One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.
LAWRENCE, Kansas — Three professors at the University of Kansas have found that a one-time tax break allowed multinational corporations to receive a 22,000 percent average return on lobbying expenditures.
The study was conducted by Raquel Meyer Alexander, assistant professor of accounting; Stephen Mazza, associate dean of the School of Law; and Susan Scholz, associate professor of accounting and Harper Faculty Fellow. Mazza recently presented their findings at the Critical Tax Theory Conference, sponsored by the Indiana University Maurer School of Law in Bloomington.
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin, USA, report in the journal Development (dev.biologists.org) the successful generation from human embryonic stem cells of a type of cell that can make myelin, a finding that opens up new possibilities for both basic and clinical research.
Session: Advances in science, engineering, public policy and hazard mitigation as a result of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
Location: DeAnza Ballroom 1, Thursday, April 9, 2009, 1:30 p.m.
The Loma Prieta earthquake transformed the earthquake sciences and engineering and remains a major focus of study, some twenty years later. The 17 October 1989 magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake severely shook the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions and initiated major changes in earthquake science and engineering, disaster response and public policy well beyond California.
Seismologists are re-evaluating the earthquake potential of the Central Coast, a very complex tectonic region located west of the San Andreas Fault, between Monterey Bay and the Western Transverse Ranges. This area of increasing population growth ranks as one of the top 40 U.S. metropolitan areas with significant earthquake risk.
Speakers from the US Geological Survey, PG&E and academia will compare fresh data to illuminate the complexity of faulting in the central California coastal region.
Three talks will use separate datasets to focus on the California Central Ranges, Hosgri Fault Zone and nearby faults:
PITTSBURGH, April 9 – Stem cells collected from human corneas restore transparency and don't trigger a rejection response when injected into eyes that are scarred and hazy, according to experiments conducted in mice by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their study will be published in the journal Stem Cells and appears online today.
The findings suggest that cell-based therapies might be an effective way to treat human corneal blindness and vision impairment due to the scarring that occurs after infection, trauma and other common eye problems, said senior investigator James L. Funderburgh, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Ophthalmology. The Pitt corneal stem cells were able to remodel scar-like tissue back to normal.
Patient-to-patient transmission of hepatitis B virus (HBV) can occur as the result of routine clinical practices incorrectly thought to be risk-free. A review of 33 HBV outbreaks, published in the open access journal BMC Medicine, has shown that the most frequent HBV transmission routes are administration of drugs using multi-vial compounds and capillary blood sampling (e.g. for glucose monitoring) using non-disposable devices.
HOUSTON (April 10, 2009) – The so-called purple pill, known popularly as Nexium and and esomeprazole to physicians, did not reduce asthma symptoms in patients who did not have symptoms of heartburn, said researchers, including one from Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu), in a report that appears today in The New England Journal of Medicine (www.nejm.org).
Lung experts from Johns Hopkins and elsewhere are calling on physicians to suspend the routine use of potent heartburn medications in asthmatics solely to temper recurrent attacks of wheezing, coughing and breathlessness.
Calling the longstanding practice "ineffective" and "unnecessarily expensive," the experts say there is no benefit from using so-called proton pump inhibitors in the absence of the stomach upset. The condition plagues 5 million asthma sufferers in the United States, of whom half (or 2.5 million) have what is known as "silent" reflux, and lack the characteristic symptom of heartburn from the backup of acid into the esophagus.
CHICAGO—For nearly 20 years, doctors believed severe asthma symptoms such as coughing, sneezing and breathlessness were triggered, in part, by acid reflux. Asthma sufferers were often prescribed heartburn medication in an effort to help their asthma symptoms.
A new national study, led in Illinois by a researcher from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, has found that the longstanding practice of prescribing heartburn medication is ineffective and unnecessarily expensive for asthma patients who don't exhibit symptoms associated with acid reflux such as heartburn or stomach pain.
A commonly used treatment for acid reflux does not improve asthma symptoms or control in patients who do not have symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux (GER), according to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health and by the American Lung Association (ALA). This suggests that silent GER (acid reflux that causes only minimal or no reflux symptoms) does not play a role in asthma, as has previously been thought.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that a widely used treatment for persistent acid reflux among asthmatics doesn't actually improve their quality of life. The finding that as many as one-third of those studied showed no improvement makes a strong case arguing that physicians should change how they currently treat these patients.
John Mastronarde, a clinical associate professor of medicine, along with scientists nationally, sought to determine if acid reflux disease, commonly known as gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD, worsens asthma symptoms. Mastronarde is also a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at Ohio State's Medical Center and director of its asthma center.
Measuring kidney function by assessing two different factors—glomerular filtration rate (GFR) and urinary albumin levels—helps determine which patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) will develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD), according to a study appearing in the May 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). This combination test could help physicians identify patients at high risk of serious kidney trouble and allow them to intervene at an early stage.
