A major medical discovery by scientists at The University of Nottingham could lead to the development of an entirely new type of painkiller. A drug resulting from the research, published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease, would offer new hope to sufferers of chronic pain conditions such as traumatic nerve injury, for which few effective painkillers are currently available. The work, led by Dr Lucy Donaldson in the University's School of Life Sciences, in collaboration with David Bates, Professor of Oncology in the University's Cancer Biology Unit, focuses on a ...

Cancer vaccines have recently emerged as a promising approach for killing tumor cells before they spread. But so far, most clinical candidates haven't worked that well. Now, scientists have developed a new way to deliver vaccines that successfully stifled tumor growth when tested in laboratory mice. And the key, they report in the journal ACS Nano, is in the vaccine's unique stealthy nanoparticles. Hiroshi Shiku, Naozumi Harada and colleagues explain that most cancer vaccine candidates are designed to flag down immune cells, called macrophages and dendritic cells, that ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 1—Inspired by a desire to help wounded soldiers, an international, multidisciplinary team of researchers led by Assistant Professor Conor L. Evans at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School (HMS) has created a paint-on, see-through, "smart" bandage that glows to indicate a wound's tissue oxygenation concentration. Because oxygen plays a critical role in healing, mapping these levels in severe wounds and burns can help to significantly improve the success of surgeries to restore limbs and physical ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Given a choice, most patients would prefer to take a drug orally instead of getting an injection. Unfortunately, many drugs, especially those made from large proteins, cannot be given as a pill because they get broken down in the stomach before they can be absorbed. To help overcome that obstacle, researchers at MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have devised a novel drug capsule coated with tiny needles that can inject drugs directly into the lining of the stomach after the capsule is swallowed. In animal studies, the team found that the capsule ...

People are significantly more likely to have negative attitudes toward those suffering from drug addiction than those with mental illness, and don't support insurance, housing, and employment policies that benefit those dependent on drugs, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests. A report on the findings, which appears in the October issue of the journal Psychiatric Services, suggests that society seems not to know whether to regard substance abuse as a treatable medical condition akin to diabetes or heart disease, or as a personal failing ...

Americans love their dogs, but they don't always love to pick up after them. And that's a problem. Dog feces left on the ground wash into waterways, sometimes carrying bacteria — including antibiotic-resistant strains — that can make people sick. Now scientists have developed a new genetic test to figure out how much dogs are contributing to this health concern, according to a report in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology. Orin C. Shanks, Hyatt C. Green and colleagues explain that our waterways are susceptible to many sources of fecal contamination, including ...

One of the most iconic forms of avant-garde cuisine, also known as molecular gastronomy, involves the presentation of flavorful, edible liquids — like cocktails or olive oil — packaged into spheres. Now a team of scientists, in collaboration with world-renowned chef Ferran Adriá, is getting to the bottom of what makes these delectable morsels possible. Their findings appear in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry B. Christophe Chipot, Wensheng Cai and colleagues explain that the technique of "spherification" was invented 70 years ago but was popularized in avant-garde ...

And the winner is ... ZEB1! There are many actors involved in the process of adipogenesis, used by the body to store the fat that it absorbs from food. Up to now there had been some uncertainty as to how it was regulated. Yet, understanding this mechanism is of crucial importance to prevent the diseases related to fat accumulation in adipose tissue. A research team led by Carine Gubelmann and Petra Schwalie at EPFL's Laboratory of Systems Biology and Genetics, directed by Bart Deplancke, joined forces with Christian Wolfrum's researchers from ETH Zurich, to decode the ...

KNOXVILLE—More than one hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Darwin hypothesized that species could cross oceans and other vast distances on vegetation rafts, icebergs, or in the case of plant seeds, in the plumage of birds. Though many were skeptical of Darwin's "jump dispersal" idea, a new study suggests that Darwin might have been correct. A new computational method, published in the journal Systematic Biology, tested two competing theories about how species came to live where they do and found strong evidence for jump dispersal, especially for island species. The ...

WASHINGTON—Researchers plan and plot every considerable aspect of their work, but sometimes it's something unexpected and seemingly insignificant that leads to the real discovery. That was the case for Scott Powell, assistant professor of biology at the George Washington University. While conducting field research on turtle ants in the savannah region of Brazil, Dr. Powell noticed something peculiar: a species of ant infiltrating the region of a host ant, Crematogaster ampla. The C. ampla is known for its hyper-aggressiveness, but did not attack the invading species, ...

ORANGE, Calif. – Researchers in Chapman University's Food Science Program have just published a study on pet food mislabeling. The study focused on commercial pet foods marketed for dogs and cats to identify meat species present as well as any instances of mislabeling. Of the 52 products tested, 31 were labeled correctly, 20 were potentially mislabeled, and one contained a non-specific meat ingredient that could not be verified. "Although regulations exist for pet foods, increases in international trade and globalization of the food supply have amplified the potential ...

A comparison of prophylactic antibiotic regimens applied to an area in the mouth and throat and digestive tract were associated with low levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and no differences in patient survival and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay, according to a study published in JAMA. The study is being posted early online to coincide with its presentation at the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine annual congress. Reductions in the incidence of ICU-acquired respiratory tract infections have been achieved by some antibiotic regimens, such as selective ...

Scientists have discovered a new form of non-genetic inheritance, showing for the first time that offspring can resemble a mother's previous sexual partner – in flies at least. This confronting idea, known as telegony, dates back to ancient Greek times, but was discredited in the early 20th Century with the advent of genetics. To test it out, UNSW Australia scientists Dr Angela Crean, Professor Russell Bonduriansky and Dr Anna Kopps manipulated the size of male flies and studied their offspring. They found that the size of the young was determined by the size of the ...

