Body

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Doctors may soon be using a system in the operating room that recognizes hand gestures as commands to tell a computer to browse and display medical images of the patient during a surgery.

Surgeons routinely need to review medical images and records during surgery, but stepping away from the operating table and touching a keyboard and mouse can delay the procedure and increase the risk of spreading infection-causing bacteria, said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University.

A new study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Health Resources and Services Administration, and published in the January 2013 issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), found that the non-use of donor livers climbed through 2010 due to a worsening of donor liver quality, primarily from donation following cardiac death. Diabetes, donor age, and body mass index (BMI) were also linked to a decrease in use of organs.

Could marriage, and associated companionship, be one key to a longer life? According to new research, not having a permanent partner, or spouse, during midlife is linked to a higher risk of premature death during those midlife years. The work, by Dr. Ilene Siegler and colleagues from Duke University Medical Center in the US, is published online in Springer's journal Annals of Behavioral Medicine.

Animals are more eloquent than previously assumed. Even the monosyllabic call of the banded mongoose is structured and thus comparable with the vowel and consonant system of human speech. Behavioral biologists from the University of Zurich have thus become the first to demonstrate that animals communicate with even smaller sound units than syllables.

One of the most difficult problems in the field of genomics is assembling relatively short "reads" of DNA into complete chromosomes. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences an interdisciplinary group of genome and computer scientists has solved this problem, creating an algorithm that can rapidly create "virtual chromosomes" with no prior information about how the genome is organized.

The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria has initiated a quest for alternatives to conventional antibiotics. One potential alternative is PlyC, a potent enzyme that kills the bacteria that causes strep throat and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. PlyC operates by locking onto the surface of a bacteria cell and chewing a hole in the cell wall large enough for the bacteria's inner membrane to protrude from the cell, ultimately causing the cell to burst and die.

ARLINGTON, VA, January 10, 2013—A study released today from the upcoming issue of the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (JPIDS) found that taking early and repeated white blood cell counts (WBC) is critical in determining whether infants have pertussis and which of those children are at highest risk of death from the disease.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Cholera could be contained in Haiti by vaccinating less than half the population, University of Florida researchers suggest in a paper to be published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports.

The work places UF's Emerging Pathogens Institute in the pro-vaccination camp in an ongoing international debate over how best to contain the two-year-old epidemic that has claimed thousands of lives.

Teenagers with a low muscular strength have a 30% higher risk of committing suicide before the age of 55 years, and a 65% higher risk of developing psychiatric diseases such as depression of schizophrenia. In addition, a low muscular strength during childhood and adolescence is a strong predictor of early death –i.e. before 55 years of age– from cardiovascular disease. A low muscular strength is as powerful a predictor as obesity and high blood pressure.

Spin and bias exist in a high proportion of published studies of the outcomes and adverse side-effects of phase III clinical trials of breast cancer treatments, according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Thursday).

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers are looking to genomic technologies – not the isolation of bacteria or viruses – to quickly detect and diagnose infectious diseases such as the flu and staph.

Two studies appearing online Jan. 9, 2013, both in the journal PLOS ONE, show how a pattern of genomic information among infected individuals can be used to accurately pinpoint the cause of infection.

Kempster adds, "Despite being confined to a very small space within an egg case where they are vulnerable to predators, embryonic sharks are able to recognise dangerous stimuli and react with an innate avoidance response. Knowledge of such behaviours may help us to develop effective shark repellents."

This is a video clip of a bamboo shark embryo responding to an electrical stimulus by ceasing gill movements.

You may have to be over a certain age to be a contestant on "Deal or No Deal", but children as young as five start to maximize their profits - in cookies - when making decisions similar to those on the show, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Valerie Dufour and colleagues from the National Center for Scientific Research in France.

Terman explains, "Sickle cells, unlike normal red blood cells, stick like Velcro to tumor blood vessels where they cluster and shut down the blood supply of oxygen deprived tumors. Once clumped within the tumor, the sickle cells rupture releasing toxic residues that promote tumor cell death."

This new approach differs from current treatment of such hypoxic solid tumors by targeting both the cancer cell and surrounding blood vessels suggesting that sickle cells may be "a potent new tool for treatment of hypoxic solid tumors."