This news release is available in French. Scientists at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, McGill University and McGill University Health Centre have shown that a member of the protein family known as SUMO (small ubiquitin-like modifier) is a key to why tumour cells multiply uncontrollably, especially in the case of glioblastoma. The SUMO family proteins modify other proteins and the SUMOylation of proteins are critical for many cellular processes. Identifying SUMO's role in the cancer cell growth will lead to a new strategy for glioblastoma treatment. ...

VIDEO: On July 3, NASA's TRMM satellite passed over Arthur and saw intense bands of thunderstorms north of Arthur's well defined eye dropping rainfall at a rate of over 98.4 mm... Click here for more information. Hurricane Arthur made landfall in North Carolina on July 3, and today, July 4, it is bringing its own fireworks along the Mid-Atlantic and New England states. Those fireworks were in the form of "hot towers," powerful, high thunderstorms with heavy rainfall that indicate ...

The 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting ended with a panel discussion entitled "Science for the benefit of mankind" on Mainau Island, Lake Constance, Germany, today." 37 Nobel laureates and more than 600 selected young scientists from 80 countries had participated in the week-long meeting in the Bavarian city of Lindau since last Sunday. A boat trip to Mainau at the invitation of the State of Baden-Württemberg marked the finish of the programme which was devoted to medicine and physiology. In 1895 Alfred Nobel determined in his will that the Nobel Prizes shall be awarded ...

Institute for Basic Science (IBS), the main organization of the International Science and Business Belt project in South Korea, has announced that a group of researchers, led by professor Won Do Heo, have developed a new technology in the field of optogenetics that can remotely control specific receptors by light. They have named this new technology "OptoTrk" and it has succeeded with neuronal differentiation inducement. The most significant feature of OptoTrk technology is that it requires only light to activate neuronal functions without the need of other substances. ...

The PandaX experiment of China, which is located in the deepest underground laboratory, has released its technical design report recently. The full article will appear in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, 2014, 57(8): 1476-1494. The Particle and Astrophysical Xenon (PandaX) collaboration was established in 2009 and mainly supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education in China， the Natural Science Foundation of China，and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The experiment is suitable for both direct dark matter detection ...

RENO – Every year, wildfires clear millions of hectares of land and emit around 34-percent of global soot mass into the atmosphere. In certain regions, such as Southeast Asia and Russia, these fires can contribute as much as 63-percent of regional soot mass. In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, a team of scientists led by Rajan Chakrabarty from Nevada's Desert Research Institute report the observation of a previously unrecognized form of soot particle, identified by the authors as "superaggregates," from wildfire emissions. These newly identified particles ...

Insights into how cells move through the body could lead to innovative techniques to stop cancer cells from spreading and causing secondary tumours, according to new UCL research. Scientists discovered that cells can change into an invasive, liquid-like state to readily navigate the narrow channels in our body. This transformation is triggered by chemical signals, which could be blocked in order to stop cancer cells from spreading. Most cancer deaths are not due to primary tumours, but to secondary tumours in vital organs, such as the lungs or brain, caused by cells ...

Some viruses can hide in our bodies for decades. They make 'fake' human proteins that trick our immune cells into thinking 'everything is awesome', there's nothing to see here. Now researchers at the Imaging Centre of Excellence at Monash and Melbourne Universities have determined the basic structure of one of the two known families of these deceptive proteins. Using synchrotron light and working with a common virus that lives in people happily and for the most part harmlessly, they worked out the structure of the fake proteins. This is an important first step towards ...

A team of scientists from the Cancer Science Institute of Singapore (CSI Singapore) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) discovered that a protein named IL23A is part of our stomach's defence against bacterial infection which leads to gastric cancer. This finding could potentially be used to combat the deadly disease. The research group, led by Professor Yoshiaki Ito, Senior Principal Investigator at CSI Singapore, also showed that the production of IL23A by stomach cells requires the tumour suppressor gene, RUNX3, which is frequently silenced in gastric cancer. ...

The equivalent of one-third of Melbourne's water use could be saved each year through the implementation of efficiency measures that deal with climate change, according to a new study. Researchers at the Monash Sustainability Institute analysed the water-saving potential of 74 options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions identified in ClimateWorks Australia's award-winning Low Carbon Growth Plan for Australia. The research was published this week in Springer's international journal Climatic Change. Monash University Research Fellow Dr Philip Wallis said an analysis ...

As in humans, cancers in dogs have complex causes. The interaction of the environment, food, and genetic disposition are the most well known factors. Today nearly all methods of human medicine are basically available for dogs with cancer, but this was not true of cancer immunotherapy so far. So-called cancer immunotherapy - which is the treatment of tumors by the use of antibodies - has been established and used very successfully in human medicine for about 20 years. Since cancer cells bear very specific antigens on the surface, the corresponding antibodies bind to these ...

The genus Axinaea belongs to the large, mainly tropical flowering plant family Melastomataceae (Meadow Beauty Family). Most of the ca. 5000 species in the family rely on bees for their pollination. Only about 100 are known to be pollinated by other insects or vertebrates. The flowers of Axinaea appear in clusters of few to more than twenty flowers and the petals of the different species are pink, yellow, orange or red. The stamens (male reproductive organs) stand out based on the contrasting colours of their bulbous appendages. The pollination mechanism of Axinaea had never ...

Alas, the thankless pseudogene. Dysfunctional, unloved and seemingly of little use, these poor-cousin relatives of genes have lost their protein-coding abilities. They contain material not essential for an organism's survival and are the "last stop" for removal of genomic waste. Not any more. The pseudogene's day may have arrived thanks to scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Han Liang, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the Cancer Center is advancing knowledge of these ...

