Common cholesterol-lowering drugs could provide relief to patients suffering from a chronic lung disease, a study has shown. The drugs – known as statins – were found to help alleviate the chronic coughing associated with the disease for some patients. Statins are commonly prescribed for people at risk of heart attack because they can reduce cholesterol levels, but scientists are increasingly finding that they also have anti-inflammatory effects. Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have shown the therapeutic potential of statins to treat patients with an inflammatory ...

NEW YORK – (March 24, 2014) – Scientists from Weill Cornell Medical College and Houston Methodist have found that a gene previously unassociated with breast cancer plays a pivotal role in the growth and progression of the triple negative form of the disease, a particularly deadly strain that often has few treatment options. Their research, published in this week's Nature, suggests that targeting the gene may be a new approach to treating the disease. About 42,000 new cases of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) are diagnosed in the United States each year, about 20 ...

Some experiments are really difficult to perform in practice. To gain a detailed understanding of the behaviour of molecular hydrogen (H2), for example, we would have to produce such high pressures as those occurring within the core of gaseous planets like Jupiter and Saturn or inside stars. If such conditions cannot be created, an alternative method is to simulate them on the computer, but the model has to be accurate. A group of research scientists from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste used a simulation model that is far more accurate than ...

Pioneering research could provide a significant boost in the vital quest to harness wave power as a viable renewable energy source for the future. Scientists from the University of Exeter have studied how wave energy developers can more accurately measure, and predict the wave conditions within wave energy test sites. The research, which is published in leading scientific journal Energy, deployed wave measurement buoys and used wave modelling to show how variations in wave size and strength could be resolved. The results should aid developers to better predict sea ...

Amsterdam, March 24, 2014 – Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the publication of a position statement by the European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) in the journal Maturitas on the topic of the management of postmenopausal women with vertebral osteoporotic fracture. Vertebral osteoporotic fracture is an underestimated condition as only about a third of people with the disease seek medical attention. While it may cause acute back pain, the presentation may be insidious with ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A protein known to promote cancer appears to give the blood vessels strength and shape, researchers report. When yes-associated protein, or YAP, is deleted from vascular smooth muscle cells during development, the protein makes thin-walled blood vessels that over-dilate in response to the usual pressure of blood flow, said Dr. Jiliang Zhou, vascular biologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Georgia Regents University. "The thickness of the arterial wall decreases from three or four layers of smooth muscle cells to one or two layers," said Zhou, corresponding ...

One in a thousand children in the United States is deaf, and one in three adults will experience significant hearing loss after the age of 65. Whether the result of genetic or environmental factors, hearing loss costs billions of dollars in healthcare expenses every year, making the search for a cure critical. Now a team of researchers led by Karen B. Avraham of the Department of Human Molecular Genetics and Biochemistry at Tel Aviv University's Sackler Faculty of Medicine and Yehoash Raphael of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at University of ...

If you weren't careful, you might end up beaten by grape thieves skulking in the darkness. A University of Cincinnati graduate student writes about the contractual obligations of vineyard guards and researchers from around the world contribute more stories from ancient times in the most recent volumes of the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists (BASP). UC's Peter van Minnen, associate professor of classics, has edited the international journal since 2006. BASP is an annual collection of articles and reviews pertaining to important discoveries from around ...

Large amounts of carbon dioxide equivalents taken up by plants on land are returned to the atmosphere from aquatic environments. This is the conclusions from a study carried out by two students at Linköping University, Sweden. As students at the Master program Science for Sustainable Development in Linköping, Bala Panneer Selvam and Sivakiruthika Natchimuthu, did a thorough investigation of greenhouse gas emissions from many types of inland waters in India under supervision by Dr Lakshmanan Arunachalam, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India, and Dr David Bastviken, ...

Hotel guests can be gently persuaded to reduce the number of towels they use each day, psychology researchers at the University of Luxembourg have found. With fewer towels to wash, this reduces the waste of water, energy and detergent. This is good news for the environment and it cuts costs, so enabling hotels to reduce prices. Two hotels in Swiss and Austrian ski resorts helped with an experiment in early 2013. Three different signs were placed separately in different bathrooms, all of which gently reminded guests of the environmental impact of towel use. However, one ...

A new microfluidic method for evaluating drugs commonly used for preventing heart attacks has found that while aspirin can prevent dangerous blood clots in some at-risk patients, it may not be effective in all patients with narrowed arteries. The study, which involved 14 human subjects, used a device that simulated blood flowing through narrowed coronary arteries to assess effects of anti-clotting drugs. The study is the first to examine how aspirin and another heart attack prevention drug respond to a variety of mechanical blood flow forces in healthy and diseased arteries. ...

This news release is available in German. The study was published in the international scientific journal PLOS ONE on 13 March 2014. To induce an illusory perception of the material properties of the hand, a group of neuroscientists from Bielefeld University, the Max-Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics (Germany), and the University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy) asked volunteers to sit with their hands lying on a table in front of them. They repeatedly hit the participants' right hands gently with a small hammer while replacing the natural sound of the hammer ...

This news release is available in German. If you put your hand over a switched-on torch in the dark, it appears to glow red. This is because long-wavelength red light beams penetrate human tissue more effectively than short-wavelength blue light. ETH Zurich researchers exploit this fact in a new kind of nanoparticles: so-called plasmonic particles, which heat up when they absorb near-infrared light. This could enable them to kill tumour tissue with heat, for instance. Gold is a popular material for nanoparticles used therapeutically, as it is well tolerated and ...

