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The paper trail is stopping for outpatients at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. All medical records will be created and stored electronically for nearly 1.5 million annual outpatient visits. Electronic record keeping enables all providers to have immediate access to a patient's records, including physician notes, orders for tests and medications as well as laboratory and test results. Henry Plummer, the fourth physician in the Mayo practice, designed a system to keep all of a patient's records, clinic visits and hospital stays, in a single file that traveled with the patient and was stored in a central repository.

The article reports that scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have published two studies on how modulating receptors for dopamine, a chemical signaler in the brain's reward circuits, affects drinking behavior in mice and rats. In one of the studies, the scientists increased the number of dopamine D2 receptors in strains of mice with genetically varying levels of D2 receptors. Earlier Brookhaven studies have shown that up-regulating D2 receptors by delivering the D2 gene directly to the brain's reward center decreased drinking behavior in genetically predisposed rats trained to drink large quantities of alcohol.

The article presents information that a program of active cognitive stimulation performed in conjunction with the drug Aricept (donepezil hydrochloride) produces greater mental and functional benefits in patients in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease than taking the drug alone, according to a study conducted by Texas university researchers and funded by the manufacturer and U.S. distributor of the drug. Fifty-four patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease, ranging in age from 54 to 91, took part in the randomized study. Twenty-eight of the patients received Aricept only, while 26 were given the drug and took part in a cognitive stimulation program consisting of 12 hours of intervention treatment by speech-language pathologists over an eight-week period at the beginning of the one-year study.

The article focuses on 145th annual session of the American Dental Association (ADA) held in Orlando. The governing body of ADA challenged the nation to improve access to oral health care for underserved populations, calling the extent and severity of untreated dental disease, especially among underserved children unacceptable. The umbrella resolution, passed by the ADA's House of Delegates during its 145th Annual Sessionreads, in part, The ADA and its members will continue working with policymakers to establish programs and services that improve access to oral health care, while maintaining a single standard of oral care.

The article cites a study reported in the recent issue of the Archives of Ophthalmology, which states that Vitamin A palmitate is estimated to provide 7 years of additional vision for those who began this supplement in their 30s. Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA), an omega-3 fatty acid, is in high concentration in the retina and is thought to provide a fluid, fat-soluble environment for vitamin A to change its shape as the initial step in the retinal response to light. In summary, among all randomized patients DHA supplementation by capsules in a dose of 1200 milligram per day, given in combination with vitamin A palmitate 15,000 IU per day, did not, on average, slow the course of this condition over a four-year interval.

Hospitals may be able to significantly cut the time it takes to deliver medications to patients and complete X-rays and lab tests by having doctors fill out orders via computer rather than by hand, a new study suggests. Results showed that computerized ordering also eliminated prescription drug errors that occurred when doctors' handwritten prescriptions were misread. Overall, computerized physician order entry (POE) seems to be good for both patients and hospitals, said Hagop Mekhjian, the study's lead author and chief medical officer for Ohio State University's health system. Researchers compared turn-around times before and after the implementation of computerized POE at Ohio State University hospitals. As many as 25 percent of reported medication errors arise from confusion over the similarity of drug names.

An article appearing in the December 13, 2003 issue of the journal "Science" by University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado professors Barbara Demmig-Adams and William W. Adams indicates there are a number of profound effects from human diet on both physical and mental health. Food molecules entering human bodies act as hormone-like messengers that regulate pivotal body functions at the cellular level, said Demmig-Adams. Demmig-Adams said such functions include the division of cells in the human body that have implications for cancer as well as heart disease inflammation processes. In addition, some mental imbalances can be aggravated by the consumption of particular foods that contribute to mood and learning disorders.

A simple two-handed, line-bisection test known as the "Best Hand Test" can be used to evaluate hemisphericity distributions in large groups, according to a paper published this month in the journal "Brain and Cognition" by University of Hawaii at Manoa Emeritus Professor Bruce E. Morton. Results from the study suggest that an individual's career path might in some way be influenced by the behavioral laterality of his or her brain. This discovery was recognized when it was observed that although the number of right or left brain-oriented male and female students entering the university was about equal, sampling of the hemisphericity of upper-level undergraduates, graduate students and amongst 15 faculty professions indicated that a progressive sorting had occurred.

