Body

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A comprehensive new review on how to treat high cholesterol and other blood lipid problems suggests that intensive treatment with high doses of statin drugs is usually the best approach.

But some statins work much better for this than others, the review concluded, and additional lipid-lowering medications added to a statin have far less value. And medications, of course, should be considered after first trying diet, weight loss and exercise.

The identified critical threshold for dangerous climate change saying that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius seems not to have helped the climate negotiations so far. New research from the University of Gothenburg and Columbia University shows that negotiations based on such a threshold fail because its value is determined by Nature and is inherently uncertain. Climate negotiators should therefore focus on other collective strategies.

A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues finds that adolescents commonly take more risks than younger children and adults because they are more willing to accept risks when consequences are unknown, rather than because they are attracted to danger, as often assumed.

Adolescents have the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases and criminal behaviors of any age group, and even drive faster than adults. The death and injury rate of adolescents is 200% greater than for their younger peers, according to research cited in the study.

MADISON -- Troy, the palatial city of prehistory, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a fabled wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced today (Monday, Oct. 15).

Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) does hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of damage each year. Matt Hudson and Brian Diers, crop sciences researchers at the University of Illinois and Andrew Bent at the University of Wisconsin, think they may have found a way to strengthen plant resistance. The research has just been published in Science Express.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA – October 15, 2012 – In a new theoretical study, 23andMe, the leading personal genetics company, developed a mathematical model which shows that family history and genetic tests offer different strengths. The study results suggest that both family history and genetics are best used in combination to improve disease risk prediction. The full results of the study have now been published online in the journal PLOS Genetics.

Archaeologists from the University of Leicester who uncovered a grave thought to contain the skeleton of King Richard III have revealed that the remains came within inches of being destroyed by Victorian builders.

The University of Leicester led the search for the Anointed King who died at the battle of Bosworth in association with Leicester City Council and the Richard III Society. The University team dug three trenches under a Leicester car park before their discovery was made.

Cyclists who died of a head injury were three times as likely to not be wearing a helmet compared with those who died of other injuries, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

"We saw an association between dying as a result of sustaining head injury and not wearing a helmet," states Dr. Navindra Persaud, Keenan Research Centre and the Department of Family and Community Medicine, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, with coauthors. "These results are consistent with a protective effect of helmets on cycling deaths."

A technique called the "mother's kiss" for removing foreign objects from the nasal passages of young children appears to be a safe and effective approach, found a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

"The mother's kiss appears to be a safe and effective technique for first-line treatment in the removal of a foreign body from the nasal cavity," writes Dr. Stephanie Cook, Buxted Medical Centre, Buxted, United Kingdom, with coauthors. "In addition, it may prevent the need for general anesthesia in some cases."

Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disorder that affects approximately 2% of the world's population. A group of inflammatory molecules known as interleukins activate an immune response that causes itchy skin, but it is unclear how the skin cells and immune cells communicate. In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Manfred Kopf at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland found that mice lacking interleukin-36 (IL-36) were protected from immune-mediated skin inflammation.

Scratching the surface of psoriasis

A molecule involved in asthma and allergies has now been shown to make mice resistant to skin cancer, according to scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The molecule, called TSLP (thymic stromal lymphopoietin), is produced by damaged skin and activates the immune system. Chronic low levels of TSLP are suspected in making the immune system oversensitive to what should be a harmless environment, leading to the skin rashes and overproduction of mucus common in allergies and asthma.

ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan and 20 other U.S. and Canadian universities will join forces to propose a set of long-term research and policy priorities to help protect and restore the Great Lakes and to train the next generation of scientists, attorneys, planners and policy specialists who will study them.

The Great Lakes Futures Project of the Transborder Research University Network will use a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector approach to outlining alternative Great Lakes futures through science-based scenario analysis.

After leukaemia and brain tumours, neuroblastoma is the most common form of cancer to affect children. A thesis from the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, has studied a DNA method which is now used for all cases of neuroblastoma in Sweden, and which has led to more effective treatment at individual level.

Evidence uncovered by a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, geography professor suggests recent droughts could be the new normal. This is especially bad news for our nation's forests.

For most, to find evidence that recent years' droughts have been record-breaking, they need not look past the withering garden or lawn. For Henri Grissino-Mayer he looks at the rings of trees over the past one thousand years. He can tell you that this drought is one of the worst in the last 600 years in America's Southwest and predicts worst are still to come.