Case Western Reserve University researchers have discovered a novel population of neutrophils, which are the body's infection control workhorses. These cells have an enhanced microbial killing ability and are thereby better able to control infection. Neutrophils, the body's most abundant type of white blood cells, have long been regarded as first responders that kill fungi, bacteria, and other pathogens. In a study published in the February issue of Nature Immunology, Case Western Reserve researchers explain that they have found the mechanism of action of a newly discovered ...

Studies have shown that the differentiation rate of grafted bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells into mature neuron-like cells is very low. Therefore, it is very important to establish an effcient and stable induction protocol to promote the differentiation of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells into neuron-like cells in vitro and elucidate the mechanisms underlying differentiation for the treatment of central nervous system diseases. Jie Du and colleagues from Sichuan University in China found that glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor/bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells ...

Preliminary basic research and clinical findings have demonstrated that electroacupuncture therapy exhibits positive effects in ameliorating depression. However, most studies of the underlying mechanism are at the single gene level; there are few reports regarding the mechanism at the whole-genome level. Using a rat genomic gene-chip, Dr. Dongmei Duan and co-workers from General PLA Hospital in China profiled hippocampal gene expression changes in rats after electroacupuncture therapy. Electroacupuncture therapy alleviated depression-related manifestations in the model ...

The world population is rapidly ageing, which means the number of disabled and dependent people is increasing since these rates increase with age, particularly after the age of 80. This is the context in which the Tecnalia centre for applied research has designed a system of sensors which when fitted in a home, allows a person's habits and activities to be monitored and any changes in his/her habits and activities that could be a symptom of disorders relating to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's to be detected. Since the symptoms of diseases like Alzheimer's ...

TORONTO — Scientists have a better way to study human proteins — large molecules that are part of every cell in the body — thanks to a new technology developed by University of Toronto researchers. The technology tracks a class of proteins called membrane proteins as they interact with other proteins to either maintain health or contribute to disease. Membrane proteins make up about one third of all proteins in the human body, and their malfunction is associated with more than 500 diseases. But they've been hard to study because understanding their role depends on observing ...

In the world of quantum science, Alice and Bob have been talking to one another for years. Charlie joined the conversation a few years ago, but now with spacelike separation, scientists have measured that their communication occurs faster than the speed of light. For the first time, physicists at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo have demonstrated the distribution of three entangled photons at three different locations (Alice, Bob and Charlie) several hundreds of metres apart, proving quantum nonlocality for more than two entangled ...

This news release is available in German. In his third major research paper since December 2013, IST Austria Professor Peter Jonas together with his collaborator, postdoc Hua Hu, identifies a new subcellular mechanism for reliable, fast transmission in the so-called basket cells of the brain. The results will be published on the website of Nature Neuroscience on March 23, 2014 (DOI 10.1038/nn.3678) IST Austria president Thomas Henzinger expressed his delight: "This is an extraordinary streak of publications in major journals which once more emphasizes the outstanding ...

Prions are infectious agents responsible for neurodegenerative diseases such as bovine spongiform encephalitis (commonly known as "mad cow disease") and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease in humans. Since the discovery in the 60s that an incurable and fatal disease could be caused by an infectious agent formed by nothing but converted misfolded proteins, the mechanisms responsible for the conversion of a normal prion protein into its infectious counterpart – the scrapie prion – have been relentlessly investigated. Researchers now know that once converted into the scrapie form, ...

VIDEO: In the absence of Omi, Ras-transformed tumor cells form invasive lamellipodial protrusions. Click here for more information. The tumor suppressor p53 does all it can to prevent oncogenes from transforming normal cells into tumor cells by killing defective cells or causing them to become inactive. Sometimes oncogenes manage to initiate tumor development in the presence of p53, but, even then, the tumor suppressor doesn't give up and focuses its efforts instead on limiting ...

The process of producing high-quality, fertile sperm requires many steps. A study in The Journal of Cell Biology shows how the transcription factor p73 promotes this process by regulating the adhesions between developing sperm and their support cells. The p53 family of transcription factors has an ancient and well-conserved function in protecting reproductive cells. In mammals, for example, p63 promotes the death of eggs and sperm that have sustained DNA damage, and female mice lacking p73 are infertile due to defects in egg development. Male mice lacking p73 are also ...

(PHILADELPHIA) – Radiation therapy fights cancer in more ways than one. Not only does it force cancer cells to self-destruct, but several studies demonstrate that it also activates the immune system to attack tumor cells. This activation can be used to boost current immunotherapies, such as anti-tumor vaccines, to produce better clinical results. What's less clear, however, is exactly how to combine the two therapies to get the best bang for the therapeutic buck. To address this question, researchers at Thomas Jefferson University tested an experimental cancer vaccine ...

Proteins are important molecules in our body and they fulfil a broad range of functions. For instance as enzymes they help to release energy from food and as muscle proteins they assist with motion. As antibodies they are involved in immune defence and as hormone receptors in signal transduction in cells. Until only recently it was assumed that all proteins take on a clearly defined three-dimensional structure – i.e. they fold in order to be able to assume these functions. Surprisingly, it has been shown that many important proteins occur as unfolded coils. Researchers ...