This article informs that researchers at the University of Virginia (U.Va.) Health System have unraveled one mystery about what histones accomplish in the complex chemical cascade that determines the function of a cell in the body. The protein Chd1 the attracts a huge complex of other proteins, called SAGA, that can turn genes on in the cell nucleus. This is a good example of how proteins respond to the histone code, explained study senior author Patrick Grant, PhD, an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at U.Va. There is a theory, proposed by David Allis at Rockefeller University and Brian Strahl at the University of North Carolina, that DNA does not function in isolation.

This article reports that defects in BRCA2, a gene that otherwise suppresses tumors are responsible for a strong familial predisposition to breast cancer. Carriers of BRCA2 mutations also are at increased risk of ovarian, prostate, pancreatic and male breast cancer. Now a new study as of September 13, 2002 featured in the September 13, 2002 issue of the journal "Science" reveals that protein made by BRCA2 is especially important in controlling damage to DNA, the double-strand molecule that houses genetic blueprints.

The article reports that patients given beta blockers prior to heart bypass surgery had fewer complications such as stroke, kidney failure and longer use of ventilators as well as lower death rates following surgery. This was true even among those for whom beta blocker therapy has up to now been considered risky, the elderly and those with heart failure, lung disease or diabetes. Findings have been adjusted for preoperative risk factors such as diabetes and age and are consistent with those previously identified for beta blocker use before non-cardiac surgery or angioplasty procedures.

The article reports on a white-paper titled "Moving toward Elimination of Healthcare-Associated Infections: A Call to Action" released by a nonprofit organization ASTHO to combat healthcare-associated infections (HAI) in the U.S. The paper says that approximately 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from HAIs and calls for its elimination by implementing proven preventive measures and public health strategies used to combat other diseases. It also emphasizes on the need to make hospitals safe.

The article informs that the paper "The Distributed Partnering Model for Drug Discovery and Development," released by Kauffman Foundation claims that the U.S. could speed the flow of new therapeutic drugs by creating a new model for drug discovery and development. The paper is an outgrowth of the 2009 Translational Medicine Alliance Forum, which was created to eliminate barriers to bring life science research to the market. The paper was written by Duane Roth and Pedro Cuatrecasas.

The article presents information on two papers published by the American Dental Education Association's Commission on Change and Innovation in Dental Education. The papers were published in the September 2006 issue of the "Journal of Dental Education." The two papers were, The Case for Change in Dental Education, and Educational Strategies Associated with Development of Problem-Solving, Critical Thinking, and Self-Directed Learning. They address the rationale for change in the field.

The article announces that Babson College Professor Dhruv Grewal has been awarded 'Best Paper' in e-Business Track at AMA Marketing Educators' Conference.

The article focuses on the role of Radiofrequency Identification Tags (RFID), as life saviors, in the medical field. Steven Schwaitzberg, chief of surgery at Cambridge Health Alliance released the paper "The Emergence of RFID," which appeared in the August 2006 issue of the journal "Surgical Endoscopy." discussing the need of the RFIDs. RFIDs can identify medical products, confirm patients' identity and store relevant medical information.

The article reports that researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California have discovered a DNA structure in the chromosomes of lymphocytes that create a fragile site on the chromosome and to predispose cells carrying it to develop a common form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. This is the first disease ever to be associated with a deviation from the Watson-Crick helix.

This article presents information on First International Conference on Applied Hair Science to be held by Textile Research Institute/Princeton in Princeton, New Jersey. A wide variety of topics will be highlighted at the conference including chemical, physical, and surface properties of hair. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Applied Hair Science will be published as a special volume of the peer reviewed Journal of Cosmetic Science. TRI has evolved into a full-service research and testing facility, specializing in hair, fibers, porous materials, polymers, and films.

Duke University Medical Center biochemists have used computational design to engineer and construct a protein that could sense the nerve agent soman. Led by Associate Professor of Biochemistry Homme Hellinga, Ph.D., the researchers reported their achievement in a paper published online May 17, 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). In the PNAS paper, Helling and his colleagues described how they had designed a protein that detects a surrogate for soman, called pinacolyl methyl phosphonic acid (PMPA), which has the same basic chemical structure as soman, but is less toxic. In developing the PMPA detector, the Duke researchers used the same general design technique that they had previously used to tailor proteins to sense glucose, lactate, TNT and the brain chemical serotonin.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, Ph.D., director of USC/Norris and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing, and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal "Nature." The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, director of USC/Norris and distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing, and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California, Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal "Nature." The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. This Nature review comes just days after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the epigenetic inhibitor azacitidine for the treatment of a pre-leukemic bone-marrow disorder known as myelodysplastic syndrome, or MDS.

