CLEVELAND: Researchers from Seidman Cancer Center at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine presented new research findings this weekend at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Francisco. In a poster presentation (Abstract #4053), Jane Little, MD, and colleagues presented promising findings related to a novel biochip aimed at improving outcomes for patients with sickle cell disease. Although it is well-known that red cell interactions are important in sickle cell disease, ...

According to a new NOAA-sponsored study, natural oceanic and atmospheric patterns are the primary drivers behind California's ongoing drought. A high pressure ridge off the West Coast (typical of historic droughts) prevailed for three winters, blocking important wet season storms, with ocean surface temperature patterns making such a ridge much more likely. Typically, the winter season in California provides the state with a majority of its annual snow and rainfall that replenish water supplies for communities and ecosystems. Further studies on these oceanic conditions ...

Using one of the most powerful lasers in the world, researchers have accelerated subatomic particles to the highest energies ever recorded from a compact accelerator. The team, from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab), used a specialized petawatt laser and a charged-particle gas called plasma to get the particles up to speed. The setup is known as a laser-plasma accelerator, an emerging class of particle accelerators that physicists believe can shrink traditional, miles-long accelerators to machines that can fit on a table. The ...

If you want your child to tell the truth, it's best not to threaten to punish them if they lie. That's what researchers discovered through a simple experiment involving 372 children between the ages of 4 and 8. How the Experiment was Done The researchers, led by Prof. Victoria Talwar of McGill's Dept. of Educational and Counselling Psychology, left each child alone in a room for 1 minute with a toy behind them on a table, having told the child not to peek during their absence. While they were out of the room, a hidden video camera filmed what went on. When the ...

AMHERST, Mass. - New three-dimensional (3D) numerical modeling that captures far more geometric complexity of an active fault segment in southern California than any other, suggests that the overall earthquake hazard for towns on the west side of the Coachella Valley such as Palm Springs and Palm Desert may be slightly lower than previously believed. New simulations of deformation on three alternative fault configurations for the Coachella Valley segment of the San Andreas Fault conducted by geoscientists Michele Cooke and Laura Fattaruso of the University of Massachusetts ...

Hamilton, ON (Dec. 8, 2014) - Researchers from McMaster University have identified an important hormone that is elevated in obese people and contributes to obesity and diabetes by inhibiting brown fat activity. Brown adipose tissue, widely known as brown fat, is located around the collarbone and acts as the body's furnace to burn calories. It also keeps the body warm. Obese people have less of it, and its activity is decreased with age. Until now, researchers haven't understood why. There are two types of serotonin. Most people are familiar with the first type in the ...

Recently, the researchers had constructed several single molecules with dual hormone action. Now, for the first time, the researchers succeeded in designing a substance that combines three metabolically active hormone components (GLP-1, GIP and glucagon) and offers unmatched potency to fight metabolic diseases in pre-clinical trials. The team headed by physician scientist Matthias Tschöp (Helmholtz Diabetes Center at HMGU and Metabolic Diseases Chair at TUM) and peptide chemist Richard DiMarchi (Indiana University) has been cooperating for almost a decade to invent ...

Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital have taken what they are describing as "the first step toward a pill that can replace the treadmill" for the control of obesity - though it of course would not provide all the additional benefits of exercise. Chad Cowan, an HSCI Principal Faculty Member and his HSCI team report that they have created a system using human stem cells to screen for compounds that have the potential to turn white, or 'bad', fat cells into brown, or 'good' fat cells, and have already identified two compounds ...

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a peculiar place. Unlike any other moon, it has a dense atmosphere. It has rivers and lakes made up of components of natural gas, such as ethane and methane. It also has windswept dunes that are hundreds of yards high, more than a mile wide and hundreds of miles long--despite data suggesting the body to have only light breezes. Research led by Devon Burr, an associate professor in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, shows that winds on Titan must blow faster than previously thought to ...

New nanopore DNA sequencing technology on a device the size of a USB stick could be used to diagnose infection - according to new research from the University of East Anglia and Public Health England. Researchers tested the new technology with a complex problem - determining the cause of antibiotic resistance in a new multi-drug resistant strain of the bacterium that causes Typhoid. The results, published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology, reveal that the small, accessible and cost effective technology could revolutionise genomic sequencing. Current technology ...

For a small percentage of cancer patients, treatment aimed at curing the disease leads to a form of leukemia with a poor prognosis. Conventional thinking goes that chemotherapy and radiation therapy induce a barrage of damaging genetic mutations that kill cancer cells yet inadvertently spur the development of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a blood cancer. But a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis challenges the view that cancer treatment in itself is a direct cause of what is known as therapy-related AML. Rather, the research suggests, ...

BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE -- The genetic tumult within cancerous tumors is more than matched by the disorder in one of the mechanisms for switching cells' genes on and off, scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard report in a new study. Their findings, published online today in the journal Cancer Cell, indicate that the disarray in the on-off mechanism - known as methylation - is one of the defining characteristics of cancer and helps tumors adapt to changing circumstances.   The researchers also showed that derangement in ...

BOSTON -- Small cell lung cancer - a disease for which no new drugs have been approved for many years - has shown itself vulnerable to an agent that disables part of tumor cells' basic survival machinery, researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported.   In a study published today in the journal Cancer Cell, the investigators found that the agent THZ1 caused human-like small cell lung tumors in mice to shrink significantly, with no apparent side effects. The compound is now being developed into a drug for testing ...

