ANN ARBOR--As if holiday travel isn't stressful enough. Now University of Michigan researchers say we're likely sharing that already overcrowded airline cabin with countless tiny creatures including house dust mites. "What people might not realize when they board a plane is that they can share the flight with a myriad of microscopic passengers-- including house dust mites--that take advantage of humanity's technological progress for their own benefit," said U-M biologist Pavel Klimov. "House dust mites can easily travel on an airline passenger's clothes, skin, food ...

Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have identified two compounds that appear, in cellular and animal models, to block the cardiac damage caused by the important chemotherapy drug doxorubicin. Their report in the Dec. 10 issue of Science Translational Medicine indicates that inhibiting the action of an enzyme that is key to the generation of cellular energy in mitochondria could prevent doxorubicin-induced damage to cardiac cells without reducing the drug's anti-tumor effects. "Doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy limits the amount of the drug a patient ...

Treating the potentially blinding haze of a scar on the cornea might be as straightforward as growing stem cells from a tiny biopsy of the patient's undamaged eye and then placing them on the injury site, according to mouse model experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. The findings, published today in Science Translational Medicine, could one day rescue vision for millions of people worldwide and decrease the need for corneal transplants. According to the National Eye Institute, part of the National Institutes of Heath, ...

Rats that received thyroid hormones had a reduced risk for dangerous heart arrhythmias following a heart attack, according to a new study by a team of medical researchers at New York Institute of Technology. In the NIH-funded study, published in the Journal of Cardiac Failure, the team found that thyroid hormone replacement therapy significantly reduced the incidence of atrial fibrillation - a specific kind of irregular heartbeat, or arrhythmia -- in the rats, compared to a control group that did not receive the hormones. The finding could have important implications ...

San Diego, Calif., Dec. 10, 2014 -- Engineers at the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a new and more efficient way to trap light, using a phenomenon called bound states in the continuum (BIC) that was first proposed in the early days of quantum wave mechanics. Boubacar Kanté, an assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, and his postdoctoral researcher Thomas Lepetit described their BIC experiment online in the rapid communication section of journal Physical Review B. The study directly ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University and Qatar University have developed a new "high-entropy" metal alloy that has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than any other existing metal material. High-entropy alloys are materials that consist of five or more metals in approximately equal amounts. These alloys are currently the focus of significant attention in materials science and engineering because they can have desirable properties. The NC State research team combined lithium, magnesium, titanium, aluminum and scandium to make a nanocrystalline high-entropy ...

Is it the thought that really counts? When it comes to giving gift cards, maybe not. New research from the University of Cincinnati can help even the most thoughtful gift giver avoid the mistake of over-personalization and keep that card from being banished to the bottom of a purse or hidden deep inside a wallet for the next six months. "Givers often fail to anticipate that the gifts they prefer to give are not necessarily the ones recipients prefer to receive," says Mary Steffel, researcher and assistant professor of marketing in UC's Carl H. Lindner College of Business. So ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Researchers for the first time have developed a method to track through the human body the movement of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, as extraordinarily tiny amounts of these potential carcinogens are biologically processed and eliminated. PAHs, which are the product of the incomplete combustion of carbon, have been a part of everyday human life since cave dwellers first roasted meat on an open fire. More sophisticated forms of exposure now range from smoked cheese to automobile air pollution, cigarettes, a ham sandwich and public drinking ...

Many children who sustain so-called open bone fractures in the forearm or lower leg can, and do, heal safely without surgery, according to the results of a small study led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. Open fractures occur when the broken bone protrudes through the skin, causing a puncture wound. The study, published ahead of print in the Journal of Children's Orthopaedics, shows that when the wound is small -- less ½-inch in diameter -- and the surrounding tissue is free of visible contamination with dirt or debris, children heal well ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA, December 10, 2014 - A team of investigators from the Broad Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital and other leading biomedical research institutions has pinpointed rare mutations in a gene called APOA5 that increase a person's risk of having a heart attack early in life. These mutations disable the APOA5 gene and also raise the levels in the blood of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins, a type of fat. The researchers' findings, together with other recent genetic discoveries -- specifically, the identification of protective mutations in the APOC3 gene that lower ...

Stem cells in early embryos have unlimited potential; they can become any type of cell, and researchers hope to one day harness this rejuvenating power to heal disease and injury. To do so, they must, among other things, figure out how to reliably arrest stem cells in a Peter Pan-like state of indefinite youth and potential. It's clear the right environment can help accomplish this, acting as a sort of Neverland for stem cells. Only now are scientists beginning to understand how. New collaborative research between scientists at Rockefeller University and Memorial ...

The dragonfly is a swift and efficient hunter. Once it spots its prey, it takes about half a second to swoop beneath an unsuspecting insect and snatch it from the air. Scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have used motion-capture techniques to track the details of that chase, and found that a dragonfly's movement is guided by internal models of its own body and the anticipated movement of its prey. Similar internal models are used to guide behavior in humans. "This highlights the role that internal models play in letting these creatures ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- How do some proteins survive the extreme heat generated when they catalyze reactions that can happen as many as a million times per second? Work by researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the University of California Berkeley published online on Dec. 10 in Nature provides an explosive answer to this important question. Proteins are essential to the human body, doing the bulk of the work within cells. Proteins are large molecules responsible for the structure, function, and regulation of tissues and organs. Enzymes ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. - Nitrous oxide (N2O) is an important greenhouse gas that doesn't receive as much notoriety as carbon dioxide or methane, but a new study confirms that atmospheric levels of N2O rose significantly as the Earth came out of the last ice age and addresses the cause. An international team of scientists analyzed air extracted from bubbles enclosed in ancient polar ice from Taylor Glacier in Antarctica, allowing for the reconstruction of the past atmospheric composition. The analysis documented a 30 percent increase in atmospheric nitrous oxide concentrations ...

