Solving global challenges in food security, emerging diseases and biodiversity loss requires evolutionary thinking, argues a new study published online in Science Express that was co-authored by Bruce Tabashnik of the University of Arizona College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. For the first time, an international team of nine scientists has reviewed progress in addressing a broad set of challenges in agriculture, medicine and environmental management using approaches that consider evolutionary histories and the likelihood of rapid adaptation to human activities. The ...

Patients whose lung cancer has developed resistance to the drug gefitinib experience no statistically significant improvement in progression-free survival from continued treatment with the drug in addition to chemotherapy, a phase III trial presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress has shown. The IMPRESS trial is a randomised phase III study that compared continuation of gefitinib in addition to chemotherapy against chemotherapy alone in patients with lung cancer that carried mutations in the EGFR cell surface receptor. Gefitinib is a type of drug known as a tyrosine kinase ...

Patients with HER2-positive breast cancer that has spread to other parts of their body live around 16 months longer if treated with a combination of pertuzumab, trastuzumab and chemotherapy compared to those treated with trastuzumab and chemotherapy alone, updated results from the CLEOPATRA study reveal. CLEOPATRA was a pivotal phase III study where researchers evaluated the safety and efficacy of pertuzumab, trastuzumb and chemotherapy in 808 patients with previously untreated HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer. HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer has historically ...

For patients with cervical cancer that has recurred after treatment or has spread elsewhere in the body, adding the experimental drug cediranib to standard chemotherapy improves tumour shrinkage and adds a modest improvement in progression-free survival, researchers report at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid. In Europe, about 70% of patients with cervical cancer are cured by either surgery or chemo-radiotherapy. Those patients with recurrent or secondary cancer have a very poor outlook. Only about 20-30% have tumour shrinkage after conventional chemotherapy and survival ...

More than three quarters of oncology specialists in Europe, South America and Asia believe their patients are not always well enough informed about the treatment options available to them, survey results have revealed at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. The results come from an online survey of 895 doctors from 12 countries in Europe, South America and Asia. All were practicing oncology specialists, with more than three years' experience, treating more than fifteen patients a month. While 82% of those surveyed believed that deciding on a course of treatment ...

A growing number of oncologists in Greece are female, but women continue to be under-represented in leadership positions, according to a survey reported at the ESMO 2014 Congress. "In Greece, and across Europe, women oncologists still find it hard to access leadership or academic positions," said Dr Helena Linardou, Associate Director of the 1st Department of Oncology at the Metropolitan Hospital, Athens, Greece, who presented the survey results at the congress. "Women are indeed increasingly choosing oncology specialties in Greece, however, most decision-making posts ...

A recent study based on a Chinese sample gives an answer to this question. The research shows that in Chinese culture, emotion- expressive suppression is not only able to dampen negative emotion effectively, but also dampen negative emotion faster than Cognitive reappraisal. This sheds much light on how to quickly regulate negative emotion in urgent situations, particularly when people from East-Asian cultures are concerned. This study has been published in SCIENCE CHINA： Life Sciences (IN CHINESE) , which is titled "The efficiency of negative emotion regulation: ...

You're waiting at a bus stop, expecting the bus to arrive any time. You watch the road. Nothing yet. A little later you start to pace. More time passes. "Maybe there is some problem", you think. Finally, you give up and raise your arm and hail a taxi. Just as you pull away, you glimpse the bus gliding up. Did you have a choice to wait a bit longer? Or was giving up too soon the inevitable and predictable result of a chain of neural events? In research published on 09/28/2014 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists show that neural recordings can be used to forecast ...

Present-day lithium batteries are efficient but involve a range of resource and environmental problems. Using materials from alfalfa (lucerne seed) and pine resin and a clever recycling strategy, Uppsala researchers have now come up with a highly interesting alternative. Their study will be presented soon in the scientific journal ChemSusChem. 'We think our discovery can open several doors to more environment-friendly, energy-efficient solutions for the batteries of the future,' says Daniel Brandell, Associate Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Uppsala University, ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—September 28, 2014—Researchers at the Gladstone Institutes have shown that low levels of the protein progranulin in the brain can increase the formation of amyloid-beta plaques (a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease), cause neuroinflammation, and worsen memory deficits in a mouse model of this condition. Conversely, by using a gene therapy approach to elevate progranulin levels, scientists were able to prevent these abnormalities and block cell death in this model. Progranulin deficiency is known to cause another neurodegenerative disorder, frontotemporal ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2014—Optical fiber sensors are used around the world to monitor the condition of difficult-to-access segments of infrastructure—such as the underbellies of bridges, the exterior walls of tunnels, the feet of dams, long pipelines and railways in remote rural areas. Now, a team of researchers in Italy are expanding the reach of optical fiber sensors "to the hills" by embedding them in shallow trenches within slopes to detect and monitor both large landslides and slow slope movements. The team will present their research at The Optical Society's (OSA) ...

How the brain ages is still largely an open question – in part because this organ is mostly insulated from direct contact with other systems in the body, including the blood and immune systems. In research that was recently published in Science, Weizmann Institute researchers Prof. Michal Schwartz of the Neurobiology Department and Dr. Ido Amit of Immunology Department found evidence of a unique "signature" that may be the "missing link" between cognitive decline and aging. The scientists believe that this discovery may lead, in the future, to treatments that can slow or ...

The monoclonal antibody nivolumab achieves superior response rates and a longer duration of response than standard chemotherapy[1] in patients whose melanoma has progressed after treatment with ipilimumab, according to phase III data presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. "Previously-treated advanced melanoma patients have limited options," says the study's principal investigator, Professor Jeffrey Weber, Director of the Donald A. Adam Comprehensive Melanoma Research Center of Excellence at the Moffitt Cancer Centre, Tampa, Florida. Nivolumab is an antibody ...

