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ATLANTA, March 31 (UPI) — Teaching students in schools in the developing world about hygiene helps the whole household reduce illness, U.S. researchers said.

Lead study investigator Elizabeth Blanton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said poor sanitation and a lack of access to safe water contribute to an estimated 1.87 million deaths per year from devastating diseases worldwide, mostly among children age 5 and younger in the developing world.

The CDC and colleagues at the Cooperative for Assistance and Relieve Everywhere, Inc., found that the school student hygiene and water treatment education program in Kenya resulted in a 200 percent increase in household water treatment.

In addition, the hygiene education program also resulted in a 164 percent increase in proper hand-washing techniques among adults and 240 percent among students, the study said.

The study, published in the April issue of the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, further found student absenteeism decreased 26 percent after seven months.

“Perhaps most exciting is the idea that through student education we can help an entire community adopt new practices that will minimize the impact of diseases that can lead to death,” Blanton said in a statement.

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WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it’s evaluating a clinical trial that suggests taking Stalevo may place people at risk of getting prostate cancer.

Stalevo (entacapone) is used to treat symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. The long-term trial suggested the drug might increase a patient’s risk of developing prostate cancer, although other controlled clinical trials didn’t find such a linkage, the FDA said.

“FDA is still reviewing the available information and has not concluded Stalevo increases the risk of developing prostate cancer,” officials said in a statement. “Healthcare professionals should be aware of this possible risk and follow current guidelines for prostate cancer screening.”

The federal agency said patients shouldn’t stop taking their medication unless directed to do so by their healthcare professional.

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OAK RIDGE, Tenn., March 31 (UPI) — U.S. scientists say they are studying micro-organisms in toxic groundwater to find biological methods of dealing with such contaminants.

The research by a collaboration of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Joint Genome Institute and the University of Oklahoma, involved a “stressed” microbial community near a former waste disposal pond on the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee.

The study revealed microbes with an overabundance of genes involved in DNA recombination and repair and other defense mechanisms for dealing with contaminants and other environmental stresses.

The studies, said ORNL researcher David Watson, are aimed at developing ways of reducing the level of contaminants in groundwater, which at the site includes nitrates, solvents and heavy metals, including uranium.

“We are looking to better understand the evolution of microbes in the groundwater plume,” Watson said. “The microbes that can break down nitrate into nitrogen can have a long-term benefit toward attenuating the plume.”

Watson says researchers particularly want to better understand the genetic makeup of microbes that can metabolize oxidized forms of uranium into a form that is only slightly soluble and thus easier to precipitate and remove from the environment.

The study that also included Montana and Michigan State Universities and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was recently published in the on-line edition of the International Society for Microbial Ecology Journal.

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AUSTIN, Texas, March 31 (UPI) — Given a choice between a quick payoff versus a longer-term benefit, people with complete information pick the instant reward, U.S. researchers find.

Bradley Love, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and graduate student Ross Otto said the findings better explain the decisions people make financially, physically and emotionally.

The researchers had 78 subjects given two options through a computer program that allowed them to accumulate points. For each choice, one option offered the subject more points. But choosing the other option could lead to more points further along in the experiment. Some were given this information, some weren’t and were given misinformation, the researcher said.

The study, published online in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, found those given full and accurate information about the short-term loss versus the long-term benefit chose the quick payoff more than twice as often as those who were given false information or no information about the long-term rewards lost.

“Basically, people have to stay away from thinking about the short-term pains and gains or they are sunk and, objectively, will end up worse off,” Love said in a statement.

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URBANA, Ind., March 31 (UPI) — U.S. scientists say they’ve identified a new soybean aphid — Biotype 3 — that can multiply on aphid-resistant soybean varieties.

The researcher, led by University of Illinois Professor Glen Hartman, said the soybean aphid is the only soybean insect pest known to have multiple biotypes, and the most recently identified soybean aphid was discovered in Springfield Fen, Ind., on overwintering glossy buckthorn.

Biotype 3 is not distinguishable by its appearance, Hartman said. It was identified by testing the aphid on soybean plants with known resistance genes. The scientists found it was capable of feeding and multiplying on varieties carrying the resistance genes Rag1 and Rag2.

“Identifying a biotype that can overcome Rag1 and Rag2 resistance, even before soybean varieties with these resistance genes were deployed in production, suggests high variability in virulence within soybean aphid populations,” said principal research specialist Curt Hill. “This gives the pest a high potential to adapt to and reduce the effective life of resistance genes deployed in production.”

The study that included Laura Crull, Theresa Herman and David Voegtlin was reported in the Journal of Economic Entomology.

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PASADENA, Calif., March 31 (UPI) — NASA says the most powerful camera aboard a spacecraft orbiting Mars has returned the first pictures of locations suggested by the public.

