Columbia University
A large-scale study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health has identified the type and frequency of hazardous conditions found in the home healthcare (HHC) setting. An anonymous survey of over 700 home healthcare RNs employed in New York City provided the most complete assessment of homecare hazardous household conditions to date.
Flying twin-engine light aircraft the equivalent of several trips around the globe and establishing a network of seismic instruments across an area the size of Texas, a U.S.-led, international team of scientists has not only verified the existence of a mountain range that is suspected to have caused the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet to form, but also has created a detailed picture of the rug
Scientists aboard the U.S. research vessel Laurence M Gould, 10,000 miles from Washington off Antarctica, held their own presidential inaugural celebration on Jan. 20. Stopped in desolate, icy seas for three days to do climate-change research, they dubbed their temporary study area Ocean Station Obama.
Did a catastrophic flood of biblical proportions drown the shores of the Black Sea 9,500 years ago, wiping out early Neolithic settlements around its perimeter?
Researchers report this week that older adults who have higher proportions of four periodontal-disease-causing bacteria inhabiting their mouths also tend to have thicker carotid arteries, a strong predictor of stroke and heart attack. The study, published in the current issue of the journal Circulation, was supported by four agencies of the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the Columbia Genome Center have designed and developed a sensitive new diagnostic technology platform, called "Mass Tag PCR," that can simultaneously screen for multiple infectious agents. The new technology is addressed in a paper published in the February issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Emerging Infectious Diseases . This new platform is demonstrated in an assay that detects and discriminates 22 pathogens including viruses and bacteria that can present as clinically similar pulmonary disease.
The first U.S. kidney cancer vaccine trial is now underway at Columbia University Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia. While the potential for vaccines to treat solid tumors has been recognized for more than a decade, this trial is pioneering the use of tumor immunotherapy -- boosting the body’s natural immune system -- as a way to fight cancer.
“Vaccines are an exciting prospect in cancer treatment and this trial is an example of our program’s dedication to bringing the latest advances in tumor vaccines and immunotherapy to patients with cancer,” said Howard L. Kaufman, M.D., associate professor of surgery and pathology at Columbia University Medical Center and director, Tumor Immunotherapy Program at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia. “We expect that combining IL-2 with Trovax will double the treatment response rate for our kidney cancer patients, offering new hope for these patients.”
Nearly 60 percent of children whose parents and grandparents suffered from depression have a psychiatric disorder before they reach their early teens, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). This is more than double the number of children (approx. 28 percent) who develop such disorders with no family history of depression.
Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center have found that fleeting images of fearful faces -- images that appear and disappear so quickly that they escape conscious awareness -- produce unconscious anxiety that can be detected in the brain with the latest neuroimaging machines. It's one of the first times that neuroimaging has captured the brain's processing of unconscious emotion.
Researchers say that reductions of trace gases may allow stabilization of climate so that additional global warming would be less than 1? C, a level needed to maintain global coastlines. Although carbon dioxide emissions, an inherent product of fossil fuel use, must also be slowed, the required carbon dioxide reduction is much more feasible if trace gases decrease.
Researchers have demonstrated the significance of central corneal thickness (CCT) on the clinical management of patients with glaucoma and those suspected to have glaucoma. While confirming previous research about the relevance of CCT in glaucoma management, this study represents one of the first attempts to determine exactly how great an impact CCT has on a patient's intraocular pressure (IOP), fluid build-up inside the eye that is a glaucoma risk factor. Results found that CCT affected more than half of the patients in the study.
Researchers have identified a possible cause of an inherited form of Parkinson's disease, which may be related to more common forms of the disease. While the cause of most cases of Parkinson's disease is unknown, a few cases are inherited and can be traced to mutations in four different genes, including the alpha-synuclein gene. This is the first study that may pinpoint the mechanism by which the mutant gene initiates a cascade of events that causes this devastating neurological disease.
During the late 1930s, amateur linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf posed the theory that language can determine the nature and content of thought. But are there concepts in one culture that people of another culture simply cannot understand because their language has no words for it? No one has ever definitively answered that question, but new findings by Dr. Peter Gordon, a bio-behavioral scientist at Teachers College, Columbia University, strongly support a ''yes'' answer. Gordon has spent the past several years studying the Pirah?, an isolated Amazon tribe of fewer than 200 people, whose language contains no words for numbers beyond ''one,'' ''two'' and ''many.'' Even the Piraha word for ''one'' appears to refer to ''roughly one'' or a small quantity, as opposed to the exact connotation of singleness in other languages.
For men with erectile dysfunction and low testosterone who do not respond to Viagra alone, the supplemental use of testosterone gel improves erectile function and overall sexual satisfaction, according to a NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center study. ''Our data support the potential benefits of a combination therapy with testosterone gel for men with erectile dysfunction and low testosterone who find sildenafil by itself ineffective,'' said Dr. Shabsigh. ''When assessing erectile dysfunction, doctors and patients should consider using a simple blood test to determine if low testosterone is a contributing factor. If the root cause is low testosterone, sildenafil alone won't fix the problem.''
What causes the peaks and valleys of the world's great mountains? For continental ranges like the Appalachians or the Northwest's Cascades, the geological picture is clearer. Continents crash or volcanoes erupt, then glaciers erode away. Yet scientists are still puzzling out what makes the highs high and the lows low for the planet's largest mountain chain, the 55,000-mile-long Mid-Ocean Ridge.
This week in the journal Nature, scientists at Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory describe new findings that challenge current thinking about how the silhouette of the miles-high deepwater ridge is formed.
