Body

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A team at the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering has developed a novel way to build what many see as the next generation memory storage devices for portable electronic devices including smart phones, tablets, laptops and digital cameras.

Adults increasingly are conveying their personal experiences with serious disease online, but do such chronicles help the authors or their audience?

In the first known study of its kind, UCLA researchers discovered that creating a personal website to chronicle the cancer experience and communicate with one's social network can reduce depressive symptoms, increase positive mood and enhance appreciation for life among women diagnosed with breast cancer.

Barcelona, Spain – August 14, 2013 – A study published today reported the identification of what may be the earliest known biomarker associated with the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The results suggest that this novel potential biomarker is present in cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) at least a decade before signs of dementia manifest.

PHILADELPHIA —Prostate cancer aggressiveness may be established when the tumor is formed and not alter with time, according to a study published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

As growing numbers of species in the modern world face extinction because of global climate change, habitat destruction, and over-exploitation, scientists have turned to the fossil record to understand how mass extinctions in the past proceeded, and how species and ecosystems recovered in the aftermath of such events.

The study's findings are surprising as much research so far suggests that the survivors of mass extinctions are often presented with new ecological opportunities because the loss of many species in their communities allows them to evolve new lifestyles and new anatomical features as they fill the roles vacated by the victims. However, it turns out that not all survivors respond in the same way, and some may not be able to exploit fully the new opportunities arising after a mass extinction.

An assessment of expert members of panels making decisions about definitions or diagnostic criteria for common conditions in the US, which were published in guidelines used by physicians and other healthcare professionals caring for patients, found that most members had ties to industry. The assessment was made in a study from Ray Moynihan of Bond University, Queensland, Australia, and colleagues published in this week's issue of PLOS Medicine.

While there have been substantial improvements in mortality rates and an increase in access to reproductive health interventions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), the global health community is neglecting prevention, screening, and treatment for cervical cancer in LMICs. These are the conclusions of a new article in PLOS Medicine this week by Ruby Singhrao and colleagues from the University of California San Francisco, San Francisco.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The everyday physical activities of an isolated group of forager-farmers in central Bolivia are providing valuable information about how industrialization and its associated modern amenities may impact health and wellness.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Patients with severe mitral valve regurgitation who are otherwise healthy should have mitral valve repair surgery sooner rather than later, even if they feel no symptoms, a Mayo Clinic-led study by U.S. and European researchers found. The results challenge the long-held belief that it is safer to "watch and wait" until a patient has symptoms, such as shortness of breath. This is the largest study to show that patients who undergo surgery early after diagnosis have improved long-term survival and lower risk of heart failure.

In a study that included patients with mitral valve regurgitation due to a condition known as flail mitral valve leaflets, performance of early surgical correction compared with initial medical management was associated with greater long-term survival and lower risk of heart failure, according to a study in the August 14 issue of JAMA.

"Although screening programs prior to participation in sports have been used for many years for young competitive athletes, it has been suggested that screening programs might also be worthwhile in the general population. Description of the incidence of sports-related sudden death by specific sports as well as by sex and age may help inform the debate," write Eloi Marijon, M.D., of the Université Paris Descartes, Sorbonne Paris Cité, Paris, and colleagues.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2013—Light traveling in a vacuum is the Universe's ultimate speed demon, racing along at approximately 300,000 kilometers per second. Now scientists have found an effective new way to put a speed bump in light's path.

AMHERST, Mass. – In two recently published peer-reviewed articles, toxicologist Edward Calabrese of the University of Massachusetts Amherst describes how regulators came to adopt the linear no threshold (LNT) dose-response approach to ionizing radiation exposure in the 1950s, which was later generalized to chemical carcinogen risk assessment.

Communities in nature are likely to be a lot more sensitive to change than previously thought, according to a new study at Rice University.

The study, which appears this week in Nature Communications, shows that scientists concerned about human influence on the biosphere need to take a deeper look at how altering the dynamics of a population -- for example, by removing large members of a species through overfishing -- can have measurable consequences, said Rice ecologist Volker Rudolf.