Boston, MA. Wednesday, November 26, 2014 -- Researchers from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard-affiliated hospitals have uncovered an easily detectable, "pre-malignant" state in the blood that significantly increases the likelihood that an individual will go on to develop blood cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma, or myelodysplastic syndrome. The discovery, which was made independently by two research teams affiliated with the Broad and partner institutions, opens new avenues for research aimed at early detection and prevention of ...

TORONTO, Nov. 26, 2014--The nervous system may play a bigger role in infections and autoimmune diseases than previously known. If researchers can learn more about that role, it could provide insight into diagnosing and treating everything from the stomach flu to rheumatoid arthritis. Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto, in conjunction with the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, N.Y., reviewed the latest, most vigorous pre-clinical trials on this topic in a commentary published Wednesday (Nov. 26) in the New England Journal of Medicine. ...

An experimental vaccine to prevent Ebola virus disease was well-tolerated and produced immune system responses in all 20 healthy adults who received it in a Phase 1 clinical trial conducted by researchers from the National Institutes of Health. The candidate vaccine, which was co-developed by the NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), was tested at the NIH Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The interim results are reported online in advance of print in the New England Journal of Medicine. "The unprecedented scale ...

ANN ARBOR--The spaghetti-like internal structure of most plastics makes it hard for them to cast away heat, but a University of Michigan research team has made a plastic blend that does so 10 times better than its conventional counterparts. Plastics are inexpensive, lightweight and flexible, but because they restrict the flow of heat, their use is limited in technologies like computers, smartphones, cars or airplanes--places that could benefit from their properties but where heat dissipation is important. The new U-M work could lead to light, versatile, metal-replacement ...

MINNEAPOLIS - The majority of people with dementia have never seen a doctor about their memory and thinking problems, according to a new study published in the November 26, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. In the study, 55 percent of the people with dementia had never had an evaluation of their thinking and memory skills with a doctor. "These results suggest that approximately 1.8 million Americans over the age of 70 with dementia have never had an evaluation of their cognitive abilities," said study author ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- Despite clear signs that their memory and thinking abilities have gone downhill, more than half of seniors with these symptoms haven't seen a doctor about them, a new study finds. University of Michigan researchers and their colleagues say their findings suggest that as many as 1.8 million Americans over the age of 70 with dementia are not evaluated for cognitive symptoms by a medical provider, which in some patients can lead to a failure to uncover modifiable causes of thinking or memory impairment. The study, published online in Neurology, the ...

Juvenile offenders with multiple psychiatric disorders when they are incarcerated in detention centers appear to be at high risk for disorders five years after detention, according to a report published online by JAMA Psychiatry. Psychiatric disorders are prevalent among juvenile detainees. However, far less is known about the young people after they leave detention. Karen M. Abram, Ph.D., of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, and co-authors looked at patterns of comorbidity (the presence of two or more disorders), how they change over ...

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- Nov. 26, 2014 -- An international team of scientists from the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) have completed a first-of-its-kind microbial analysis of a biological wastewater treatment plant that has broad implications for protecting the environment, energy recovery and human health. The study, published Nov. 26 in the scientific journal Nature Communications (DOI: 10.1038/ncomm6603), describes in unprecedented detail the complex relationships within a model ecosystem. The ...

Johns Hopkins researchers report that their test of an interventional X-ray guidance device approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2013 has the potential to reduce the radiation exposure of patients undergoing intra-arterial therapy (IAT) for liver cancer. In a report prepared for presentation Dec. 3 at the 100th annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America in Chicago (abstract #SSM24-02), the researchers described the results of a clinical trial of the imaging system AlluraClarity, made by Philips Healthcare, on 50 patients with liver cancer. ...

Plasmid DNA attached to the outer surface of a sounding rocket may be able to withstand rocket launch, a period of residence in suborbital space, re-entry, and landing conditions into the Earth's atmosphere, all the while staying intact and active in its function as carrier of genetic information, according to a study published November 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Cora Thiel and Oliver Ullrich from University of Zurich and colleagues. DNA plays an important role as a biomarker for the search of extraterrestrial signatures of life, and scientists are ...

Potential 'vampires' buried in northwestern Poland with sickles and rocks across their bodies were likely local and not immigrants to the region, according to a study published November 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Lesley Gregoricka from University of South Alabama and colleagues. In northwestern Poland, apotropaic funerary rites--a traditional practice intended to prevent evil--occurred throughout the 17th-18th c. AD. Those of the dead considered at risk for becoming vampires for a variety of reasons were given specific treatment, and investigating ...

Shifts in the timing and duration of ice cover, especially the possible lengthening of ice-free periods, may impact polar bears under projected warming before the end of the 21st century, according to a study published November 26, 2014 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Stephen Hamilton from University of Alberta and colleagues. Sea ice across the Arctic is declining and altering physical characteristics of marine ecosystems, and polar bears are vulnerable to these changes in sea ice conditions. The authors of this study used sea ice projections for the Canadian ...

Induced pluripotent stem cells made from patients with a form of blistering skin disease can be genetically corrected and used to grow back healthy skin cells in laboratory dishes, researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found. They've termed the new technique "therapeutic reprogramming." The skin cells formed normal human skin when grafted onto the backs of laboratory mice, they said. The findings represent a major advance in the battle against the disease, epidermolysis bullosa, in which the top layer of skin, called the epidermis, sloughs off ...

