science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Τετάρτη 26 Ιουνίου 2013

Science News SciGuru.com

Medicare Payment Overhaul Must Recognize Varying Needs of Patients
Sea level along Maryland’s shorelines could rise 2 feet by 2050, according to new report
Overweight causes heart failure - large study with new method clarifies the association
Unraveling the Largest Outbreak of Fungal Infections Associated with Contaminated Steroid Injections
Creation of a photonic wheel- light with purely transverse angular momentum
Optogenetics reveal the organization of rhythmogenic locomotor networks

Medicare Payment Overhaul Must Recognize Varying Needs of Patients

Posted: 26 Jun 2013 07:21 AM PDT

On any given day at Mayo Clinic, patient care ranges from the simple to the complex. One person may come in for a blood pressure checkup; another, new knees. A third may need cutting-edge therapies, complicated care from several specialists, diagnosis of a mysterious illness — or all of the above.

Sea level along Maryland’s shorelines could rise 2 feet by 2050, according to new report

Posted: 26 Jun 2013 07:04 AM PDT

A new report on sea level rise recommends that the State of Maryland should plan for a rise in sea level of as much as 2 feet by 2050. Led by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the report was prepared by a panel of scientific experts in response to Governor Martin O’Malley’s Executive Order on Climate Change and “Coast Smart” Construction. The projections are based on an assessment of the latest climate change science and federal guidelines.

Overweight causes heart failure - large study with new method clarifies the association

Posted: 26 Jun 2013 06:49 AM PDT

An international research team led by Swedish scientists has used a new method to investigate obesity and overweight as a cause of cardiovascular disease. Strong association have been found previously, but it has not been clear whether it was overweight as such that was the cause, or if the overweight was just a marker of another underlying cause, as clinical trials with long-term follow-ups are difficult to implement.

Unraveling the Largest Outbreak of Fungal Infections Associated with Contaminated Steroid Injections

Posted: 26 Jun 2013 06:39 AM PDT

Investigators from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describe pathologic findings from 40 case reports of fungal infection in patients who had been given contaminated epidural, paraspinal, or intra-articular (into joints) steroid injections and correlate these findings with clinical and laboratory data. The report, published in the September issue of The American Journal of Pathology, alerts clinicians and the general public to the catastrophic dangers of contaminated epidural injections.

Creation of a photonic wheel- light with purely transverse angular momentum

Posted: 25 Jun 2013 07:26 AM PDT

Light can now be used to achieve ever better control of microparticles and nanoparticles. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen are now able to use a laser to cause tiny particles to rotate around an axis perpendicular to the light beam – a particle thus rotates like the wheel of a bicycle in its direction of motion. The researchers achieved this by creating a photonic wheel: light with purely transverse angular momentum. This state of light was previously unknown.

Optogenetics reveal the organization of rhythmogenic locomotor networks

Posted: 25 Jun 2013 07:15 AM PDT

By using optogenetics - a method that involves the use of light to activate nerve cells - to stimulate excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the spinal cord, neuroscientists at Karolinska Institutet have managed to switch on and off neural circuits that control locomotion. The study, which is published in the scientific journal PNAS, shows that the basic structure underlying the locomotor network in mammals has a distributed organization with many intrinsically rhythmogenic modules.