Throughout history, Cannabis sativa has been exploited by humanity. Hemp seed oil is rich in omega 6, an essential fatty acid, and its fibre is used in the production of fabrics. Marijuana is known for its mind-altering properties and has been used medicinally for over 2700 years. The changes to the genome that led to drug-producing plants is a mystery of cannabis evolution, but one that has now been solved, thanks to an article published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology.
Culture
Men are funnier than women, but only just barely and mostly to other men. So says a psychology study from the University of California, San Diego Division of Social Sciences.
You've heard of the history of science, the philosophy of science, maybe even the sociology of science. But how about the psychology of science? In a new article in Current Directions in Psychological Science,, San Jose State University psychologist Gregory J. Feist argues that the field has been quietly taking shape over the past decade.
Alexandria, VA — The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 mandates a national comparative outcomes research project agenda for pragmatic and clinical trials that provide optimal evidence-based medicine, according to an article published in the October 2011 issue of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery.
Berkeley — Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have turned a benign virus into an engineering tool for assembling structures that mimic collagen, one of the most important structural proteins in nature. The process they developed could eventually be used to manufacture materials with tunable optical, biomedical and mechanical properties.
Using a simple, single-step process, engineers and scientists at the University of California at Berkeley have developed a technique to direct benign, filamentous viruses called M13 phages to serve as structural building blocks for materials with a wide range of properties.
Contrary to common belief, men age 75 and older are diagnosed with late-stage and more aggressive prostate cancer and thus die from the disease more often than younger men, according to a University of Rochester analysis published online this week by the journal, Cancer.
AUSTIN, Texas — Pesticides and pollutants are related to an alarming 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.
In a new camera trap survey in the world's most biologically diverse landscape, researchers for the Wildlife Conservation Society have identified more individual jaguars than ever before.
Finding innovative, minimally invasive ways to treat liver cancer—and being able to tailor that treatment individually to patients—are hallmarks of interventional radiologists. Advances in yttrium-90 (Y-90) radioembolization for liver cancer, a leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, are reported in studies in the October Journal of Vascular and Interventional Radiology.
DALLAS (SMU) -- An archaeological excavation at Poggio Colla, the site of a 2,700-year-old Etruscan settlement in Italy's Mugello Valley, has turned up a surprising and unique find: two images of a woman giving birth to a child.
Researchers from the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project, which oversees the Poggio Colla excavation site some 20 miles northeast of Florence, discovered the images on a small fragment from a ceramic vessel that is more than 2,600 years old.
CHICAGO, IL and DURHAM, N.C. – Duke University Medical Center researchers have verified data that suggest three medical factors appear to correlate with mortality for a patient who has been under anesthesia for an operation.
The risk of death was 2.5-times higher during the first year after surgery if a patient has low values in all three measures, called a "triple low," compared to patients whose values are all normal.
Using a specially designed risk assessment tool was an effective way of identifying violent hospital patients in medical and surgical units, according to a study in the November issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
American researchers led by Son Chae Kim, Professor of Nursing at Point Loma Nazarene University and Kristyn Ideker, a Registered Nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital, San Diego, California, studied more than 2,000 patients admitted to an American acute care hospital over a five-month period.
Whole communities in Africa could be protected from pneumococcus by immunising young children
A study led by the Medical Research Council in The Gambia in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in this week's PLoS Medicine shows for the first time in Africa, that vaccinating young children against the pneumococcus (a bacterium that can cause fatal infections) causes a herd effect in which the entire community is protected against this infection.
CHICAGO – A review and analysis of 26 validated hospital readmission risk prediction models finds that most, whether for hospital comparison or clinical purposes, have poor predictive ability, according to an article in the October 19 issue of JAMA.