Access to potentially life-extending cancer drugs varies significantly in different regions of the world, two new studies show at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. Researchers say the results demonstrate the need for better collaboration between doctors and health authorities on an international scale, to ensure patients have access to the best treatments. Coordinated action is needed at an international level to ensure new cancer-fighting drugs are approved in a timely manner, oncologists said at the Congress. Their call came after a survey revealed that patients ...

Imperial chemists have gained fresh insights into how a disease-causing enzyme makes changes to proteins and how it can be stopped. The scientists hope their findings will help them to design drugs that could target the enzyme, known as N-myristoyltransferase (NMT), and potentially lead to new treatments for cancer and inflammatory conditions. They have already identified a molecule that blocks NMT's activity, and have identified specific protein substrates where this molecule has a potent impact. NMT makes irreversible changes to proteins and is known to be involved ...

Across Europe, more than 70% of young cancer specialists are showing signs of burnout, the largest survey of its kind has revealed. The results, reported at the Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO 2014) in Madrid, have prompted calls for serious action to address the issue at all levels. "Oncology is an exceptionally rewarding career, but it can be demanding and stressful at times," said Dr Susana Banerjee, lead author of the study and a consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust in London, UK. "Oncologists make complex decisions ...

A study by an international team of scientists coordinatedby Italy's MUSE - Science Museum updates knowledge on the faunal richness of the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania and Kenya; presents the discovery of 27 new vertebrate species (of which 23 amphibians and reptiles); identifies the drivers of the area's exception biological importance and advocates for its candidature to the UNESCO's List of World Heritage Sites. A study documenting the latest research findings on the faunal richness of the tropical moist forests of the Eastern Arc Mountains of Kenya and Tanzania ...

A bioactive compound found in turmeric promotes stem cell proliferation and differentiation in the brain, reveals new research published today in the open access journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy. The findings suggest aromatic turmerone could be a future drug candidate for treating neurological disorders, such as stroke and Alzheimer's disease. The study looked at the effects of aromatic (ar-) turmerone on endogenous neutral stem cells (NSC), which are stem cells found within adult brains. NSC differentiate into neurons, and play an important role in self-repair and ...

While antidepressants are the most commonly used treatment for social anxiety disorder, new research suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is more effective and, unlike medication, can have lasting effects long after treatment has stopped. Social anxiety disorder is a psychiatric condition characterized by intense fear and avoidance of social situations and affects up to 13 percent of Americans and Europeans. Most people never receive treatment for the disorder. For those who do, medication is the more accessible treatment because there is a shortage of trained ...

As the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) moves forward with plans to launch health-related generic top-level domains (gTLD), such as .health and .doctor, a coalition of health policy academics and clinicians are raising concerns about a process they say "favor[s] business interests and the generation of profits over the future integrity of the Health Internet." In a commentary published in the open access journal Globalization and Health, the authors - led by Tim Mackey of the Global Health Policy Institute – call for a moratorium on use of ...

Washington, DC (September 25, 2014) — Kidney transplant recipients infected with BK virus are more likely to develop antibodies against their kidney transplants than uninfected patients, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (JASN). Future treatment strategies should focus on simultaneously clearing BK infections while protecting against risks of transplant rejection. Many people are infected with BK virus, and it rarely causes disease. However, for transplant recipients and others who take immunosuppressive ...

Hispanics are often grouped into a single category when it comes to alcohol use. Yet a new Michigan State University study indicates that the risk of alcohol abuse and dependence can vary significantly among different subgroups within the population. Using pre-existing national data which looked at the incident rate of alcohol use disorders, or AUDs, over a period of time, Carlos F. Ríos-Bedoya, an assistant professor in the College of Human Medicine, is the first to determine that the annual incidence rate isn't the same among all Hispanics and prevention efforts shouldn't ...

DALLAS – Sept. 25, 2014 – Gastric bypass surgery has better outcomes than gastric banding for long-term weight loss, controlling type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and lowering cholesterol levels, according to a new review by UT Southwestern Medical Center surgeons of nearly 30 long-term studies comparing the two types of bariatric procedures. The review, appearing in JAMA, found that those undergoing gastric bypass operations lost more weight — an average of 66 percent of their excess weight, compared to 45 percent average excess weight loss for those undergoing ...

Most severely obese people experience much better spirits once they shed weight through a diet, lifestyle changes or medical intervention. This is unfortunately not true for everyone, says Valentina Ivezaj and Carlos Grilo of the Yale University School of Medicine in the US. In an article in Springer's journal Obesity Surgery, the researchers advise that the levels of depression in patients be measured six to 12 months after they have had such bariatric surgery. This will ensure that the necessary help can be provided when needed. Ivezaj and Grilo set out to investigate ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – While the unemployment rate for people out of work for six months or less has returned to prerecession levels, the levels of unemployment for workers who remain jobless for more than six months is among the most persistent, negative effects of the Great Recession, according to a new national study at Rutgers. In fact, one in five workers laid off from a job during the last five years are still unemployed and looking for work, researchers from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development found. Among the key findings of "Left Behind: The ...

