Culture
PULLMAN, Wash. Soil pathogen testing - critical to farming, but painstakingly slow and expensive - will soon be done accurately, quickly, inexpensively and onsite, thanks to research that Washington State University scientists plant pathologists are sharing.
As the name implies, these tests detect disease-causing pathogens in the soil that can severely devastate crops.
Until now, the tests have required large, expensive equipment or lab tests that take weeks.
Lizards have special superpowers. While birds can regrow feathers and mammals can regrow skin, lizards can regenerate entire structures such as their tails. Despite these differences, all have evolved from the same ancestor as lizards.
Spreading through the Americas, one lizard group, the anoles, evolved like Darwin's finches, adapting to different islands and different habitats on the mainland. Today there are more than 400 species.
URBANA, Ill. - Over the past 30 years, the prevalence of overweight and obesity has doubled in 2- to 5-year-olds and tripled in children aged 6 to 11 years. To address this public health concern, in 2011, the USDA funded the Illinois Transdisciplinary Obesity Prevention Program (I-TOPP), a joint doctoral/Masters of Public Health (MPH) degree program, at the University of Illinois with the goal of training future leaders to address the problem of childhood obesity.
Many hospital patients get medicine or nutrition delivered straight into their bloodstream through a tiny device called a PICC. In just a decade, it's become the go-to device for intravenous care.
But a new study finds that one in every four times a PICC gets inserted, the patient didn't need it long enough to justify the risks that it can also pose.
In fact, in just the five days or less that they had a PICC implanted in their vein, nearly one in ten of these patients suffered a blocked line, an infection, a blood clot or another complication linked to the device.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The arrangement of a city's streets and buildings plays a crucial role in the local urban heat island effect, which causes cities to be hotter than their surroundings, researchers have found. The new finding could provide city planners and officials with new ways to influence those effects.
While some may see corporate diversity initiatives as nothing more than glitzy marketing campaigns, a PSU business school professor's research shows that companies that hire a more diverse set of employees are rewarded with a richer pipeline of innovative products and a stronger financial position.
February 23, 2018 - At most US maternity units, women in labor are put on nil per os (NPO) status--they're not allowed to eat or drink anything, except ice chips. But new nursing research questions that policy, showing no increase in risks for women who are allowed to eat and drink during labor.
A new analysis of data from two lunar missions finds evidence that the Moon's water is widely distributed across the surface and is not confined to a particular region or type of terrain. The water appears to be present day and night, though it's not necessarily easily accessible.
New York, NY (February 23, 2018)--Children from low-income neighborhoods had a higher mortality rate and higher hospital costs after heart surgery compared with those from higher-income neighborhoods, found a national study of more than 86,000 kids with congenital heart disease. The magnitude of the neighborhood effect, which persisted even after accounting for race, type of insurance, and hospital, was similar for children of all disease severities.
The findings were published online today in Pediatrics.
More than half of gun owners do not safely store all their guns, according to a new survey of 1,444 U.S. gun owners conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The survey, believed to be the first nationally representative sample in 15 years to examine gun storage practices in U.S. households, found that 54 percent of gun owners reported not storing all their guns safely. The internet-based survey was fielded by the survey research firm GfK Knowledge Networks between March 15 and April 13, 2016.
MINNEAPOLIS - Tears may hold clues to whether someone has Parkinson's disease, according to a preliminary study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 70th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, April 21 to 27, 2018.
"We believe our research is the first to show that tears may be a reliable, inexpensive and noninvasive biological marker of Parkinson's disease," said study author Mark Lew, MD, of the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology.
Using an innovative crystallization technique for studying three-dimensional structures of gene transcription machinery, an international team of researchers, led by scientists at Penn State, has revealed new insights into the long debated action of the "magic spot"--a molecule that controls gene expression in Eschericahia coli and many other bacteria when the bacteria are stressed. The study contributes to our fundamental understanding of how bacteria adapt and survive under adverse conditions and provides clues about key processes that could be targeted in the search for new antibiotics.
Researchers at New York University College of Dentistry (NYU Dentistry), in collaboration with Rheonix, Inc. (Ithaca, NY), are developing a novel test for Zika virus that uses saliva to identify diagnostic markers of the virus in a fraction of the time of current commercial tests.
The test, which was adapted from an existing model developed by NYU and Rheonix for rapid HIV testing, is described in two new publications appearing in PLOS ONE and the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE).
How Zika is Tested
For previously healthy children, brain infections are rare. But about one out of every 10,000 people who are exposed to common viruses like herpes simplex or influenza will develop a potentially deadly disease, encephalitis.
Chronic kidney disease causes irreversible deterioration in renal function, often requiring dialysis or transplant surgery.
In children, genetic causes account for the greatest number of cases.
Published today in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology the research shows children with CKD are at greater risk of deficits in academic skills, visual and verbal memory, and executive function.
The analysis included 34 studies of over 3000 children and adolescents under the age of 21 years.
Key findings