News Articles

 No vaccine currently exists for West Nile Virus, but a new therapeutic made from tobacco plants has been shown to arrest the infection, according to research conducted by Arizona State University scientists. The study, published this week in PNAS,  is the first to demonstrate a plant-derived treatment to successfully combat West Nile virus after exposure and infection. "The goal of this research was twofold," said Arizona State University scientist Qiang Chen. "First, we wanted to show proof-of- concept, demonstrating that plant-made antibodies can work as effective post-exposure therapeutics. Secondly, we've sought to develop a therapeutic which can be made inexpensively so that the health care systems in developing countries can afford it."

Extended use of nicotine patches – 24 weeks versus the standard eight weeks recommended by manufacturers – boosts the number of smokers who maintain their cigarette abstinence and helps more of those who backslide into the habit while wearing the patch, according to new a study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

A palm-sized device invented at Cornell that uses water surface tension as an adhesive bond just might make walking on walls possible for humans. The rapid adhesion mechanism could lead to such applications as shoes or gloves that stick and unstick to walls, or Post-it-like notes that can bear loads, researchers say.The device is the result of inspiration drawn from a beetle native to Florida, which can adhere to a leaf with a force 100 times its own weight, yet also instantly unstick itself. Research behind the device is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to a new report in the Archives of General Psychiatry, individuals at extremely high risk of developing psychosis appear less likely to develop psychotic disorders following a 12-week course of fish oil capsules containing long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. Researchers conducted a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of their effect on the risk of progression to psychosis in 81 individuals at ultra–high risk. These individuals either had mild psychotic symptoms, transient psychosis or a family history of psychotic disorders plus a decrease in functioning. These criteria identify individuals whose risk of becoming psychotic may be as high as 40 percent in a 12-month period.

Anti-smoking activists have made some ridiculous claims about smoking and the associated health risks. In recent years, studies have suggested that movies encourage teenagers to pick up the habit, any exposure to secondhand smoke is dangerous, and that such a thing as ‘third hand smoke’ exists. But a new study in Environmental Health may be the greatest example of exaggeration on the issue ever.

A new report from the National Research Council suggests that naturally occurring methane hydrate may represent an enormous source of methane, the main component of natural gas, and could ultimately augment conventional natural gas supplies. Although a number of challenges require attention before commercial production can be realized, no technical challenges have been identified as insurmountable. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Energy's Methane Hydrate Research and Development Program has made considerable progress in the past five years toward understanding and developing methane hydrate as a possible energy resource, the report claims.

Writing in PLoS Genetics, UCLA Researchers say they have performed the first complete genomic sequencing of a brain cancer cell line, a discovery that may lead to personalized treatments based on the unique biological signature of an individual's cancer and a finding that may unveil new molecular targets for which more effective and less toxic drugs can be developed.

A new study in Acta Paediatrica suggests that parents of four and five-year-olds may be unaware that their children are at an unhealthy weight.  Half of the mothers who took part in the new study thought that their obese four or five year-old was normal weight, as did 39 per cent of the fathers. When it came to overweight children, 75 per cent of mothers and 77 per cent of fathers thought that their child was normal weight. More than 800 parents of 439 children took part in the study, carried out by researchers from the University Medical Centre Groningen in The Netherlands. Five per cent of the children were overweight, four were obese and the rest were normal weight.

In recent years, climate change hasn't proceeded as most scientists expected. Global surface temperatures have not risen as fast in the last decade as they did in the 1980s and 1990s, and researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say they may know why--fluctuations in stratospheric water vapor. The team's new study in Science suggests that Just a 10 percent drop in water vapor ten miles above Earth’s surface has had a big impact on global warming.

Astronomers have discovered another black hole with a mass over fifteen times that of the Sun, one of only three such objects found so far. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300, six million light-years from Earth. "This is the most distant stellar-mass black hole ever weighed, and it's the first one we've seen outside our own galactic neighborhood, the Local Group," says Paul Crowther, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Sheffield and lead author of the paper appearing in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

A new study in the Journal Of Law And Economics suggests that the number of hours physicians work each week is influenced by their fear of malpractice lawsuits.The study found that doctors cut back their workload by almost two hours each week when the expected liability risk increases by 10 percent. The study notes that the decline in hours adds up to the equivalent of one of every 35 physicians retiring without a replacement.The analysis combined data gathered by insurers about medical liability risks in each state and medical specialty with physicians' responses to surveys about their workload and income.

Married couples who refer to themselves as 'we' may annoy everyone around them, but probably have healthier marriages than people who emphasize individuality in their relationships, according to a recent study published in Psychology and Aging.UC Berkeley Researchers analyzed conversations between 154 middle-aged and older couples about points of disagreement in their marriages and found that those who used pronouns such as "we," "our" and "us" behaved more positively toward one another and showed less physiological stress.