(Press-News.org) PHILADELPHIA — Lung tumors in those who smoke and those who never smoked have different DNA alterations in the tumor genomes, according to results of a pilot study presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held Nov. 7-10, 2010, in Philadelphia.
Based on the results of this study, Kelsie Thu, a Ph.D. candidate at the BC Cancer Research Center in Vancouver, Canada, suggested that "lung cancer in never-smokers should be studied as a separate group," and that lung cancers in smokers and never-smokers may represent two different diseases.
Thu and colleagues investigated the biology of lung cancer to determine how it is different in 30 patients who never smoked vs. 53 patients who were current or former smokers. The goal: to improve the current understanding of lung cancer development.
"A better understanding of the biology underlying lung cancer development will lead to improved detection and therapeutic strategies, and ultimately, will result in improved patient prognosis," she said.
Using genomic technologies, the researchers found regions of DNA that were altered in both the smoker and never-smoker groups, as well as regions of DNA altered preferentially in one group.
Besides having more epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, which is typical, never-smoker tumor genomes had more DNA alterations than smokers altogether. This suggests there may be more genomic instability in never-smoker lung tumors and that they could develop through different molecular mechanisms, according to Thu.
"Hopefully, our findings will stimulate the research community to further investigate the differences between lung cancer in these two cohorts, which could ultimately lead to the discovery of novel molecular targets for the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer in never-smokers," Thu said.
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PHILADELPHIA — Being a current smoker or having a history of smoking significantly increased the risk of breast cancer progression and overall death among a group of multiethnic women with breast cancer, according to the results of a large prospective cohort study.
"We found that women who are current smokers or have history of smoking had a 39 percent higher rate of dying from breast cancer, even after we took into account a wide array of known prognostic factors including clinical, socioeconomic and behavioral factors," said Dejana Braithwaite, Ph.D, assistant professor, ...
PHILADELPHIA — Obesity was not associated with breast cancer risk in Mexican-American women, even when measured at numerous ages throughout a woman's lifetime, according to data presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held here Nov. 7-10, 2010.
However, data did show that weight gain during adulthood seemed to reduce breast cancer risk, regardless of menopausal status.
"We found that for every 5 kg of weight gain there was a significant 8 percent decrease in the risk for breast cancer," said Krystal Sexton, Ph.D., a ...
The second wave of the pandemic (H1N1) was substantially greater than the first with 4.8 times more hospital admissions, 4.6 times more deaths and 4 times more ICU cases, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj100746.pdf. However, because of the larger number of people hospitalized during the second wave compared to the first, the percentage of people with severe outcomes was smaller.
The researchers compared demographic and clinical characteristics as well as outcomes of patients ...
Health Canada's cancellation of plans to renew tobacco warning labels on cigarette packages may lead to increased smoking rates and smoking-related illnesses and deaths, states an editorial in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal) (pre-embargo link only) http://www.cmaj.ca/embargo/cmaj101583.pdf.
Ten years ago, Canada was a leader in warning labels and other effective tobacco policies. Abandoning this labeling policy may be a set back for efforts in Canada, particularly as labels are now the government's only remaining mass communication initiative warning of the ...
The findings are based on comparisons of virtual imprints of the developing brain and surrounding structures (known as endocasts) derived from the skulls of modern and fossilized humans, including that of a newborn Neanderthal.
Philipp Gunz of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology explained that the differences researchers observe in early brain development likely reflect changes in the underlying brain circuitry. It is that internal organization of the brain that matters most for cognitive ability.
"In modern humans, the connections between diverse ...
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These new findings will be presented in three invited talks at the American Physical Society, Division of Plasma Physics 52nd annual meeting on November 8-12 in Chicago. END ...
Researchers at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory have successfully used Coaxial Helicity Injection (CHI) to generate plasma current and couple it to a conventional current generation method at the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) fusion experiment. After coupling, the combined process generated 1 million amperes of current using 40 percent less energy than needed to generate this current using the conventional means by itself, thus demonstrating that a high-quality initial magnetic configuration was produced by CHI.
Plasma confinement devices based on ...
Fusion plasmas in the laboratory typically reach 100 million degrees. These high temperatures are required to ignite the hydrogen plasma and maintain the fusion burn by the production of high-energy alpha particles. One challenge for a fusion reactor is how to contain the alpha particles in the vessel long enough for the particles to efficiently heat the hydrogen plasma. One way that these alpha particles can escape the fusion chamber prematurely is by exciting high frequency Alfvén waves and riding these waves to the vessel walls, like a surfer rides a wave to the beach.
While ...
When physicists probe the mysteries of plasma, the fourth state of matter, they often discover phenomena of striking beauty. Much as when the Hubble Space Telescope sent back vivid images from space of ionized gas clouds (an interstellar plasma!), new 3D images of shear Alfvén waves are delighting both scientists and a new generation of science enthusiasts.
Plasmas support a large variety of waves. Some of these are familiar, such as light and sound waves, but a great many exist nowhere else. One of the fundamental waves in magnetized plasma is the shear Alfvén wave, ...
Just like an electrical switch allows the flow of electricity into electrical circuits, relativistic transparency in plasma can act like a fast optical switch allowing the flow of light through otherwise opaque plasma. Modern day lasers, such as the Trident laser in Los Alamos National Laboratory delivers a 200 terawatt power pulse (roughly 400 times the average electrical consumption of the United States) in half a trillionth of a second (picosecond) time. As shown in Fig. 1, when the laser power reaches a threshold limit, relativistic transparency in plasma turns the ...
