A therapy that replaces the faulty gene responsible for cystic fibrosis in patients' lungs has produced encouraging results in a major UK trial. One hundred and thirty six patients aged 12 and over received monthly doses of either the therapy or the placebo for one year. The clinical trial reached its primary endpoint with patients who received therapy having a significant, if modest benefit in lung function compared with those receiving a placebo. Patients from across England and Scotland participated, and were treated in two centres, Royal Brompton Hospital in ...

Banded mongooses take extraordinary risks to ensure that they find the right mate. Female banded mongooses risk their lives to mate with rivals during pack 'warfare' and both males and females have also learned to discriminate between relatives and non-relatives to avoid inbreeding even when mating within their own social group. Researchers from the University of Exeter and Liverpool John Moores University found that 18% of wild banded mongoose pups are fathered by males from rival packs. Banded mongooses are found living in stable social groups across Central ...

For the first time gene therapy for cystic fibrosis has shown a significant benefit in lung function compared with placebo, in a phase 2 randomised trial published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal. The technique replaces the defective gene response for cystic fibrosis by using inhaled molecules of DNA to deliver a normal working copy of the gene to lung cells. "Patients who received the gene therapy showed a significant, if modest, benefit in tests of lung function compared with the placebo group and there were no safety concerns," said senior author Professor ...

LAWRENCE -- A new study that is the first to use Social Security Administration's personal income tax data tracking the same individuals over 20 years to measure individual lifetime earnings has confirmed significant long-term economic benefits of college education. ChangHwan Kim, a University of Kansas researcher, said the research team was also able to account for shortcomings in previous studies by including factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, place of birth and high school performance that would influence a person's lifetime earnings and the probability of college ...

DALLAS, July 2, 2015 -- An emergency room rapid response plan for children can help diagnose stroke symptoms quickly, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. "Just as there are rapid response processes for adults with a possible stroke, there should be a rapid response process for children with a possible stroke that includes expedited evaluation and imaging or rapid transfer to a medical center with pediatric stroke expertise," said Lori Jordan, M.D., Ph.D., study senior author and an assistant professor of pediatrics and neurology ...

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have found a way to stimulate the growth of axons, which may spell the dawn of a new beginning on chronic SCI treatments. Chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a formidable hurdle that prevents a large number of injured axons from crossing the lesion, particularly the corticospinal tract (CST). Patients inflicted with SCI would often suffer a loss of mobility, paralysis, and interferes with activities of daily life dramatically. While physical therapy and rehabilitation would help the patients to ...

Washington, D.C. - July 2, 2015 - Male fruit flies infected with the bacterium, Wolbachia, are less aggressive than those not infected, according to research published in the July Applied and Environmental Microbiology, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. This is the first time bacteria have been shown to influence aggression, said corresponding author Jeremy C. Brownlie, PhD, Deputy Head, School of Natural Sciences, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. The research began with a discovery by University of Arizona student Elizabeth Bondy, an undergraduate ...

Astronomers are gearing up for high-energy fireworks coming in early 2018, when a stellar remnant the size of a city meets one of the brightest stars in our galaxy. The cosmic light show will occur when a pulsar discovered by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope swings by its companion star. Scientists plan a global campaign to watch the event from radio wavelengths to the highest-energy gamma rays detectable. The pulsar, known as J2032+4127 (J2032 for short), is the crushed core of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. It is a magnetized ball about 12 miles ...

MINNEAPOLIS - A new study suggests that genes may not be to blame for the increased risk of heart disease some studies have shown in people with migraine, especially those with migraine with aura. The research is published during Headache/Migraine Awareness Month in the inaugural issue of the journal Neurology® Genetics, an open access, or free to the public, online-only, peer-reviewed journal from the American Academy of Neurology. Aura are sensations that come before the headache, often visual disturbances such as flashing lights. "Surprisingly, when we looked ...

BOSTON -- A new study led by scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shows that an HIV-1 vaccine regimen, involving a viral vector boosted with a purified envelope protein, provided complete protection in half of the vaccinated non-human primates (NHPs) against a series of six repeated challenges with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a virus similar to HIV that infects NHPs. These findings are published online today in Science. Based on these pre-clinical data, the HIV-1 version of this vaccine regimen is now being evaluated in an ongoing Phase ...

One more piece and we are done! A research team led by the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS) has found the second-to-last piece of the puzzle needed to potentially cure or treat dengue. This is welcome news as the dengue virus infects about 400 million people worldwide annually, and there is currently no licensed vaccine available to treat it. Associate Professor Shee-Mei Lok and Research Fellow Guntur Fibriansah, from the Duke-NUS Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Programme, led research that showed how an antibody neutralises dengue virus serotype ...

