Body

NEW YORK (16 December 2014) -- The Population Council published new research in the November issue of the journal Contraception demonstrating that an investigational one-year contraceptive vaginal ring containing Nestorone® and ethinyl estradiol was found to be highly acceptable among women enrolled in a Phase 3 clinical trial.

NEW YORK, NY (December 15, 2014)--Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have found that, in addition to gluten, the immune systems of patients with celiac disease react to specific types of non-gluten protein in wheat. The results were reported online in the Journal of Proteome Research.

HOUSTON - (Dec. 16, 2014) - Rice University scientists have detected at least three instances of cross-species mating that likely influenced the evolutionary paths of "old world" mice, two in recent times and one in the distant past.

PRINCETON, N.J.--More than half of all American children will likely live with an unmarried mother at some point before they reach age 18, according to a report issued by Princeton University and Harvard University.

We humans have an exceptional age structure compared to other animals: Our children remain dependent on their parents for an unusually long period and our elderly live an extremely long time after they have stopped procreating.

Could the microscopic fellow travelers that consider the human body to be their home - collectively known as the microbiome - have played an active role in shaping and maintaining this unusual aspect of human nature?

In a study that included overweight and obese participants, those with diets with low glycemic index of dietary carbohydrate did not have improvements in insulin sensitivity, lipid levels, or systolic blood pressure, according to a study in the December 17 issue of JAMA.

DALLAS - Dec. 16, 2014 - It's a sound that saves. A "real-time" radiation monitor that alerts by beeping in response to radiation exposure during cardiac-catheterization procedures significantly reduces the amount of exposure that medical workers receive, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers found.

Boston, MA-- Nutrition experts are continually debating the nutritional value of carbohydrate-containing foods and whether some are healthier than others. High carbohydrate foods are classified by how much they increase blood sugar; known as glycemic index. In new findings led by researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) in Boston and Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Baltimore, researchers looked at glycemic index' effect on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes and found that low glycemic diets did not improve insulin sensitivity or cardiovascular risk factors.

Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health analyzed the results of the Oregon Health Experiment, where eligible uninsured individuals were randomly assigned Medicaid or to stay with their current care. Considered controversial because the experiment found no measurable gains for physical health it did reveal benefits for mental health, financial wellbeing, and preventive screening. In terms of quality-adjusted life years, the researchers showed that Medicaid is an excellent value--a $62,000 gain in quality-adjusted life years.

It may seem counterintuitive, but exercise can be beneficial for people suffering from arthritis and other muscle and joint conditions. A new study at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) finds that older adults experienced less pain, reduced stiffness and less fatigue after participating in a hospital-based exercise program.

"The study adds to the growing body of evidence that exercise can help people with muscle and joint conditions," said Sandra Goldsmith, MA, MS, RD, director of Public and Patient Education at Hospital for Special Surgery.

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have developed a method of detecting, across the entire genome of human cells, unwanted DNA breaks induced by use of the popular gene-editing tools called CRISPR-Cas RNA-guided nucleases (RGNs). Members of the same team that first described these off-target effects in human cells describe their new platform, called Genome-wide Unbiased Indentification of DSBs Evaluated by Sequencing (GUIDE-seq), in a report being published online in Nature Biotechnology.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins have found that dense mats of interacting bacteria, called biofilms, were present in the majority of cancers and polyps, particularly those on the right side of the colon. The presence of these bacterial bunches, they say, may represent an increased risk for colon cancer and could form the basis of new diagnostic tests.

Home- and community-based HIV testing and counselling services can achieve high participation uptake in rural Africa but reach different populations within a community and should be provided depending on the groups that are being targeted, according to new research published in this week's PLOS Medicine by Niklaus Labhardt from the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, and colleagues from SolidarMed, a Swiss non-governmental Organization for Health in Africa.

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Introverted employees are more likely to give low evaluations of job performance to extroverted co-workers, giving introverts a powerful role in workplaces that rely on peer-to-peer evaluation tools for awarding raises, bonuses or promotions, new research shows.

The team responsible for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument suite on NASA's Curiosity rover has made the first definitive detection of organic molecules at Mars. Organic molecules are the building blocks of all known forms of terrestrial life, and consist of a wide variety of molecules made primarily of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. However, organic molecules can also be made by chemical reactions that don't involve life, and there is not enough evidence to tell if the matter found by the team came from ancient Martian life or from a non-biological process.