Bigger human genome pool uncovers rarer variants

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A team of UC Davis investigators has discovered a protein on the surface of lung cancer cells that could prove to be an important new target for anti-cancer therapy. A series of experiments in mice with lung cancer showed that specific targeting of the protein with monoclonal antibodies reduced the size of tumors, lowered the occurrence of metastases and substantially lengthened survival time. The findings will be published in the November issue of Cancer Research. "Lung cancer continues to be one of the biggest killers in the United States, and ...

Negatively framed political attitudes ("I don't like Obama") are stronger than positively framed attitudes ("I like Romney"), and this effect is strengthened when people think more deeply about the issues involved. That is the finding of a paper published in the latest issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology by George Bizer, a psychology professor at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. Bizer and his co-authors Iris Žeželj (University of Belgrade) and Jamie Luguri (Yale University) presented participants with information about two fictional (though ostensibly ...

In one of the largest studies of its kind ever conducted, an international team of scientists has thrown new light on the genetic basis of the inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two most common forms of IBD, are chronic inflammatory digestive disorders affecting 230,000 Canadians. Dr. John Rioux, researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute and Associate Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal, is one of the researchers who have identified 71 genetic regions newly associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), increasing ...

Adding an angiogenesis inhibitor to treatment with a HER2-inhibiting drug could improve outcomes for patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who develop brain metastases. In their report published online in PNAS Plus, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators report the first preclinical study combining antiangiogenic and anti-HER2 drugs in an animal model of brain metastatic breast cancer. "We have shown dramatic improvement in survival by slowing the growth of brain metastatic, HER2-amplified breast cancer," says Rakesh Jain, PhD, director of the Steele ...

PHILADELPHIA - Arterial stiffening has long been considered a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Keeping arteries soft and supple might reduce disease risk, but the mechanisms of how arteries stave off hardening has remained elusive. Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Wistar Institute, and The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have discovered that the protein apolipoprotein E (apoE) plays a major role in maintaining arterial softness by suppressing production of the extracellular matrix, a network of connective ...

AMES, Iowa – The human body has more than a trillion cells, most of them connected, cell to neighboring cells. How, exactly, do those bonds work? What happens when a pulling force is applied to those bonds? How long before they break? Does a better understanding of all those bonds and their responses to force have implications for fighting disease? Sanjeevi Sivasankar, an Iowa State assistant professor of physics and astronomy and an associate of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory, is leading a research team that's answering those questions as it studies ...

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM, satellite acts as a rain gauge in space as it orbits the Earth's tropics. As TRMM flew over Hurricane Sandy since its birth on Oct. 21 it was gathering data that has now been mapped to show how much rain the storm dropped along the U.S. eastern seaboard. Much of the recent deadly flooding along the northeastern United States coastlines was caused by super storm Sandy's storm swell. Strong winds from Sandy persistently pushed Atlantic Ocean waters toward the coast. High tides that occurred at the same time also magnified ...

Wind shear is pushing the bulk of Tropical Storm Rosa southeast of the storm's center, and that's evident on infrared imagery from NASA's Aqua satellite. Meanwhile System 99E, that was trailing behind Rosa on Oct. 31, has now "given up the ghost" as a result of that same wind shear. When NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Rosa at 5:41 a.m. EDT (0951 UTC) on Nov. 1, 2012 the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument took an infrared picture of Tropical Storm Rosa and remnants of System 99E. The AIRS data showed the strongest convection (rising air that ...

Parents with social anxiety disorder are more likely than parents with other forms of anxiety to engage in behaviors that put their children at high risk for developing angst of their own, according to a small study of parent-child pairs conducted at Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Authors of the federally funded study say past research has linked parental anxiety to anxiety in children, but it remained unclear whether people with certain anxiety disorders engaged more often in anxiety-provoking behaviors. Based on the new study findings, they do. A report on the team's ...

After Tropical Cyclone Nilam made landfall in southeastern India NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and saw the storm's clouds blanket the entire southern portion of the country from Chennai southward. On Nov. 1 at 05:50 UTC (1:50 a.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Depression Nilam. The MODIS image showed that Nilam's clouds stretched as far north as Andra Pradesh, a state in east central India. It covered the states of Goa and Karnataka in ...