In a new Science study, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS) scientists have identified how small changes in dengue's viral genome can affect the virus' ability to manipulate human immune defences and spread more efficiently. This research is the first of its kind that examined the dengue virus starting from broad population level observations and then linked it to specific molecular interactions, to explain an outbreak. This work provides a framework for identifying genomic differences within the virus that are important for epidemic spread. Dengue virus ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Detailed tabletop experiments are helping researchers understand how Earth's landscapes erode to form networks of hills and valleys. The findings, which highlight a balance between processes that send sediments down hills and those that wash them out of valleys, might also help researchers predict how climate change could transform landscapes in the future. Kristin Sweeney and colleagues developed a laboratory device that mimicked the processes that smooth or disturb soil to make hillslopes, and those that cut it away to make ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers have discovered that a human antibody specific to dengue virus serotype 2, called 2D22, protects mice from a lethal form of the virus -- and they suggest that the site where 2D22 binds to the virus could represent a potential vaccine target. The mosquito-borne virus, which infects nearly 400 million people around the world each year, has four distinct serotypes, or variations, and there is currently no protective vaccine available. Recent phase 3 clinical trials of a potential vaccine candidate showed poor efficacy, ...

Why is the seahorse's tail square? An international team of researchers has found the answer and it could lead to building better robots and medical devices. In a nutshell, a tail made of square, overlapping segments makes for better armor than a cylindrical tail. It's also better at gripping and grasping. Researchers describe their findings in the July 3 issue of Science. "Almost all animal tails have circular or oval cross-sections--but not the seahorse's. We wondered why," said Michael Porter, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Clemson University and ...

This news release is available in Japanese. Researchers working with roses have identified an enzyme, known as RhNUDX1, which plays a key role in producing the flowers' sweet fragrances. These ornamental plants, which provide essential oils for perfumes and cosmetics, have been bred mostly for their visual traits, and their once-strong scents have faded over the generations. Restoring their fragrant odors will require a better understanding of the rose scent biosynthesis pathway. Until now, most studies of rose fragrance have focused on a biosynthetic pathway that generates ...

This news release is available in Japanese. The seahorse tail is square because this shape is better at resisting damage and at grasping than a circular tail would be, a new engineering study shows. Insights gleaned from the study could inspire new armor and advances in robotics, the authors say. While most animals with tails, including certain monkeys, lizards and rodents, have soft, cylindrical-shaped appendages, tails of seahorses are organized into square prisms surrounded by bony plates. To better understand why the seahorse tail deviates from the norm, and what ...

Mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. appear to be contagious, according to a team of scientists from Arizona State University and Northeastern Illinois University. Study author Sherry Towers, research professor in the ASU Simon A. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center, explained, "The hallmark of contagion is observing patterns of many events that are bunched in time, rather than occurring randomly in time." Her team examined databases on past high-profile mass killings and school shootings in the U.S. and fit a contagion model to ...

Climate change is forcing fish out of their current habitats and into cooler waters and many more species will soon be affected if climate goals are not met, say scientists. An international team of researchers compared the future of the oceans under two climate change scenarios. In one scenario, we limit atmospheric warming to two degrees by 2100, as outlined by the Copenhagen accord. In the other, we continue with the current approach, which researchers say would cause a five-degree increase in atmospheric temperatures. They say if warming continues unchecked, fish ...

A new study has discovered mysterious behaviour of a material that acts like an insulator in certain measurements, but simultaneously acts like a conductor in others. In an insulator, electrons are largely stuck in one place, while in a conductor, the electrons flow freely. The results, published today (2 July) in the journal Science, challenge current understanding of how materials behave. Conductors, such as metals, conduct electricity, while insulators, such as rubber or glass, prevent or block the flow of electricity. But by tracing the path that electrons follow ...

Researchers at Vanderbilt University and the National University of Singapore have determined the structure of a human monoclonal antibody which, in an animal model, strongly neutralizes a type of the potentially lethal dengue virus. The finding, reported today July 2 in the journal Science, could lead to the first effective therapies and vaccines against dengue, a complex of four distinct but related mosquito-borne viruses that infect about 390 million people a year and which are a leading cause of illness and death in the tropics. "Scientists in the antibody discovery ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J., - July, 2, 2015 - Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) announced today that scientists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Crucell Holland B.V, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (Janssen), and several other collaborators today published results from a preclinical study of an HIV vaccine regimen used in in non-human primates. The study, published in the online edition of Science, suggests that a "heterologous prime-boost" vaccine regimen--which first primes the immune system, then boosts the immune system to increase ...

Doughnuts, electric current and quantum physics - this will sound like a weird list of words to most people, but for Sebastian Huber it is a job description. ETH-professor Huber is a theoretical physicist who, for several years now, has focused his attention on so-called topological insulators, i.e., materials whose ability to conduct electric current originates in their topology. The easiest way to understand what "topological" means in this context is to imagine how a doughnut can be turned into a coffee cup by pulling, stretching and moulding - but without cutting ...

Hamilton, ON (July 2, 2015) - Two new studies led by researchers from the Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute at McMaster University show that transplantation of fecal matter may be a useful tool in the fight against ulcerative colitis (UC). Ulcerative colitis is a chronic, debilitating inflammatory bowel condition characterized by symptoms including bloody stools, diarrhea, abdominal pain, weight loss and malnutrition. It results from the development of abnormal immune responses to the normal bacteria in the digestive tract. It is difficult to treat ...

NEW YORK, NY (July 2, 2015)--Research from Eric Kandel's lab at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) has uncovered further evidence of a system in the brain that persistently maintains memories for long periods of time. And paradoxically, it works in the same way as mechanisms that cause mad cow disease, kuru, and other degenerative brain diseases. In four papers published in Neuron and Cell Reports, Dr. Kandel's laboratory show how prion-like proteins - similar to the prions behind mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease in humans - are critical ...