Blue sharks may use the central North Atlantic as a nursery prior to males and females moving through the ocean basin in distinctly different patterns, according to a study published August 13, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Frederic Vandeperre from University of the Azores, Portugal, and colleagues. Shark populations typically organize by location and separate by sex and size, but these patterns remain poorly understood, particularly for exploited oceanic species such as the blue shark. The authors of this study employed a long-term electronic tagging experiment ...

Kansas City, MO. — Deep within most tumors lie areas that remain untouched by chemotherapy and radiation. These troublesome spots lack the blood and oxygen needed for traditional therapies to work, but provide the perfect target for a new cancer treatment using bacteria that thrive in oxygen-poor conditions. Now, researchers have shown that injections of a weakened version of one such anaerobic bacteria -- the microbe Clostridium novyi -- can shrink tumors in rats, pet dogs, and a human patient. The findings from BioMed Valley Discoveries and a nationwide team of collaborators ...

Researchers from the Universities of York, Macquarie and Oxford have discovered new evidence to suggest that the origins of mummification started in ancient Egypt 1,500 years earlier than previously thought. The scientific findings of an 11-year study by a researcher in the Department of Archaeology at York, and York's BioArCh facility, and an Egyptologist from the Department of Ancient History at Macquarie University, push back the origins of a central and vital facet of ancient Egyptian culture by over a millennium. Traditional theories on ancient Egyptian mummification ...

A modified version of the Clostridium novyi (C. noyvi-NT) bacterium can produce a strong and precisely targeted anti-tumor response in rats, dogs and now humans, according to a new report from Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center researchers. In its natural form, C. novyi is found in the soil and, in certain cases, can cause tissue-damaging infection in cattle, sheep and humans. The microbe thrives only in oxygen-poor environments, which makes it a targeted means of destroying oxygen-starved cells in tumors that are difficult to treat with chemotherapy and radiation. The ...

An immune-regulating cell present in lymph nodes may be able to halt severe cases of sepsis, an out-of-control inflammatory response that can lead to organ failure and death. In the August 13 issue of Science Translational Medicine, a multi-institutional research team reports that treatment with fibroblastic reticular cells (FRCs) significantly improved survival in two mouse models of sepsis, even when delivered after the condition was well established. Even after treatment with antibiotics, sepsis remains a major cause of death. "Our findings are important because, ...

Boston, MA – Following a tissue graft transplant—such as that of the face, hand, arm or leg—it is standard for doctors to immediately give transplant recipients immunosuppressant drugs to prevent their body's immune system from rejecting and attacking the new body part. However, there are toxicities associated with delivering these drugs systemically, as well as side effects since suppressing the immune system can make a patient vulnerable to infection. A global collaboration including researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH); Institute for Stem Cell Biology ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Genomic prediction, a new field of quantitative genetics, is a statistical approach to predicting the value of an economically important trait in a plant, such as yield or disease resistance. The method works if the trait is heritable, as many traits tend to be, and can be performed early in the life cycle of the plant, helping reduce costs. Now a research team led by plant geneticists at the University of California, Riverside and Huazhong Agricultural University, China, has used the method to predict the performance of hybrid rice (for example, the ...

BOULDER – Researchers at NCAR and partner organizations are making significant headway in predicting the behavior of the atmosphere on a variety of fronts, including: improving weather forecasts advancing renewable energy capabilities helping satellites avoid space debris estimating the risk of a crop slowdown due to climate change These advances are summarized in short online features now published each week on our AtmosNews website: http://www.ucar.edu/atmosnews. To get a jump on stories about new research, we invite you to sign up for our concise weekly ...

LA JOLLA–Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a gene that regulates sleep and wake rhythms. The discovery of the role of this gene, called Lhx1, provides scientists with a potential therapeutic target to help night-shift workers or jet lagged travelers adjust to time differences more quickly. The results, published in eLife, can point to treatment strategies for sleep problems caused by a variety of disorders. "It's possible that the severity of many dementias comes from sleep disturbances," says Satchidananda Panda, a Salk associate ...

WHAT: Scientists are pursuing injections or intravenous infusions of broadly neutralizing HIV antibodies (bNAbs) as a strategy for preventing HIV infection. This technique, called passive immunization, has been shown to protect monkeys from a monkey form of HIV called simian human immunodeficiency virus, or SHIV. To make passive immunization a widely feasible HIV prevention option for people, scientists want to modify bNAbs such that a modest amount of them is needed only once every few months. To that end, an NIH-led team of scientists has mutated the powerful anti-HIV ...

A long lasting foreshock series controlled the rupture process of this year's great earthquake near Iquique in northern Chile. The earthquake was heralded by a three quarter year long foreshock series of ever increasing magnitudes culminating in a Mw 6.7 event two weeks before the mainshock. The mainshock (magnitude 8.1) finally broke on April 1st a central piece out of the most important seismic gap along the South American subduction zone. An international research team under leadership of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences now revealed that the Iquique earthquake ...

A cure for a range of blood disorders and immune diseases is in sight, according to scientists who have unravelled the mystery of stem cell generation. The Australian study, led by researchers at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University and the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, is published today in Nature. It identifies for the first time mechanisms in the body that trigger hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) production. Found in the bone marrow and in umbilical cord blood, HSCs are critically important because they can replenish the ...

Researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have made a novel discovery that may potentially protect the world from future collisions with asteroids. The team studied near-Earth asteroid 1950 DA and discovered that the body, which rotates so quickly it defies gravity, is held together by cohesive forces called van der Waals, never detected before on an asteroid. The findings, published in this week's edition of the science journal Nature, have potential implications for defending our planet from a massive asteroid impact. Previous research has shown that ...

Graphene may be tough, but those who handle it had better be tender. The environment surrounding the atom-thick carbon material can influence its electronic performance, according to researchers at Rice and Osaka universities who have come up with a simple way to spot contaminants. Because it's so easy to accidently introduce impurities into graphene, labs led by physicists Junichiro Kono of Rice and Masayoshi Tonouchi of Osaka's Institute of Laser Engineering discovered a way to detect and identify out-of-place molecules on its surface through terahertz spectroscopy. They ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Normal microorganisms in the intestines appear to play a pivotal role in how the HIV virus foils a successful attack from the body's immune system, according to new research from Duke Medicine. The study, published Aug. 13, 2014, in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, builds on previous work from researchers at the Duke Human Vaccine Institute that outlined a perplexing quality about HIV: The antibodies that originally arise to fight the virus are ineffective. These initial, ineffective antibodies target regions of the virus's outer envelope called gp41 ...

Recent advances that allow the precise editing of genomes now raise the possibility that fruit and other crops might be genetically improved without the need to introduce foreign genes, according to researchers writing in the Cell Press publication Trends in Biotechnology on August 13th. With awareness of what makes these biotechnologies new and different, genetically edited fruits might be met with greater acceptance by society at large than genetically modified organisms (GMOs) so far have been, especially in Europe, they say. This could mean that genetically edited ...

(Boston)- In a scientific discovery that has significant implications for HIV vaccine development, collaborators at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and Duke University School of Medicine have uncovered novel properties of special HIV antibodies. The paper, published in Cell Host and Microbe, describes how some HIV antibodies experience an unusual type of mutation, a phenomenon that allows them to neutralize many different strains of HIV. These antibodies are called "broadly neutralizing antibodies," or BNAbs. Antibodies develop from immune cells known as ...

The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has brought a lot of attention to the deadly virus. According to the World Health Organization, up to 90% of those infected with Ebola die from the virus. Now, researchers publishing August 13 in the Cell Press journal Cell Host & Microbe reveal how Ebola blocks and disables the body's natural immune response. Understanding how Ebola disarms immune defenses will be crucial in the development of new treatments for the disease. Dr. Gaya Amarasinghe and colleagues from Washington University School of Medicine along with collaborators from ...

One of the human body's first responses to a viral infection is to make and release signaling proteins called interferons, which amplify the immune system response to viruses. Over time, many viruses have evolved to undermine interferon's immune-boosting signal, and a paper published today in the journal Cell Host & Microbe describes a mechanism unique to the Ebola virus that defeats attempts by interferon to block viral reproduction in infected cells. The newly published study explains for the first time how the production by the virus of a protein called Ebola Viral ...

HP1 proteins are found in most eukaryotic organisms and are important regulators of gene silencing. In short, HP1 induces heritable condensation of chromosomal regions. As a result genes located within these regions are not expressed. Importantly, since this conformation is reversible HP1-controlled genes can become activated without requiring changes in the underlying DNA sequence. The team led by Till Voss at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute in collaboration with colleagues from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore engineered a mutant parasite ...

HOUSTON – (Aug. 13, 2014) – Nature's artistic and engineering skills are evident in proteins, life's robust molecular machines. Scientists at Rice University have now employed their unique theories to show how the interplay between evolution and physics developed these skills. A Rice team led by biophysicists Peter Wolynes and José Onuchic used computer models to show that the energy landscapes that describe how nature selects viable protein sequences over evolutionary timescales employ essentially the same forces as those that allow proteins to fold in less than a second. ...

Well-publicized tragedies on college campuses across the United States have prompted university officials to implement alert systems that broadcast real-time warnings via text message and e-mail to students, faculty, and staff. Such systems can be highly effective tools, but only if users take them seriously. New research to be presented at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 2014 Annual Meeting in Chicago illustrates some factors that can determine whether campus alert systems are attended to or disregarded. In their paper, "Taking Emergency Warnings Seriously," ...

Philadelphia, PA, August 13, 2014 – The fungal infection invasive aspergillosis (IA) can be life threatening, especially in patients whose immune systems are weakened by chemotherapy or immunosuppressive drugs. Despite the critical need for early detection, IA remains difficult to diagnose. A study in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics compared three diagnostic tests and found that the combination of nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) and real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR) detects aspergillosis with 100% accuracy. IA is caused by the fungus Aspergillus ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 13, 2014—About 1 in 5 Medicare patients is discharged from hospice care alive, whether due to patients' informed choice, a change in their condition, or inappropriate actions by the hospice to save on hospitalization costs related to terminal illness. How live discharge rates differ between hospice programs and geographic regions, and when those rates should raise red flags are among the issues explored in the article "A National Study of Live Discharges from Hospice" , published in Journal of Palliative Medicine, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary ...

The metaphor of a ticking clock is often used to refer to a woman's growing urge – from puberty onwards to menopause – to conceive before her childbearing years are over. New research in Springer's journal Human Nature shows that there's more truth to this phrase than you might think. The subtle sound of a ticking clock can quite literally speed up a woman's reproductive timing. That is, the sound of a ticking clock can lead women to want to start a family at an earlier age, especially if she was raised in a lower socio-economic community. This is according to Justin Moss ...