Body

Ann Arbor, MI, October 16, 2014 – Although disease outbreaks and epidemics drawing worldwide attention emphasize the importance and acute need for public health professionals, the world faces a longer-term challenge—a public health workforce that is truly effective in the 21st century. In a new supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, experts address critical challenges to public health, from workforce development, capacity building, partnership and collaborations, and changes and needs in workforce composition.

October 16, 2014, Glenview, Illinois—The American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) and the Canadian Thoracic Society (CTS) announced today the release of Prevention of Acute Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: American College of Chest Physicians and Canadian Thoracic Society Guideline in the journal CHEST.

Researchers have devised a new test to help doctors diagnose ovarian tumours and choose the most appropriate treatment.

Successful treatment depends in part on accurately identifying the type of tumour, but this can be difficult. As a result, many women with cancer are not sent to the right specialist surgeon, or those with a benign cyst may have a more serious operation than they need.

Melbourne researchers have challenged conventional thinking on how the bowel lining develops and, in the process, suggested a new mechanism for how bowel cancer starts.

The researchers produced evidence that stem cells are responsible for maintaining and regenerating the 'crypts' that are a feature of the bowel lining, and believe these stem cells are involved in bowel cancer development, a controversial finding as scientists are still divided on the stem cells' existence.

Although monocultures can be cultivated efficiently, they are anything but sustainable: environmental damage to soil and water caused by monoculture cultivation is becoming increasingly evident. Despite their disadvantages, however, monocultures remain the principal crop form and are regarded as the sole possibility of achieving higher yields in plant production – quite wrongfully, finds Bernhard Schmid, an ecology professor at the University of Zurich, who advocates a novel form of agriculture and forestry.

Respiratory Syncytial Virus causes severe respiratory tract infections and worldwide claims the lives of 160,000 children each year. Scientists at VIB and Ghent University have succeeded in developing a promising vaccination strategy to counteract this common virus infection.

Xavier Saelens (VIB/UGent): "We discovered a new vaccination strategy that paves the way for the development of a novel approach to vaccination against RSV, a virus that causes suffering in numerous small children and elderly people."

RSV: an infection that is difficult to combat

A new expert panel report, Energy Prices and Business Decision-Making in Canada: Preparing for the Energy Future, released today by the Council of Canadian Academies, details how Canadian businesses have historically been successful in responding to fluctuating energy prices, but this should not be considered a predictor for future resiliency or competiveness. The energy environment is evolving with advances in oil and gas extraction, the development of alternative energy sources, changes within the electricity market, and new regulatory requirements.

Research to be published in the International Journal of Web-Based Communities suggests that the familiar interfaces of online social networking sites might be adapted to allow us to interact more efficiently with our networked devices such as cars, domestic appliances and gadgets. The concept would also extend to the idea of those devices connecting with each other as necessary to improve efficiency of heating and lighting, make our home entertainment systems smarter and much more.

Emily loves Justin - Stop global warming - Two more weeks till I graduate!: The exchange of information in public toilets is widespread. It also occurs in the world of white-footed sportive lemurs. Only instead of writing on the walls, they use scent-marks in order to communicate with their own kind. In a study published online in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Iris Dröscher and Peter Kappeler from the German Primate Center (DPZ) have found that the urine left on latrine trees serves as a method to maintain contact with family members.

The number of overweight persons is greatly increasing worldwide - and as a result is the risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke, diabetes or Alzheimer's disease. For this reason, many people dream of an efficient method for losing weight. An international team of researchers led by Professor Alexander Pfeifer from the University Hospital Bonn, have now come one step closer to this goal. The scientists discovered a new way to stimulate brown fat and thus burn energy from food: The body's own adenosine activates brown fat and "browns" white fat.

Rice is one of the few cereal grains consumed by people with celiac disease, as it does not contain gluten. However, it can have high concentrations of a toxic substance – arsenic – as revealed by the analyses of flour, cakes, bread, pasta and other foods made with rice, conducted by researchers from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche, Spain. The European Union is working to establish the maximum quantities of arsenic in these products.

A study recently published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology shows that for Ebola, measles, syphilis and many other conditions with skin manifestations the mortality rates are hundreds of times higher in developing countries than they are in developed countries. The case of Ebola, the paper writes, "Highlights the importance of monitoring disease burden in the developing world even when the burden is low."

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — River beds, where flowing water meets silt, sand and gravel, are critical ecological zones. Yet how water flows in a river with a gravel bed is very different from the traditional model of a sandy river bed, according to a new study that compares their fluid dynamics.

The findings establish new parameters for river modeling that better represent reality, with implications for field researchers and water resource managers.

Kyoto, Japan — Researchers in Japan have developed a novel yet simple technique, called "diffusion driven layer-by-layer assembly," to construct graphene into porous three-dimensional (3D) structures for applications in devices such as batteries and supercapacitors. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications.

The study, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialist cancer agency of the World Health Organization, is the first to try and quantify the worldwide extent of each of the two main types of oesophageal cancer: squamous cell carcinoma, or SCC for short; and adenocarcinoma.

Rates of SCC have remained fairly stable or have even fallen over the past few years, but those of adenocarcinoma have risen, particularly in high income countries. In 2012, oesophageal cancer was the eighth most common cancer worldwide.