Global warming is generally expected to bring spring forward but, as a new study at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich shows, a concomitant influx of plant species from warmer southern latitudes could counteract this effect. Climate change is already clearly discernible in our part of the world. Data from local weather stations indicate that the average temperature in the Munich region has risen by 1.5°C over the past century. LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner and her research group have now looked at the effects of this warming trend on the timing ...

(Millbrook, NY) People who get bitten by a blacklegged tick have a higher-than-expected chance of being exposed to more than one pathogen at the same time. The new research, published online today in the journal PLOS ONE, was conducted by scientists at Bard College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. "We found that ticks are almost twice as likely to be infected with two pathogens—the bacterium that causes Lyme disease and the protozoan that causes babesiosis—than we would have expected," said Felicia Keesing, a professor of biology ...

Cancer care has a new side effect. Along with the distress that comes with a cancer diagnosis and the discomforts of treatment, more patients now have to deal with "financial toxicity," the expense, anxiety and loss of confidence confronting those who face large, unpredictable costs, often compounded by decreased ability to work. In the July issue of Cancer, a team of University of Chicago cancer specialists describe the first tool — 11 questions, assembled and refined from conversations with more than 150 patients with advanced cancer — to measure a patient's risk for, ...

(Phoenix Ariz. June 19, 2014) -- Doctors at the University of Arizona Cancer Center at St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix reported today in Lancet Oncology that a new treatment for ovarian cancer can improve response rates (increase the rate of tumor shrinkage) and prolong the time until cancers recur. In addition, this breakthrough showed a trend in improving survival although these data are not yet mature. Trebananib (formally known as AMG 386; Amgen) is a first-in-class peptide-Fc fusion protein (or peptibody) that targets angiogenesis (the growth ...

Einstein's theory of relativity envisions time as a spatial dimension, like height, width, and depth. But unlike those other dimensions, time seems to permit motion in only one direction: forward. This directional asymmetry — the "arrow of time" — is something of a conundrum for theoretical physics. But is it something we can see? An international group of computer scientists believes that the answer is yes. At the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition this month, they'll present a new algorithm that can, with roughly 80 percent accuracy, determine ...

DALLAS – June 19, 2014 – A new driver of atherosclerosis has been identified by researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center. This molecule, known as 27HC (27-hydroxycholesterol), has been found to exacerbate the development of the condition, and may prove to be a promising therapeutic target. Atherosclerosis is characterized by the build-up of lesions (or plaques) formed from lipids, such as cholesterol and fatty acids. Ruptured plaques can partially or completely block blood flow, potentially leading to a heart attack or stroke. A member of a larger family of molecules ...

In late May, NASA's Swift satellite imaged comet Siding Spring, which will brush astonishingly close to Mars later this year. These optical and ultraviolet observations are the first to reveal how rapidly the comet is producing water and allow astronomers to better estimate its size. "Comet Siding Spring is making its first passage through the inner solar system and is experiencing its first strong heating from the sun," said lead researcher Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP). "These observations are part of a two-year-long ...

They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe's stars. Studying this early epoch of the universe's history is critical to fully understanding how these stars formed and how galaxies grew and evolved 3.5 to 6 billion years after the beginning of the universe. The result supports a decade-long investigation into whether there is a link between a galaxy's mass and its star-forming activity, and ...

Georgia Tech researchers have identified a weakness in one of Android's security features and will present their work at Black Hat USA 2014, which will be held August 6-7 in Las Vegas. The research, titled Abusing Performance Optimization Weaknesses to Bypass ASLR, identifies an Android performance feature that weakens a software protection called Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), leaving software components vulnerable to attacks that bypass the protection. The work is aimed at helping security practitioners identify and understand the future direction of such ...

What seemed to be rock-solid assumptions about the nature of small asteroids may end in collections of rubble or even a cloud of dust, but in such findings lies the lure of the unexpected. Northern Arizona University researchers David Trilling and Michael Mommert, while playing a well-defined role in the NASA Asteroid Initiative, are beginning to wonder if they have found a separate path of investigation. The two researchers presented their findings about asteroid 2011 MD on Thursday during a NASA event updating progress on the path to capturing a small asteroid and ...

Only 15% of patients with squamous cell lung cancer – the second most common lung cancer – survive five years past diagnosis. Little is understood about how the deadly disease arises, preventing development of targeted therapies that could serve as a second line of defense once standard chemotherapy regimens fail. Published online in Cell Reports on June 19, Huntsman Cancer Institute investigators report that misregulation of two genes, sox2 and lkb1, drives squamous cell lung cancer in mice. The discovery uncovers new treatment strategies, and provides a clinically relevant ...

WASHINGTON, June 19, 2014—Before they excise a tumor, surgeons need to determine exactly where the cancerous cells lie. Now, research published today in The Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics Letters details a new technique that could give surgeons cheaper and more lightweight tools, such as goggles or hand-held devices, to identify tumors in real time in the operating room. The new technology, developed by a team at the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis, is a dual-mode imager that combines two systems—near-infrared fluorescent imaging to ...