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the pictures. The program resulted in NASA receiving more than 1,000 suggestions for locations to be photographed, the space agency said.

Since 2006, HiRISE has obtained approximately 13,000 observations covering dozens of square miles, including areas from a previous student-suggestion program called NASA Quest, the space agency said. Despite that, NASA says only about 1 percent of the Martian surface has been photographed.

The first images of areas the public selected are available at http://www1.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/images20100331.html.

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WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) — New U.S. environmental rules have a mixed effect on Muscovy ducks, protecting them, but only in Texas, environmental activists say.

That’s because Muscovy ducks, a species native to Central and South America and the Rio Grande Valley, are considered invasive everywhere outside the Lone Star state. The new regulations list Muscovies as a protected native wild bird, while allowing property owners and state wildlife agents to kill invasive birds, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Tuesday.

Muscovies are adaptable. The descendants of escaped domestic ducks live as far north as Canada. Current regulations ban duck enthusiasts from relocating invasive Muscovies or releasing birds back into the wild after treatment for injuries.

Eunice Sivertsen, who runs Duck Haven, a refuge in Margate, Fla., fears the rules allow “all the nasty people to go out there and shoot the ducks right in their back yard.”

George Allen of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said he got little feedback during the public comment period but a lot after the regulations were published.

“They started contacting me about uses of Muscovy ducks I didn’t know about before,” he said. “I want to go back and revise the regulations.”

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COLUMBUS, Ohio, March 31 (UPI) — U.S. medical scientists say they’ve found a gene that normally protects the body against cancer can itself cause a variety of cancers if it becomes mutated.

Ohio State University researchers led by Associate Professor Gustavo Leone said they examined a gene called PTEN, which, when mutated, causes Cowden syndrome — a condition that carries a high risk of cancer in various organs, including the breast, thyroid and ovaries. In addition, muted PTEN also can lead to prostate, lung and pancreatic cancers.

Why people with Cowden syndrome develop different cancers is unknown,

In the animal study, however, the scientists linked specific mutations in the gene to distinct kinds of cancer in various organs.

“We showed mutations themselves play a critical role in driving the cancers that occur in certain organs in people with Cowden syndrome,” Leone said. “Together, our findings demonstrate specific inherited PTEN mutations have a strong influence in the variable predisposition to cancer of patients with Cowden syndrome.”

Co-principle investigator Professor Michael Ostrowski added, “Mutations in this gene also play a role in developmental disabilities and perhaps in autism, so this mouse model might be useful for studies in those conditions, as well.”

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggest testing for specific PTEN mutations might predict the kind and severity of cancer that will develop in people with the syndrome.

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TORONTO, March 31 (UPI) — Immigrant women — especially South Asian, West Asian or Arab women — say they have trouble accessing healthcare in Canada, researchers found.

Researchers at St. Michael’s Hospital and the Institute for Clinical and Evaluative Sciences found more than 50 percent of South Asian, West Asian or Arab adults say they were not very satisfied with their ability to get an appointment with a doctor for a regular checkup.

Nearly 40 percent of East and Southeast Asian and 34 percent of Aboriginal adults reported having difficulties when accessing a specialist compared with 22 percent of white Ontario residents.

The study also found that 15 percent of Canadian immigrants for less than five years do not have a primary care doctor, compared to 7.3 percent of Canadian-born men and women who say they don’t have primary care doctor.

“Ensuring all Ontarians have equal access to care is important if we want to improve the health and well-being of men and women across the province,” principal investigator Arlene Bierman, a physician at St. Michael’s Hospital, said in a statement.

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NEW YORK, March 31 (UPI) — U.S.-led scientists say they have found evidence suggesting changing environmental factors, including drought, can cause a civilization’s collapse.

The researchers, led by Brendan Buckley of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, say decades of drought, interspersed with intense monsoon rains, may have helped bring about the fall of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilization at Angkor nearly 600 years ago.

The scientists reached their conclusion after conducting an analysis of tree rings — the longest tropical tree ring record studied to date.

Historians have offered various explanations for the fall of the Angkor civilization that stretched across much of Southeast Asia between the 9th and 14th centuries. But the scientists said their new findings offer the strongest evidence yet that two severe droughts, punctuated by bouts of heavy rainfall, may have weakened the empire by shrinking water supplies for drinking and agriculture, and damaging Angkor’s vast irrigation system, which was central to its economy.

The kingdom is thought to have collapsed in 1431 after a raid by Siamese from present-day Thailand.

“Angkor at that time faced a number of problems — social, political and cultural,” Buckley said. “Environmental change pushed the ancient Khmers to the limit and they weren’t able to adapt. I wouldn’t say climate caused the collapse, but a 30-year drought had to have had an impact.”

The research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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