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 ...

Patients with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) were able to safely tolerate treatment with cells cultured from human placental tissue, according to a study published today in the journal Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. The study, which is the first of its kind, was conducted by researchers at Mount Sinai, Celgene Cellular Therapeutics subsidiary of Celgene Corporation and collaborators at several other institutions. While designed to determine safety of the treatment, early signals in the data also suggested that a preparation of cultured cells called PDA-001 may repair ...

A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide. In addition to assessing the impact of the increasing levels of meltwater created and spilled into the ocean each year as the climate continues to warm, the new model also takes into account the role that the soft, spongy ground beneath the ice ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have discovered a previously unknown mechanism by which estrogen prepares cells to divide, grow and, in the case of estrogen-positive breast cancers, resist cancer drugs. The researchers say the work reveals new targets for breast cancer therapy and will help doctors predict which patients need the most aggressive treatment. The University of Illinois team reports its findings in the journal Oncogene. Estrogen pre-activates the unfolded-protein response (UPR), a pathway that normally protects cells from stress, the researchers report. The ...

Scientists have found amphibians worldwide are breeding earlier due to climate change, but how that affects species is just now being answered. After warmer winters, wood frogs breed earlier and produce fewer eggs, a Case Western Reserve University researcher has found. Michael F. Benard, the George B. Mayer Chair in Urban and Environmental Studies and assistant professor of biology, also found that frogs produce more eggs during winters with more rain and snow. Benard's study, published today in the journal Global Change Biology, is among the first in a natural habitat ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A nine-month-long, randomized controlled trial involving 221 prepubescent children found that those who engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 60 minutes a day after school saw substantial improvements in their ability to pay attention, avoid distraction and switch between cognitive tasks, researchers report in the journal Pediatrics. Half of the study subjects were randomly assigned to the after-school program and the rest were placed on a wait list. All participants underwent cognitive testing and brain imaging before and after ...

People tend to perceive their dominant hand as staying relatively the same size even when it's magnified, lending support to the idea that we use our hand as a constant perceptual "ruler" to measure the world around us. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "These findings suggest that our bodies are used as perceptual metrics, meaning that we are more likely to attribute changes in the perceived size of the hand to changes in the world — instead of thinking that our hand has become bigger, we're more ...

More children than ever are being admitted to intensive care units in England and Wales but there are fewer staff per bed available to cope with the increase, according to a new report published jointly by the University of Leeds and University of Leicester. The Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network (PICANet) report showed that there was a 15% increase in admissions over a 10-year period between 2004 and 2013, but this included an increase of 4% that was not due to changes in the childhood population. At the same time, staffing levels have increased by 36% but this ...

BOSTON –– Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and other institutions have discovered a sign of the early development of pancreatic cancer – an upsurge in certain amino acids that occurs before the disease is diagnosed and symptoms appear. The research is being published online today by the journal Nature Medicine. Although the increase isn't large enough to be the basis of a new test for early detection of the disease, the findings will help researchers better understand how pancreatic cancer affects the rest of the body, ...

New findings by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, suggest that an evolutionary arms race between rival elements within the genomes of primates drove the evolution of complex regulatory networks that orchestrate the activity of genes in every cell of our bodies. The arms race is between mobile DNA sequences known as "retrotransposons" (a.k.a. "jumping genes") and the genes that have evolved to control them. The UC Santa Cruz researchers have, for the first time, identified genes in humans that make repressor proteins to shut down specific jumping ...

The first direct comparison of treating non-squamous lung cancer with either pemetrexed or docetaxel in addition to cisplatin has shown that the two combinations achieve similar progression-free survival, although docetaxel was associated with more frequent adverse events. At the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Dr Young-Chul Kim from Chonnam National University Medical School, South Korea, reported the results of an open-label phase III trial that included 149 patients with non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) conducted at 14 centres in South Korea. "We wanted ...

Measuring the expression levels of an enzyme involved in DNA synthesis can help predict the response of lung cancers to certain treatments, a Korean study has shown at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid. In a randomized phase II study, researchers showed that patients whose lung cancers expressed low levels of an enzyme called thymidylate synthase experienced a greater benefit from treatment with the combination of pemetrexed and cisplatin than those whose tumours expressed high levels. "Thymidylate synthase is one of the proteins that is targeted by pemetrexed which ...

The introduction of biennial colorectal cancer screening in a region of France increased the rate of diagnosis of high risk pre-cancerous adenomas (sometimes called polyps) by 89%, researchers have reported at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid. Dr Vanessa Cottet from INSERM Unité 866 in Dijon, France, and colleagues studied the region of Côte-d'Or, where a registry has been collecting data on adenomas since 1976. They wanted to evaluate the rate of diagnosis of adenomas before and after the initiation of a screening program using fecal occult blood testing that began ...

