Plants can undergo the same extreme 'chromosome shattering' seen in some human cancers and developmental syndromes, UC Davis researchers have found. Chromosome shattering, or 'chromothripsis,' has until now only been seen in animal cells. A paper on the work is published in the online journal eLife. The process could be applied in plant breeding as a way to create haploid plants with genetic material from only one parent, said Ek Han Tan, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Davis Department of Plant Biology and first author on the paper. Although plants don't get cancer, ...

The public can now make a more informed choice about long-term care thanks to a new online tool launched today that compares facilities across Canada based on nine indicators such as safety, quality of life and general health of residents. Researchers at the University of Waterloo led the development of the assessment criteria and quality measures that will allow people to compare data of more than 1,000 facilities. They are members of interRAI, a global network developing assessment and screening tools to support vulnerable populations. 'This website provides Canadians ...

A large data-mining study carried out by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine has linked a popular class of heartburn drugs to an elevated risk of heart attack. Proton-pump inhibitors, or PPIs, are among the world's most widely prescribed drugs, with $14 billion in annual sales. They are effective at lowering the acidity of the stomach, in turn preventing heartburn, a burning sensation in the chest that occurs when stomach acid rises up into the esophagus. In any given year, more than 20 million Americans -- about one in every 14 -- use PPIs such ...

Chimpanzee may be able to use facial expressions and vocalizations flexibly, notably during physical contact play, according to a study published June 10, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Marina Davila-Ross from University of Portsmouth, UK and colleagues. The ability to flexibly produce facial expressions and vocalizations has a strong impact on the way humans communicate, but scientists' understanding of nonhuman primate facial expressions and vocalizations is limited. The authors of this study investigated whether chimpanzees produce the same types of ...

People reflecting on a roundtrip walk estimated that the return trip took less time than the outward trip, according to a study published June 10, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ryosuke Ozawa from Kyoto University, and colleagues. Many have experienced the "return trip effect," where the return trip seems shorter than the outward trip, even when the trips actually took the same amount of time. Scientists have studied the effect, but haven't confirm its existence in the context of the environment and duration of the real-life trip. To better understand the ...

This news release is available in French. A study at the University of Montreal shows that the market share of the five largest research publishing houses reached 50% in 2006, rising, thanks to mergers and acquisitions, from 30% in 1996 and only 20% in 1973. "Overall, the major publishers control more than half of the market of scientific papers both in the natural and medical sciences and in the social sciences and humanities," said Professor Vincent Larivière of the School of Library and Information Science, who led the study. "Furthermore, these large commercial ...

Most Americans are aware that food waste is a problem, are concerned about it, and say they work to reduce their own waste, but nearly three-quarters believe that they waste less food than the national average, new research suggests. The findings, from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, are significant given that 31 to 40 percent of the American food supply goes to waste, primarily in homes, stores and restaurants. The top foods wasted, by weight, are fruits and vegetables, due in part to their perishability ...

People hospitalized for heart failure had a significantly lower chance of being readmitted within 30 days of discharge when treated with a cardiac resynchronization therapy device, or CRT, equipped with an algorithm to automatically deliver and adjust therapy when compared to those receiving the standard CRT optimized with echocardiography, according to a study today in JACC: Heart Failure. A CRT device is a defibrillator that sends electrical impulses to the heart to help the chambers beat in synchronization and improves the heart's pumping function. It is an established ...

Although hypertension is more common in African-Americans, they have significantly lower levels of a hormone produced in response to cardiac stress than white and Hispanic individuals, a finding that may indicate a target for prevention or treatment of heart disease, according to a study published today in JACC: Heart Failure. Using data from the Dallas Heart Study, researchers assessed 3,148 patients and examined the association between race and ethnicity and levels of natriuretic peptides -- which are hormones produced in response to increased cardiac wall stress common ...

In preliminary experiments with mice and lab-grown cells, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have found that a protein-signaling process accelerates the work of the gene most frequently mutated in a common form of adult leukemia and is likely necessary to bring about the full-blown disease. The Kimmel team, in a report published in the June 10 issue of Science Translational Medicine, demonstrated the impact of the so-called Hedgehog protein signaling pathway by successfully using a combination of two drugs to both block the activity of the mutated gene, called ...

PRINCETON, N.J.--Double-blind clinical trials for new drugs are considered the "gold standard" of medical research because they're designed to determine the efficacy of a treatment free from doctor and participant bias. But one effect these trials fail to measure is how a medication's performance can vary based on patients' lifestyle choices, especially if patients change their habits because they are anticipating treatment, according to a new study published in PLOS ONE. A recent meta-analysis of six clinical trials, led by researchers from Princeton University, the ...

A key potential 'benefit' of global warming--namely, that plants at northern latitudes will thrive in a warmer world--is challenged by a new study released by University of Hawai'i scientists today. The prevailing assumption ignores the fact that plants in the North will remain limited by solar radiation, curbing positive effects of warming and additional CO2 availability. In addition, that same warming could surpass plant temperature tolerances in tropical areas around the world, and further be accompanied by drought. "Those that think climate change will benefit plants ...

