Body

RICHMOND, Va. (Oct. 24, 2012) – High compliance with hand hygiene and focusing on other simple infection control measures on medical, surgical and neuroscience intensive care units resulted in reduced rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection by 95 percent in a nine-year study, according to research findings by Virginia Commonwealth University physicians presented during IDWeek 2012.

Those tiny balls of boutique mozzarella cheese with the sticker-shock price tag beckoning from the dairy case — are they the real deal, mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, crafted from the milk of water buffaloes? Or are they really cheap fakes made from cow's milk? A new method described in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry promises to provide the answer for mozzarella and other dairy products.

This press release is available in Spanish.

Potatoes with higher levels of beneficial carotenoids are the result of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) studies to improve one of America's most popular vegetables.

Scientists with USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) bred yellow potatoes with carotenoid levels that are two to three times higher than those of the popular Yukon Gold yellow-fleshed potato variety.

New Rochelle, NY, October 24, 2012—Full-body or X-ray scanners used for airport security screening may affect the function of insulin pump or continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) devices. People with diabetes can present a travel letter obtained from their physicians to avoid possible damage caused by exposure to imaging equipment in airports.

Putting a speed limit on cargo ships as they sail near ports and coastlines could cut their emission of air pollutants by up to 70 percent, reducing the impact of marine shipping on Earth's climate and human health, scientists have found. Their evaluation of the impact of vessel speed reduction policies, such as those proposed by the California Air Resources board, appears in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers has dissected a case of synergy in drug-resistant chronic myeloid leukemia to understand the mechanism by which two drugs, danusertib and bosutinib, work together to overcome resistance in the BCR-ABL gatekeeper mutation-specific disease. The team includes a researcher at Moffitt Cancer Center and colleagues at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Austria and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Chewing betel quid — the fourth most popular psychoactive substance in the world after tobacco, alcohol and caffeine — exposes its 600 million users to substances that act as direct carcinogens in the mouth, scientists are reporting in a new study. It appears in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology.

Televised political advertising takes up a large portion of campaigns budgets. Much of it is spent on negative political ads. But do these negative ads work? A new study by Juliana Fernandes, assistant professor of strategic communication at the University of Miami (UM), shows that a negative political ad is most effective when it's shown in moderation. The findings reveal that massive exposure to a negative ad has a backlash effect on the evaluation of the sponsor candidate.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (October 24, 2012)—Hypnosis can help cut hot flashes by as much as 74%, shows a study supported by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. This is the first controlled, randomized study of the technique to manage hot flashes, which affect as much as 80% of women who go through menopause. The study was published online this month in Menopause, the journal of the North American Menopause Society.

The flame-retardant mixture known as "Firemaster 550" is an endocrine disruptor that causes extreme weight gain, early onset of puberty and cardiovascular health effects in lab animals, according to a new study spearheaded by researchers from North Carolina State University and Duke University.

October 24, 2012, New York, NY – Cancers arise in the body all the time. Most are nipped in the bud by the immune response, not least by its T cells, which detect telltale molecular markers—or antigens—on cancer cells and destroy them before they grow into tumors. Cancer cells, for their part, evolve constantly to evade such assassination. Those that succeed become full-blown malignancies. Yet, given the right sort of help, the immune system can destroy even these entrenched tumors.

Amphibians are the vertebrate group that is more likely to become roadkill in Catalonia, even more so than reptiles, mammals and birds. This is the case according to an international team of scientists who have concluded that highly protected areas are home to more cases of animal death on the roads.

Our network of roads is considered one of the main threats to fauna survival. Researchers at the universities of Barcelona (UB), Porto (Portugal) and Uppsala (Sweden) have studied the number of vertebrate deaths on 820 kilometres of road in North Eastern area of Spain and Portugal.

Bacteria have a bad rap as agents of disease, but scientists are increasingly discovering their many benefits, such as maintaining a healthy gut.

A new study now suggests that bacteria may also have helped kick off one of the key events in evolution: the leap from one-celled organisms to many-celled organisms, a development that eventually led to all animals, including humans.

A number of herbs and dietary supplements (HDS) can cause potentially harmful drug interactions, particularly among people receiving medication for problems with their central nervous or cardiovascular systems.

Those are the key findings of an extensive research review published in the November issue of IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice.

Philadelphia, PA, October 24, 2012 – Evidence linking partial sleep deprivation to energy imbalance is relevant to weight gain prevention and weight loss promotion. A new study published today in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics bases this finding on an extensive review of literature published over a fifteen-year period.