Big disasters almost always result in big power failures. Not only do they take down the TV and fridge, they also wreak havoc with key infrastructure like cell towers. That can delay search and rescue operations at a time when minutes count. Now, a team led by Nina Mahmoudian of Michigan Technological University has developed a tabletop model of a robot team that can bring power to places that need it the most. "If we can regain power in communication towers, then we can find the people we need to rescue," says Mahmoudian, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering–engineering ...

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – In a state famous for its turnpike and infamous for traffic, tolls and "Jersey drivers," a new partnership between the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and Rutgers New Jersey Medical School (NJMS) has launched a series of public health polls with a survey about risky driving habits. New Jerseyans were asked about their perceptions of safety both as a driver and passenger. "Three-quarters of New Jerseyans are behind the wheel nearly every day. They are continually at the center of jokes and have even been ranked as some of the worst drivers in the country," ...

Ancient, acidic and nutrient-depleted dunes in Western Australia are not an obvious place to answer a question that has vexed tropical biologists for decades. But the Jurien Bay dunes proved to be the perfect site to unravel why plant diversity varies from place to place. Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute scientist Benjamin Turner and colleagues from the University of Western Australia published findings in the Sept. 26 edition of Science showing that environmental filtering—but not a host of other theories—determines local plant diversity in one of Earth's biodiversity ...

HOUSTON – (Sept. 25, 2014) – Recently published prevalence estimates of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in five Latin American countries — Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela — could suggest a new direction for United States foreign policy in the region, according to a tropical-disease expert at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. Dr. Peter Hotez, the fellow in disease and poverty at the Baker Institute, outlined his insights in a new editorial, "The NTDs and Vaccine Diplomacy in Latin America: Opportunities for United States Foreign Policy," ...

A study published on September 25th in PLOS Pathogens reports a new primate model to test treatments that might cure HIV/AIDS and suggests answers to questions raised by the "Berlin patient", the only human thought to have been cured so far. Being HIV-positive and having developed leukemia, the Berlin patient underwent irradiation followed by a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with a mutation that abolishes the function of the CCR5 gene. The gene codes for a protein that facilitates HIV entry into human cells, and the mutation—in homozygous carriers who, like the donor, ...

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (Bonn, Germany), Cornell University (USA), and the University of Cologne (Germany) have for the first time detected a carbon-bearing molecule with a "branched" structure in interstellar space. The molecule, iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN), was discovered in a giant gas cloud called Sagittarius B2, a region of ongoing star formation close to the center of our galaxy that is a hot-spot for molecule-hunting astronomers. The branched structure of the carbon atoms within the iso-propyl cyanide molecule is unlike the ...

The analysis of artifacts from a 325,000-year-old site in Armenia shows that human technological innovation occurred intermittently throughout the Old World, rather than spreading from a single point of origin, as previously thought. The study, published today in the journal Science, examines thousands of stone artifacts retrieved from Nor Geghi 1, a unique site preserved between two lava flows dated to 200,000–400,000 years ago. Layers of floodplain sediments and an ancient soil found between these lava flows contain the archaeological material. The dating of volcanic ...

Washington, D.C.—Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth's water is key to understanding how life-fostering environments come into being and how likely they are to be found elsewhere. New work from a team including Carnegie's Conel Alexander found that much of our Solar System's water likely originated as ices that formed in interstellar space. Their work is published in Science. Water is found throughout our Solar System. Not just on Earth, but ...

The deadly rabies virus--aptly shaped like a bullet-- can be eliminated among humans by stopping it point-blank among dogs, according to a team of international researchers led by the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University. Ridding the world of rabies is cost-effective and achievable through mass dog vaccination programs, the scientists report in a paper that appears in the Sept. 26 issue of Science magazine. What's more, they write, because infections occur as a result of interactions between animals and people, a "One Health" approach ...

A pioneering new study has shown that water found on Earth predates the formation of the Sun – raising hopes that life could exist on exoplanets, the planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. The ground-breaking research set out to discover the origin of the water that was deposited on the Earth as it formed. It found that a significant fraction of water found on Earth, and across our solar system, predates the formation of the Sun. By showing that water is 'inherited' from the environment when a star is born, the international team of scientists believe other exoplanetary ...

VIDEO: Science published on Sept. 25, 2014 the latest developments in Michael Grätzel's laboratory at EPFL in the field of hydrogen production from water. By combining a pair of perovskite solar... Click here for more information. The race is on to optimize solar energy's performance. More efficient silicon photovoltaic panels, dye-sensitized solar cells, concentrated cells and thermodynamic solar plants all pursue the same goal: to produce a maximum amount of electrons ...

A new discovery of thousands of Stone Age tools has provided a major insight into human innovation 325,000 years ago and how early technological developments spread across the world, according to research published in the journal Science. Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, together with an international team from across the United States and Europe, have found evidence which challenges the belief that a type of technology known as Levallois – where the flakes and blades of stones were used to make useful products such as hunting weapons – was invented ...

PITTSBURGH—Electricity and magnetism rule our digital world. Semiconductors process electrical information, while magnetic materials enable long-term data storage. A University of Pittsburgh research team has discovered a way to fuse these two distinct properties in a single material, paving the way for new ultrahigh density storage and computing architectures. While phones and laptops rely on electricity to process and temporarily store information, long-term data storage is still largely achieved via magnetism. Discs coated with magnetic material are locally oriented ...