An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch, and Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University have identified small molecules that can represent a new class of anticancer drugs with a novel target for the treatment of lung cancer. These findings are detailed in Nature Communications. A PCT patent (WO 2013028543 A1) was jointly documented by these two Institutes for the invention. Survival outcomes remain poor for lung cancer patients in large part because of lung cancer's resistance to conventional therapies. Programmed cell death, ...

While space debris was the uncontrolled adversary in the award-winning space thriller film "Gravity," space debris, also known as "space junk," is an ongoing real-life concern for teams managing satellites orbiting Earth, including NOAA-NASA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership, or Suomi NPP, satellite. It is not unusual for satellites that have the capability of maneuvering to be repositioned to avoid debris or to maintain the proper orbit. On an otherwise quiet Sunday on September 28, the Suomi NPP mission team was monitoring a possible close approach of a debris ...

Many cancer patients use dietary supplements such as vitamins, minerals and herbs or other botanicals but often don't tell their doctor. This gap in communication can happen when patients believe that their doctors are indifferent or negative toward their use of these supplements. As a result, patients may find information about dietary supplements from unreliable sources, exposing themselves to unneeded risks. Since information on these dietary supplements is limited, researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch describe a practical patient-centered approach ...

AMES, Iowa – News of a school shooting or a homicide involving a teenage suspect always leads to the question of why? It is human nature to want an explanation or someone to blame, and policymakers try to pinpoint a cause in an effort to prevent it from happening again. But too often, the speculation or rush to judgment clouds reality, said Matt DeLisi, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at Iowa State University. "Anytime you have violence, such as a school shooting, people gravitate to single-item explanations that cite mental illness, guns, bullying ...

CHICAGO --- A nano-sized discovery by Northwestern Medicine® scientists helps explain how bipolar disorder affects the brain and could one day lead to new drug therapies to treat the mental illness. Scientists used a new super-resolution imaging method -- the same method recognized with the 2014 Nobel Prize in chemistry -- to peer deep into brain tissue from mice with bipolar-like behaviors. In the synapses (where communication between brain cells occurs), they discovered tiny "nanodomain" structures with concentrated levels of ANK3 -- the gene most strongly associated ...

VIDEO: This rainfall analysis showed that Gonzalo generated several areas over the Atlantic Ocean where rainfall totals topped 12 inches (red). Fay's maximum rainfall appeared between 4 and 8 inches (green).... Click here for more information. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite can estimate rainfall rates from its orbit in space and that data is used to create a rainfall analysis and calculate total rainfall for weather events in the tropics. NASA used ...

Tropical Storm Ana was being battered by wind shear when NASA's Terra satellite passed overhead and saw the bulk of showers and thunderstorms pushed north and east of the center. NASA's Terra satellite flew over Tropical Storm Ana as it was moving past Hawaii on Oct. 21 at 21:30 UTC (5:30 p.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument took a visible picture of the storm. The MODIS image showed that the strong southwesterly wind shear that was affecting the storm on Oct. 20 continued through Oct. 21 as the bulk of clouds and showers ...

WORCESTER, MA –Using an innovative exome sequencing strategy, a team of international scientists led by John Landers, PhD, at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has shown that TUBA4A, the gene encoding the Tubulin Alpha 4A protein, is associated with familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a fatal neurological disorder also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Details of the study were published today in Neuron. Exome sequencing, in contrast to whole genome sequencing, relies on sequencing only the protein-coding genes in a genome and has been an effective ...

The Bureau of Reclamation has released a report summarizing six years of testing coatings to control the attachment of quagga and zebra mussels to water and power facilities. Since the study began in 2008, Reclamation has tested more than 100 coatings and materials. "Controlling attachment of invasive quagga and zebra mussels on Bureau of Reclamation facilities is important to ensure water delivery and hydropower generation," principal researcher Allen Skaja said. "Though we have tested many different coatings, three durable foul-release coatings are showing promise ...

Worcester, Mass. – People paralyzed by spinal cord injuries lose mechanical strength in their leg bones faster, and more significantly, than previously believed, putting them at greater risk for fractures from minor stresses, according to a new study by a research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). The results suggest that physicians need to begin therapies for spinal cord injury patients sooner to maintain bone mass and strength. The data also serve as warning to physicians treating patients with osteoporosis to think beyond the standard bone density ...

Combining a PET scanner with a new chemical tracer that selectively tags specific types of bacteria, Johns Hopkins researchers working with mice report they have devised a way to detect and monitor in real time infections with dangerous Gram-negative bacteria. These increasingly drug-resistant bacteria are responsible for a range of diseases, including fatal pneumonias and various bloodstream or solid-organ infections acquired in and outside the hospital. "What we have produced is essentially a system that localizes the epicenter of infection and provides real-time tracking ...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the final version of the US Government Cloud Computing Technology Roadmap, Volumes I and II. The roadmap focuses on strategic and tactical objectives to support the federal government's accelerated adoption of cloud computing. This final document reflects the input from more than 200 comments on the initial draft received from around the world. The roadmap leverages the strengths and resources of government, industry, academia and standards development organizations to support technology innovation ...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study recently published in the journal Prostate offers compelling evidence that inflammation may be the link between Vitamin D and prostate cancer. Specifically, the study shows that the gene GDF-15, known to be upregulated by Vitamin D, is notably absent in samples of human prostate cancer driven by inflammation. "When you take Vitamin D and put it on prostate cancer cells, it inhibits their growth. But it hasn't been proven as an anti-cancer agent. We wanted to understand what genes Vitamin D is turning on or off in prostate cancer ...

