LA JOLLA, CA—September 25, 2014—Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have described how a single family of antibodies that broadly neutralizes different strains of HIV has evolved remarkably diverse structures to attack a vulnerable site on the virus. The findings provide clues for the design of a future HIV vaccine. "In a sense, this antibody family takes more than one shot on goal in order to hit divergent forms of HIV," said Ian A. Wilson, the Hansen Professor of Structural Biology and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI. "The ...

In the largest collaborative study so far, an international team of researchers, including scientists from VIB and Antwerp University identified novel causes for severe childhood epilepsies. The researchers analyzed the genetic information of 356 patients and their parents. In their analysis, the research teams looked for genes that had acquired new mutations in the children with severe epilepsies when compared to the DNA of the parents. In total, they identified 429 new mutations and in 12% of children, these mutations were considered unequivocally causative for the patient's ...

VIDEO: The perpetual proliferation of cancer cells requires a means to maintain telomere length. Alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) is a poorly understood mechanism of telomere maintenance that is utilized by... Click here for more information. PHILADELPHIA – Maintaining the ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, is a requisite feature of cells that are able to continuously divide and also a hallmark of human cancer. "Telomeres are much like the plastic cap on the ends ...

LOS ANGELES — Keck Medicine of USC scientists have discovered new clues about a drug instrumental in treating a certain blood cancer that may provide important targets for researchers searching for cures. The team investigated whether demethylation of gene bodies induced by the drug 5-Aza-CdR (decitabine), which is used to treat pre-leukemia, could alter gene expression and possibly be a therapeutic target in cancer. "When we put the drug in cancer cells, we found it not only reactivated some tumor suppressor genes, but it down-regulated the overexpressed oncogene ...

When NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kammuri the VIIRS instrument aboard took a visible picture of the storm that showed bands of thunderstorms wrapped around its center. The storm appears to be coming together as circulation improves and bands of thunderstorms have been wrapping into the low-level center of circulation. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite passed over Tropical Storm Kammuri on Sept. 25 at 03:13 UTC (Sept. 24 at 11:13 p.m. EDT) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard captured a visible picture of ...

Cambridge, MA, September 25, 2014 — Researchers from the Broad Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have created a new mouse model to simplify application of the CRISPR-Cas9 system for in vivo genome editing experiments. The researchers successfully used the new "Cas9 mouse" model to edit multiple genes in a variety of cell types, and to model lung adenocarcinoma, one of the most lethal human cancers. The mouse has already been made available to the scientific community and is being used by researchers at more than a dozen institutions. A paper describing ...

NOAA's GOES-West satellite spotted the eighteenth tropical depression of the Eastern Pacific grow into a tropical storm that was renamed Rachel today, Sept. 25, 2014. Wind shear is affecting the tropical storm, however, so it doesn't have a rounded appearance on satellite imagery. Tropical Depression 18-E formed on Wednesday, Sept. 24 around 11 a.m. EDT about 285 miles (460 km) south-southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. Manzanillo is a city in the Manzanillo municipality of the Mexican state of Colima on the country's west coast. In an infrared image from NOAA's GOES-West ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 25, 2014—The staggering growth rate of the global population demands innovative and sustainable solutions to increase food production by as much as 70-100% in the next few decades. In light of environmental changes, more drought-tolerant food crops are essential. The latest technological advances and future directions in regulating genes involved in stress tolerance in crops is presented in a Review article in OMICS: A Journal of Integrative Biology, the peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Herbivores, not herbicides, may be the most effective way to combat the spread of one of the most invasive plants now threatening East Coast salt marshes, a new Duke University-led study finds. Phragmites australis, or the common reed, is a rapid colonizer that has overrun many coastal wetlands from New England to the Southeast. A non-native perennial, it can form dense stands of grass up to 10 feet high that block valuable shoreline views of the water, kill off native grasses, and alter marsh function. Land managers traditionally have used chemical ...

Washington, D.C.— A team including Carnegie's Malcolm Guthrie and George Cody has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymer fibers. Such exceedingly strong, stiff, and light materials have an array of potential applications, everything from more-fuel efficient vehicles or even the science fictional-sounding proposal for a "space elevator." Their work is published in Nature Materials. The team—led by ...

(Edmonton, AB) Every year in Canada about 50,000 people suffer from a stroke, caused either by the interruption of blood flow or uncontrolled bleeding in the brain. While many environmental risk factors exist, including high blood pressure and smoking, stroke risk is also frequently inherited. Unfortunately, remarkably little is known regarding stroke's genetic basis. A study from the University of Alberta, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, extends knowledge of stroke's genetic underpinnings and demonstrates that in some cases it originates in infancy. The ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Along with copying and splitting DNA during division, cells must have a way to break safely into two viable daughter cells, a process called cytokinesis. But the molecular basis of how plant cells accomplish this without mistakes has been unclear for many years. In a new paper by cell biologist Magdalena Bezanilla of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she and her doctoral student Shu-Zon Wu present a detailed new model that for the first time proposes how plant cells precisely position a "dynamic and complex" structure called a phragmoplast at the ...

