AURORA, Colo. (May 8, 2014) - Results from a study by University of Colorado School of Medicine researchers show that pravastatin, a medicine widely used for treatment of high cholesterol, also slows down the growth of kidney cysts in children and young adults with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD). ADPKD is the most common potentially lethal hereditary kidney disease, affecting at least 1 in 1000 people. ADPKD is characterized by progressive kidney enlargement due to cyst growth, which results in loss of kidney function over time. At one time, ADPKD ...

Some Ecuadorian tribes were famous for making mummified shrunken heads from the remains of their conquered foes. Field work in the cloud forests of Ecuador by Professor Scott Shaw, University of Wyoming, Laramie, and colleagues, has resulted in the discovery of 24 new species of Aleiodes wasps that mummify caterpillars. The research by Eduardo Shimbori, Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil, and Scott Shaw, was recently published in the open access journal ZooKeys. Among the 24 new insect species described by Shimbori and Shaw, several were named after famous people ...

The tropical low pressure area known as System 91B has been making a slow northerly crawl while sitting inland in southwestern India, and NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of the struggling storm that showed half of it is over the Northern Indian Ocean. NASA's Terra satellite passed over System 91B over southwestern India and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument captured a visible image on May 8 at 05:40 UTC/1:40 a.m. EDT. The despite having a poorly defined low-level circulation center on infrared imagery, the circulation ...

Tumors shrank or disappeared and disease progression was temporarily halted in 15 children with advanced neuroblastoma enrolled in a safety study of an experimental antibody produced at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Four patients are still alive after more than two-and-a-half years and without additional treatment. Findings from the Phase I study were published recently online and will appear in the May 10 edition of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results prompted St. Jude to expand clinical trials of the monoclonal antibody hu14.18K322A to include patients ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – May 8, 2014 – An old idea of retreating lung tumors with radiation is new again, especially with the technological advances seen in radiation oncology over the last decade. The Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center is one of only a handful of cancer centers that is attempting to give lung cancer patients out of treatment options a chance to keep the cancer at bay. For these patients, hope lies in a second course of treatment – repeat radiation. Two complementary papers published back-to-back recently in the journal Radiotherapy ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 8, 2014—When Massachusetts enacted its own statewide health insurance reform in 2006, low-income women transitioned from receiving free, federally subsidized screening for breast and cervical cancer and cardiovascular disease risk to an insurance-based payment system. The effects on screening rates in this vulnerable population are explored in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Women's Health website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/jwh.2013.4612. A ...

Microscopes don't exactly lie, but their limitations affect the truths they can tell. For example, scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) simply can't see materials that don't conduct electricity very well, and their high energies can actually damage some types of samples. In an effort to extract a little more truth from the world of nanomaterials and nanostructures, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built the first low-energy focused ion beam (FIB) microscope that uses a lithium ion source.* The team's new approach opens up ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- When tracking a moving object, the two halves of the human brain operate much like runners successfully passing a baton during a relay race, says a University of Oregon researcher. In a study online ahead of print in Current Biology, electroencephalogram (EEG) measured brainwaves from healthy young adults revealed how information about an attended object -- one being watched closely -- moves from one brain hemisphere to the other. Such handoffs are necessary because the human visual system is contralateral; objects on the left side of space are processed ...

A newly discovered grasshopper by University of Central Florida scientists now bears the name of Grammy-award winning singer and activist Ana Lila Downs Sanchez. The scientists named the new species discovered on the side of a mountain road near Oaxaca, Mexico, after the Mexican-American singer as a nod to her efforts to preserve indigenous culture and penchant for wearing colorful, local costumes as part of her performances. "It was primarily Paolo's idea to name the grasshopper after the singer" said Derek Woller, one of the authors of the paper referring to colleague ...

A new study, published today in the Journal of Health Psychology, found that patients who gained weight 18 months after taking Orlistat attributed their weight-loss failure either to the side effects which have prevented them from sticking to the medication or felt that the medication simply had not worked. The team from the University of Surrey also found that participants described a series of barriers to weight loss including psychological and physical health issues, relationships and the make-up of their bodies. They also described a number of alternative methods ...

Researchers from Italy confirm that urinary ethyl glucuronide (uEtG) accurately detects alcohol consumption in liver transplant candidates and recipients. The study published in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, suggests that a combination of uEtG and the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test for alcohol consumption (AUDIT-c) are best in alerting doctors to alcohol consumption by patients undergoing evaluation for liver transplantation or who have received ...

Researchers at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories (MFPL) of the University of Vienna and the Medical University of Vienna made a breakthrough for the Platynereis model system, as they describe the first method for generating specific and inheritable mutations in the species. The method, in combination with other tools, now places this marine bristle worm in an excellent position to advance research at the frontiers of neurobiology, chronobiology, evolutionary developmental biology and marine biology. The study and a review on Platynereis dumerilii genetic methods were chosen ...

A naturally occurring fungus might help curb the spread of an invasive tree species that is threatening forests in most of the United States, according to researchers. Researchers tested the fungus -- Verticillium nonalfalfae -- by injecting it into tree-of-heaven, or Ailanthus, plots, according to Matthew Kasson, who recently received his doctorate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology from Penn State. The treatment completely eradicated the tree-of-heaven plants in those forests. "It appears that this treatment is effective in Pennsylvania and could ...