Though it garners few public headlines, carbonic acid, the hydrated form of carbon dioxide, is critical to both the health of the atmosphere and the human body. However, because it exists for only a fraction of a second before changing into a mix of hydrogen and bicarbonate ions, carbonic acid has remained an enigma. A new study by Berkeley Lab researchers, has yielded valuable new information about carbonic acid with important implications for both geological and biological concerns. Richard Saykally, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Chemical Sciences Division and a professor ...

When studying extremely fast reactions in ultrathin materials, two measurements are better than one. A new research tool invented by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) captures information about both temperature and crystal structure during extremely fast reactions in thin-film materials.* The combined device will help scientists study new materials and processes used to make advanced technologies, including state-of-the-art semiconductors and flat-screen ...

Abandoned penguin chicks that were hand-reared and returned to the wild showed a similar survival rate to their naturally-reared counterparts, according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Richard Sherley from University of Cape Town and colleagues. The Endangered African penguin population has been rapidly decreasing since 2001. In the Western Cape of South Africa, penguins breed from February to September and moult between September and January, once chicks have fledged. If adult penguins begin the moulting process, a 21 day ...

Wild chimpanzees living in disturbed habitat may use innovative strategies, like foraging crops at night, to coexist with nearby human activities, according to a study published October 22, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Sabrina Krief from Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and colleagues. People expanding land use for agriculture and other activities are increasingly encroaching on wild chimpanzee habitat. To understand how chimpanzees are adjusting, researchers used camera-traps to observe chimpanzee behavior during incursions out of the forest into ...

VIDEO: This video shows treatment with OTS964 induced cytokinetic defect with inter-cellular bridges that eventually led to cell apoptosis. Cell pictures were taken every 10 min. Click here for more information. A new drug, known as OTS964, can eradicate aggressive human lung cancers transplanted into mice, according to a report in Science Translational Medicine. The drug, given as a pill or by injection, inhibits the action of a protein that is overproduced by several tumor types, ...

Males of great bustard consume small doses of poison with a dual purpose: to eliminate intern parasites and, especially, to look healthier and stronger before females, allowing them to achieve a greater reproductive success. A team of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council has now suggested for the first time that this function of self-medication could be a mechanism of sexual selection. The study results are published in the PLOS ONE journal. Juan Carlos Alonso, who led the project, CSIC researcher at the Department of Evolutive Ecology of the Spanish ...

A new study conducted by University of North Carolina School of Medicine researchers provides the first known evidence of how a similar acoustic characteristic in the cry sounds of human infants and rat pups may be used to detect the harmful effects of prenatal cocaine exposure on nervous system development. "These findings are important because studies of prenatal drug exposure in humans are always limited by not knowing if infant nervous system damage was due to the effects of a specific drug, such as cocaine, or the effects of other associated factors, such as maternal ...

Bright colours appear on a fruit fly's transparent wings against a dark background as a result of light refraction. Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have now demonstrated that females choose a mate based on the males' hidden wing colours. "Our experiment shows that this newly-discovered trait is important in female choice in fruit flies, and is the first evidence that wing interference patterns have a biological signalling function between the sexes during sexual selection", said Jessica Abbott, a biologist at Lund University. The extremely thin wings of the ...

Following the study of a hospital that logged more than 2.5 million patient monitoring alarms in just one month, researchers at UC San Francisco have, for the first time, comprehensively defined the detailed causes as well as potential solutions for the widespread issue of alarm fatigue in hospitals. Their study is in the Oct. 22 issue of PLOS ONE and available online. The issue of alarm fatigue has become so significant that The Joint Commission, a national organization that accredits hospitals, named it a National Patient Safety Goal. This goal requires hospitals ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2014—At first glance, the static, greyscale display created by a group of researchers from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, China might not catch the eye of a thoughtful consumer in a market saturated with flashy, colorful electronics. But a closer look at the specs could change that: the ultra-thin LCD screen described today in a paper in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics Letters is capable of holding three-dimensional images without a power source, making it a compact, energy-efficient way to display visual information. Liquid ...

Tropical Depression Nine formed over the western Bay of Campeche, Gulf of Mexico and is forecast to make a quick landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. NOAA's GOES-East Satellite captured the birth of the depression. NOAA's GOES-East Satellite captured an image of the birth of Tropical Depression 9 on Oct. 22 at 1600 UTC (12 p.m. EDT) in the western Bay of Campeche. The clouds associated with the depression stretched over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the western Caribbean Sea. On Oct. 22, a Tropical Storm Warning was in effect from Celestun to Frontera, Mexico. The ...

Beta Pictoris is a young star located about 63 light-years from the Sun. It is only about 20 million years old and is surrounded by a huge disc of material — a very active young planetary system where gas and dust are produced by the evaporation of comets and the collisions of asteroids. Flavien Kiefer (IAP/CNRS/UPMC), lead author of the new study sets the scene: "Beta Pictoris is a very exciting target! The detailed observations of its exocomets give us clues to help understand what processes occur in this kind of young planetary system." For almost 30 years ...