Failure to get the best treatment and variations in the quality of care are the most likely reasons why survival for blood cancer patients still varies widely between regions within Europe, according to the largest population-based study of survival in European adults to date, published in The Lancet Oncology. "The good news is that 5-year survival for most cancers of the blood has increased over the past 11 years, most likely reflecting the approval of new targeted drugs in the early 2000s such as rituximab for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and imatinib for chronic myeloid leukaemia", ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, July 13, 2014 — An international research project, led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, reports that a new oral medication is showing significant progress in restoring vision to patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA). Until now, this inherited retinal disease that causes visual impairment ranging from reduced vision to complete blindness, has remained untreatable. The study is published today in the scientific journal The Lancet. "This is the first ...

NOAA scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia's long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience. "This new high-resolution climate model is able to simulate regional-scale precipitation with considerably improved accuracy compared to previous generation models," said Tom Delworth, a research scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., who helped ...

ANN ARBOR – Biophysics researchers at the University of Michigan have used short pulses of light to peer into the mechanics of photosynthesis and illuminate the role that molecule vibrations play in the energy conversion process that powers life on our planet. The findings could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. They also inject new evidence into an ongoing "quantum biology" debate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient. Through photosynthesis, plants and some bacteria turn sunlight, water and ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Brown University) -- The discovery 30 years ago of soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules called buckyballs helped to spur an explosion of nanotechnology research. Now, there appears to be a new ball on the pitch. Researchers from Brown University, Shanxi University and Tsinghua University in China have shown that a cluster of 40 boron atoms forms a hollow molecular cage similar to a carbon buckyball. It's the first experimental evidence that a boron cage structure—previously only a matter of speculation—does indeed exist. "This is the first time that ...

New research in Nature Genetics identifies a novel genetic and molecular pathway in the esophagus that causes eosinophillic esophagitis (EoE), opening up potential new therapeutic strategies for an enigmatic and hard-to-treat food allergy. EoE is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the esophagus. The condition is triggered by allergic hypersensitivity to certain foods and an over-accumulation in the esophagus of white blood cells called eosinophils (part of the body's immune system). EoE can cause a variety of gastrointestinal complaints including reflux-like symptoms, ...

BOSTON – New research raises the prospect of more effective treatments for cachexia, a profound wasting of fat and muscle occurring in about half of all cancer patients, raising their risk of death, according to scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Many strategies have been tried to reverse the condition, which may cause such frailty that patients can't endure potentially life-saving treatments, but none have had great success. Scientists reporting in the July 13 advanced online edition of Nature, led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, demonstrated that in mice bearing ...

An inexpensive, portable, microchip-based test for diagnosing type-1 diabetes could improve patient care worldwide and help researchers better understand the disease, according to the device's inventors at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Described in a paper to be published online July 13 in Nature Medicine, the test employs nanotechnology to detect type-1 diabetes outside hospital settings. The handheld microchips distinguish between the two main forms of diabetes mellitus, which are both characterized by high blood-sugar levels but have different causes ...

LOS ANGELES – A noninvasive optical imaging device developed at Cedars-Sinai can provide early detection of changes that later occur in the brain and are a classic sign of Alzheimer's disease, according to preliminary results from investigators conducting a clinical trial in Australia. The researchers will present their findings July 15 in an oral presentation at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also were invited by conference organizers to participate in a "breaking news" news conference beginning at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, ...

COPENHAGEN, July 13, 2014 – A decreased ability to identify odors might indicate the development of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, while examinations of the eye could indicate the build-up of beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer's, in the brain, according to the results of four research trials reported today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference® 2014 (AAIC® 2014) in Copenhagen. In two of the studies, the decreased ability to identify odors was significantly associated with loss of brain cell function and progression to Alzheimer's ...

Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behaviour – known commonly as sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of drug addicts, according to a University of Cambridge study published in the journal PLOS ONE. However, the researchers caution that this does not necessarily mean that pornography itself is addictive. Although precise estimates are unknown, previous studies have suggested that as many as one in 25 adults is affected by compulsive sexual behaviour, an obsession with sexual thoughts, feelings or behaviour ...

Boston, MA – Being sick due to an infection can make us feel lousy. But what must the ecosystem of bacteria, or microbiota, colonizing our guts be going through when hit with infection? A study from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) has utilized unique computational models to show how infection can affect bacteria that naturally live in our intestines. The findings may ultimately help clinicians to better treat and prevent gastrointestinal infection and inflammation through a better understanding of the major alterations that occur when foreign bacteria disrupt the gut ...

New research from UC San Francisco shows that an "expressive therapy" group intervention conducted by The Medea Project helps women living with HIV disclose their health status and improves their social support, self-efficacy and the safety and quality of their relationships. "Medication alone is totally insufficient," said the study's first author, Edward L. Machtinger, MD, director of the Women's HIV Program at UCSF. "Over 90 percent of our patients are on effective antiretroviral therapy but far too many are dying from suicide, addiction, and violence. Depression, addiction, ...

