Body

TORONTO, ON., March 8, 2011—Homeless patients cost about $2,500 more per hospital stay than the average patient, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital.

Homeless people with medical or surgical problems arrive at the hospital with underlying health issues and stay longer than others, often because there is no place to send them after their initial medical crisis has been treated, the study found. Those with psychiatric illness arrive at the hospital much sicker than others.

Metabolomics is a post-genomic research field for analysis of low molecular weight compounds in biological systems, and its approaches offer an analysis of metabolite level changes in biological samples. Recently, metabolomic method has shown great potentials in identifying the new diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets for cancers. However, metabolomic studies on cancer metastasis remain scarce.

Biliary atresia (BA) is an inflammatory obliterative cholangiopathy with unknown etiology, leading to progressive fibrosis and cirrhosis. Microarray technology, emerged as an indispensable research tool for gene expression profiling, has been used to study the mechanism underlying BA, and allows the simultaneous analysis of thousands of transcripts within a single experiment. Some studies have been performed to investigate the gene expression profiling of livers from BA patients.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Western countries. Metastatic liver disease more frequently develops metachronous metastasis following treatment of CRC. It was reported that hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection finally reduces the risk of intrahepatic metastasis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients with a higher survival rate and therefore can be considered an important prognostic factor for HCC patients. Rare reports are available on the relation between HBV infection and hepatic metastasis of CRC.

The artificial intelligence program "Watson" may have outsmarted human competitors on the television quiz show "Jeopardy!" recently, but it would have to go a long way to best an intelligence analyst, according to Kristan Wheaton, J.D., associate professor of intelligence studies at Mercyhurst College.

On Feb. 14-16, the reigning champions of Jeopardy! – Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter – faced a formidable new competitor – a supercomputer named Watson under development by IBM for four years. Watson defeated his adversaries handily.

High levels of "good" (high density lipoprotein) HDL cholesterol seem to cut the risk of bowel cancer, suggests research published online in Gut.

The association is independent of other potentially cancer-inducing markers of inflammation in the blood.

The researchers base their findings on participants in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study. This is tracking the long term impact of diet on the development of cancer in more than half a million people in 10 European countries, including the UK.

Traditional Chinese acupuncture curbs the severity of hot flushes and other menopausal symptoms, suggests a small study published today in Acupuncture in Medicine.

The effects did not seem to be related to changes in levels of the hormones responsible for sparking the menopause and its associated symptoms, the study shows.

AMES, Iowa – L. Keith Woo is searching for cleaner, greener chemical reactions.

Woo, an Iowa State University professor of chemistry and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, has studied catalysts and the chemical reactions they affect for more than 25 years. And these days, his focus is on green catalysis.

Two types of raw materials are currently used for biorefining and biofuel production: carbohydrates and lipids. Biofuels like ethanol are derived from carbohydrate raw materials such as sugars and lignocellulose, while biodiesels are derived from another raw material, lipid-rich vegetable oil.

Biologists tend to look at cells in bulk, observing them as a group and taking the average behavior as the norm — the assumption is that genetically identical cells all behave the same way. In a paper to be published in the online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 7, 2011, Sam Sia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia Engineering, presents the results of his four-year tissue-engineering study that show a surprising range of variation in how individual cells behave during formation of a blood vessel.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- A University of Florida study demonstrates extinction's ripple effect through the animal kingdom, including how the demise of large mammals 20,000 years ago led to the disappearance of one species of cowbird.

The study shows the trickle-down effect the loss of large mammals has on other species, and researchers say it is a lesson from the past that should be remembered when making conservation, game and land-use decisions today.

Poor diet during pregnancy increases offspring's vulnerability to the effects of aging, new research has shown for the first time.

The research, by scientists from the University of Cambridge, provides important insight into why children born to mothers who consumed an unhealthy diet during pregnancy have an increased risk of type 2 diabetes (a significant contributing factor to heart disease and cancer) later in life.

Researchers at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and collaborators at the FBI, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Northern Arizona University have published the first scientific paper based on their investigation into the anthrax attacks of 2001. The case was groundbreaking in its use of genomics and microbiology in a criminal investigation. More than 20 people contracted anthrax from Bacillus anthracis spores mailed through the U.S.

LA JOLLA, CA, AND JUPITER, FL – March 7, 2011 – Embargoed by the journal PNAS until March 7, 2011, 3 PM, Eastern time –Working as part of a public program to screen compounds to find potential medicines and other biologically useful molecules, scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered an extremely potent class of potential anti-cancer and anti-neurodegenerative disorder compounds. The scientists hope their findings will one day lead to new therapies for cancer and Alzheimer's disease patients.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Despite the fears of some, a new study suggests that use of the internet in general does not make people more likely to believe political rumors.

However, one form of internet communication – e-mail – does seem to have troubling consequences for the spread and belief of rumors.

"I think a lot of people will be surprised to learn that using the internet doesn't necessarily promote belief in rumors. Many people seem to think that's self-evident," said R. Kelly Garrett, author of the study and assistant professor of communication at Ohio State University.