Researchers at UC San Francisco and Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, may have found a predictor for a disorder affecting kidney transplant recipients that can accelerate organ failure, a discovery that eventually could allow for customized therapies and improved patient selection for transplant. The study of focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS), a devastating form of kidney disease, is in the Oct. 1 issue of Science Translational Medicine. Research was conducted by an international study team, with Necker Hospital in Paris and UCSF joint lead authors and ...

(Boston) — Glioblastma multiforme (GBM) is one of the most lethal primary brain tumors, with median survival for these patients only slightly over one year. Researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM), in collaboration with researchers from the City of Hope, are looking toward novel therapeutic strategies for the treatment of GBM in the form of targeted therapies against a unique receptor, the interleukin-13 receptor α chain variant 2 (IL13Rα2). In a review paper published in the October issue of Neuro-Oncology, the researchers discuss various ...

An international research team's field work, drilling and measuring melt rates and ice sheet movement in Greenland is showing that things are, in fact, more complicated than we thought. "Although the Greenland Ice Sheet initially speeds up each summer in its slow-motion race to the sea, the network of meltwater channels beneath the sheet is not necessarily forming the slushy racetrack that had been previously considered," said Matthew Hoffman, a Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist on the project. A high-profile paper appearing in Nature this week notes that observations ...

VIDEO: NASA's TRMM satellite saw Phanfone was producing rainfall over a very large area on Oct. 1. Some storms in these bands were dropping rain at a rate of over 76... Click here for more information. An intensifying typhoon called Phanfone that originated east of Guam on September 28, 2014 is headed toward southern Japan. The TRMM satellite crossed above Typhoon Phanfone on October 1, 2014 at 1039 UTC and gathered data about rainfall rates occurring in the storm. TRMM, ...

The monarch butterfly is one of the most iconic insects in the world, best known for its distinct orange and black wings and a spectacular annual mass migration across North America. However, little has been known about the genes that underlie these famous traits, even as the insect's storied migration appears to be in peril. Sequencing the genomes of monarch butterflies from around the world, a team of scientists has now made surprising new insights into the monarch's genetics. They identified a single gene that appears central to migration – a behavior generally regarded ...

To protect their gut microbes during illness, sick mice produce specialized sugars in the gut that feed their microbiota and maintain a healthy microbial balance. This protective mechanism also appears to help resist or tolerate additional harmful pathogens, and its disruption may play a role in human diseases such as Crohn's disease, report scientists from the University of Chicago in Nature on Oct 1. "Both hosts and their gut microbiota can suffer in the case of sickness, but this mutually beneficial relationship is guarded by the host," said study senior author Alexander ...

Chemicals released into the air by oil and gas exploration, extraction and related activities can spark reactions that lead to high levels of ozone in wintertime, high enough to exceed federal health standards, according to new NOAA-led research, published today in Nature. The study comes at a time when new technologies are helping to accelerate oil and gas development in Utah's Uintah Basin, elsewhere in the United States and in many other countries, and its findings may help air quality managers determine how to best minimize the impact of ozone pollution. When ozone ...

AUSTIN, Texas—A team led by scientists at the University of Texas at Austin's Institute for Geophysics has for the first time directly observed multiple parts of Greenland's subglacial plumbing system and how that system evolves each summer to slow down the ice sheet's movement toward the sea. These new observations could be important in accurately modeling Greenland's future response to climate change. "Everyone wants to know what's happening under Greenland as it experiences more and more melt," said study coauthor Ginny Catania, a research scientist at the institute ...

Titan is unique in our solar system because of its dense nitrogen-methane atmosphere, which is very similar to Earth's in some ways, but very different in others. For example, air temperatures are around 200 degrees colder and, in contrast to the warm salt water seas of Earth, frigid hydrocarbon lakes populate Titan's surface. Titan has seasons just like Earth, only each season lasts over seven years instead of three months due to its ponderous orbit around the Sun. After equinox in 2009, Titan's south pole entered the perpetual darkness of polar winter. Soon after, ...

New data obtained by NASA's GRAIL mission reveals that the Procellarum region on the near side of the moon — a giant basin often referred to as the "man in the moon" — likely arose not from a massive asteroid strike, but from a large plume of magma deep within the moon's interior. The Procellarum region is a roughly circular, volcanic terrain some 1,800 miles in diameter — nearly as wide as the United States. One hypothesis suggested that it was formed by a massive impact, in which case it would have been the largest impact basin on the moon. Subsequent asteroid collisions ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Oceanus Procellarum, a vast dark patch visible on the western edge of the Moon's near side, has long been a source of mystery for planetary scientists. Some have suggested that the "ocean of storms" is part of a giant basin formed by an asteroid impact early in the Moon's history. But new research published today in Nature deals a pretty big blow to the impact theory. The new study, based on data from NASA's GRAIL mission, found a series of linear gravitational anomalies forming a giant rectangle, nearly 1,600 miles across, running ...

CINCINNATI – Researchers developed a new type of cell transplantation to treat mice mimicking a rare lung disease that one day could be used to treat this and other human lung diseases caused by dysfunctional immune cells. Scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report their findings in a study posted online Oct. 1 by Nature. In the study, the authors used macrophages, a type of immune cell that helps collect and remove used molecules and cell debris from the body. They transplanted either normal or gene-corrected macrophages into the respiratory ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass--Error-correcting codes are one of the glories of the information age: They're what guarantee the flawless transmission of digital information over the airwaves or through copper wire, even in the presence of the corrupting influences that engineers call "noise." But classical error-correcting codes work best with large chunks of data: The bigger the chunk, the higher the rate at which it can be transmitted error-free. In the Internet age, however, distributed computing is becoming more and more common, with devices repeatedly exchanging small chunks of ...