Astronomers have discovered strange and unexpected behaviour around the supermassive black hole at the heart of the galaxy NGC 5548. The international team of researchers detected a clumpy gas stream flowing quickly outwards and blocking 90 percent of the X-rays emitted by the black hole. This activity could provide insights into how supermassive black holes interact with their host galaxies. The discovery of the unusual behaviour in NGC 5548 is the result of an intensive observing campaign using major ESA and NASA space observatories, including the NASA/ESA Hubble Space ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. – Imagine a material with the same weight and density as aerogel -- a material so light it's called 'frozen smoke' -- but with 10,000 times more stiffness. This material could have a profound impact on the aerospace and automotive industries as well as other applications where lightweight, high-stiffness and high-strength materials are needed. Lawrence Livermore and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a material with these properties using additive micro-manufacturing processes. The research team's findings are published ...

URBANA, Ill. – What social skills does a three-year-old bring to interactions with a new peer partner? If he has strong bonds to his parents, the child is likely to be a positive, responsive playmate, and he'll be able to adapt to a difficult peer by asserting his needs, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Developmental Psychology. "Securely attached children are more responsive to suggestions or requests made by a new peer partner. A child who has experienced a secure attachment relationship with caregivers is likely to come into a new peer relationship ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. – June 19, 2014) St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have discovered how an important "on" switch is attached to the machinery that cells rely on to adapt thousands of proteins to meet changing conditions. The research appears in the current issue of the journal Cell. The switch is a small protein called NEDD8. Problems with NEDD8 have been associated with several cancers, developmental disorders and infectivity of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Drugs that target NEDD8 are in anti-cancer clinical trials. The ability ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 19, 2014) — For the first time, a therapy has been found that can delay progression of metastatic uveal melanoma, a rare and deadly form of melanoma of the eye. Results from a multicenter clinical trial show that a new drug called selumetinib increases progression-free survival, the length of time during and after treatment that a patient with metastases lives with the disease without it progressing. The findings were published today in the online edition of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Although the effects of the drug were ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 19, 2014—Plasminogen activators are proteins involved in the breakdown of blood clots, and an elevated level of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) is associated with an increased risk for clotting and cardiovascular disease. No PAI-1 inhibitors are currently available for clinical use, but a novel therapeutic approach using a targeted RNA aptamer drug that has been shown to block PAI-1 activity and prevent PAI-1-associated vascular events is described in Nucleic Acid Therapeutics, a peer-reviewed journal from Nucleic Acid Therapeutics. The ...

Covert changes of mind can be discovered by tracking neural activity when subjects make decisions, researchers from New York University and Stanford University have found. Their results, which appear in the journal Current Biology, offer new insights into how we make decisions and point to innovative ways to study this process in the future. "The methods used in this study allowed us to see the idiosyncratic nature of decision making that was inaccessible before," explains Roozbeh Kiani, an assistant professor in NYU's Center for Neural Science and the study's lead author. ...

UCLA researchers led by Dr. Brigitte Gomperts have discovered the inner workings of the process thought to be the first stage in the development of lung cancer. Their study explains how factors that regulate the growth of adult stem cells that repair tissue in the lungs can lead to the formation of precancerous lesions. Findings from the three-year study could eventually lead to new personalized treatments for lung cancer, which is responsible for an estimated 29 percent of U.S. cancer deaths, making it the deadliest form of the disease. The study was published online ...

Equine influenza viruses from the early 2000s can easily infect the respiratory tracts of dogs, while those from the 1960s are only barely able to, according to research published ahead of print in the Journal of Virology. The research also suggests that canine and human influenza viruses can mix, and generate new influenza viruses. Canine influenza is a relatively new disease. The first appearance is believed to be in 2003, as a result of direct transfer of a single equine influenza virus to dogs in a large greyhound training facility and was subsequently carried to ...

A University of Central Florida research team has developed a facial recognition tool that promises to be useful in rapidly matching pictures of children with their biological parents and in potentially identifying photos of missing children as they age. The work verifies that a computer is capable of matching pictures of parents and their children. The study will be presented at the nation's premier event for the science of computer vision - the IEEE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference in Columbus, Ohio, which begins Monday, June 23. Graduate Student ...

(Vancouver – June 19, 2014) – A new mobile app developed by researchers at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) at BC Children's Hospital and the University of British Columbia can measure respiratory rate in children roughly six times faster than the standard manual method. According to findings published this month in PLOS One, RRate can reliably measure respiratory rate in an average of 9.9 seconds. Currently, health care workers typically measure respiratory rate by counting a patient's breaths for 60 seconds using a stop watch. "Mobile phones are changing ...

A team of scientists, led by principal investigator David D. Schlaepfer, PhD, professor in the Department of Reproductive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report that small molecule inhibitors to a protein called focal adhesion kinase (FAK) selectively prevent the growth of ovarian cancer cells as tumor spheroids. The findings come in a pair of studies published online this week in the journals Gynecologic Oncology and Molecular Cancer Therapeutics. Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of female cancer death in the United States. On ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to control populations of the Australian sheep blowfly – a major livestock pest in Australia and New Zealand – by making female flies dependent upon a common antibiotic to survive. Dr. Max Scott, professor of entomology at NC State, and his research team genetically modified lines of female Australian sheep blowflies (Lucilia cuprina) so that they required doses of tetracycline in order to live. Female blowflies that did not receive the antibiotic died in the late larval or pupal stages, before ...