants.

More than two percent of babies are born before the completion of their eighth month of gestation, and up to half of these infants suffer brain injury. Unlike adults, premature infants receive the most damage in the white matter, the portions of the brain that connect different brain regions.

"These injuries can lead to behavioral problems, developmental delay, cognitive impairment or cerebral palsy," says senior author Mark P. Goldberg, M.D., professor of neurology and of neurobiology. "In this study, we've identified a unique vulnerability in the developing brain's white matter that likely contributes to those disabilities. We will be looking for new drug therapys to prevent injury"......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 2, 2007, 11:03 PM CT

Rapid response to 1918 flu pandemic

One of the persistent riddles of the deadly 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic is why it struck different cities with varying severity. Why were some municipalities such as St. Louis spared the fate of the hard-hit cities like Philadelphia when both implemented similar public health measures? What made the difference, according to two independent studies funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), was not only how but also how rapidly different cities responded.

Cities where public health officials imposed multiple social containment measures within a few days after the first local cases were recorded cut peak weekly death rates by up to half compared with cities that waited just a few weeks to respond. Overall mortality was also lower in cities that implemented early interventions, but the effect was smaller. These conclusions--the results of systematic analyses of historical data to determine the effectiveness of public health measures in 1918--are described in two articles published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These important papers suggest that a primary lesson of the 1918 influenza pandemic is that it is critical to intervene early, says Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of NIHs National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which funded one of the studies. While researchers are working very hard to develop pandemic influenza vaccines and increase the speed with which they can be made, nonpharmaceutical interventions may buy valuable time at the beginning of a pandemic while a targeted vaccine is being produced......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

April 1, 2007, 9:04 PM CT

Fat Cancels Effects Of Vitamin C

Fats in our stomach may reduce the protective effects of antioxidants such as vitamin C. Scientists at the University of Glasgow found that in the presence of lipid the ability of antioxidants, such as ascorbic acid (the active component of vitamin C), to protect against the generation of potential cancer-forming compounds in the stomach is less than when no lipids are present. Our results illustrate how diet can influence gastric biochemistry, says Emilie Combet, the post-doctoral researcher working on the project, who will be presenting her results at the Society of Experimental Biologys Annual Main Meeting on Monday 2nd of April.

The incidence of cancer of the proximal stomach has been increasing over the last 20 years for which environmental factors, such as diet, certainly play a part. Nitrite, which is present in our saliva and is derived from nitrate in our diet, is thought to be a pre-carcinogen for gastric cancer. When it is swallowed and enters the acidic environment of the stomach, nitrite spontaneously forms nitrosating species able to convert a range of targets, such as secondary amines and bile acids, into carcinogenic N-nitrosocompounds. Antioxidants such as ascorbic acid protect against the formation of these nitrosocompounds by converting the nitrosating species back into nitric oxide (NO). However, NO diffuses rapidly to lipids, where it reacts with oxygen to reform nitrosating species. The presence of lipids therefore overrides the protective effect of vitamin C against the formation of harmful compounds......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

March 29, 2007, 10:36 PM CT

Should single parents stay that way?

In an age when cohabitation and divorce are common, single parents concerned about the developmental health of their children may want to choose new partners slowly and deliberately, new research from The Johns Hopkins University suggests.

The reason for taking your time? The more transitions children go through in their living situation, the more likely they are to act out, Johns Hopkins sociologists Paula Fomby and Andrew Cherlin report. They also found that the effect of family upheaval on children varies by race.

In their paper, "Family Instability and Child Well-Being," published in the recent issue of the American Sociological Review, Fomby and Cherlin note that with each breakup, divorce, remarriage or new cohabitation, there is a period of adjustment as parents, partners, and children establish their places in a new family setting. Studying a nationally representative sample of mothers and their children, the researchers found that children who go through frequent transitions are more likely to have behavioral problems than children raised in stable two-parent families and maybe even more than those in stable single-parent families.

Looking at children's scores on a mother-reported assessment of behavior problems with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 15 (similar to how an IQ test is scored), the authors found that a child who experienced three transitions would have a behavior problems score about 6 points higher compared to a child who had experienced no transitions. Experiencing multiple transitions was also associated with children's more frequent delinquent behavior, including vandalism, theft and truancy......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source

March 25, 2007, 8:44 PM CT

Drug-eluting and bare-metal stents

Although the use of stents to treat coronary artery disease has soared during the past decade thanks to novel equipment and new implant techniques, clinical data has recently raised concerns around the safety of drug-eluting stents (DES) and their risk of post-procedure complications. A study presented today at the American College of Cardiologys Innovation in Intervention: i2 Summit compared rates of complications in thousands of patients who received bare-metal stents (BMS) or DES. Innovation in Intervention: i2 Summit is an annual meeting for practicing cardiovascular interventionalists sponsored by the American College of Cardiology in partnership with the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions.

Researchers from three University Hospitals in Western Denmark studied 12,395 stent patients; 11,730 coronary lesions were treated with BMS, and 5,422 lesions were treated with DES (CypherTM or TaxusTM). Both BMS and DES patients were treated with two types of blood-thinning medicines for 12 months following stent implantation, as recently recommended by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Researchers followed the patients for 15 months after stent implantation and assessed the rates of stent thrombosis, MI (myocardial infarction, or heart attack), mortality and revascularization (repeat procedure or bypass surgery to treat the target lesion)......... Posted by: Jenn      Read more         Source