A new report from the Wildlife Conservation Society shows that no-take zones in Belize can not only help economically valuable species such as lobster, conch, and fish recover from overfishing, but may also help re-colonize nearby reef areas. The report—titled "Review of the Benefits of No-Take Zones"—represents a systematic review of research literature from no-take areas around the world. The report was written by Dr. Craig Dahlgren, a recognized expert in marine protected areas and fisheries management. The report comes as signatory countries of the Convention on Biological ...

Every full moon, Landsat 8 turns its back on Earth. As the satellite's orbit takes it to the nighttime side of the planet, Landsat 8 pivots to point at the moon. It scans the distant lunar surface multiple times, then flips back around to continue its task of collecting land-cover information of the sunny side of Earth below. These monthly lunar scans are key to ensuring the land-imaging instrument aboard Landsat 8 is detecting light consistently. For this, engineers need a consistent source of light to measure. And while there are some spots on Earth – like the Sahara ...

Sea ice in summer looks dramatically different than sea ice in winter, even in the polar Arctic. Summer snowmelt, pools of water on thinning ice and exposed ocean replace vast winter expanses of white snow-covered ice – and this weekend NASA's high-flying laser altimeter begins a campaign to investigate these features. Icy areas look different from a satellite's perspective as well. When NASA launches the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2, or ICESat-2, in 2017, it will measure Earth's elevation by sending out pulses of green laser light and timing how long it ...

Astronomers analyzing a long-lasting blast of high-energy light observed in 2013 report finding features strikingly similar to those expected from an explosion from the universe's earliest stars. If this interpretation is correct, the outburst validates ideas about a recently identified class of gamma-ray burst and serves as a stand-in for what future observatories may see as the last acts of the first stars. "One of the great challenges of modern astrophysics has been the quest to identify the first generation of stars to form in the universe, which we refer to as Population ...

VERNON – It's no secret groundwater levels have declined across the state over the past eight decades, and that the primary reason was the onset of irrigation in agriculture and population growth. But a recent Texas A&M AgriLife Research study has identified other factors having an impact. The groundwater declines have been most severe in the past four decades, but the news isn't all bad, according to Dr. Srinivasulu Ale, AgriLife Research geospatial hydrology assistant professor in Vernon. "Long-term (1930�) trends in groundwater levels in Texas: Influences ...

USC Stem Cell scientists have set a "mouse TRAP" to capture the early signs of kidney failure, as described by a recent study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Their new transgenic mouse line uses a technique called TRAP to extract cellular and genetic information from a variety of solid organs. Invented by scientists at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in 2008, TRAP involves attaching a fluorescent tag to the protein-making machinery, or ribosomes, of the cell type of interest. Scientists can then collect the tagged ribosomes and determine ...

PULLMAN, Wash.—The largest study of its kind has found that organic foods and crops have a suite of advantages over their conventional counterparts, including more antioxidants and fewer, less frequent pesticide residues. The study looked at an unprecedented 343 peer-reviewed publications comparing the nutritional quality and safety of organic and conventional plant-based foods, including fruits, vegetables, and grains. The study team applied sophisticated meta-analysis techniques to quantify differences between organic and non-organic foods. "Science marches on," said ...

VIDEO: Chemists want to understand chemical reactions that happen in solutions under high pressure in the Earth's crust. A new device invented at UC Davis allows chemists to make nuclear magnetic... Click here for more information. A new pressure cell invented by UC Davis researchers makes it possible to simulate chemical reactions deep in the Earth's crust. The cell allows researchers to perform nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements on as little as 10 microliters ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Researchers from The Miriam Hospital have found that people with mobility impairments under age 65 have significantly higher rates of smoking than those without mobility impairments. Additionally, smokers with mobility impairments were less likely to attempt quitting than those without mobility impairments, and evidence-based, quit-smoking treatments may not be sufficient for this population. The study and its findings are published online in advance of print in the American Journal of Public Health. Lead researcher Belinda Borrelli, Ph.D., of The ...

HOUSTON – (July 10, 2014) – Obese and overweight firefighters are not receiving weight management advice from their health care providers, according to new research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth). National guidelines state that health care professionals (HCPs) should advise patients on the importance of maintaining a healthy weight. Firefighters have high rates of obesity, and cardiovascular events are the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths in firefighters. This study assessed the association of age and body mass index (BMI) ...

There were many fires burning in eastern New South Wales, Australia when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on July 11. At 03:35 UTC on July 11 (12:35 p.m. local time/11:35 p.m. EDT on July 10), when Aqua passed over eastern New South Wales (NSW), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard captured a natural-color visible image of the region and spotted smoke (light brown) from various fires. Actively burning areas, detected by MODIS's thermal bands, are outlined in red. The New South Wales, Australia Government website "NSW Rural Fire Service" ...

The Mills Canyon fire started near the City of Entiat on Tuesday, July 8, 2014. Despite the efforts of local resources, the fire quickly grew to over 1,000 acres by evening. Three outbuildings were damaged. The cause of the fire is under investigation by the Washington Department of Natural Resources. The fire team is working with existing local resources in developing fire control strategies and tactics. Other cooperators include the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), Washington State Department of Natural Resources, (WA DNR), Bureau of Land Management, Chelan County Emergency ...