Researchers from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (IBB-UAB) and from the University of Warsaw have developed a new computational method called AGGRESCAN3D which will allow studying in 3D the structure of folded globular proteins and substantially improve the prediction of any propensity for forming toxic protein aggregates. With this new algorithm proteins can also be modelled to study the pathogenic effects of the aggregation or redesign them for therapeutic means. Current knowledge of the molecular bases of ...

This news release is available in German. At first glance, there is not the slightest doubt: to us, the universe looks three dimensional. But one of the most fruitful theories of theoretical physics in the last two decades is challenging this assumption. The "holographic principle" asserts that a mathematical description of the universe actually requires one fewer dimension than it seems. What we perceive as three dimensional may just be the image of two dimensional processes on a huge cosmic horizon. Up until now, this principle has only been studied in exotic ...

Hot vents on the seabed could have spontaneously produced the organic molecules necessary for life, according to new research by UCL chemists. The study shows how the surfaces of mineral particles inside hydrothermal vents have similar chemical properties to enzymes, the biological molecules that govern chemical reactions in living organisms. This means that vents are able to create simple carbon-based molecules, such as methanol and formic acid, out of the dissolved CO2 in the water. The discovery, published in the journal Chemical Communications, explains how some of ...

New Haven, Conn. -- Yale researchers successfully corrected the most common mutation in the gene that causes cystic fibrosis, a lethal genetic disorder. The study was published April 27 in Nature Communications. Cystic fibrosis is an inherited, life-threatening disorder that damages the lungs and digestive system. It is most commonly caused by a mutation in the cystic fibrosis gene known as F508del. The disorder has no cure, and treatment typically consists of symptom management. Previous attempts to treat the disease through gene therapy have been unsuccessful. To ...

This news release is available in German. Bumblebees are considered peaceful and industrious creatures, and their commercial value has increased in the wake of the decline of honeybees around the world. The bees are therefore now bred on a large scale and used as pollinators for economically valuable crops. Yet, these cute little, buzzing creatures, of which there are around 250 different species worldwide, is doing poorly in some places. The large shadow cast by the honeybee collapse has distracted from the fact that in recent years in the US as well as in other areas ...

(Boston)--Cardiorespiratory fitness may positively impact the structure of white matter in the brains of older adults. These results suggest that exercise could be prescribed to lessen age-related declines in brain structure. The findings, which appear online in the Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, are the first to show a relationship between fitness and brain structure in older adults, but not younger adults. The researchers compared younger adults (age 18-31) to older adults (age 55-82). All participants had MRIs taken of their brains and their cardiorespiratory ...

April 25, 2015, Vienna, Austria: Preliminary data from an ongoing study revealed today at The International Liver Congress™ 2015 suggest that a combination of three direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) is well tolerated in patients with severe renal impairment or end-stage renal disease when used either with or without ribavirin. In addition, the combination led to rapid hepatitis C viral load suppression with no virological failures seen in the preliminary data from the ongoing open-label study. In the study, treatment naïve non-cirrhotic adults with chronic ...

SAN DIEGO - Technology can bolster efforts by parents, lawmakers and insurance companies to reduce distracted driving among novice teen drivers, according to a study to be presented Monday, April 27 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego. Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of accidental death for teens, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Studies suggest that the use of voice/text devices while driving is associated with crash risks up to 24 times higher than when cell phones are not used to talk or text ...

SAN DIEGO - Parents-to-be often look forward to prenatal ultrasounds, when they get the first glimpse of their baby and perhaps learn their child's sex. Ultrasound technology also allows for the detection of birth defects and other abnormalities before a baby is born. While prenatal ultrasounds are doing a good job of identifying critical congenital heart disease, those living in poor or rural communities are less likely to find out their baby has heart disease before birth than those in more affluent or urban communities, according to research to be presented Monday, ...

High school students subjected to bullying and other forms of harassment are more likely to report being seriously depressed, consider suicide and carry weapons to school, according to findings from a trio of studies reported at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in San Diego. "Teens can be the victim of face-to-face bullying in school, electronic bullying outside of the classroom and dating violence," said Andrew Adesman, MD, senior investigator of all three studies. "Each of these experiences are associated with a range of serious adverse consequences." All ...

WASHINGTON -- Researchers from Georgetown University Medical Center and American University have shown that, like humans, mustached bats use the left and right sides of their brains to process different aspects of sounds. Aside from humans, no other animal that has been studied, not even monkeys or apes, has proved to use such hemispheric specialization for sound processing -- meaning that the left brain is better at processing fast sounds, and the right processing slow ones. The scientists say their study, published in Frontiers of Neuroscience, opens a pathway to ...

A new smoking-specific survey has been developed that is much better than a currently available general health questionnaire at discriminating between different types of 'otherwise healthy' smokers. This test could be useful in determining the potential health impact of next generation tobacco and nicotine products on smokers who switch. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is a measure of the day-to-day functioning and well-being of a person that is used to assess the effect of illness or injury over time. HRQoL measurements are important to public policy, because ...

A new analysis has found that, among patients with cancer, rates of health insurance coverage vary by patient demographics and by cancer type. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings suggest that the expansion of coverage through the Affordable Care Act may disproportionally benefit certain patient populations. In the United States, an estimated 48 million individuals live without health insurance. To examine how insurance coverage differs among cancer patients according to various individual factors such ...

