A QUT scientist has helped unravel the way in which plants regulate their levels of vitamin C, the vitamin essential for preventing iron deficiency anaemia and conditions such as scurvy. Professor Roger Hellens, working with Dr William Laing from New Zealand's Plant and Food Research, has discovered the mechanism plants use to regulate the levels of Vitamin C in each of their cells in response to the environment. "Understanding these mechanisms may help in plant breeding programmes to produce hardier plant crops and improve human health because iron deficiency anaemia ...

This news release is available in German. Simulations of impressive landscapes and alien creatures have become commonplace, especially in fantasy and science fiction films. But simulations are also appearing in ever more medical and engineering applications. However, the road to a perfect illusion is complex and time-intensive. Nils Thürey, professor at the Technische Universität München and his colleagues have developed a methodology that could accelerate these calculations. The attack takes place at the climax of the blockbuster "Avatar": Rockets slam ...

"When I interviewed inspectors they are surprisingly open about this. They tell me that they get a box of fish or just some money from fishermen in exchange for being allowed to break the rules that apply to protected areas or catches," says Aksel Sundström. Many of South Africa's marine fish stocks are overexploited. At the same time, the government actors that are meant to ensure that fishers abide to rules may be a part of the problem. For example, one anonymous inspector is quoted to say: "A Chinese captain that was arrested last week called someone who arrived ...

CHICAGO (March 12, 2015): A surgical approach in which a surgeon removes less than a lobe of the liver in a patient undergoing an operation for liver cancer is associated with lower mortality and complication rates, according to new study results published online as an "article in press" in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS). The article will appear in print in the April issue of the Journal. Historically, the most common surgical method of treatment for liver cancer was a major hepatectomy in which a lobe (hemi-liver) is removed in order to remove ...

Very low mammographic breast density worsens the prognosis of breast cancer, according to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland. Disease free survivals as well as overall life expectancies were significantly shorter in women with very low-density breasts in comparison to women with high density breast tissue. The lower the breast tissue density, the less fibroglandular tissue there is compared to fat tissue. In the future, these findings may prove significant for the assessment of breast cancer prognosis and treatment planning. The study involved 270 ...

WASHINGTON, DC, March 12, 2015 -- Actresses need to be pickier than men about with whom they work if they want to survive in the movie industry, suggests a new study. "My research indicates that women in the film industry suffer a lack of access to future career opportunities when they tend to work with people who have collaborated frequently in the past," said Mark Lutter, lead author of the study and head of the "Transnational Diffusion of Innovation" Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) in Germany. Titled, "Do Women Suffer ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 12, 2015 - The American Educational Research Association has published a special edition of its peer-reviewed journal Educational Researcher (ER) devoted to examining value-added measures (VAM). Since 2009, President Barack Obama's Race to the Top initiative has brought on a wave of value-added-based accountability measures, with value-added now embedded in policy in more than 30 states. AERA's journals have examined the validity and reliability of value-added measures over the past six years. This special issue of ER considers the key questions, ...

Materials resulting from chemical bonding of glucosamine, a type of sugar, with fullerenes, kind of nanoparticles known as buckyballs, might help to reduce cell damage and inflammation occurring after stroke. A team from the Max Planck Institute in Germany has tested this on mice, opening the door to potential new drugs for the cerebrovascular accident. The majority of stroke occurs when the blood vessels that reach the brain are blocked by clots or fatty deposits which decrease the flow of blood towards its cells. It is then that an ischemic attack occurs, a pathology ...

Harvesting fire-killed trees is an effective way to reduce woody fuels for up to four decades following wildfire in dry coniferous forests, a U.S. Forest Service study has found. The retrospective analysis, among the first to measure the long-term effects of post-fire logging on forest fuels, is published in the journal Forest Ecology and Management. "Large wildfires can leave behind thousands of acres of fire-killed trees that eventually become fuel for future fires. In the past, post-fire logging has been conducted primarily to recover economic value from those fire-killed ...

Loneliness may be a fundamental part of the human condition, but scientists have only recently begun exploring its causes, consequences, and potential interventions. A special section in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, aims to bring these strands of inquiry together, presenting a series of articles that review the current state of scientific research on loneliness. The section, edited by psychological scientist David Sbarra of the University of Arizona, investigates loneliness across multiple levels, from ...

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (March 12, 2015) Targeting deadly, drug-resistant bacteria poses a serious challenge to researchers looking for antibiotics that can kill pathogens without causing collateral damage in human cells. A team of Boston College chemists details a new approach using a "warhead" molecule to attack bacteria -- and spare healthy human cells -- by targeting a pair of lipids found on the surface of deadly germs, according to a report today in the journal Nature Communications. The new strategy required the researchers to develop a novel type of "warhead molecule" ...

Study links oddly shaped hippocampus to poor long-term memory in former marijuana users The longer teens used cannabis, the more abnormal the hippocampus as adults Former users perform 18 percent worse on long-term memory test Cannabis affects short and long-term memory CHICAGO --- Teens who were heavy marijuana users - smoking it daily for about three years -- had an abnormally shaped hippocampus and performed poorly on long-term memory tasks, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The hippocampus is important to long-term memory (also known as ...