Treatment with the targeted therapy drug crizotinib effectively halts the growth of lung tumors driven by rearrangements of the ROS1 gene. In an article receiving Online First publication in the New England Journal of Medicine to coincide with a presentation at the European Society for Medical Oncology meeting, an international research team reports that crizotinib treatment led to significant tumor shrinkage in 36 of 50 study participants and suppressed tumor growth in another 9. "Prior to this study, there were a handful of reports describing marked responses to crizotinib ...

Children who are exposed to chemotherapy or radiotherapy while in the womb suffer no negative impacts on mental or cardiac development, international studies presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid have shown. "When chemotherapy is administered after the first trimester of pregnancy, we cannot discern any problems in the children," says lead author Dr Frederic Amant, KU Leuven and University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium. "Fear about the risks of chemotherapy administration should not be a reason to terminate a pregnancy, delay cancer treatment for the mother, or ...

A new drug, anamorelin, improves appetite and body mass in patients with advanced lung cancer who are suffering cancer anorexia and cachexia, according to phase III data presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. "Anorexia and cachexia are among the most troubling and distressing symptoms of advanced cancer, for both patients and their families," says the study's principal investigator, Dr Jennifer Temel from the Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, USA. Symptoms of the wasting syndrome can include a loss of weight and muscles, ...

The tyrosine kinase inhibitor afatinib significantly improved progression-free survival compared to methotrexate in patients with recurrent or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck after failure of platinum-based chemotherapy, the results of a phase III trial show. Presented at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, the Lux-Head & Neck 1 trial showed that patients who received treatment with 40 mg/day oral afatinib had a 20% reduction in risk of progression or death compared to patients who received methotrexate, with a median progression-free survival of ...

Rolapitant reduces nausea and vomiting in patients receiving cisplatin-based chemotherapy, according to the results of a phase III trial presented for the first time today at the ESMO 2014 Congress in Madrid, Spain. Dr Martin Chasen, lead author and medical director, Palliative Care, Ottawa Hospital Cancer Centre, Canada, said: "This agent makes a significant difference in the way people tolerate their chemotherapy. Patients experienced no loss in quality of life and, in fact, many saw meaningful improvements. One of the patients in the rolapitant cohort reported that ...

The author of new research into organ trafficking has called for a concerted international effort to confront the problem. Dr Ana Manzano, of the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds, says a combination of factors means nobody knows definitively how many organs are being traded across the world. She said: "Unless these issues are addressed and countries work together to take firm action against the traffickers, more people who have their organs trafficked will die. "Even in the UK, although the World Health Organization has identified us ...

Over 96,004 acres have been burned by the King Fire since it began on September 13, 2014. The fire is currently 68% contained, and the cause of the fire is arson. Just a few days ago, (Sept. 23) the fire was only 38% contained so progress on extinguishing it continues. Over 7,700 personnel are battling this fire. A Pacific system came through the fire area yesterday (9/25) bringing 0.6-0.9 inches of rain. The observed fire activity was minimal with smoldering in interior pockets of the heavier fuels. A low pressure system will become the dominate feature today (9/26) ...

The skies over Indonesian Borneo were filled with the smoke from hundreds of fires set deliberately to clear farmland. A shroud of thick, gray smoke hung over the area when the Aqua satellite captured this image on September 25, 2014. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Aqua satellite detected dozens of fires (locations outlined in red) across the entire region from Central Borneo to South Borneo and even on East Laut Island. Widespread burning in lowland forests on Borneo is an annual, manmade occurrence. People use fires ...

Hunting from a distance of 27,000 light years, astronomers have discovered an unusual carbon-based molecule – one with a branched structure – contained within a giant gas cloud in interstellar space. Like finding a molecular needle in a cosmic haystack, astronomers have detected radio waves emitted by isopropyl cyanide. The discovery suggests that the complex molecules needed for life may have their origins in interstellar space. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, known as the ALMA Observatory, a group of radio telescopes funded partially through ...

A bright orange poison dart frog with a unique call was discovered in Donoso, Panama, and described by researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Universidad Autónoma de Chiriquí in Panama, and the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. In the species description published this week in Zootaxa, it was named Andinobates geminisae for Geminis Vargas, "the beloved wife of [coauthor] Marcos Ponce, for her unconditional support of his studies of Panamanian herpetology." Every new species name is based on a representative specimen. The specimen for ...

DALLAS – Sept. 26, 2014 – Lung cancer clinical trials exclude a substantial proportion of patients due to a history of prior cancer, as shown in an analysis by cancer researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center. Among more than 50 lung cancer clinical trials examined, more than 80 percent excluded patients with prior cancer from participating, according to the study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The exclusion criterion was even applied in more than two-thirds of trials in which survival was not the primary endpoint. "Our research demonstrates ...