New York, NY – July 7, 2014 - While cigarette use is declining precipitously among youth, evidence indicates that American adolescents are turning to ethnically-linked alternative tobacco products, such as hookahs, cigars, and various smokeless tobacco products, according to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Now a new study by researchers affiliated with New York University's Center for Drug Use and HIV Research (CDUHR), in the August 2014 edition of Pediatrics identifies how prevalent Hookah use is and which teens are most likely ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – A trio of paleontologists has discovered a remarkable new tracksite in Alaska's Denali National Park filled with duck-billed dinosaur footprints -- technically referred to as hadrosaurs -- that demonstrates they not only lived in multi-generational herds but thrived in the ancient high-latitude, polar ecosystem. The paper provides new insight into the herd structure and paleobiology of northern polar dinosaurs in an arctic greenhouse world. The article, "Herd structure in Late Cretaceous polar dinosaurs: A remarkable new dinosaur tracksite, Denali ...

Babies' growth in the womb and their size at birth, especially their length, are strikingly similar the world over – when babies are born to healthy, well-educated and well-nourished mothers. That's the finding of a landmark international study, INTERGROWTH-21st, led by Oxford University researchers, which involved almost 60,000 pregnancies in eight defined urban areas in Brazil, China, India, Italy, Kenya, Oman, the UK and USA. Worldwide there are wide disparities in the average size of babies at birth. This has significant consequences for future health, as small ...

Researchers from DTU Systems Biology have mapped 500 previously unknown microorganisms in human intestinal flora as well as 800 also unknown bacterial viruses (also called bacteriophages) which attack intestinal bacteria. To map the microorganisms, the researchers have developed a new principle for analysing DNA sequence data, which they have named the co-abundance principle. A principle which basically assumes that different pieces of DNA from the same organism will occur in the same amount in a sample, and that this amount will vary over a series of samples. "Using ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Located deep in the human gut, the small intestine is not easy to examine. X-rays, MRIs and ultrasound images provide snapshots but each suffers limitations. Help is on the way. University at Buffalo researchers are developing a new imaging technique involving nanoparticles suspended in liquid to form "nanojuice" that patients would drink. Upon reaching the small intestine, doctors would strike the nanoparticles with a harmless laser light, providing an unparalleled, non-invasive, real-time view of the organ. Described July 6 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, ...

Biologists at UC San Diego have solved a long-standing mystery concerning the way plants reduce the numbers of their breathing pores in response to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. In a paper published in this week's early online edition of Nature, they report the discovery of a new genetic pathway in plants, made up of four genes from three different gene families that control the density of breathing pores—or "stomata"—in plant leaves in response to elevated CO2 levels. Their discovery should help biologists better understand how the steadily increasing ...

RENO – A team of scientists led by Michael Sigl and Joe McConnell of Nevada's Desert Research Institute (DRI) has completed the most accurate and precise reconstruction to date of historic volcanic sulfate emissions in the Southern Hemisphere. The new record, described in a manuscript published today in the online edition of Nature Climate Change, is derived from a large number of individual ice cores collected at various locations across Antarctica and is the first annually resolved record extending through the Common Era (the last 2,000 years of human history). "This ...

Created at Monash University, the world's first toolkit is designed for GPs to use with women from the age of 40. Thought to be the first of its kind, researchers say the toolkit has the potential to help manage menopausal conditions for women globally. The Practitioner Toolkit for Managing the Menopause, which includes a diagnostic tool, as well as a compendium of approved hormone therapies, is published today in the journal, Climacteric. Led by Professor Susan Davis, the research team from the School of Public Health and Preventative Medicine, combined existing research ...

Researchers working in Sierra Leone today [Saturday 5 July] suggest priority actions needed to tackle the ongoing Ebola crisis in West Africa. In a letter to The Lancet, the researchers call for improvements in access to diagnostic technologies and health-care resources, as well as improved disease surveillance and health communication. At present, there is little incentive for patients to seek professional diagnosis of suspected Ebola, say the authors, with most people with febrile (fever-causing) illnesses in Sierra Leone treated at home, and the true extent of the ...

A new study published in The Lancet compares outcomes for two drugs used to prevent blood clot formation during emergency heart attack treatment. The study suggests that use of one of the drugs, heparin, could result in improved outcomes (such as a reduced rate of repeat heart attacks), compared to the other drug tested, bivalirudin, which is in widespread use in high-income countries, and is around 400 times more expensive than heparin. The results of the HEAT-PPCI trial suggest that systematic use of heparin rather than bivalirudin after primary percutaneous coronary ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Barcelona, 4 July 2014: An association between high blood cholesterol and breast cancer has been found in a study of more than 1 million patients over a 14 year time period in the UK. The research will be presented today at Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting is organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies. http://spo.escardio.org/SessionDetails.aspx?eevtid=65&sessId=13301&subSessId=3494 Dr ...

Barcelona, 4 July 2014: The first evidence for a shockless treatment for atrial fibrillation (AF) will be presented today at Frontiers in CardioVascular Biology (FCVB) 2014 in Barcelona, Spain. The meeting is organised by the Council on Basic Cardiovascular Science of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in collaboration with 13 European cardiovascular science societies. http://spo.escardio.org/SessionDetails.aspx?eevtid=65&sessId=13104 Dr Brian O. Bingen, first author, said: "AF is the most common cardiac arrhythmia. Symptoms range from the feeling of fish flapping ...