DARIEN, Ill. -- A new study suggests that the risk for sleep disorders among college freshmen may be a predictor of retention and academic success. Results show that students at risk for a sleep disorder were more likely to leave the institution over the three-year period, although this association was weakened when covariates were included. Risk for sleep disorder also predicted grade point average (GPA) at the end of the first and second years. 'A survey that screens for sleep disorders administered when students first enter college may identify a potentially modifiable ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have launched a clinical trial to investigate the safety and efficacy of an unprecedented drug therapy for autism. The phase 1 clinical trial, which is recruiting 20 qualifying participants, will evaluate suramin -- a century-old drug still used for African sleeping sickness -- as a novel treatment for children with a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Previous published research by Robert K. Naviaux, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine, pediatrics and pathology at UC San Diego School of ...

MADISON, Wis. -- Fragile X syndrome is the most common inherited intellectual disability and the greatest single genetic contributor to autism. Unlocking the mechanisms behind fragile X could make important revelations about the brain. In a new study published June 4 in the journal Cell Reports, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Waisman Center and Department of Neuroscience show that two proteins implicated in fragile X play a crucial role in the proper development of neurons in mice. They also show that while the two proteins act through distinct mechanisms ...

Researchers at Children's Hospital Los Angeles have demonstrated that adolescents and young adults with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) have significantly increased amounts of abdominal fat tissue, placing them at greater risk for harmful conditions linked to obesity, including cardiovascular disease (CVD). Their study, which reveals new information about the role of abdominal fat in patients with CAH and points to a need for targeted prevention and therapeutics to avoid these adverse effects, will be published online June 10, 2015 by The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology ...

SAN FRANCISCO - Innovative vaccine and tumor research will be unveiled at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' (AAPS) National Biotechnology Conference (NBC). The meeting takes place Monday, June 8- Wednesday, June 10 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis. This year's conference is organized into five meeting workstreams: Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls (CMC) including Formulation, Characterization, Stability and Biomanufacturing; Research and Discovery; Clinical Pharmacology, Pharmacokinetic/Pharmacodynamic (PK/PD), and Bioanalytics; Regulatory; ...

Was it a massive migration? Or was it rather a slow and persistent seeping of people, items and ideas that laid the foundation for the demographic map of Europe and Central Asia that we see today? The Bronze Age (about 5,000 - 3,000 years ago) was a period with large cultural upheavals. But just how these upheavals came to be have remained shrouded in mystery. Assistant Professor Morten Allentoft from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen is a geneticist and is first author on the paper in Nature. He says: - ...

An international team of scientists has found a dramatic ice sheet collapse at the end of the ice age before last caused widespread climate changes and led to a peak in the sea level well above its present height. The team found the events 135,000 years ago caused the planet to warm in a different way to the end of the most recent ice age about 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. The findings will help scientists understand the processes that control Earth's dramatic climate changes, said the leader of the study, Dr Gianluca Marino of The Australian National University (ANU). "We ...

Several neurodegenerative disorders are caused by aggregates of a single protein known as alpha-synuclein. In collaboration with CNRS and the University of Antwerp, KU Leuven neurobiologists have discovered that the shape of these aggregates - 'cylinders' or 'ribbons' - determines whether a patient develops Parkinson's disease or Multiple System Atrophy, respectively. Typical of neurodegenerative disorders is the disrupted communication between brain cells together with a loss of cells in specific brain regions. For some brain diseases this phenomenon is linked to a ...

The discovery of how a group of bacteria rapidly adapts to changing growth conditions could have implications for future antibiotic development, according to research at the University of Oxford and the University of York. Led by Professor Colin Kleanthous at Oxford and Dr Christoph Baumann at York, the research which also involved key collaborators Mark Sansom at Oxford and Jacob Piehler at the University of Osnabrück, is published in Nature. Gram-negative bacteria are a major cause of disease, in part because they have a robust outer membrane that protects ...

A University of Manchester led trial of a new psoriasis drug has resulted in 40 percent of people showing a complete clearance of psoriatic plaques after 12 weeks of treatment and over 90 percent showing improvement. The research tested 2,500 people with psoriasis. Half were given a new drug - ixekizumab - either once every two or four weeks. The other half were given a placebo or a widely used drug for psoriasis called etanercept. The ixekizumab groups showed quick and extensive improvements in their condition, outperforming the groups on placebo or etanercept. Around ...

wo NASA satellites provided a look inside and outside of Tropical Cyclone Ashobaa. NASA and JAXA's GPM satellite observed rainfall rates and cloud heights identifying powerful thunderstorms within the cyclone, and NASA's Aqua satellite provided an overall look at Ashobaa's cloud extent. The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) core observatory had an excellent view of Tropical Cyclone Ashobaa in the Arabian Sea over on June 8, 2015 at 2131 UTC (5:31 p.m. EDT). As expected, Tropical Cyclone Ashobaa was more powerful than when seen by GPM earlier in the day. GPM's Microwave ...

Genetically modified fish that overexpress growth hormone have been created for more than 25 years, but unlike many domesticated crops, transgenic fish have yet to enter commercial production. Because of the difficulty inherent in eradicating an established fish population, efforts are under way to model the threat posed by possible invasions. In an article for an upcoming issue of BioScience, a team of government and academic researchers, led by Robert Devlin of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, examined the possible outcomes of an accidental release of transgenic fish. Their ...

The air around us is a chaotic superhighway of molecules whizzing through space and constantly colliding with each other at speeds of hundreds of miles per hour. Such erratic molecular behavior is normal at ambient temperatures. But scientists have long suspected that if temperatures were to plunge to near absolute zero, molecules would come to a screeching halt, ceasing their individual chaotic motion and behaving as one collective body. This more orderly molecular behavior would begin to form very strange, exotic states of matter -- states that have never been observed ...