A new paper by a team of researchers led by Zachary T. Schafer, Coleman Assistant Professor of Cancer Biology in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, offers important new insights into the role carcinoma-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play in tumor biology. A number of recent studies have revealed CAFs to be a major contributor to tumor progression through a variety of mechanisms. Despite this information, the precise role CAFs play in augmenting the growth of tumors is still poorly understood. In their new paper, Schafer and his fellow ...

Nearly one-third of songbird species across North America are experiencing long-term declines. Scientists have spent years researching potential causes for these population declines, focusing on the birds when they have just hatched as well as when they are adults. Now, researchers from the University of Missouri and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have found that songbirds are vulnerable to environmental dangers particularly when they are juveniles, shortly after they have left their parents' nests. Frank Thompson, a scientist with the USDA Forest Service and an associate ...

Viruses use human cells in order to multiply and spread. This process involves interactions with cellular host factors as well as virus-virus interactions. For example interactions among viral proteins are essential for the assembly of newly produced infectious virions. Interaction network explains viral mechanisms and opens up possibilities for new treatments Hepatitis C virus (HCV) forms a precursor protein, which is processed into ten viral proteins. Scientists at the Institute of Virology at the Helmholtz Zentrum have now discovered how these proteins interact with ...

New Rochelle, NY, May 8, 2014—The powerful anti-inflammatory compound interleukin-10 (IL-10) plays a crucial role in regenerative, scarless healing of fetal skin. Studies of IL-10 in postnatal skin wounds have demonstrated its promise as an anti-scarring therapeutic agent, as described in a Critical Review article published in Advances in Wound Care, a monthly peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers and an Official Journal of the Wound Healing Society. The article is available free on the Advances in Wound Care website. In "Regenerative Wound Healing: ...

University of Adelaide research may help in the fight against terrorism with the creation of a sensor that can detect tiny quantities of explosives with the use of light and special glass fibres. Published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, the researchers describe a novel optical fibre sensor which can detect explosives in concentrations as low as 6.3 ppm (parts per million). It requires an analysis time of only a few minutes. "Traditionally explosives detection has involved looking for metals that encase them such as in land mines," says project leader ...

Melbourne researchers have overturned a 40-year-old theory on when and how cells divide, showing that 'parent' cells program a cell division time for their offspring that is different from their own. Scientists from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have shown that both phases of the cell cycle contribute to the overall change in division time rather than one staying fixed in duration as previously thought. They have developed these findings into a new model that helps scientists predict how a population of cells has divided. Their research could impact our understanding ...

A low-carbohydrate diet, but not a low-fat diet, reduces inflammation in patients with type 2 diabetes, according to research at Linköping University in Sweden. It is known that patients with type 2 diabetes have higher levels of inflammation than those who do not have the disease, and it is believed that this may contribute to a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and other complications. In a clinical trial at Linköping University a low-carbohydrate diet was compared with a traditional low-fat diet in 61 patients with type 2 diabetes. Only patients in the low-carbohydrate ...

A majority of the UK general public perceive alcohol adverts to breach the Advertising Standards Authority's Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP) Code suggesting that the current regulatory system for UK television is inadequate, research from The University of Manchester shows. Researchers surveyed 373 adults, aged 18-74 years, showing them one of seven adverts that had been broadcast in the previous month on leading commercial television channels. Overall 75 per cent of the participants rated the adverts as breaching at least one rule from the BCAP Code ...

Almost all herbivorous insects are specialized to feed on specific host plants and have adapted to their chemical defenses. Flea beetles are important pests of cabbage and other cruciferous plants, such as mustard, horseradish and rapeseed. These plants use a sophisticated defense system, known as the mustard oil bomb, to get rid of their enemies : If plant tissues are wounded, glucosinolates and an enzyme known as myrosinase come into contact, and, as a result, toxic metabolites are formed which deter most insects. This defensive mechanism, however, has no negative effect ...

Ground breaking research by an international team of scientists has resulted in greater understanding of the effects of pesticides on aquatic invertebrates such as shrimps and snails. Research published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology by a team of scientists from the UK, Switzerland and Finland provides an important new approach for systematically measuring and modelling the sensitivity of aquatic invertebrates to various pesticides. Aquatic invertebrate species are abundant in European freshwaters and play an important role in the decomposition of organic ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A research team using tunable luminescent nanocrystals as tags to advance medical and security imaging have successfully applied them to high-speed scanning technology and detected multiple viruses within minutes. The research, led by Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and Purdue University, builds on the team's earlier success in developing a way to control the length of time light from a luminescent nanocrystal lingers, which introduced the dimension of time in addition to color and brightness in optical detection technology. Detection ...

LOS ANGELES (May 7, 2014) – Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have found that a commonly prescribed drug restores blood flow to oxygen-starved muscles of boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a genetic muscle-wasting disease that rarely is seen in girls but affects one in 3,500 male babies, profoundly shortening life expectancy. It is the most common fatal disease that affects children. Muscle weakness begins in early childhood, often causing deformity of the arms, legs and spine. Heart and respiratory muscles often begin to fail before children reach early teen ...