Some people say that reading "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" taught them the importance of friends, or that easy decisions are seldom right. Carnegie Mellon University scientists used a chapter of that book to learn a different lesson: identifying what different regions of the brain are doing when people read. Researchers from CMU's Machine Learning Department performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of eight people as they read a chapter of that Potter book. They then analyzed the scans, cubic millimeter by cubic millimeter, for every four-word ...

Applied to the outer shell of the payload section of a rocket using pipettes, small, double-stranded DNA molecules flew into space from Earth and back again. After the launch, space flight, re-entry into Earth's atmosphere and landing, the so-called plasmid DNA molecules were still found on all the application points on the rocket from the TEXUS-49 mission. And this was not the only surprise: For the most part, the DNA salvaged was even still able to transfer genetic information to bacterial and connective tissue cells. "This study provides experimental evidence that the ...

Scientists investigating the potentially deadly hantavirus have used a novel approach to developing protective antibodies against it. Their work, published in today's online edition of Science Translational Medicine, provides proof of concept for producing antibodies against a broad range of human pathogens. Hantaviruses cause a condition known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS), which has a case fatality rate of 35-40 percent. Currently there are no licensed vaccines, prophylactics, or therapeutics to prevent or treat this highly pathogenic disease. This research ...

This news release is available in German. Scientists led by Kristina Djinović-Carugo at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna have elucidated the molecular structure and regulation of the essential muscle protein α-actinin. The new findings allow unprecedented insights into the protein's mode of action and its role in muscle disorders. The findings, made in collaboration with King's College London (KCL), may lead to improved treatments, and are published in the top-class journal Cell. Most ...

A popular indigestion medication can increase survival in colorectal cancer, according to research published in ecancermedicalscience. But in fact, scientists have studied this for years - and a group of cancer advocates want to know why this research isn't more widely used. "Cimetidine is an interesting drug as it's very safe, very well-known, and has clinical results in cancer that have been confirmed in a number of trials," says Pan Pantziarka, lead author of the paper and member of the Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO) project. Cimetidine treats indigestion ...

Stanford engineers have invented a revolutionary coating material that can help cool buildings, even on sunny days, by radiating heat away from the buildings and sending it directly into space. A team led by electrical engineering Professor Shanhui Fan and research associate Aaswath Raman reported this energy-saving breakthrough in the journal Nature. The heart of the invention is an ultrathin, multilayered material that deals with light, both invisible and visible, in a new way. Invisible light in the form of infrared radiation is one of the ways that all objects ...

A team of scientists, led by Dr Sebastian Hoenig from the University of Southampton, have developed a new way of measuring precise distances to galaxies tens of millions of light years away, using the W. M. Keck Observatory near the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The method is similar to what land surveyors use on earth, by measuring the physical and angular, or 'apparent', size of a standard ruler in the galaxy, to calibrate the distance from this information. The research, which is published in the journal Nature, was used to identify the accurate distance of the ...

One of the major problems in astronomy is measuring very large distances in the universe. The current most common methods measure relative distances, but now research from the Niels Bohr Institute demonstrates that precise distances can be measured using supermassive black holes. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature. The active galaxy NGC 4151 called the, 'Eye of Sauron' due to its similarity to the eye in the film Lord of the Rings, is a modest spiral galaxy. It has a supermassive black hole at its centre and this black hole is still active, that ...

BOSTON - A promising experimental immunotherapy drug works best in patients whose immune defenses initially rally to attack the cancer but then are stymied by a molecular brake that shuts down the response, according to a new study led by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Yale University School of Medicine. The antibody drug, known as MPDL3280A, inhibits the brake protein, PD-L1, reviving the response by immune killer T cells, which target and destroy the cancer cells. In recent clinical trials, the PD-L1 checkpoint blocker caused impressive shrinkage ...

MADISON, Wis. -- It was fishermen off the coast of Peru who first recognized the anomaly, hundreds of years ago. Every so often, their usually cold, nutrient-rich water would turn warm and the fish they depended on would disappear. Then there was the ceaseless rain. They called it "El Nino," The Boy -- or Christmas Boy -- because of its timing near the holiday each time it returned, every three to seven years. El Nino is not a contemporary phenomenon; it's long been the Earth's dominant source of year-to-year climate fluctuation. But as the climate warms and the feedbacks ...

A new study has pulled together research into the most diverse place on earth to demonstrate how the organisms below-ground could hold the key to understanding how the worlds ecosystems function and how they are responding to climate change. Published in Nature, the paper by Professor Richard Bardgett from The University of Manchester and Professor Wim van der Putten of the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, brings together new knowledge on this previously neglected area. The paper not only highlights the sheer diversity of life that lives below-ground, but also how rapid ...

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London have made a breakthrough in developing a new therapy for advanced bladder cancer - for which there have been no major treatment advances in the past 30 years. Published today in Nature, the study examined an antibody (MPDL3280A) which blocks a protein (PD-L1) thought to help cancer cells evade immune detection. In a phase one, multi-centre international clinical trial, 68 patients with advanced bladder cancer (who had failed all other standard treatments such as chemotherapy) received MPDL3280A, a cancer immunotherapy ...