COLUMBUS, OH - As interest in organic agricultural and horticultural practices continues to grow, so does the need to identify alternative weed control practices. Mulching, a common practice used to control weeds and reduce the need for tillage, can also reduce insect pollinators' exposure to harmful pesticides; however, finding the right mulch materials that allow pollinators to flourish can be challenging. Caitlin E. Splawski, from The Ohio State University Department of Horticulture and Crop Science, researched the effects of several types of organic mulch on squash ...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8, 2014 -- There's probably a box of it in your fridge or cupboard, and it has a million uses: baking soda. Reactions is back with volume four of its popular Chemistry Life Hacks series, with tips on how to de-skunk your dog, clean your kitchen and supercharge your washing machine. Check out the latest in the series that's one-part MacGyver, one-part Mendeleev here: http://youtu.be/85diRmuk-ow. Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. The American Chemical Society ...

Nearly half of all children in the United States are exposed to at least one social or family experience that can lead to traumatic stress and impact their healthy development - be it having their parents divorce, a parent die or living with someone who abuses alcohol or drugs - increasing the risk of negative long-term health consequences or of falling behind in school, suggests new research led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The study reports on new data showing the magnitude of these adverse experiences in the child population in the U.S., ...

Voters are more willing to pay for a decreased risk of food-related illness than consumers, but female consumers are more willing to pay than male consumers, according to an international team of researchers. "The question is, what would consumers prefer?" said Amit Sharma, associate professor of hospitality management and finance, Penn State. "Would they prefer a market-driven, or a policy-driven approach? Either of those two approaches could lead to some price increase. Improving quality costs money, and food safety is no different." Sharma and colleagues wanted to ...

In the days shortly after giving birth, most mothers experience a period of increased calmness and decreased stress responses, but around 20% of mothers experience anxiety. Some women may become depressed, and around one in a thousand can develop psychosis. The latest evidence indicates that these distressing responses to motherhood are still poorly understood, but that animal research could provide valuable clues to their causes. Writing in the British Journal of Pharmacology, Dr David Slattery and Dr Clara Perani highlight that anxiety, depression and psychosis during ...

Wind turbine developments have no effect on property values of nearby homes and farms, according to new research from the University of Guelph. Published in a recent issue of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, the study is believed the first peer-reviewed study on this issue in Canada. It was conducted by Richard Vyn, a professor in the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Ryan McCullough, a former U of G graduate student and now a policy analyst for Health Canada. They analyzed more than 7,000 home and farm sales in Melancthon ...

PORTICI, ITALY - As water becomes scarcer in arid and semiarid regions across the globe, the floriculture industry is looking for ways to reduce water usage and produce ornamental plants more efficiently. Chiara Cirillo and members of an Italian research team coordinated by Professor Stefania De Pascale, say that understanding flowering plants' response to water management is critical for optimizing the production of high-quality potted ornamentals. "Water-saving irrigation management strategies are among the options available to horticultural growers to reduce water consumption ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- By identifying the most efficient fishing practices and behaviors, a new model developed by economists at Duke University and the University of Connecticut could help fishermen land larger paychecks while reducing the risk of fishery depletion. "We're not talking about a trivial improvement. In some cases, we found that identifying the most efficient practices led to a 20 percent annual increase in total revenues if the fishery is managed differently," said Martin D. Smith, professor of environmental economics at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Under ...

The same research team that developed the first laser based on a living cell has shown that use of fluorescent proteins in a solid form rather than in solution greatly increases the intensity of light produced, an accomplishment that takes advantage of natural protein structures surrounding the light-emitting portions of the protein molecules. The findings from investigators Seok Hyun Yun, PhD, of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Malte Gather, PhD, of the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. appear in the online journal Nature ...

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- The majority of streams in the Chesapeake Bay region are warming, and that increase appears to be driven largely by rising air temperatures. These findings are based on new U.S. Geological Survey research published in the journal Climatic Change. Researchers found an overall warming trend in air temperature of 0.023 C (0.041 F) per year, and in water temperature of 0.028 C (0.050 F) per year over 51 years. This means that air temperature has risen 1.1 C (1.98 F), and water temperature has risen 1.4 C (2.52 F) between 1960 and 2010 in the Chesapeake ...

You don't have to be a jerk to come up with fresh and original ideas, but sometimes being disagreeable is just what's needed to sell your brainchild successfully to others. However, difficult or irritating people should be aware of the social context in which they are presenting their ideas. A pushy strategy will not always be equally successful, warn Samuel Hunter of Pennsylvania State University and Lily Cushenbery of Stony Brook University in the US, in an article in Springer's Journal of Business and Psychology. People are often labelled as jerks if they are disagreeable ...

Washington, D.C.-- Natural gas power plants produce substantial amounts of gases that lead to global warming. Replacing old coal-fired power plants with new natural gas plants could cause climate damage to increase over the next decades, unless their methane leakage rates are very low and the new power plants are very efficient. These are the principal findings of new research from Carnegie's Ken Caldeira and Xiaochun Zhang, and Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures that compares the temperature increases caused by different kinds of coal and natural gas power plants. ...