Body

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In a year-long case study of a major American transportation company, researchers at The Ohio State University have uncovered the strategies that helped the company maintain safety and meet customer demand during 2012's Hurricane Sandy.

One key to the company's effective response was its setup of a weather event management team, an ad hoc group that set planning priorities as the storm approached the United States, ensuring the protection of personnel and equipment in hurricane's path.

(WASHINGTON, October 2, 2013) – New research shows that children with an inherited genetic defect in a critical anti-inflammatory pathway have a genetic predisposition to lymphoma.

A detailed annotated checklist of the scale insects of Iran, describing a total of 275 species from 13 families, represents a first effort towards a better knowledge of the Coccoidea family in attempt to improve the view in practical fields such as pest control management. The scale insects species are listed along with their locality data and host plants. In addition to latest species names for any record, new records for Iran and new host plants for some scale insects species.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The dramatic explosion of flowering plant species that occurred about 100 million years ago was thought to have been good news for evolving mammals, providing them with new options for food and habitat. But research by geologists at Indiana University Bloomington suggests that wasn't necessarily the case.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- In a completely unexpected finding, MIT researchers have discovered that tiny water droplets that form on a superhydrophobic surface, and then "jump" away from that surface, carry an electric charge. The finding could lead to more efficient power plants and a new way of drawing power from the atmosphere, they say.

The finding is reported in a paper in the journal Nature Communications written by MIT postdoc Nenad Miljkovic, mechanical engineering professor Evelyn Wang, and two others.

DETROIT – Offering free head and neck cancer screenings annually to the community not only has the possibility of early detection, but also the opportunity – particularly in an urban city – to increase a person's understanding of risk factors that cause cancer, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have for the first time managed to measure the internal pressure that enables the herpes virus to infect cells in the human body. The discovery paves the way for the development of new medicines to combat viral infections. The results indicate good chances to stop herpes infections in the future.

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Babies considered "early-term," born at 37 or 38 weeks after a mother's last menstrual period, may look as healthy as full-term babies born at 39-41 weeks, but a new study published by University at Buffalo physicians in JAMA Pediatrics has found that many of them are not.

The study is considered the first population-based, countywide assessment of neonatal morbidity among early-term infants based on individual medical records in the U.S.

In many ways, the spread of HIV has been fueled by substance abuse. Shared needles and drug users' high-risk sexual behaviors are just some of the ways that narcotics such as cocaine have played a key role in the AIDS epidemic in much of the world.

Researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have found that mice made obese by high-calorie, high-fat diets develop abnormally high numbers of lesions known to be precursors to pancreas cancer.

This is the first study to show a direct causative link in an animal model between obesity and risk of this deadly cancer.

The study, published Sept. 30 in the journal Cancer Prevention Research, was led by Dr. Guido Eibl, a member of the Jonsson Cancer Center and a professor in the department of surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.

The findings stress the important role of higher BMI in the increasing rates of death from cardiovascular disease in Asia, which could be managed by policy and prevention strategies, say the authors.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death globally and is predicted to steadily increase over the next few decades. Many Asian populations that used to be physically active with a low BMI now have some of the world's highest rates of obesity.

(New York City, October 1, 2013)- A study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has found that the association between body fat and mortality due to cardiovascular disease differs between south and east Asians, a finding that has important implications for global health recommendations. Cardiovascular disease, a condition in which arteries thicken and restrict blood flow, kills more than 17 million people annually, making it the leading cause of death worldwide.

Over the past few decades, crop breeders have increasingly relied on the wild and weedy relatives of domesticated crops as new sources of disease resistance, drought tolerance, and other traits. But just like all wild plant species, these "crop wild relatives" (CWR) are also at risk of decline and extinction due to habitat loss, pollution, and climate change.

Community health officers (health workers who are not trained midwives) can safely give injections of the drug oxytocin to prevent severe bleeding after delivery (postpartum hemorrhage) when attending home births in rural areas of Ghana, according to a study by US and Ghanaian researchers in this week's PLOS Medicine.

Boston, MA - A study of 41,133 mothers and their children in Arkansas has shown that high pregnancy weight gain increases the risk of obesity in those children through age 12. The findings, published Oct. 1 in PLoS Medicine, suggest pregnancy may be an especially important time to prevent obesity in the next generation.