Researchers at Purdue University, the University of Alberta and Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology have discovered that bone cells called osteoblasts attach better to nanotube-coated titanium than they do to conventional titanium used to make artificial joints. Researchers have demonstrated the same improved bone-cell adhesion with other materials, but these nanotubes are especially promising for biomedical applications because they probably be able to tailor them for specific parts of the body. Findings are detailed in a paper appearing in the April issue of the journal "Nanotechnology," published by the Institute of Physics in Great Britain. The paper was written by Purdue biomedical engineering doctoral student Ai Lin Chun, Purdue chemistry doctoral student Jesus G. Moralez, Webster and Hicham Fenniri, a professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta.

Scientists team at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was able to distinguish genes involved in cancer from those involved in a chronic inflammatory disease, pancreatitis, that's often mistaken for cancer. Both diseases produce similar scar tissue around the pear-shaped pancreas gland, which produces insulin, hormones and digestive juices. Late diagnosis, a lack of effective treatment options, rapid metastasis, and a dearth of research on how pancreatic cancer works combine to make the nation's 10th most common cancer into its 4th most deadly cancer. In the paper, published May 15, the team reports finding 158 genes specific to pancreatic cancer, the most accurate list to date. The newly published paper is based on tissue from ten pancreatic tumors, five samples from pancreatitis patients and five samples of normal pancreas, as well as seven commercially available pancreatic cancer cell lines.

The article reports on a research paper that shows the importance of genetic similarity to group loyalty and patriotism. The paper shows that genetic similarity is a social glue in groups as small as two spouses and best friends, or in those as large as nations and alliances. The evidence comes from studies of identical and non-identical twins, adopted and non-adopted children, blood tests, social assortment, heritabilities, family bereavements, and large-scale population genetics. The study's author is J. Philippe Rushton, professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario.

The article reports that researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center continue to make strides in their work to develop the next generation of effective viral-based therapies for cancer. Two papers about promising research with genetically engineered viruses studied in mice, published in the journals "Cancer Research" and the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," bring significantly closer to this objective and the start of clinical trials with these viral-based therapies in cancer patients. In the "Cancer Research" paper, the researchers discuss the development of a terminator virus, which was administered to mice with pancreatic cancers at both primary and distant sites.

Duke University Medical Center biochemists have used computational design to engineer and construct a protein that could sense the nerve agent soman. Led by Associate Professor of Biochemistry Homme Hellinga, Ph.D., the researchers reported their achievement in a paper published online May 17, 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Besides Hellinga, other co-authors of the PNAS paper were Malin Allert, Shahir Rizk and Loren Looger. In the PNAS paper, Helling and his colleagues described how they had designed a protein that detects a surrogate for soman, called pinacolyl methyl phosphonic acid, which has the same basic chemical structure as soman, but is less toxic.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. They add that a number of chemical compounds have been found that have an affect on some form of epigenetic gene change, and note that several of these agents are currently being tested in clinical trials, including trials being conducted at USC/Norris.

Duke University Medical Center biochemists have used computational design to engineer and construct a protein that could sense the nerve agent soman. Led by Associate Professor of Biochemistry Homme Hellinga, the researchers reported their achievement in a paper published online in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." In the PNAS paper, Helling and his colleagues described how they had designed a protein that detects a surrogate for soman, called pinacolyl methyl phosphonic acid PMPA, which has the same basic chemical structure as soman, but is less toxic.

Researchers from the University of Southern California/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. Dispelling the belief that the only way to treat such conditions is by fixing or replacing damaged genes, they are instead focusing on the field of epigenetics — the study of changes in gene silencing that occur without changes in the genes themselves. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on.

Researchers from the University of Southern California/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, Ph.D., director of USC/Norris and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing, and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, director of USC/Norris, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing, and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, director of USC/Norris and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal "Nature." The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on. In their article, Peter Jones, director of USC/Norris and Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Urology at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, and his colleagues lay out their new perspective on the treatment of genetic disorders by discussing the potential ways to interfere with epigenetic gene silencing, and the ways in which that potential is already being exploited.

Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC)/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center are heralding an entirely new approach to the treatment of aging, inherited diseases and cancer in a review paper published in today's issue of the journal Nature. Dispelling the belief that the only way to treat such conditions is by fixing or replacing damaged genes, they are instead focusing on the field of epigenetics — the study of changes in gene silencing that occur without changes in the genes themselves. The new field of epigenetic therapy, put forth by the USC researchers in their Nature review paper, aims to switch these genes back on.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center have designed an online, Web-based system for ordering total parenteral nutrition (TPN) that identifies and pre-emptively eliminates potentially serious calculation errors. The Children's Center team describes its TPN Calculator in the April issue of Pediatrics. TPN Calculator not only reduced TPN order errors by nearly 90 percent, but also proved to be faster and easier to use than the standard paper-based order system, the team reports. Researcher Christoph U. Lehmann, one of the developers of the TPN Calculator, says the system's design was based on existing paper forms to provide users with a familiar format and maximum comfort level.

Andrea Sjovall, a 2002 MBA graduate from Purdue University's Krannert School of Management, won the Best MBA Paper in Corporate Citizenship, awarded by the Center for Corporate Citizenship at Boston College. She received a $5,000 prize for her paper, "From Actions to Impressions: Cognitive Attribution Theory and the Formation of Corporate Reputation." Sjovall's paper draws upon cognitive psychology theory to understand how people form opinions about companies. According to her being considered a good corporate citizen is the result of a consistent and recognizable long-term management effort. In addition to that Sjovall provides four suggestions for those responsible for corporate reputation management.

The Hereditary Disease Array Group (HDAG) reported important new findings on Huntington's disease, in six peer-reviewed papers published in the online version of the August 6, 2002 issue of the journal "Human Molecular Genetics." These papers are part of the two-year research effort of HDAG that brought over 50 scientists from 19 universities together to discover how the mutant Huntington's disease gene causes brain cells to die by affecting other biological pathways. Those data were then compiled in the HDAG NeuMetrix gene expression database, which was custom-built by 3rd Millennium to analyze results and is free and publicly available to all researchers at web sites.

Purdue University scientists developing a new imaging technology have created the world's first visual fly-throughs of a living tumor. The technique, which uses lasers, holograms and special detectors, offers promise for a new kind of medical imaging based on light instead of tissue-damaging X-rays, said researcher David Nolte, a professor of physics at Purdue. Findings about the work will be detailed in an oral paper to be presented May 23, 2002 during the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Long Beach, California. The paper will be presented by Ping Yu, a postdoctoral research associate at Purdue who authored the paper with Nolte, graduate student Mirela Mustata, John Turek, a professor of basic medical sciences, all from Purdue, and P.M.W. French, a physicist from the Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London. Critical to optical coherence imaging is a semiconductor holographic film developed by the team. The film is combined with a series of lenses and mirrors, acting as a filter that rejects ordinary scattered light and lets through only the coherent laser light needed to produce the images. The ripples, or light waves from a laser, are spaced regularly apart and move in unison. But most light detectors, including the human eye and conventional video cameras, do not detect coherent light, a limitation that can be overcome with the holographic film.

Pinpointing oxygen as the cause of routine chromosome damage and defining the role of a key protein in the repair of that damage are the subjects of two recently published papers from the laboratory of USC/Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center pathologist Michael Lieber, the Rita and Edward Polusky Chair in Basic Cancer Research at the Keck School of Medicine. The first paper was published in the March 5, 2002, issue of the journal "Current Biology," and the other is slated for the March 22 issue of the journal "Cell." The paper published in the "Cell" revealed that a protein previously linked to a devastating form of immunodeficiency plays a key role in a pathway by which nuclear DNA is repaired-the same system, in fact, which the immune system uses to create antibodies. Researchers from the University of Ulm in Germany, conclusively demonstrated that Artemis is a key protein in the repair of double-stranded DNA breaks, a process called NHEJ. In the NHEJ pathway, explained Lieber, the ends of the broken DNA strands are trimmed and rejoined to one another. "What Artemis does is trim away the damaged parts of the DNA so that the strands can be joined," said Lieber.

