Schepens Eye Research Institute scientists have found that–when tested in a driving simulator–patients with hemianopia (blindness in one half of the visual field in both eyes) have significantly more difficulty detecting pedestrians (on their blind side) than normally sighted people. These results, published in the November 2009 issue of Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science, ...

As more people are diagnosed with H1N1 influenza infection, some will be admitted to hospital. The most severely affected may be treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) and placed on a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe while they recover from the infection. While mechanical ventilation clearly saves the lives of many people felled by serious illness, in some cases, this supportive measur...

Astrophysicists at the University of Warwick and Kiel University have discovered two earth sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres — however there is a bit of a disappointing snag for anyone looking for a potential home for alien life, or even a future home for ourselves, as they are not planets but are actually two unusual white dwarf stars. The two white dwarf stars SDSS 0922+2928 and SD...

The war between the sexes has been fought on many fronts throughout time — from humans to birds to insects, the animal kingdom is replete with species involved in their own skirmishes. A recent study by Dr. Sarah Eppley and colleagues at Portland State University published in the November issue of the American Journal of Botany demonstrates that certain plants, with some help from fungal fri...

Among postmenopausal women, the risk of hip fractures increases steeply with age and is seven times higher in 70-year-olds than in 50-year-olds, according to a study in this week`s PLoS Medicine. The study also found that in women aged 50-54 years (i.e. around the time of menopause), although hip fractures are rare, the risk of a fracture in postmenopausal women is twice that in premenopausal wome...

Cumulative exposure to five common infection-causing pathogens may be associated with an increased risk of stroke, according to a report posted online today that will appear in the January 2010 print issue of Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Stroke is the third leading cause of death and leading cause of serious disability in the United States, according to background info...

High blood pressure, evidence of arterial disease and markers of inflammation in the blood in middle age appear more common in individuals whose parents have Alzheimer`s disease than in individuals without a parental history of the condition, according to a report in the November issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Previous twin studies estimate that as much...

The first human embryonic stem cell treatment approved by the FDA for human testing has been shown to restore limb function in rats with neck spinal cord injuries — a finding that could expand the clinical trial to include people with cervical damage. In January, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration gave Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif., permission to test the UC Irvine treatment in indi...

Good news for heterogeneous catalysis and the hydrogen economy: computers can now be used to make accurate predictions of the reactions of (hydrogen) molecules with surfaces. An international team of researchers, headed by Leiden theoretical chemist Geert-Jan Kroes, published on this subject this week in the journal Science. Hydrogen on copper The team developed a new method of modelling what happ...

Inflammatory response of brain cells — as indicated by a molecular imaging technique — could tell researchers more about why certain neurologic disorders, such as migraine headaches and psychosis in schizophrenic patients, occur and provide insight into how to best treat them, according to two studies published in the November issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine. By using positron...