Cells regulate protein functions in a wide variety of ways, including by modifying the protein structure. In an instant, a protein can take on another form and perform no or even the "wrong" function: in humans, proteins that fold wrongly can cause serious diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or cystic fibrosis. Some of these proteins also have a tendency to "infect" other molecules of the same type and congregate into insoluble so-called amyloid fibrils or plaques. These amyloids can damage cells and tissues and make people ill. Method breaks the shackles Until ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine have discovered how two genes – Period and Cryptochrome – keep the circadian clocks in all human cells in time and in proper rhythm with the 24-hour day, as well as the seasons. The finding, published today in the journal Genes and Development, has implications for the development of drugs for various diseases such as cancers and diabetes, as well as conditions such as metabolic syndrome, insomnia, seasonal affective disorder, obesity, and even jetlag. "Discovering how these circadian clock genes interact has ...

Health policies which favour using ranibizumab for treating eye disease in older people over safety concerns for a cheaper alternative should take account of a new Cochrane Review published today. The researchers looked at the results of studies which compared the safety of two drugs used for treating age-related macular degeneration, ranibizumab and bevacizumab. Contrary to what was argued by some experts the review has found that the cheaper drug, bevacizumab, does not appear to increase deaths or serious side-effects compared with ranibizumab in people with neovascular ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — A comprehensive look at how tiny particles in a lithium ion battery electrode behave shows that rapid-charging the battery and using it to do high-power, rapidly draining work may not be as damaging as researchers had thought – and that the benefits of slow draining and charging may have been overestimated. The results challenge the prevailing view that "supercharging" batteries is always harder on battery electrodes than charging at slower rates, according to researchers from Stanford University and the Stanford Institute for Materials & Energy Sciences ...

PISCATAWAY, NJ – Adolescents and young adults who smoke marijuana frequently may attempt to manage negative moods by using the drug, according to a study in September's Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. "Young people who use marijuana frequently experience an increase in negative affect in the 24 hours leading up to a use event, which lends strong support to an affect-regulation model in this population," says the study's lead author Lydia A. Shrier, M.D., M.P.H., of the division of adolescent and young adult medicine at Boston Children's Hospital. She notes ...

New research shows that patients with fibromyalgia have hypersensitivity to non-painful events based on images of the patients' brains, which show reduced activation in primary sensory regions and increased activation in sensory integration areas. Findings published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), suggest that brain abnormalities in response to non-painful sensory stimulation may cause the increased unpleasantness that patients experience in response to daily visual, auditory and tactile stimulation. Fibromyalgia ...

The story of cancer care seems so simple: find the mutated gene that causes cancer and turn it off or fix it. But rarely does a single gene cause cancer. More often, many genes are altered together to drive the disease. So the challenge becomes sorting out which altered genes are the most to blame in which cancers. A collaborative study between researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) published today in the journal Clinical Cancer Research takes an important step toward answering this question in bladder cancer. Specifically, ...

WASHINGTON — Which is more likely to convince a smoker to quit? The words, "Warning: cigarettes cause cancer" beneath the image of an open mouth with a cancerous lesion and rotten teeth, or the same image with the words, "Warning: Quitting smoking reduces the risk of cancer"? The answer depends on how confident you are in your ability to quit, according to a study led by researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research. The research, which involved 740 participants and three D.C. area institutions, ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Aggressive children are less likely to become violent criminals or psychiatrically troubled adults if they receive early intervention, says a new study based on more than two decades of research. These findings from researchers at Duke, Pennsylvania State and Vanderbilt universities and the University of Washington are based on the Fast Track Project, a multi-faceted program that is one of the largest violence-prevention trials ever funded by the federal government. Beginning in 1991, the researchers screened nearly 10,000 5-year-old children in Durham, ...

AUDIO: New research shows that schizophrenia isn't a single disease but a group of eight genetically distinct disorders, each with its own set of symptoms. The finding could be a first... Click here for more information. New research shows that schizophrenia isn't a single disease but a group of eight genetically distinct disorders, each with its own set of symptoms. The finding could be a first step toward improved diagnosis and treatment for the debilitating psychiatric illness. The ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Amid conflicting reports about the need for vitamin E and how much is enough, a new analysis published today suggests that adequate levels of this essential micronutrient are especially critical for the very young, the elderly, and women who are or may become pregnant. A lifelong proper intake of vitamin E is also important, researchers said, but often complicated by the fact that this nutrient is one of the most difficult to obtain through diet alone. It has been estimated that only a tiny fraction of Americans consume enough dietary vitamin E to meet ...

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 15, 2014) — The treatment of Crohn's disease is evolving. To help gastroenterologists better identify and manage their Crohn's disease patients, the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) has created a clinical decision tool to guide GIs in their decision-making process. The "Identification, Assessment, and Initial Medical Treatment in Crohn's Disease Clinical Decision Support Tool," published in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the AGA, synthesizes gastroenterologist's understanding of the disease with data from recent studies to create ...

TORONTO, Sept. 12, 2014 – High-dose opioid prescribing increased by 23 per cent in Canada between 2006 and 2011, despite clinical guidelines recommending that most patients should avoid high-doses of these drugs, according to new research. Researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences (ICES) found that rates of high-dose opioid dispensing across Canada increased from 781 units per 1,000 people in 2006 to 961 units per 1,000 people in 2011. "We found that high-dose prescribing was widespread across the country, but the prevalence ...