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 25, 2014) — Taller individuals are less likely to develop esophageal cancer and it's precursor, Barrett's esophagus, according to a new study1 in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. "Individuals in the lowest quartile of height (under 5'7" for men and 5'2" for women) were roughly twice as likely as individuals in the highest quartile of height (taller than 6' for men and 5'5" for women) to have Barrett's esophagus or esophageal cancer," said Aaron P. Thrift, ...

CIFAR researchers have shown that information stored in quantum bits can be exponentially compressed without losing information. The achievement is an important proof of principle, and could be useful for efficient quantum communications and information storage. Compression is vital for modern digital communication. It helps movies to stream quickly over the Internet, music to fit into digital players, and millions of telephone calls to bounce off of satellites and through fibre optic cables. But it has not been clear if information stored in quantum bits, or qubits, ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 25, 2014—The increasing popularity of social media, online dating sites, and mobile applications for meeting people and initiating relationships has made online dating an effective means of finding a future spouse. The intriguing results of a new study that extends this comparison of online/offline meeting venues to include non-marital relationships, and explores whether break-up rates for both marital and non-marital relationships differ depending on whether a couple first met online or offline are reported in an article in Cyberpsychology, ...

If it's true that good things come in small packages, then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make anyone working with nanoparticles very happy. NIST recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created for validating measurements of these man-made, ultrafine particles between 1 and 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size. RM 8027 consists of five hermetically sealed ampoules containing one milliliter of silicon nanoparticles—all certified to be close to 2 nanometers in diameter—suspended ...

Astronomers usually have to peer very far into the distance to see back in time, and view the Universe as it was when it was young. This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy DDO 68, otherwise known as UGC 5340, was thought to offer an exception. This ragged collection of stars and gas clouds looks at first glance like a recently-formed galaxy in our own cosmic neighbourhood. But, is it really as young as it looks? Astronomers have studied galactic evolution for decades, gradually improving our knowledge of how galaxies have changed over cosmic history. ...

New evolutionary psychology research shows gender differences in age preferences regarding sexual partners. Men and women have different preferences regarding the age of their sexual partners and women's preferences are better realized than are men's. Regarding the age of their actual sexual partners, the difference is however much smaller. Researchers in psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, suggest that this pattern reflect the fact that when it comes to mating, women control the market. Grounding their interpretation in evolutionary theory, the ...

This news release is available in German. Sugars are usually known as energy storage units in plants and the insects that feed on them. But, sugars may also be part of a deadly game of tag between plant and insect according to scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Grasses and crops such as maize attach sugars to chemical defenses called benzoxazinoids to protect themselves from being poisoned by their own protective agents. Then, when an insect starts feeding, a plant enzyme removes the sugar to deploy the active toxin. The Max Planck scientists ...

Typical cave-dwelling organisms, unpigmented and eyeless, were discovered in a karst area located in northeastern Brazil. The organisms were assigned to a new genus and species of freshwater flatworm and may constitute an oceanic relict. They represent the first obligate cave-dwelling flatworm in South America. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Freshwater flatworms occur on a wide range of habitats, namely streams, lagoons, ponds, among others. Some species also occur in subterranean freshwater environments. Brazil has more than 11,000 caves, ...

MANHATTAN — Two Kansas State University biologists are studying streams to prevent tallgrass prairies from turning into shrublands and forests. By looking at 25 years of data on the Konza Prairie Biological Station, Allison Veach, doctoral student in biology, Muncie, Indiana, and Walter Dodds, university distinguished professor of biology, are researching grassland streams and the expansion of nearby woody vegetation, such as trees and shrubs. They have found that burn intervals may predict the rate of woody vegetation expansion along streams. Their latest research ...

SAN ANTONIO (Sept. 25, 2014) — The long-observed association between pneumonia and heart failure now has more physical evidence, thanks to research in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. The researchers found proof that Streptococcus pneumoniae, the leading cause of community-acquired pneumonia, actually physically damages the heart. The bacterium leaves tiny lesions that researchers detected in mouse, rhesus macaque and human autopsy tissue samples. "If you have had severe pneumonia, this finding suggests your heart ...

New research by biomedical engineers at the University of Minnesota shows that people who practice yoga and meditation long term can learn to control a computer with their minds faster and better than people with little or no yoga or meditation experience. The research could have major implications for treatments of people who are paralyzed or have neurodegenerative diseases. The research is published online in TECHNOLOGY, a new scientific journal featuring cutting-edge new technologies in emerging fields of science and engineering. In the study, researchers involved ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue researchers have discovered the structure of the enzyme that makes cellulose, a finding that could lead to easier ways of breaking down plant materials to make biofuels and other products and materials. The research also provides the most detailed glimpse to date of the complicated process by which cellulose - the foundation of the plant cell wall and the most abundant organic compound on the planet - is produced. "Despite the abundance of cellulose, the nitty-gritty of how it is made is still a mystery," said Nicholas Carpita, professor ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Is my child lagging behind physically, mentally or emotionally? Should I be concerned? When should I ask our pediatrician about it? What can I do to help my child? A new study from Indiana University School of Medicine and Regenstrief Institute researchers reports that a computerized clinical decision support system is helping parents answer such questions. The system, which they developed to automate pediatric care guidelines, significantly increased the number of children screened for developmental delay at 9, 18 and 30 months of age, as recommended ...