BOSTON (October 1, 2014) — Despite a policy focus on expanding access to care for adults with developmental disabilities, this vulnerable population continues to have significant dental disease. In this month's issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association, researchers from Tufts University School of Medicine and Tufts University School of Dental Medicine report on the first large-scale survey to investigate factors influencing at-home oral care provided by caregivers to adults with developmental disabilities. The study findings suggest that, in addition to addressing ...

New research suggests the adage that encourages people to keep their "eyes on the prize" may be on target when it comes to exercise. When walking, staying focused on a specific target ahead can make the distance to it appear shorter and help people walk there faster, psychology researchers have found. Their study, which compares this technique to walking while looking around the environment naturally, offers a new strategy to improve the quality of exercise. "People are less interested in exercise if physical activity seems daunting, which can happen when distances to ...

A new study from North Carolina State University sheds light on how some collegiate student-athletes deal with uncertainties ranging from excelling in both school and sports to their career prospects outside of athletics, and urges university athletic programs to adopt new efforts to support student-athletes. "We wanted to explore how student-athletes at top-tier universities cope with the dual challenges of meeting the expectations of their teams while simultaneously complying with their responsibilities as university students," says Dr. Lynsey Romo, an assistant professor ...

Having the possibility to measure magnetic properties of materials at atomic precision is one of the important goals of today's experimental physics. Such measurement technique would give engineers and physicists an ultimate handle over magnetic properties of nano-structures for future applications. In an article published in Physical Review Letters researchers propose a new method, utilizing properties of the quantum world – the phase of the electron beam – to detect magnetism with atom-by-atom precision. The electron microscope is a fascinating instrument. It uses a ...

Graphene quantum dots created at Rice University grab onto graphene platelets like barnacles attach themselves to the hull of a boat. But these dots enhance the properties of the mothership, making them better than platinum catalysts for certain reactions within fuel cells. The Rice lab of chemist James Tour created dots known as GQDs from coal last year and have now combined these nanoscale dots with microscopic sheets of graphene, the one-atom-thick form of carbon, to create a hybrid that could greatly cut the cost of generating energy with fuel cells. The research ...

Psychiatry researchers from the University of Adelaide have developed a model that could help to predict a patient's likelihood of a good outcome from treatment - from their very first psychotic episode. The model is based on a range of factors, including clinical symptoms, cognitive abilities, MRI scans of the brain's structure, and biomarkers in the patient's blood. Speaking in the lead up to World Mental Health Day (10 October), the University's Head of Psychiatry, Professor Bernhard Baune, says the model is a revolutionary idea for psychiatric care, and is aimed ...

Cyberbullying and hurtful 'fat jokes' are disturbingly prevalent in the social media environment, especially on Twitter, says Wen-ying Sylvia Chou of the National Institutes of Health in the US. Chou is lead author of a study in Springer's journal Translational Behavioral Medicine which analyzed well over a million social media posts and comments about weight matters. However, the researchers were also happy to find that the news was not all bad: many instances of support and advice were also observed, especially on blogs and forums. The study is one of the first to analyze ...

Emissions produced by human activity have caused annual monsoon rainfall to decline over the past 50 years, a study suggests. In the second half of the 20th century, the levels of rain recorded during the Northern Hemisphere's summer monsoon fell by as much as 10 per cent, researchers say. Changes to global rainfall patterns can have serious consequences for human health and agriculture. Scientists found that emissions of tiny air particles from man-made sources – known as anthropogenic aerosols – were the cause. High levels of aerosols in the atmosphere cause heat ...

Messier 11 is an open cluster, sometimes referred to as a galactic cluster, located around 6000 light-years away in the constellation of Scutum (The Shield). It was first discovered by German astronomer Gottfried Kirch in 1681 at the Berlin Observatory, appearing as nothing more than a fuzzy blob through the telescope. It wasn't until 1733 that the blob was first resolved into separate stars by the Reverend William Derham in England, and Charles Messier added it to his famous catalogue in 1764. Messier was a comet hunter and the catalogue came into being as he was frustrated ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A new genetic finding from Duke Medicine suggests that some people who are prone to hostility, anxiety and depression might also be hard-wired to gain weight when exposed to chronic stress, leading to diabetes and heart disease. An estimated 13 percent of people, all of whom are Caucasian, might carry the genetic susceptibility, and knowing this could help them reduce heart disease with simple interventions such as a healthy diet, exercise and stress management. "Genetic susceptibility, psychosocial stress and metabolic factors act in combination to increase ...

Today in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia, at the occasion of the Leishmaniasis East Africa Platform meeting, which has gathered some 150 African and international leishmaniasis experts, results of a pharmacovigilance – or large-scale treatment safety and efficacy monitoring – plan, carried out by MSF, DNDi, and national partners in Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia, were presented to key decision makers in order to boost patient access to treatment of kala-azar with the combination of Sodium Stibogluconate and Paromomycin (SSG&PM) in the region. In this large cohort of patients, treated ...

TORONTO, Oct. 1, 2014 – Long-acting insulin is safer and more effective than intermediate-acting insulin for patients with Type 1 diabetes, according to new research published in the BMJ. Researchers looked at once-daily and twice-daily doses of both long- and intermediate-acting insulin, ranking their effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness. "In patients with Type 1 diabetes, we found that long-acting insulin is superior to intermediate-acting insulin when it came to controlling blood sugar, preventing weight gain and treating severe hypoglycemia," said Dr. ...