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Neurons that can multitask greatly enhance the brain's computational power, study finds. Over the past few decades, neuroscientists have made much progress in mapping the brain by deciphering the functions of individual neurons that perform very specific tasks, such as recognizing the location or color of an object. However, there are many neurons, especially in brain regions that perform sophisticated functions such as thinking and planning, that don't fit into this pattern...

National guidelines recommend that at-risk women be screened for elevated cholesterol levels to reduce their chances of developing cardiovascular disease. But who is 'at risk?' The results of a study by investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to estimate the proportion of women young and old who have cholesterol levels that meet the definition of being at-risk are reported in an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Journal of Women's Health website...

CosmosID®, a leading data mining solutions company for health and wellness, has reported as part of a collaboration results on analysis of labeling claims for the composition of probiotic products comparing speed, specificity, and accuracy. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CosmosID® conducted side-by-side analysis of a number of commercially available probiotics, four of which have been reported at the American Society for Microbiology...

Researchers from King's College London have for the first time used a novel form of MRI to identify crucial developmental processes in the brain that are vulnerable to the effects of premature birth. This new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), shows that disruption of these specific processes can have an impact on cognitive function...

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have mapped the significance of heredity for common forms of atherosclerotic disease. No studies have previously examined whether different forms of the disease share heredity. The study looked at coronary heart disease, ischemic stroke, peripheral arterial disease and atherosclerosis of the aorta in individuals whose siblings and parents have suffered different types of cardiovascular disease...

A novel vaccine study from South Dakota State University (SDSU) headlined the groundbreaking research unveiled at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' (AAPS) National Biotechnology Conference (NBC). The meeting took place at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina. "The main goal of a vaccine is to stimulate the immune system to fight against a pathogen that causes the disease", explained Dr. Hemachand Tummala, assistant professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at SDSU...

There is a link between use of anabolic-androgenic steroids and reduced mental health later in life. This is the main conclusion of a new study on elite male strength athletes that researchers from the University of Gothenburg recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. Twenty per cent of the subjects in the study admitted steroid use. The study is published by CERA, which is the University of Gothenburg's centre for education and research on addiction...

A new computer model could help scientists predict when a particular strain of avian influenza might become infectious from bird to human, according to a report to be published in the International Journal Data Mining and Bioinformatics. Chuang Ma of the University of Arizona, Tucson, and colleagues at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, explain that since 1997 several strains of avian influenza A virus (AIV), commonly known as "bird flu" have infected people directly from their natural bird hosts leading to numerous deaths...

Discovering that mouse hair has a circadian clock - a 24-hour cycle of growth followed by restorative repair - researchers suspect that hair loss in humans from toxic cancer radiotherapy and chemotherapy might be minimized if these treatments are given late in the day. The study, which appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that mice lost 85 percent of their hair if they received radiation therapy in the morning, compared to a 17 percent loss when treatment occurred in the evening...

Researchers from the Masonic Cancer Center, University of Minnesota, and the University's Brain Tumor Program, have developed a new mouse model of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) that allow them to discover new genes and gene pathways driving this type of cancer. The research was published this week in the journal Nature Genetics. Utilizing the Sleeping Beauty transposon method, researchers in the lab of David Largaespada, Ph.D...

While Huntington's disease (HD) is currently incurable, the HD research community anticipates that new disease-modifying therapies in development may slow or minimize disease progression. The success of HD research depends upon the identification of reliable and sensitive biomarkers to track disease and evaluate therapies, and these biomarkers may eventually be used as outcome measures in clinical trials. Biomarkers could be especially helpful to monitor changes during the time prior to diagnosis and appearance of overt symptomatology...

Nearly 20 percent of kidneys that are recovered from deceased donors in the U.S. are refused for transplant due to factors ranging from scarring in small blood vessels of the kidney's filtering units to the organ going too long without blood or oxygen...

Little is known about the effect of physical education (PE) on child weight, but a new study from Cornell University finds that increasing the amount of time that elementary schoolchildren spent in gym class reduces the probability of obesity. The study represents some of the first evidence of a causal effect of PE on youth obesity, and is forthcoming in the Journal of Health Economics. An early, online version of the study can be viewed here...

Video games that pit players against human-looking characters may be more likely to provoke violent thoughts and words than games where monstrous creatures are the enemy, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Connecticut and Wake Forest University...

New research suggests that a compound abundant in the Mediterranean diet takes away cancer cells' "superpower" to escape death. By altering a very specific step in gene regulation, this compound essentially re-educates cancer cells into normal cells that die as scheduled. One way that cancer cells thrive is by inhibiting a process that would cause them to die on a regular cycle that is subject to strict programming...

The surgical management of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in U.S. hospitals varies widely depending on the race of the patient, according to a new study. "In most patients, the initial treatment for Stage I and Stage II NSCLC is surgery," said researcher Jayanth Adusumalli, MBBS, of the Creighton University Medical Center in Omaha, Nebraska. "In our study of more than 1,200,000 patients diagnosed with NSCLC in US hospitals between the years 2000 and 2010, we found statistically significant racial disparities in the surgical management of these patients...

Delayed transfer to the intensive care unit (ICU) in hospitalized patients significantly increases the risk of dying in the hospital, according to a new study from researchers in Chicago. "Early intervention improves outcomes for many of the conditions that are indications for inpatient transfer to the ICU. This suggests that delaying ICU transfer may increase the risk of death in these patients," said lead author Matthew Churpek, MD, MPH, of the University of Chicago Medical Center...

Children who have suffered maltreatment are 36% more likely to be obese in adulthood compared to non-maltreated children, according to a new study by King's College London. The authors estimate that the prevention or effective treatment of 7 cases of child maltreatment could avoid 1 case of adult obesity. The findings come from the combined analysis of data from 190,285 individuals from 41 studies worldwide, published this week in Molecular Psychiatry...

The decision to limit life support in patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) appears to be significantly influenced by physician practices and/or the culture of the hospital, suggests new findings from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference...

Early-life exposure to traffic-related air pollution was significantly associated with higher hyperactivity scores at age 7, according to new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. The research is detailed in a study published in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer-reviewed open access journal published by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, an institute within the National Institutes of Health (NIH)...