British stoats suffered a dramatic loss in genetic diversity in the 20th Century but extinct British genes were preserved in the stoat population of New Zealand, a new study has found. The research reveals that stoats, which were introduced to New Zealand, have greater genetic diversity there, than in their native Britain. The results are unusual because introducing a species to a new area is usually associated with a loss in its genetic diversity. The study, which was carried out by researchers at the Universities of Exeter, Auckland, Griffith and Canberra and at Landcare ...

To maintain the idea that we are moral people, we tend to lie or cheat only to the extent that we can justify our transgressions. New research suggests that situational ambiguity is one such avenue for justification that helps us preserve our sparkling self-image. Findings from two related experiments show that people are apt to cheat on a task in favor of their self-interest but only when the situation is ambiguous enough to provide moral cover. The research, conducted by psychological scientists Andrea Pittarello, Margarita Leib, Tom Gordon-Hecker, and Shaul Shalvi, ...

A common spinal disease could be the result of some people's vertebrae, the bones that make up the spine, sharing similarities in shape to a non-human primate. The research, published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, suggests that the relatively quick evolution of the ability to walk on two legs may have had a substantial impact on modern human health. Humans are more commonly afflicted with spinal disease than non-human primates, and one widely discussed explanation for this is the stress placed on the spine by bipedal locomotion. This research backs ...

UK scientists may have uncovered a natural way of avoiding the use of pesticides and help save plants from attack by recreating a natural insect repellent. Scientists from Cardiff University and Rothamsted Research have, for the first time, created tiny molecules which mirror a natural occurring smell known to repel insects. The scientists were able to make similar smelling insect repellent molecules, by providing the enzyme, ((S)-germacrene D synthase), which creates the smell, with alternative substrate molecules. The effectiveness of the smell or perfume to ...

Referring patients with unexplained swollen neck glands for specialist investigations could help to avoid some of the thousands of deaths each year from lymphoma, a type of cancer. New research led by the University of Exeter Medical School, published today in the British Journal of General Practice, has concluded that persistent enlarged lymph glands, found in the neck, should be referred for further investigation when detected in clinic. Each year in the UK, more than 14,500 people in are diagnosed with a form of lymphoma, and nearly 5,000 die from the disease, with ...

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have captured the first three-dimensional images of a live embryo turning itself inside out. The images, of embryos of a green alga called Volvox, make an ideal test case to understand how a remarkably similar process works in early animal development. Using fluorescence microscopy to observe the Volvox embryos, the researchers were able to test a mathematical model of morphogenesis - the origin and development of an organism's structure and form - and understand how the shape of cells drives the process of inversion, when ...

Barcelona, Spain: Results from a randomised controlled trial to compare the use of permanent radioactive implants (brachytherapy) with dose-escalated external beam radiotherapy in patients with prostate cancer show that the men who received brachytherapy were twice as likely to be cancer-free five years later. Presenting these results at the 3rd ESTRO Forum in Barcelona, Spain, today (Monday) Professor James Morris, from the Department of Radiation Oncology, Vancouver Cancer Centre, British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA), Vancouver, Canada, will say that the ASCENDE-RT1 ...

Barcelona, Spain: Radiotherapy using protons can deliver more accurate treatment to a tumour while reducing the dose to surrounding tissue. However, in mobile organs such as the lung, precise targeting of the dose is difficult. Now researchers have succeeded in making a model of breathing movement that allows for the precise measurement of narrow beams to a dummy tumour by simulating the motion and physical properties of the chest anatomy in a model, the 3rd ESTRO Forum in Barcelona, Spain, will hear today (Monday). Dr Rosalind Perrin, from the Centre for Proton Therapy ...

Millions of people are dying from common, easily treatable conditions like appendicitis, fractures, or obstructed labour because they do not have access to, or can't afford, proper surgical care, according to a major new Commission, published in The Lancet. The Commission reveals that five billion people worldwide do not have access to safe and affordable surgery and anaesthesia when they need it, and access is worst in low-income and lower-middle income countries, where as many as nine out of ten people cannot access basic surgical care. Just under a third of all deaths ...

The team led by Dr Sheena Cruickshank of the Faculty of Life Sciences and Professor Andy Brass from the School of Computer Science analysed 58 papers on research into inflammatory bowel disease published between 2000 and 2014. They found a wide variety in how methods were reported and that vital information about experiments were missing, meaning they couldn't be accurately reproduced in animal or human models. In several instances the gender of the animal used wasn't recorded which can have a bearing on the result as female mice have a stronger immune response to males. ...

SAN DIEGO - New research shows that it doesn't take much for kids to be considered couch potatoes. Kindergartners and first-graders who watched as little as one hour of television a day were more likely to be overweight or obese compared to children who watched TV for less than 60 minutes each day, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 26 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego. Efforts to fight the childhood obesity epidemic have focused on getting kids to be more active. Previous studies have shown that children who watch ...

SAN DIEGO - Adults can have a bigger influence on youths growing up in poor, violent neighborhoods than they may realize, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 26 at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in San Diego. Researchers found that males living in Philadelphia who identified supportive relationships with parents and other adult family members were significantly less likely to report that they were involved in violence or had witnessed violence. "This is good news. In neighborhoods with high levels of community violence and few ...