Critically ill children admitted to the pediatric intensive care units of regional medical centers from smaller hospitals are sicker than those admitted directly from those centers’ own emergency rooms, a study by pediatric critical care physicians at UC Davis Children’s Hospital has found.
- Article Source

A mini-protein found in sunflower seeds could be the key to stopping tumors spreading in prostate cancer patients, according to researchers.
- Article Source

Scientists have developed a new ultrasensitive assay to detect botulinum neurotoxin. The toxin is one of the most poisonous substances known that can cause life-threatening disease, and is considered a major potential bioterrorism threat agent.
- Article Source

Researchers report the first evidence of a distinctive protein signature that could help to transform the diagnosis and improve the monitoring of the devastating lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis in PLoS Medicine. Scientists describe a unique combination of blood proteins that appears to distinguish IPF patients from normal controls with extraordinary sensitivity and precision.
- Article Source

A new life-detecting instrument is preparing for a mission to the Red Planet. The Urey: Mars Organic and Oxidant Detector instrument, developed by a scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, received approximately $2 million in NASA funding to further refine the design and technology for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) 2013 ExoMars Rover Mission.
- Article Source

A drug for the treatment of diabetic eye disease has performed better in clinical trials than the current standard treatment using laser surgery. “These are very encouraging results, showing that drugs we have been testing in human clinical trials can be effective in slowing or stopping the effects of eye disease brought on by diabetes,” said one of the scientists.
- Article Source

Is medicated memory manipulation ethically sound? And perhaps more importantly, who should be charged with the decision to deliver such a treatment: patient or physician? A philosophy professor, is seeking answers to these questions in her new research.
- Article Source

Over millions of years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been moderated by a finely-tuned natural feedback system — a system that human emissions have recently overwhelmed. Scientists have now linked the pre-human stability to connections between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the breakdown of minerals in the Earth’s crust.
- Article Source

Investors get carried away with excitement and wishful ‘fantasies’ as the stock market soars, suppressing negative emotions warning them of high risks, according to a new study led by UCL. Economic models fail to factor in the emotions and unconscious mental life that drive human behavior says the study, which argues that banks and financial institutions should be as wary of ‘emotional inflation’ as they are fiscal inflation.
- Article Source

Researchers adapt an algal protein to reengineer sight into a broken visual circuit.

- Article Source