Scientists at the University of East Anglia have shown how the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis could reduce tumor growth in cancer patients. Research published today reveals the existence of previously unknown signaling platforms which are responsible for the drug's success in shrinking tumours. It is hoped that the findings could help develop a synthetic equivalent with anti-cancer properties. The research was co-led with the Universidad Complutense de Madridin, Spain. The team used samples of human breast cancer cells to induce tumours in mice. They ...

Weizmann Institute scientists have demonstrated for the first time a photonic router – a quantum device based on a single atom that enables routing of single photons by single photons. This achievement, as reported in Science magazine, is another step toward overcoming the difficulties in building quantum computers. At the core of the device is an atom that can switch between two states. The state is set just by sending a single particle of light – or photon – from the right or the left via an optical fiber. The atom, in response, then reflects or transmits the next incoming ...

Serendipity leads University of Kansas scientists to the discovery and description of Rhipidocyrtus muiri - a 107 year old, lost in collections specimen, which turned out to represent a new genus and species. The long and tortuous history of the enigmatic ripidiine wedge beetle from Borneo is discussed in a recent paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The holotype male, and only known specimen of Rhipidocyrtus muiri, was collected 107 years ago in Borneo but subsequent to this it was transferred among several researchers in the early 1900s. The specimen ...

Honey bees with roots in the local environment manage much better in the struggle for survival than imported honey bees from foreign environments. A world without bees would be a whole lot poorer – literally. In Denmark alone an additional 600 million to 1 billion Danish kroner are earned annually due to the work done by bees making honey and pollinating a wide range of crops from apples to cherries and clover. Unfortunately, bees all over the world are under pressure from pesticides, mites, viruses, bacteria, fungi and environmental changes, among other things. The ...

The Roquin protein, discovered in 2005, controls T-cell activation and differentiation by regulating the expression of certain mRNAs. In doing so, it helps to guarantee immunological tolerance and prevents immune responses against the body's own structures that can lead to autoimmune disease. Roquin is thus an immune regulator. Autoimmune diseases affect between five and ten per cent of the population. They usually occur as a result of complex environmental influences when a genetic predisposition exists. Only in rare cases the development of the disease is determined by ...

In close collaboration with Jürg Schönenberger and Yannick Städler from the Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research of the Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, 14 developmental stages of the flower of Arabidopsis thaliana from very early meristematic floral initiation to fully developed seeds were monitored with micro-computed tomography in 3D. From the same set of developmental stages a full metabolic profile using mass spectrometry was measured covering hundreds of biochemical pathways. "Smallest changes in floral organ development were thus correlated ...

Early maize farmers selected for genes that improved the harvesting of sunlight, a new detailed study of how plants use 'doubles' of their genomes reveals. The findings could help current efforts to improve existing crop varieties. Oxford University researchers captured a 'genetic snapshot' of maize as it existed 10 million years ago when the plant made a double of its genome – a 'whole genome duplication' event. They then traced how maize evolved to use these 'copied' genes to cope with the pressures of domestication, which began around 12,000 years ago. They discovered ...

Rutgers researchers have developed a technology that could overcome a major cost barrier to make clean-burning hydrogen fuel – a fuel that could replace expensive and environmentally harmful fossil fuels. The new technology is a novel catalyst that performs almost as well as cost-prohibitive platinum for so-called electrolysis reactions, which use electric currents to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The Rutgers technology is also far more efficient than less-expensive catalysts investigated to-date. "Hydrogen has long been expected to play a vital role ...

MADISON, Wis. — The ability to reliably and safely make in the laboratory all of the different types of cells in human blood is one key step closer to reality. Writing today in the journal Nature Communications, a group led by University of Wisconsin-Madison stem cell researcher Igor Slukvin reports the discovery of two genetic programs responsible for taking blank-slate stem cells and turning them into both red and the array of white cells that make up human blood. The research is important because it identifies how nature itself makes blood products at the earliest ...

A new analysis has found that rates of testicular cancer have been rising dramatically in recent years among young Hispanic American men, but not among their non-Hispanic counterparts. Published early online in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that greater awareness is needed concerning the increasing risk of testicular cancer in Hispanic adolescents and young adults, and that research efforts are needed to determine the cause of this trend. Testicular cancer is one of the most common types of cancer among adolescent ...

COPENHAGEN – Participation in activities that promote mental activity, and moderate physical activity in middle age, may help protect against the development of Alzheimer's disease and dementia in later life, according to new research reported today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference® 2014 (AAIC® 2014) in Copenhagen. Research reported at AAIC 2014 also showed that sleep problems – especially when combined with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – may increase dementia risk in veterans. Additionally, in a population of people age 90 and older, ...

VIDEO: Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center have found that women who ate a high-fat meal the day after a stressful event metabolized food more slowly, and the... Click here for more information. COLUMBUS, Ohio – A new study in women suggests that experiencing one or more stressful events the day before eating a single high-fat meal can slow the body's metabolism, potentially contributing to weight gain. Researchers questioned study participants about ...

An archaeological dig in southeast Turkey has uncovered a large number of clay tokens that were used as records of trade until the advent of writing, or so it had been believed. But the new find of tokens dates from a time when writing was commonplace – thousands of years after it was previously assumed this technology had become obsolete. Researchers compare it to the continued use of pens in the age of the word processor. The tokens – small clay pieces in a range of simple shapes – are thought to have been used as a rudimentary bookkeeping system in prehistoric ...