In a ground-breaking paper published in Nature, they show that the three protein complexes act in relay to regulate cell division: reactivation of one leads to the second becoming active. Cells rely on control systems to make sure that each aspect of the cell division cycle occurs in the correct order. Following successful segregation of the genomes in mitosis, each must return to its pre-division state in a process called mitotic exit. Mitotic exit is irreversible for all multicellular organisms. Loss of cell cycle control during this process - leading to unregulated ...

Clathrates are now known to store enormous quantities of methane and other gases in the permafrost as well as in vast sediment layers hundreds of metres deep at the bottom of the ocean floor. Their potential decomposition could therefore have significant consequences for our planet, making an improved understanding of their properties a key priority. In a paper published in Nature this week, scientists from the University of Göttingen and the Institut Laue Langevin (ILL) report on the first empty clathrate of this type, consisting of a framework of water molecules ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Using a gene-editing system originally developed to delete specific genes, MIT researchers have now shown that they can reliably turn on any gene of their choosing in living cells. This new application for the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing system should allow scientists to more easily determine the function of individual genes, according to Feng Zhang, the W.M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering in MIT's Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Biological Engineering, and a member of the Broad Institute and MIT's McGovern Institute ...

Anticipated changes in climate will push West Coast marine species from sharks to salmon northward an average of 30 kilometers per decade, shaking up fish communities and shifting fishing grounds, according to a new study published in Progress in Oceanography. The study suggests that shifting species will likely move into the habitats of other marine life to the north, especially in the Gulf of Alaska and Bering Sea. Some will simultaneously disappear from areas at the southern end of their ranges, especially off Oregon and California. "As the climate warms, the species ...

For the firefighters and rescue workers conducting the rescue and cleanup operations at Ground Zero from September 2001 to May 2002, exposure to hazardous airborne particles led to a disturbing "WTC cough" -- obstructed airways and inflammatory bronchial hyperactivity -- and acute inflammation of the lungs. At the time, bronchoscopy, the insertion of a fiber optic bronchoscope into the lung, was the only way to obtain lung samples. But this method is highly invasive and impractical for screening large populations. That motivated Prof. Elizabeth Fireman of Tel Aviv University's ...

There are pros and cons to the support that victimized teenagers get from their friends. Depending on the type of aggression they are exposed to, such support may reduce youth's risk for depressive symptoms. On the other hand, it may make some young people follow the delinquent example of their friends, says a team of researchers from the University of Kansas in the US, led by John Cooley. Their findings are published in Springer's Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment. Adolescence is an important time during which youth establish their social identity. ...

Patients with heart disease who receive transfusions during surgeries do just as well with smaller amounts of blood and face no greater risk of dying from other diseases than patients who received more blood, according to a new Rutgers study. The research, published in the journal Lancet, measures overall mortality and mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancer and severe infection, and offers new validation to a recent trend toward smaller transfusions. For the study, led by Jeffrey Carson, chief of the Division of Internal Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson ...

A class of drug for treating arthritis - all but shelved over fears about side effects - may be given a new lease of life, following the discovery of a possible way to identify which patients should avoid using it. The new study, led by Imperial College London and published in the journal Circulation, sheds new light on the 10-year-old question of how COX-2 inhibitors - a type of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) - can increase the risk of heart attack in some people. NSAIDs - which include very familiar drugs such as ibuprofen, diclofenac and aspirin - are ...

Typhoon Hagupit soaked the Philippines, and a NASA rainfall analysis indicated the storm dropped almost 19 inches in some areas. After Hagupit departed the Philippines as a tropical storm, NASA's Terra satellite passed over and captured a picture of the storm curled up like a cat waiting to pounce when it landfalls in Vietnam on Dec. 11. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite, managed by NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency gathered over a week of rainfall data on Hagupit. That rainfall data along with data from other satellites was compiled ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Previous cancer research has revealed that women are less likely than men to suffer from non-sex specific cancers such as cancer of the colon, pancreas and stomach. Scientists theorized that perhaps this trend was due to a protecting effect created by female hormones, such as estrogen, that help prevent tumors from forming. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found evidence suggesting that the male hormone testosterone may actually be a contributing factor in the formation of colon cancer tumors. In his study, James Amos-Landgraf, an assistant ...

Ants: Ever since agriculture evolved ca 10.000 years ago, plants have been artificially selected to become the fast growing and highly productive varieties we know today. However, humans were not the first to see merit in cultivating their own food, as ants have been doing this for 50 million years. A lineage of South-American ants collect leaves and recycle their own feces to manure a fungus garden for food. New research shows that these ants have an evolutionary history of improvement of their fungal crops. A joint effort by researchers at the Universities of Copenhagen ...