LA JOLLA--Stem cells, which have the potential to turn into any kind of cell, offer the tantalizing possibility of generating new tissues for organ replacements, stroke victims and patients of many other diseases. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have uncovered details about stem cell growth that could help improve regenerative therapies. While it was known that two key cellular processes--called Wnt and Activin--were needed for stem cells to grow into specific mature cells, no one knew exactly how these pathways worked together. The details of how Wnt and Activin ...

Many human communities want answers about the current status and future of Arctic marine mammals, including scientists who dedicate their lives to study them and indigenous people whose traditional ways of subsistence are intertwined with the fate of species such as ice seals, narwhals, walruses and polar bears. But there are many unknowns about the current status of 11 species of marine mammals who depend on Arctic sea ice to live, feed and breed, and about how their fragile habitat will evolve in a warming world. A recently published multinational study attempted ...

AUSTIN, Minn. (4/30/15) - Taking aspirin reduces a person's risk of colorectal cancer, but the molecular mechanisms involved have remained unknown until a recent discovery by The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. Researchers led by The Hormel Institute's Executive Director Dr. Zigang Dong and Associate Director Dr. Ann M. Bode, who co-lead the Cellular & Molecular Biology section, discovered that aspirin might exert its chemopreventive activity against colorectal cancer, at least partially, by normalizing the expression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) ...

New York, NY (April 30, 2015) - The use of integrative medicine interventions leads to significant improvements in patient activation and patient-reported outcomes in the treatment of chronic pain, depression, and stress, according to a new report released by The Bravewell Collaborative. The findings are based on data collected by the Patients Receiving Integrative Medicine Interventions Effectiveness Registry (PRIMIER), the first-ever patient registry on integrative medicine. "We are encouraged by these early results, and we see tremendous potential for PRIMIER to provide ...

Philadelphia, April 30, 2015 -- The American College of Physicians (ACP) today released clinical advice aimed at reducing overuse of cervical cancer screening in average risk women without symptoms. "Cervical Cancer Screening in Average Risk Women" is published in Annals of Internal Medicine and lists two concurring organizations: the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Clinical Pathology. "ACP's advice for cervical cancer screening is designed to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of testing," said Dr. David Fleming, ...

1. American College of Physicians releases Best Practice Advice for the proper time, test, and interval for cervical cancer screening ACP's advice is supported by ACOG and endorsed by ASCP New clinical advice from the American College of Physicians (ACP) aims to reduce overuse of cervical cancer screening in average risk women without symptoms. "Cervical Cancer Screening in Average Risk Women" is published in Annals of Internal Medicine and lists two concurring organizations: the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Society for Clinical ...

HOUSTON - (April 30, 2015) - The percentage of Texans without health insurance dropped 31 percent since enrollment began in the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Health Insurance Marketplace, according to a new report released today by the Episcopal Health Foundation and Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The report found that from September 2013 to March 2015, the percentage of uninsured adult Texans ages 18-64 dropped from 25 to 17 percent. "This is a dramatic drop that's unprecedented in Texas," said Elena Marks, president and CEO of the Episcopal Health ...

Due to a lack of suitable studies, no conclusions can be drawn on the patient-relevant benefit or harm of screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) in pregnant women. The benefit of antibiotic treatment of ASB following screening is also an open issue, as the results of the over 40-year-old studies cannot be applied to the current healthcare situation. This is the result of the final report published by the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) on 23 April 2015, which was commissioned by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). Maternity guidelines ...

A team of scientists has shed light on the dynamics of the creation, collaboration and dissemination processes involved in classical music works and styles. Their study focuses on analysing networks of composers contemporary to CD publications, using modern data analysis and data modelling techniques. These findings have just been published in EPJ Data Science by Doheum Park from the Graduate School of Culture Technology at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Daejeon and colleagues. This work explores the nature of culture in novel ways, as part of a broader ...

This news release is available in French. Quebec City, April 30, 2015--Noroviruses, a group of viruses responsible for over 50% of global gastroenteritis cases, can spread by air up to several meters from an infected person according to a new study by Université Laval researchers. The discovery, details of which are presented in the latest issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, suggests that measures applied in hospitals during gastroenteritis outbreaks may be insufficient to effectively contain this kind of infection. The team led by Caroline Duchaine, professor ...

TAMPA, Fla. - DNA can be damaged by different environmental insults, such as ultraviolet light, ionizing radiation, oxidative stress or certain drugs. If the DNA is not repaired, cells may begin growing uncontrollably, leading to the development of cancer. Therefore, cells must maintain an intricate regulatory network to ensure that their DNA remains intact. Moffitt Cancer Center researchers have discovered a novel mechanism that controls a cell's response to DNA damage. The protein SIRT1 plays an important role in controlling DNA damage. It can sense the presence of ...

Few doctors are prescribing a low-cost drug that has been proven effective in preventing the onset of diabetes, according to a UCLA study. The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Internal Medicine, found that only 3.7 percent of U.S. adults with pre-diabetes were prescribed metformin during a recent three-year period. Metformin and lifestyle changes both can prevent the onset of diabetes, but people often struggle to adopt healthier habits, according to Dr. Tannaz Moin, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine in the division ...

The international Solar Wind Sherpas team, led by Dr. Shadia Habbal of the University of Hawaii at Manoa Institute for Astronomy, braved Arctic weather to successfully observe the total solar eclipse of March 20 from Longyearbyen on the island of Spitsbergen in the Svalbard archipelago east of northern Greenland. Their preliminary results are being presented Thursday at the Triennial Earth-Sun Summit in Indianapolis, IN. It was no easy feat. Ever-changing weather predictions, subfreezing temperatures of -4 degrees F (-20 C) and the danger from polar bears were some of ...

