Patients who die in the hospital in the United States are almost five times as likely to have spent part of their last hospital stay in the ICU than patients in England. What`s more, over the age of 85, ICU usage among terminal patients is eight times higher in the U.S. than in England, according to new research from Columbia University that compared the two countries` use of intensive care servic...

Rats fed a high-fat diet show a stark reduction in their physical endurance and a decline in their cognitive ability after just nine days, a study by Oxford University researchers has shown. The research, funded by the British Heart Foundation and published in the FASEB Journal, may have implications not only for those eating lots of high-fat foods, but also athletes looking for the optimal diet f...

The virus that causes AIDS is classified as a lentivirus, a word derived from the Latin prefix, "lenti-," meaning "slow." But new research from the NIAID-funded Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology suggests that HIV-1 is anything but – moving at breathtaking speed in destroying and dysregulating the body`s gut-based B-cell antibody-producing system. "These new data...

Amid concerns about a pandemic of swine flu, researchers from Nebraska report for the first time that poultry carcasses infected with another threat — the "bird flu" virus — can remain infectious in municipal landfills for almost 2 years.  Shannon L. Bartelt-Hunt and colleagues note that avian influenza, specifically the H5N1 strain, is an ongoing public health concern. ...

Exposure to particulate matter has been recognized as a contributing factor to lung cancer development for some time, but a new study indicates inhalation of certain particulates can actually cause some genes to become reprogrammed, affecting both the development and the outcome of cancers and other diseases. The research will be presented on May 17, at the 105th International Conference of the Am...

Another chapter in a murder case over 5000 years old. New investigations by an LMU research team working together with a Bolzano colleague reconstructed the chronology of the injuries that Ötzi, the glacier man preserved as a frozen mummy, received in his last days. It turns out, for example, that he did in fact only survive the arrow wound in his back for a very short time – a few minu...

Scientists from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have selected 262 European observatories which analysed the series of minimum and maximum daily temperatures from 1955 to 1998 to estimate trend variations in extreme temperature events. According to the study, in Europe days of extreme cold are decreasing and days of extreme heat increasing. From 0.5ºC to 1ºC in the average mini...

Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University. Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cyc...

In a breakthrough study appearing in advance online publication of Nature Methods, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University describe for the first time a method of viewing individual breast cancer cells for several days at a time. The study, by scientists in Einstein`s Gruss Lipper Biophotonics Center, provides detail on how cancer cells invade surrounding tissue an...

With the days getting shorter (and colder) and the Holidays quickly approaching, many of us start thinking back to days gone by. This sentimentality and desire for the past is known as nostalgia. All of us are struck with nostalgic feelings from time to time but a new study in Psychological Science indicates that nostalgia may serve a greater purpose than just taking us back to the good old days. ...