A team of scientists from the John Innes Centre (JIC), the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) and The Sainsbury Laboratory (TSL) have successfully transferred a receptor that recognises bacteria from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana - a dicot, to wheat - a monocot. They showed that the receptor can trigger a defensive response and confers increased resistance to bacterial disease. The research findings demonstrate that the signalling pathways or circuitry downstream of the receptor are conserved between evolutionary distant monocots and dicots. Drs Henk-jan ...

Researchers from ZSL and the Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, surveyed 43 farms in China and worked with the Shaanxi Province Fisheries Office to investigate the Chinese giant salamander farming industry. They found that, although only a decade old, the industry houses millions of animals and is a major contributor to the Chinese rural economy. The farming industry however, poses a number of threats to the Chinese giant salamander, but also has potential to benefit the species. Wild salamanders are illegally poached to supplement farmed populations which often do not ...

The indoor air quality in nursing homes has a serious effect on the lung health of elderly residents, according to the findings of a new study. The study, which is published online today (12 March 2015) in the European Respiratory Journal, is the first to detail the negative effects of poor air quality in nursing homes across several countries. Researchers from the EU-funded GERIE research project collected data on five indoor air pollutants: PM10, PM0.1, formaldehyde, NO2 and O3. These pollutants come from a range of sources including heaters, building materials, ...

A comprehensive programme providing older people at risk of dementia with healthy eating guidance, exercise, brain training, and management of metabolic and vascular risk factors appears to slow down cognitive decline, according to the first ever randomised controlled trial of its kind, published in The Lancet. In the Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) study, researchers led by Professor Miia Kivipelto from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, and ...

DURHAM, N.C. - Despite legal and ethical mandates for disclosure, results from most clinical trials of medical products are not reported promptly on a registry specifically created to make results of human studies publically available, according to Duke Medicine researchers. Among all clinical trials of medical products, those funded by industry were the most likely to be publicly disclosed in a timely fashion, but even then, compliance was poor. Research funded by the National Institutes of Health and academic institutions lagged further, according to findings published ...

New research has shown that patients having heart surgery do not benefit if doctors wait until a patient has become substantially anaemic before giving a transfusion. In the UK, about half of all patients having cardiac surgery are given a red blood cell transfusion after the operation, using up to ten per cent of the nation's blood supply. The proportion of patients having a transfusion is high because blood loss and severe anaemia are common after cardiac surgery and transfusion is the preferred treatment. Blood loss causes anaemia which doctors detect by measuring ...

MINNEAPOLIS - Older people who are physically active may be protecting themselves from the effects of small areas of brain damage that can affect their movement abilities, according to a new study published in the March 11, 2015, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Many older people have small areas of damage in their brains seen on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as white matter hyperintensities. Higher levels of this damage have been linked to more problems with movement, such as difficulty walking. But this new ...

The origin of life is still a mystery with many unsolved puzzles. How were molecules created? How did they assemble into large structures? Among the conundrums, the "homochirality" phenomenon upon which amino acids and sugars form is particularly fascinating. University of Akron A. Schulman Professor of Polymer Science Tianbo Liu has discovered that Mother Nature's clear bias toward certain amino acids and sugars and against others isn't accidental. Liu explains that all life molecules are paired as left-handed and right-handed structures. In scientific terms, the phenomenon ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study has identified a group of molecules in prostate-cancer cells that doctors might one day use to distinguish which patients should be treated with radiation therapy if rising PSA levels indicate their cancer has recurred after surgical removal of the prostate. Led by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center - Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC - James), the retrospective study suggested that a pattern of molecules called microRNA (miRNA) in tumor cells might predict patients' ...

A team of scientists from the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History gained new understanding about the evolutionary history of whale hearing thanks to a rare collection of whales at the museum. The researchers used noninvasive biomedical imaging techniques to trace the development of fetal ear bones in 56 specimens from 10 different families of toothed and baleen whales. They observed how ears develop in unborn whales of modern species, and compared these changes with those reflected in the fossilized ears of extinct whales over the course of millions of years. ...

A new study by University of Alberta law researchers reveals sometimes overly optimistic news coverage of clinical translation of stem cell therapies--and as spokespeople, scientists need to be mindful of harnessing public expectations. "As the dominant voice in respect to timelines for stem cell therapies, the scientists quoted in these stories need to be more aware of the importance of communicating realistic timelines to the press," said researcher Kalina Kamenova, who co-authored the study with professor Timothy Caulfield in the University of Alberta's Health Law ...

DURHAM, N.C. - An innovative approach using a tetanus booster to prime the immune system enhances the effect of a vaccine therapy for lethal brain tumors, dramatically improving patient survival, according to a study led by Duke Cancer Institute researchers. Appearing online March 11, 2015, in the journal Nature, the researchers not only present survival data for a small, randomized and blinded patient trial, they also detail how the tetanus pre-conditioning technique works, providing a roadmap for enhancing dendritic cell immunotherapies that have shown promise ...

A puzzling observation, pursued through hundreds of experiments, has led Stanford researchers to a simple yet profound discovery: under certain circumstances, droplets of fluid will move like performers in a dance choreographed by molecular physics. "These droplets sense one another, they move and interact, almost like living cells," said Manu Prakash, an assistant professor of bioengineering and senior author of an article published (today) in Nature. The unexpected findings may prove useful in semiconductor manufacturing and self-cleaning solar panels, but what truly ...