Silica dust hazards in large gold mines have been well documented, but the situation is far worse in small-scale gold mining according to a new study. The new research in the article "Silica Exposures in Artisanal Small-Scale Gold Mining in Tanzania and Implications for Tuberculosis Prevention" shows that exposures to silica are more than two hundred times greater in small-scale artisanal mines than in larger mines. Hundreds of thousands of miners have already come down with silicosis and rates of tuberculosis (TB) among miners in Africa are approximately 5-6 times higher ...

Pathological gamblers "see" patterns in things that are actually quite random and not really there, to such a degree that they are quite willing to impulsively bet good money on such illusory nonrandomness. This is confirmed by Wolfgang Gaissmaier of the University of Konstanz in Germany and Andreas Wilke of Clarkson University in the USA, leaders of a study in Springer's Journal of Gambling Studies that sheds light on why some people are gamblers and others not. The findings of the study add to a large body of research that suggests that cognitive distortions (or people's ...

Researchers at the Helmholtz Zentrum München now report the discovery of a very unexpected role for one such lncRNA, which they call PARTICLE, in regulating the response of cells to ionizing radiation. Biophysical studies have shown that the damage arising to cells from an exposure to ionizing radiation declines in a linearly manner with decreasing dose, with some damage still occurring even at the lowest doses. This linear no-threshold (LNT) dose-response relationship has been used to extrapolate the risks of low doses of radiation from epidemiological studies that ...

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have found that people who eat different types and brands of commonly available food items, such as pizza, are more likely to overeat than people who tend to consume the same brand. Psychologists from the Universities of Liverpool and Bristol undertook the first study of its kind to look at the effect of the wide variety of types and brands of mass-produced foods on consumption. Importantly. The number of varieties of the same food product that are available to consumers has increased dramatically since the 1970s and the use ...

For the past 50 years, researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy have followed the health of 855 Gothenburg men born in 1913. Now that the study is being wrapped up, it turns out that ten of the subjects lived to 100 and conclusions can be drawn about the secrets of their longevity. Over the past half century, the University Gothenburg has hosted one of the world's first prospective studies of aging. The subjects are 855 Gothenburg men born in 1913. The first surveys were conducted in 1963.Now that it has been determined that ten of the men lived to 100, the study is being ...

A new research report appearing in the May 2015 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that allergic reactions--or at least the pre-existing inflammation from these reactions--may set the stage for cancer to spread from one area to another. Specifically, the report uses mice to show that inflammation raises the level of a known biomarker of cancer, called "chitinase-3-like-1" or "CHI3L1," in the inflamed tissue, which leads to increased metastasis and faster cancer growth in that tissue. "The research we have done is striking in that we showed pre-existing ...

Together with clinical partners, a team led by Dr. Dr. Melanie Königshoff and the doctoral student Franziska Uhl at the Comprehensive Pneumology Center of Helmholtz Zentrum München have investigated, for the first time, the suitability of Wnt/beta-catenin activation to initiate repair in patient-derived COPD lung tissue. To achieve this, the researchers used a variety of chemical, biological and imaging techniques. "In our study we showed that activation of the Wnt / beta-catenin ** - signaling pathway induces lung tissue repair, depending on the patient's ...

Scientists moved a step closer toward coaxing the body into producing its own replacement blood vessels after discovering that suppressing parts of the innate immune system may raise the chances of a tissue engineered vascular graft's success. In a report appearing in the May 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal scientists showed that by controlling the reaction that natural killer cells, platelets and the acute inflammatory response have to the graft, they could also reduce the abnormal narrowing of the grafts, called stenosis, which is the cause of most failures. This discovery ...

In research report published in the May 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal, scientists report that a particular class of pesticides called "neonicotinoids" wreaks havoc on the bee populations, ultimately putting some crops that rely on pollination in jeopardy. Specifically, these pesticides kill bee brain cells, rendering them unable to learn, gather food and reproduce. The report, however, also suggests that the effects of these pesticides on bee colonies may be reversible by decreasing or eliminating the use of these pesticides on plants pollenated by bees and increasing ...

A team of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich has identified the first fossil specimens of a major group of killifishes that is widely distributed in freshwater habitats today. The 6-million-year-old material sheds new light on the evolution of the bony fishes. Killifish are true survivors. These colorful little fish are perfectly adapted to the demands of their ephemeral habitats. They spend their short lives in temporary freshwater pools that form during the rainy season, and owe their long-term survival to the fact that their eggs are resistant to desiccation. ...

Researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich demonstrate for the first time that bacteriophages (bacterial viruses) carry genetic instructions for proteins that mediate the transport of their DNA to specialized replication sites in the host cell. Viruses are essentially inert nucleoprotein particles that come alive only when they find the right host cells, on which they depend for their reproduction. Bacteriophages (or 'phages' for short) are viruses that infect bacteria. Work carried out by researchers led by Marc Bramkamp, who is Professor of Microbiology ...

Chicago, April 30, 2015 - Using fresh whole blood from single donors is better than using component blood from multiple donors in pediatric heart surgery patients, according to an article in the May 2015 issue of The Annals of Thoracic Surgery. Key points Fresh whole blood reduces the number of individual blood donors that pediatric heart patients are exposed to, which reduces the risk of acquiring transfusion-related illness. Study results show the youngest patients having complex procedures were exposed to the highest number of donors, while older patients having ...