The bluetongue virus, which causes a serious disease that costs the cattle and sheep industries in the United States an estimated $125 million annually, manages to survive the winter by reproducing in the insect that transmits it, report veterinary scientists at the University of California, Davis. The findings solve a century-old mystery and are particularly significant as global climate change brings more moderate winter temperatures around the world. The new study appears Sept. 12 in the journal PLOS ONE. "By conducting this epidemiological study on a commercial ...

The image of the Eastern Pacific Ocean and the two storms was taken at 8 a.m. EDT (5 a.m. PDT) on September 12. It shows that Tropical Depression 16E (TD16E) is about 10 times smaller in comparison to Tropical Storm Odile, located to its east. NOAA manages the GOES-West satellite but the image was created by the NASA/NOAA GOES Project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The National Hurricane Center noted that TD16E is unable to intensify because of its close proximity to Tropical Storm Odile. Forecaster Pasch at NOAA's National Hurricane Center ...

When it comes to a happy marriage, a new Rutgers study finds that the more content the wife is with the long-term union, the happier the husband is with his life no matter how he feels about their nuptials. "I think it comes down to the fact that when a wife is satisfied with the marriage she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life," said Deborah Carr, a professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Science. "Men tend to be less vocal about their relationships and their level of marital unhappiness might not be ...

Tropical Depression 15W intensified during the early morning hours of September 12 and became a tropical storm re-named "Kalmaegi." NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead as the storm intensified. The MODIS instrument, known as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm Kalmaegi approaching the Philippines on Sept. 12 at 4:45 UTC (12:45 a.m. EDT). The image showed tightly-curved bands of thunderstorms over the northern and southern quadrants of the storm that were wrapping into a ...

The sixth tropical depression of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season formed in the central Atlantic Ocean yesterday, and today, September 12, it strengthened into Tropical Storm Edouard. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite flew over Edouard and provided forecasters with an infrared view of what's happening within the strengthening storm. When Suomi NPP passed over Edouard on September 12 at 04:37 UTC (12:37 a.m. EDT), the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite or VIIRS instrument aboard captured an infrared image of the storm. The infrared data shows temperature, an indicated ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Sept. 12, 2014 — Physicians envision a future in which genomic data from patients is heavily used to manage care — but experts have questioned the accuracy and reliability of these analyses. Now, a study by 150 researchers in 12 countries finds real strength and agreement across RNA genomic sequencing techniques and laboratories — as well as ways to improve what little variability exists to set a new high standard. The results of the study were published in Nature Biotechnology in three separate research articles. These results should provide assurance ...

As Tropical Storm Odile continues to affect Mexico's west coast and stir up dangerous surf, NASA's TRMM and Aqua satellites provided forecasters information on clouds and rainfall in the coast-hugging storm. On September 12, A Tropical Storm Watch remained in effect from Manzanillo to Cabo Corrientes, Mexico. Tropical Storm Odile formed on September 10, 2014 in the same area where Norbert formed. Gathering Rainfall and Thunderstorm Height Information The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite flew over tropical storm Odile on September 11, 2014 at ...

Applying analyses designed by City College of New York biologist Mike Hickerson, a team of international researchers is challenging a commonly held view that explains how so many species of birds ended up in the Neotropics, an area rich in rain forest extending from Mexico to the southernmost tip of South America. It is home to the most bird species on Earth. "The unanswered question has been—how did this extraordinary bird diversity originate?" said Dr. Brian Smith, lead author of a paper on the subject published in the journal Nature this week and an assistant curator ...

The central mystery of quantum mechanics is that small chunks of matter sometimes seem to behave like particles, sometimes like waves. For most of the past century, the prevailing explanation of this conundrum has been what's called the "Copenhagen interpretation" — which holds that, in some sense, a single particle really is a wave, smeared out across the universe, that collapses into a determinate location only when observed. But some founders of quantum physics — notably Louis de Broglie — championed an alternative interpretation, known as "pilot-wave theory," which ...

When corn plants come under attack from a pathogen, they sometimes respond by killing their own cells near the site of the attack, committing "cell suicide" to thwart further damage from the attacker. This cell sacrifice can cause very small, often microscopic, spots or lesions on the plant. But up until now it's been difficult to understand how the plant regulates this "spotty" defense mechanism because the response is so quick and localized. Researchers at North Carolina State University have identified a number of candidate genes and cellular processes that appear ...

AUDIO: Professor Peter Piot, Director of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, explains how he co-discovered the Ebola virus in 1976, and gives his views on the current Ebola... Click here for more information. The current Ebola outbreak now requires a "rapid response at a massive global scale", according to experts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Writing an editorial in Science, Professor Peter Piot, co-discoverer of the virus, says that the ...

A strange thing happened on the way to dealing with climate change: Advances in hydraulic fracturing put trillions of dollars' worth of previously unreachable oil and natural gas within humanity's grasp. The environmental costs – and benefits – from "fracking," which requires blasting huge amounts of water, sand and chemicals deep into underground rock formations, are the subject of new research that synthesizes 165 academic studies and government databases. The survey covers not only greenhouse gas impacts but also fracking's influence on local air pollution, earthquakes ...