An editorial published today in The Lancet Neurology calls for sports authorities to take into consideration the long term neurological problems that repeated concussions can cause. Cerebral concussion is the most common form of sports-related traumatic brain injury (TBI), and the long-term effects of repeated concussions may include dementia, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and other neurological disorders, say the journal editors. However, what is perhaps more concerning, is that even when the symptoms of concussion are delayed, or if they come and go quickly, neurological ...

Failure to get the best treatment and variations in the quality of care are the most likely reasons why survival for blood cancer patients still varies widely between regions within Europe, according to the largest population-based study of survival in European adults to date, published in The Lancet Oncology. "The good news is that 5-year survival for most cancers of the blood has increased over the past 11 years, most likely reflecting the approval of new targeted drugs in the early 2000s such as rituximab for non-Hodgkin lymphoma and imatinib for chronic myeloid leukaemia", ...

This news release is available in French. Montreal, July 13, 2014 — An international research project, led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, reports that a new oral medication is showing significant progress in restoring vision to patients with Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA). Until now, this inherited retinal disease that causes visual impairment ranging from reduced vision to complete blindness, has remained untreatable. The study is published today in the scientific journal The Lancet. "This is the first ...

NOAA scientists have developed a new high-resolution climate model that shows southwestern Australia's long-term decline in fall and winter rainfall is caused by increases in manmade greenhouse gas emissions and ozone depletion, according to research published today in Nature Geoscience. "This new high-resolution climate model is able to simulate regional-scale precipitation with considerably improved accuracy compared to previous generation models," said Tom Delworth, a research scientist at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., who helped ...

ANN ARBOR – Biophysics researchers at the University of Michigan have used short pulses of light to peer into the mechanics of photosynthesis and illuminate the role that molecule vibrations play in the energy conversion process that powers life on our planet. The findings could potentially help engineers make more efficient solar cells and energy storage systems. They also inject new evidence into an ongoing "quantum biology" debate over exactly how photosynthesis manages to be so efficient. Through photosynthesis, plants and some bacteria turn sunlight, water and ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Brown University) -- The discovery 30 years ago of soccer-ball-shaped carbon molecules called buckyballs helped to spur an explosion of nanotechnology research. Now, there appears to be a new ball on the pitch. Researchers from Brown University, Shanxi University and Tsinghua University in China have shown that a cluster of 40 boron atoms forms a hollow molecular cage similar to a carbon buckyball. It's the first experimental evidence that a boron cage structure—previously only a matter of speculation—does indeed exist. "This is the first time that ...

New research in Nature Genetics identifies a novel genetic and molecular pathway in the esophagus that causes eosinophillic esophagitis (EoE), opening up potential new therapeutic strategies for an enigmatic and hard-to-treat food allergy. EoE is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the esophagus. The condition is triggered by allergic hypersensitivity to certain foods and an over-accumulation in the esophagus of white blood cells called eosinophils (part of the body's immune system). EoE can cause a variety of gastrointestinal complaints including reflux-like symptoms, ...

BOSTON – New research raises the prospect of more effective treatments for cachexia, a profound wasting of fat and muscle occurring in about half of all cancer patients, raising their risk of death, according to scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Many strategies have been tried to reverse the condition, which may cause such frailty that patients can't endure potentially life-saving treatments, but none have had great success. Scientists reporting in the July 13 advanced online edition of Nature, led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, demonstrated that in mice bearing ...

An inexpensive, portable, microchip-based test for diagnosing type-1 diabetes could improve patient care worldwide and help researchers better understand the disease, according to the device's inventors at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Described in a paper to be published online July 13 in Nature Medicine, the test employs nanotechnology to detect type-1 diabetes outside hospital settings. The handheld microchips distinguish between the two main forms of diabetes mellitus, which are both characterized by high blood-sugar levels but have different causes ...

LOS ANGELES – A noninvasive optical imaging device developed at Cedars-Sinai can provide early detection of changes that later occur in the brain and are a classic sign of Alzheimer's disease, according to preliminary results from investigators conducting a clinical trial in Australia. The researchers will present their findings July 15 in an oral presentation at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They also were invited by conference organizers to participate in a "breaking news" news conference beginning at 7:30 a.m. Sunday, ...

COPENHAGEN, July 13, 2014 – A decreased ability to identify odors might indicate the development of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease, while examinations of the eye could indicate the build-up of beta-amyloid, a protein associated with Alzheimer's, in the brain, according to the results of four research trials reported today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference® 2014 (AAIC® 2014) in Copenhagen. In two of the studies, the decreased ability to identify odors was significantly associated with loss of brain cell function and progression to Alzheimer's ...

Pornography triggers brain activity in people with compulsive sexual behaviour – known commonly as sex addiction – similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of drug addicts, according to a University of Cambridge study published in the journal PLOS ONE. However, the researchers caution that this does not necessarily mean that pornography itself is addictive. Although precise estimates are unknown, previous studies have suggested that as many as one in 25 adults is affected by compulsive sexual behaviour, an obsession with sexual thoughts, feelings or behaviour ...