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.
A new study links a well-known cell communication pathway called Notch to one of the most common -- but overall still rare -- brain tumors found in children.
Researchers have uncovered a pathway that's key for protecting healthy tissue from overly active immune responses. The findings, which are described in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, may help clinicians provide better treatments for patients with a variety of autoimmune diseases.
During inflammatory responses due to infection, trauma, or cancer, the body's immune system becomes highly activated in an attempt to fend off invading organisms, foreign bodies, or tumor cells. Excessive immune activation, however, often results in collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissues. Even worse, uncontrolled immune responses can lead to the development of self-destructive autoimmune diseases.
The brain’s GPS wouldn't be much value if its maps of our surroundings that were not calibrated to the real world - grounded in reality. But they are, and a new study shows how this is done.The way that the brain’s internal maps are linked and anchored to the external world has been a mystery for a decade, ever since 2014 Nobel Laureates May-Britt and Edvard Moser discovered grid cells, the key reference system of our brain’s spatial navigation system. Now, researchers at the Mosers’ Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience believe they have solved this mystery.
Most people don't realize it, but the majority of stars in our galaxy arrive in pairs. These fraternal twins tend to be somewhat equal partners when it comes to mass, but in a quest to find mismatched star pairs called extreme mass-ratio binaries, astronomers have discovered a new class of binary stars: One star is fully formed while the other is still in its infancy.
Osteoporosis is the most common type of bone disease, it is characterized by bones becoming so weak and brittle a simple cough can cause a fracture. About half of all women over the age of 50 are at risk. It is preventable but for those who have it, existing treatments for this pathological bone loss mean inhibiting osteoclasts (bone-destroying cells) to limit bone degradation - but by doing so, they also prevent bone formation since it is stimulated by the presence of these very same osteoclast cells.
A fossil discovery has provided a missing link that helps to resolve a more than 5-million-year gap in fur seal and sea lion evolutionary history.This new genus and species of fur seal has been called Eotaria crypta. Eotaria means 'dawn sea lion'. The species was tiny, with adults being only slightly larger than a sea otter and around the size of a juvenile New Zealand fur seal, according to University of Otago graduate student Robert Boessenecker, who found the fossil while looking through the John D. Cooper Archaeological and Paleontological Center.
Muscles necessary for breathing need a greater amount of oxygen in women than in men, according to a study published today in The Journal of Physiology.
Researchers found that at submaximal and maximal exercise intensities, respiratory muscles (muscles necessary for breathing, such as the diaphragm and muscles surrounding the ribcage) consume a greater amount of oxygen in women compared with men. This means that women use more energy when breathing because a significantly greater part of total oxygen is directed to the respiratory muscles.
Crops and other plants are constantly faced with adverse environmental conditions, such as rising temperatures (2014 was the warmest year on record) and lessening fresh water supplies, which lower yield and cost farmers billions of dollars annually.
Drought is a major environmental stress factor affecting plant growth and development. When plants encounter drought, they naturally produce abscisic acid (ABA), a stress hormone that inhibits plant growth and reduces water consumption. Specifically, the hormone turns on a receptor (special protein) in plants when it binds to the receptor like a hand fitting into a glove, resulting in beneficial changes - such as the closing of guard cells on leaves, called stomata, to reduce water loss - that help the plants survive.
There is no time to waste when it comes to stroke. The more time that passes between stroke onset and treatment, the worse the outcome is for the patient. A study designed to test the benefits of early administration of magnesium sulfate suggests that stroke patients may not have to wait until they get to the hospital for treatment -- paramedics may be able to start therapy as soon as stroke is suspected. Although the drug did not improve outcome in stroke patients, the study demonstrated the feasibility of early therapy in the ambulance. The results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and the study was funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), part of the National Institutes of Health.
The folks in Boston might feel like they are having a run of bad weather now, but it's nothing like the intense hurricanes, fueled by warmer oceans, that frequently pounded the region during the first millennium, from the peak of the Roman Empire into the height of the Middle Ages, according to a new study.
People who suffer motor disability may soon get a high-technology boost from neurorobotics, neuroprosthetics and virtual reality.The HYPER research project, with a budget of 5 million euros and the participation of the IK4 R&D Alliance under the coordination of the Spanish National Scientific Research Council (CSIC), has been running since 2010 and has led to the development of systems that facilitate new rehabilitation therapies and ways to compensate for gait in patients who have had spinal cord injuries or cerebral strokes. Various prototypes have been developed and one of them is undergoing a preliminary clinical validation process with 10 patients with spinal cord injuries at the National Hospital for Paraplegics in Toledo.
High-powered microwave devices are designed to transfer energy to targets via ultra-high-frequency radio waves, in civil applications, such as radar and communication systems, heating and current drive of plasmas in fusion devices, and acceleration in high-energy linear colliders. They can also be used for military purpose in directed-energy weapons or missile guidance systems.
