After decades of public safety campaigns focused on drinking and driving, it may be time to focus on the seventh leading cause of injury-related death, according to Bureau of Occupational Health and Injury Prevention at New York State Department of Health and Columbia University scholars looking at New York State.
Few doctors are prescribing a low-cost drug that has been proven effective in preventing the onset of diabetes, according to a study in Annals of Internal Medicine which found that only 3.7 percent of U.S. adults with pre-diabetes were prescribed metformin during a recent three-year period.
Metformin and lifestyle changes both can prevent the onset of diabetes, but people often struggle to adopt healthier habits, according to Dr. Tannaz Moin, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine in the division of endocrinology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and at VA Greater Los Angeles.
"The word, virus, connotes morbidity and mortality, but that bad reputation is not universally deserved," said Marilyn Roossinck, PhD, Professor of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology and Biology at the Pennsylvania State University, University Park. "Viruses, like bacteria, can be important beneficial microbes in human health and in agriculture," she said. Her review of the current literature on beneficial viruses appeared ahead of print April 24 in the Journal of Virology, which is published by the American Society for Microbiology.
More than 1,000 dams have been removed across the United States because of safety concerns, sediment buildup, inefficiency or having otherwise outlived usefulness. A paper published today in Science finds that rivers are resilient and respond relatively quickly after a dam is removed.
"The apparent success of dam removal as a means of river restoration is reflected in the increasing number of dams coming down, more than 1,000 in the last 40 years," said lead author of the study Jim O'Connor, geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Rivers quickly erode sediment accumulated in former reservoirs and redistribute it downstream, commonly returning the river to conditions similar to those prior to impoundment."
Clinics are advertising stem cell treatments using exceptions in FDA regulations, according to a new paper.
In proof-of-concept experiments, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine demonstrate the ability to tune medically relevant cell behaviors by manipulating a key hub in cell communication networks. The manipulation of this communication node, reported in this week's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, makes it possible to reprogram large parts of a cell's signaling network instead of targeting only a single receptor or cell signaling pathway.
A statistical analysis of data from 20 industrial countries covering the period 1970 to 2012 suggests housing market pricing cycles -- normal, boom and bust phases -- have become longer over the last four decades.
The study also found that longer down phases can have dire consequences on national and international economies. While relatively short-lived housing booms tend to deflate, more prolonged booms are likely to spiral out of control. Similarly, compared to short housing busts, longer housing busts are more likely to turn into chronic slumps and, ultimately, lead to severe recessions.
Contrary to popular belief, more healthy kids' meals were ordered after a regional restaurant chain added more healthy options to its kids' menu and removed soda and fries, researchers from ChildObesity180 at Tufts University Friedman School reported today in the journal Obesity. Including more healthy options on the menu didn't hurt overall restaurant revenue, and may have even supported growth.
Dispersal and adaptation are two fundamental evolutionary strategies available to species given an environment. Generalists, like dandelions, send their offspring far and wide. Specialists, like alpine flowers, adapt to the conditions of a particular place.
Ecologists have typically modeled these two strategies, and the selective pressures that trigger them, by holding one strategy fixed and watching how the other evolves. New research published in the journal Evolution illustrates the dramatic interplay during the co-evolution of dispersal and adaptation strategies.
We have all seen "fat bloom", that unwelcome white layer that occasionally forms on chocolate. It is harmless but Europe once banned ugly fruit so cosmetics are clearly important to them and for that reason Nestlé and the Hamburg University of Technology got the DESY synchrotron's high brilliance X-ray source PETRA III on the case.
Common DNA modifications occur through methylation, a chemical process that can dramatically change gene expression, which regulates the eventual production of proteins that carry out the functions of an organism.
DNA encodes genetic information in its chemical bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Methylated cytosine is the dominant DNA modification found in eukaryotes, a taxonomical classification that includes mammals, insects, worms, plants, and algae, but new papers have identified an adenine DNA methylation that also epigenetically regulates cellular function in green algae, worms, and flies.
On March 17th, 2013, an object the size of a boulder hit the lunar surface in Mare Imbrium and exploded in a flash of light nearly 10 times as bright as anything ever recorded before - the largest recorded explosion occurred on the surface of the moon.
A common black fungus, Aspergillus carbonarius ITEM 5010, found in decaying leaves, soil and rotting fruit has been used to to create hydrocarbons, the chief component of petroleum, similar to those in aviation fuels. The fungus produced the most hydrocarbons on a diet of oatmeal but also created them by eating wheat straw or the non-edible leftovers from corn production.
Fungi have been of interest for about a decade within biofuels production as the key producer of enzymes necessary for converting biomass to sugars. Some researchers showed that fungi could create hydrocarbons, but the research was limited to a specific fungus living within a specific tree in the rainforest, and the actual hydrocarbon concentrations were not reported.
