Body

MANHATTAN, Kansas — Football teams are claiming it improves their athletic performance, and according to new research from Kansas State University, it also benefits heart failure patients. The special ingredient: beetroot.

Recently, the Auburn University football team revealed its pregame ritual of taking beetroot concentrate, or beet juice, before each game. The juice may have contributed to the team's recent winning season — and one exercise physiologist who has been studying the supplement for several years says that may be the case.

Scientists have identified 181 California dams that may need to increase water flows to protect native fish downstream. The screening tool developed by the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California, Davis, to select "high-priority" dams may be particularly useful during drought years amid competing demands for water.

On behalf of the Federal Ministry of Health (BMG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether specific methodological aspects have to be considered in the conduct, analysis and assessment of the certainty of results of studies on rare diseases. Within the framework of the same commission, the Institute also analysed the underlying studies for the approval of so-called orphan drugs, i.e. drugs for rare diseases, in Europe.

While losses in family income predict increases in behavior problems for many children, attending high-quality early childhood education and care centers offers some protection against families' economic declines, according to a new study out of Norway. In Norway, publicly subsidized high-quality early childhood education and care is available to all children, from low-income to affluent, starting at age 1. The study found that children who don't take part in such programs have more early behavior problems when their families' income drops.

A rare form of a devastating disease which causes low blood sugar levels in babies and infants may now be recognised earlier thanks to a new test developed by researchers from The University of Manchester.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Right out of the starting gate, Michigan's expansion of health coverage for the poor and near-poor holds lessons for other states that are still on the fence about expanding their own Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, a new analysis shows.

In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, a team of University of Michigan Medical School researchers publish the first analysis of the initial results from the Healthy Michigan Plan, which launched this past April.

Good news, bad news: The amount of trans fats we eat has declined over the last 30 years, but we're still consuming more than recommended.

In a study reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association, researchers reviewed results from a series of six surveys as part of the Minnesota Heart Survey in 1980-2009.

More than 12,000 adults 25-74 years old in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area revealed that:

MINNEAPOLIS – Bariatric surgery may be a risk factor for a condition that causes severe headaches, according to a study published in the October 22, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

No significant variation was found in hospital readmission rates after colorectal cancer surgery when the data was adjusted to account for patient characteristics, coexisting illnesses and operation types, which may prompt questions about the use of readmission rates as a measure of hospital quality.

WORCESTER, MA –Using an innovative exome sequencing strategy, a team of international scientists led by John Landers, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has shown that TUBA4A, the gene encoding the Tubulin Alpha 4A protein, is associated with familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Details of the study were published today in Neuron.

Combining a PET scanner with a new chemical tracer that selectively tags specific types of bacteria, Johns Hopkins researchers working with mice report they have devised a way to detect and monitor in real time infections with dangerous Gram-negative bacteria. These increasingly drug-resistant bacteria are responsible for a range of diseases, including fatal pneumonias and various bloodstream or solid-organ infections acquired in and outside the hospital.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the final version of the US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Volumes I and II. The roadmap focuses on strategic and tactical objectives to support the federal government's accelerated adoption of cloud computing. This final document reflects the input from more than 200 comments on the initial draft received from around the world.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Prostate offers compelling evidence that inflammation may be the link between Vitamin D and prostate cancer. Specifically, the study shows that the gene GDF-15, known to be upregulated by Vitamin D, is notably absent in samples of human prostate cancer driven by inflammation.

Invasive seaweed shelters native crustacean

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch, and Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University have identified small molecules that can represent a new class of anticancer drugs with a novel target for the treatment of lung cancer. These findings are detailed in Nature Communications. A PCT patent (WO 2013028543 A1) was jointly documented by these two Institutes for the invention.