Scientists at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), California, have produced dramatic images of brain cells forming temporary and permanent connections in response to various stimuli, illustrating for the first time the structural changes between neurons in the brain that, many scientists have long believed, take place when one store short-term and long-term memories. In a paper published in the November 30 issue of the journal "Cell," researchers from UCSD describe their achievement, a Holy Grail, for neuroscientists who have long sought concrete evidence for how nerve connections in the brain are changed temporarily and permanently by our experiences. The long-term memories stored in brain last entire lives, so everybody had assumed that there must be lasting structural changes between neurons in the brain, says Michael A. Colicos, the lead author of the paper.

This article reports that in two research papers appearing in the August 2005 issue of the journal "Nicotine and Tobacco Research," Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts' researchers describe new evidence for the role of mentholated cigarettes in tobacco-related health disparities among White and African-American smokers. Researchers from Harvard School of Public Health said their findings suggest one important role of menthol may be to offset reductions in tar and nicotine delivery in so-called light cigarettes, either by replacing missing perceptions of strength or impact or by facilitating deeper inhalation than with regular cigarettes. A second study by researchers from Harvard School of Dental Medicine examined the relationships among race, gender, menthol, and tobacco exposure measures, including cotinine among a group of 307 Boston-area smokers.

The article reports that Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators and their colleagues have established that tiny microRNAs provide a novel genetic route to the initiation of some forms of cancer. This discovery may open a new chapter in understanding and diagnosing cancer. The researchers published their discoveries in independent papers in the June 9, 2005, issue of the journal "Nature." Todd R. Golub, who is at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, said that their findings show that distinctive patterns of activity of microRNAs (miRNAs) in cancer cells can be used to diagnose cancers.

The article focuses on the latest U.S. mental health tracking survey that shows a continued high prevalence of mental disorders. In a set of four papers published in the June issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, the survey authors reported that a majority of Americans will have a mental health disorder at some time in their life, but that most are mild. Anxiety disorders were found to be the most prevalent class of disorders, followed by impulse-control, mood and substance use disorders. The most prevalent individual lifetime disorders are major depressive disorder, alcohol abuse, specific phobia and social phobia.

This article reports that on June 6, 2005 in a set of four papers, the Archives of General Psychiatry will publish the results of the National Co-morbidity Survey Replication, a nationwide survey taken every 10 years to assess the mental health of the United States. The survey was led by Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, and the National Institute of Mental Health. The first National Co-morbidity Survey was conducted in the early 1990s; since then, important advances have been made in mental health care in terms of new medications, public attitudes and treatment financing.

The article reports that new research reveals a clash between two of the biggest issues in health care today: protecting individual patients' privacy and improving the quality, safety and cost of medical care for all patients. In a paper published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center report how their research on heart attack care has been hampered by the national medical privacy regulations under a law known as HIPAA, which took effect two years ago last month.

The article reports on growing shortage of geriatricians. The American Geriatrics Society's 2005 Annual Meeting, the premier scientific meeting for geriatrics health care providers, educators and researchers began on May 15, 2005. More than 1,000 geriatrics experts and researchers will present research papers and posters, symposia and workshops during the five-day meeting. American Geriatrics Society will also release its watershed report, Caring for Older Americans: The Future of Geriatric Medicine.

The article focuses on an international consortium of 29 neuroscientists which has proposed a drastic renaming of the structures of the bird brain to correctly portray birds as more comparable to mammals in their cognitive ability. The Avian Brain Nomenclature Consortium published a report on the rationale for the proposed revised nomenclature in the February 2005 issue of Nature Reviews Neuroscience. The consortium's efforts were supported by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (NSF), including the NSF's Waterman Award for young researchers to the Nature Reviews Neuroscience paper's first author, Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Erich Jarvis.

The article reports a study in which Duke University neurobiologist Erich Jarvis and a team of 28 other neuroscientists have proposed sweeping changes to the terminology associated with the brain structures of birds. It is a century-old nomenclature the researchers consider outdated and irrelevant to birds' true brainpower. The international research group concludes in a February 2005, paper published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that significant discoveries made over time reveal that birds are much closer to mammals in cognitive ability, and therefore, a new consistency in language will enhance studies of both.

Anal cancer is on the rise in both sexes, particularly among American men, and changing trends in sexual behavior, combined with current tobacco use and infection by a specific strain of the human papillomavirus, may help explain the increase. These findings, from two separate studies by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, will be reported in a pair of papers in the July 15 issue of Cancer. The first study, by lead author Lisa G. Johnson, a statistical-research associate in Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division, found that incidence rates of anal cancer have increased significantly in the past 30 years, jumping 160 percent in men and 78 percent in women.