Contrary to the popular research-based assumption that the world's coral reefs are doomed, a new longitudinal study from UC Santa Barbara's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) paints a brighter picture of how corals may fare in the future. An NCEAS working group reports that there will be winners and losers among coral species facing increasing natural and human-caused stressors. However, its experts demonstrate that a subset of the present coral fauna will likely populate the world's oceans as water temperatures continue to rise. The findings ...

PITTSBURGH—The notion of "group selection"—that members of social species exhibit individual behavioral traits that render a population more or less fit for survival—has been bandied about in evolutionary biology since Darwin. The essence of the argument against the theory is that it's a "fuzzy" concept without the precision of gene-based selection. Jonathan Pruitt, assistant professor of behavioral ecology in the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biological Sciences within the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences, has published a paper today in the ...

Spiders found in international cargo brought into North America are sometimes submitted to arachnologists for identification. Often, these spiders are presumed to be of medical importance because of their size or similarity to spiders that are known to be venomous. In 2006, after witnessing multiple episodes where harmless spiders were mistaken for toxic ones, Dr. Richard Vetter, an arachnologist at the University of California, asked other arachnologists to provide data on specimens they found in international cargo that had been submitted to them for identification. ...

New insights into botulinum neurotoxins and their interactions with cells are moving scientists ever closer to safer forms of Botox and a better understanding of the dangerous disease known as botulism. By comparing all known structures of botulinum neurotoxins, researchers writing in the Cell Press journal Trends in Biochemical Sciences on October 1st suggest new ways to improve the safety and efficacy of Botox injections. "If we know from high-resolution structures how botulinum neurotoxins interact with their receptors, we can design inhibitors or specific antibodies ...

WASHINGTON— The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) proudly announces the publication of a Health Education & Behavior (HE&B) supplement devoted to the latest research and practice to promote healthy aging. The October 2014 supplement, "Fostering Engagement and Independence: Opportunities and Challenges for an Aging Society," contains a dozen peer-reviewed articles on innovative behavioral and psycho-social approaches to improve the health of the nation's fastest growing cohort - older adults. Together the articles describe promising advances in research directed ...

BEIJING; BERKELEY, CA; and UPTON, NY - The Daya Bay Collaboration, an international group of scientists studying the subtle transformations of subatomic particles called neutrinos, is publishing its first results on the search for a so-called sterile neutrino, a possible new type of neutrino beyond the three known neutrino "flavors," or types. The existence of this elusive particle, if proven, would have a profound impact on our understanding of the universe, and could impact the design of future neutrino experiments. The new results, appearing in the journal Physical Review ...

CUMBERLAND, MD (October 1, 2014)--When scientists talk about the consequences of climate change, it can mean more than how we human beings will be impacted by higher temperatures, rising seas and serious storms. Plants and trees are also feeling the change, but they can't move out of the way. Researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and University of Vermont have developed a new tool to overcome a major challenge of predicting how organisms may respond to climate change. "When climate changes, organisms have three choices: migrate, adapt, ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. — If a person is dually diagnosed with a severe mental illness and a substance abuse problem, are improvements in their mental health or in their substance abuse most likely to reduce the risk of future violence? Although some may believe that improving symptoms of mental illness is more likely to lessen the risk for future episodes of violence, a new study from the University at Buffalo Research Institute on Addictions (RIA) suggests that reducing substance abuse has a greater influence in reducing violent acts by patients with severe mental illness. ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 1, 2014—Regulation of the human immune system's response to infection involves an elaborate network of complex signaling pathways that turn on and off multiple genes. The emerging importance of long noncoding RNAs and their ability to promote, fine-tune, and restrain the body's inflammatory response by regulating gene expression is described in a Review article in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (JICR), a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the JICR website. In the Review ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Relational aggression, or "mean girl" bullying, is a popular subject in news and entertainment media. This nonphysical form of aggression generally used among adolescent girls includes gossiping, rumor spreading, exclusion and rejection. As media coverage has illustrated, relational aggression can lead to tragic and sometimes fatal outcomes. Despite these alarming concerns, little has been done to prevent and eliminate these negative behaviors. Now, University of Missouri researchers have developed and tested an intervention that effectively decreases relational ...

This news release is available in French and Spanish. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has released a comprehensive report on the changing face of industrial pollution in North America, covering the years 2005 through 2010. This is the first time an edition of the CEC's Taking Stock series, which gathers data from pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs) in Canada, Mexico and the United States, has analyzed North American pollutant information over an extended timeframe. To view the report, visit http://www.cec.org/library. This volume ...

Biological sensors, or biosensors, are like technological canaries in the coalmine. By converting a biological response into an optical or electrical signal, they can alert us to dangers in our external and internal environments. They can sense toxic chemicals and particles in the air and enzymes, molecules, and antibodies in the body that could indicate diabetes, cancer, and other diseases. An optical biosensor works by absorbing a specific bandwidth of light and shifting the spectrum when it senses minor changes in the environment. The narrower the band of absorbed ...