Combination therapy with both BRAF inhibitor vemurafenib and MEK inhibitor cobimetinib achieves greater progression-free survival and response rates than vemurafenib plus placebo in BRAF-mutation positive melanoma, according to phase III data presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. "Before the results of this study, we knew that cobimetinib plus vemurafenib could be safely delivered together with highly promising rates of tumour shrinkage; however until the performance of a scientifically rigorous randomised trial the potential magnitude of this benefit ...

Treating patients with high-dose radiotherapy after chemotherapy and surgery for malignant pleural mesothelioma does not achieve improvements in local relapse and overall survival, according to data from a prospective randomized phase II trial presented at ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid. "Mesothelioma remains a difficult disease to find better treatment options for, so we asked whether high-dose hemithoracic radiotherapy would decrease the rate or delay the time of local recurrence after chemotherapy and radical surgery," says lead author Prof Rolf A. Stahel, from the ...

The BRAF inhibitor dabrafenib has significant anti-tumour activity in patients with advanced BRAF V600E mutant non-small cell lung cancer whose disease has progressed after chemotherapy, according to phase II data presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. "Reports of lung cancers bearing mutations in BRAF have generated considerable interest because these mutations may be associated with increased sensitivity to BRAF tyrosine-kinase inhibiting agents," says lead author Dr David Planchard, pulmonary oncologist at the Gustav-Roussy Cancer Campus, Paris, France. ...

Droplets are simple spheres of fluid, not normally considered capable of doing anything on their own. But now researchers have made droplets of alcohol move through water. In the future, such moving droplets may deliver medicines, etc. To be able to move on your own – to be self-moving – is a feature normally seen in living organisms. But also non-living entities can be self-moving, report researchers from University of Southern Denmark and Institute of Chemical Technology in Prague, Czech Republic. The researchers have made alcohol droplets move in a life-like way, ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2014 — Oktoberfest is here, and that means beer. And there's nothing worse than reaching for a cold one, taking that first sip and realizing your beer's been skunked: chemicals have reacted to form compounds that cause an awful, bitter taste. This week, Reactions explains why beers get skunky, and what you can do to keep your brews from going bad. Learn all about it at http://youtu.be/9i4dHdQzTFg. INFORMATION: Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. The American ...

What can DNA from the skeleton of a man who lived 2,330 years ago in the southernmost tip of Africa tell us about ourselves as humans? A great deal when his DNA profile is one of the 'earliest diverged' – oldest in genetic terms – found to-date in a region where modern humans are believed to have originated roughly 200,000 years ago. The man's maternal DNA, or 'mitochondrial DNA', was sequenced to provide clues to early modern human prehistory and evolution. Mitochondrial DNA provided the first evidence that we all come from Africa, and helps us map a figurative genetic ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, September 29th, 2014 - The number of days an expectant mother was deprived of electricity during Quebec's Ice Storm (1998) predicts the epigenetic profile of her child, a new study finds. Scientists from the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and McGill University have detected a distinctive 'signature' in the DNA of children born in the aftermath of the massive Quebec ice storm. Five months after the event, researchers recruited women who had been pregnant during the disaster and assessed their degrees of ...

A new study by researchers from the University of Montreal reveals the current state of knowledge about anorexia in men and boys. "Most of the knowledge about anorexia pertains to females. However, about 10% of persons affected are males, and we believe this figure is underestimated," says Laurence Corbeil-Serre, lead author of the study. "Our results show that there appear to be similarities between the behavioural symptoms of males and females, but certain particularities can be identified in males, especially related to personality, gender identity, and sexual orientation." The ...

Yerkes National Primate Research Center researchers are the first to show that an irradiation plus transplantation combination approach in nonhuman primates can be used to treat or even possibly cure HIV/AIDS, and this new model is providing some answers about the "Berlin patient," the only human thought cured of AIDS. The study is published in the September 25 issue of PLOS Pathogens. Guido Silvestri, MD, division chief of Microbiology and Immunology at the Yerkes Research Center at Emory, and several of his research colleagues performed the first hematopoietic stem ...

About 210 million years ago when the supercontinent of Pangea was starting to break up and dog-sized dinosaurs were hiding from nearly everything, entirely different kinds of reptiles called phytosaurs and rauisuchids were at the top of the food chain. It was widely believed the two top predators didn't interact much as the former was king of the water, and the latter ruled the land. But those ideas are changing, thanks largely to the contents of a single bone. In a paper published online in September in the German journal Naturwissenschaften, Stephanie Drumheller of ...

Certain primordial stars—those 55,000 and 56,000 times the mass of our Sun, or solar masses—may have died unusually. In death, these objects—among the Universe's first-generation of stars—would have exploded as supernovae and burned completely, leaving no remnant black hole behind. Astrophysicists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and the University of Minnesota came to this conclusion after running a number of supercomputer simulations at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Minnesota Supercomputing ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah, Sept. 29, 2014 – Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Nasdaq: MYGN) today announced that its Tumor BRACAnalysis CDx™ companion diagnostic test significantly improved the detection of cancer-causing BRCA1/2 mutations by 44 percent in women with ovarian cancer. Data from this new study were presented at the 2014 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) annual meeting in Madrid, Spain. "Several previous clinical studies have demonstrated that patients with germline or somatic BRCA1/2 mutations respond to certain DNA-damaging medicines such as the platinum ...