Sequencing an entire human genome is faster and cheaper than ever before, leading to an explosion of studies comparing the genomes of people with and without a given disease. Often clinicians and researchers studying genetic contributions to a certain disease encounter variations that appear to be responsible, only to find other people with the same mutation who don't have the disease or who are affected to a lesser degree. How do doctors pinpoint the genetic changes that really cause disease? An open-access policy paper to be published Wednesday in Nature proposes guidelines ...

New University of Toronto Scarborough research shows that male black widow spiders prefer their female mates to be well-fed virgins – a rare example of mate preference by male spiders. The study, authored by UTSC post-doc Emily MacLeod and Maydianne Andrade, a professor in UTSC's Department of Biological Sciences, found in both controlled field studies and the wild that males overwhelmingly chose to mate with well-fed, unmated females. They also found male black widows can tell whether a potential mate is well-fed and unmated by pheromones released by females. "This ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Like a hungry diner ripping open a dinner roll, a fuel cell catalyst that converts hydrogen into electricity must tear open a hydrogen molecule. Now researchers have captured a view of such a catalyst holding onto the two halves of its hydrogen feast. The view confirms previous hypotheses and provides insight into how to make the catalyst work better for alternative energy uses. This study is the first time scientists have shown precisely where the hydrogen halves end up in the structure of a molecular catalyst that breaks down hydrogen, the team reported ...

WASHINGTON – A changing climate is increasing the accessibility of U.S. Arctic waters to commercial activities such as shipping, oil and gas development, and tourism, raising concern about the risk of oil spills. A new report from the National Research Council says that a full suite of proven oil response tools is needed to address potential oil spills in U.S. Arctic waters, but not all of them are readily available. While much is known about both oil behavior and response technologies in ice-covered environments, there are areas where additional research would enable ...

People diagnosed with Huntington's disease, most in their mid-thirties and forties, face a devastating prognosis: complete mental, physical, and behavioral decline within two decades. "Mutant" protein clusters, long blamed for the progression of the genetic disease, have been the primary focus of therapies in development by pharmaceutical companies. But according to new research from Prof. Gerardo Lederkremer and Dr. Julia Leitman of Tel Aviv University's Department of Cell Research and Immunology, in collaboration with Prof. Ulrich Hartl of the Max Planck Institute for ...

Fairfax, Va., April 23, 2014— The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has issued a new guideline, "The Role of Postoperative Radiation Therapy for Endometrial Cancer: An ASTRO Evidence-Based Guideline," that details the use of adjuvant radiation therapy in the treatment of endometrial cancer. The guideline's executive summary is published in the May-June 2014 issue of Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of ASTRO. The full-length guideline is available as an open-access article online at http://www.practicalradonc.org. ASTRO's ...

This news release is available in French and Spanish. Montreal, 23 April 2014—Today, the CEC released its Conservation Assessment for the Big Bend-Río Bravo Region: A Binational Collaborative Approach to Conservation, which identifies 29 priority conservation areas in a region straddling the United States-Mexico border that includes 11 different protected areas in the states of Texas, Coahuila, and Chihuahua. This region features unique, highly diverse arid and semi-arid habitats inhabited by rare and endangered plants and animals, and provides a vital migratory ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A novel compound that targets an important brain receptor has a dramatic effect against a host of cocaine addiction behaviors, including relapse behavior, a University at Buffalo animal study has found. The research provides strong evidence that this may be a novel lead compound for treating cocaine addiction, for which no effective medications exist. The UB research was published as an online preview article in Neuropsychopharmacology last week. In the study, the compound, RO5263397, severely blunted a broad range of cocaine addiction behaviors. "This ...

Tropical Cyclone Jack had weakened to a tropical depression when NASA and JAXA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed above on April 22, 2014 at 1120 UTC/7:20 a.m. EDT. At that time, TRMM found that Jack was devoid of almost all rainfall near the tropical cyclone's center. Outside the center was a different story, however. That's where TRMM's precipitation radar instrument found rain falling at a rate of over 130mm/hr (about 5.1 inches) in a band of thunderstorms that stretched from east of Jack's center to the south. Some of the thunderstorms even ...

Alexandria, Va. – On a muggy day in mid-July 2009, a lone seven-story condominium complex northwest of Kobe, Japan, was violently shaken by an earthquake. Onlookers watched the 23-unit, wood-frame tower sway and bounce while, inside the building, furniture toppled and plates clattered to the floor. No one was hurt during the highly localized event and there was only minimal damage, in part because the building's wooden skeleton had been augmented to better resist earthquake shaking, but also because the whole event — from the seismicity to the partially furnished building ...

Johns Hopkins scientists report that rats exposed to high-energy particles, simulating conditions astronauts would face on a long-term deep space mission, show lapses in attention and slower reaction times, even when the radiation exposure is in extremely low dose ranges. The cognitive impairments — which affected a large subset, but far from all, of the animals — appear to be linked to protein changes in the brain, the scientists say. The findings, if found to hold true in humans, suggest it may be possible to develop a biological marker to predict sensitivity to radiation's ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue University researchers have developed a way to detect and measure cancer levels in a living cell by using tiny gold particles with tails of synthetic DNA. A team led by Joseph Irudayaraj, professor of agricultural and biological engineering, used gold nanoparticles to target and bind to fragments of genetic material known as BRCA1 messenger RNA splice variants, which can indicate the presence and stage of breast cancer. The number of these mRNA splice variants in a cell can be determined by examining the specific signal that light produces ...

Purdue University researchers have identified an important enzyme pathway that helps prevent new cells from receiving too many or too few chromosomes, a condition that has been directly linked to cancer and other diseases. Mark Hall, associate professor of biochemistry, found that near the end of cell division, the enzyme Cdc14 activates Yen1, an enzyme that ensures any breaks in DNA are fully repaired before the parent cell distributes copies of the genome to daughter cells. This process helps safeguard against some of the most devastating genome errors, including the ...

PITTSBURGH—The ability of individuals to store and instantly access thousands of their photos online has become a commonplace luxury, but the sheer size of these archives can be intimidating. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, have found people might actually enjoy their collections more by giving up a bit of control and learning to wait. Their 14-month study showed that people reflected more on past events and developed a renewed interest in their online photos when a device called Photobox would randomly print four or five ...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Maximum water levels in New York harbor during major storms have risen by nearly two and a half feet since the mid-1800s, making the chances of water overtopping the Manhattan seawall now at least 20 times greater than they were 170 years ago, according to a new study. Whereas sea-level rise, which is occurring globally, has raised water levels along New York harbor by nearly a foot and a half since the mid-19th century, the research shows that the maximum height of the city's "once-in-10-years" storm tide has grown additionally by almost a foot in that ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Apr. 23 2014) – A team of researchers in Korea who transplanted human neural stem cells (hNSCs) into the brains of nonhuman primates and assessed cell survival and differentiation after 22 and 24 months found that the hNSCs had differentiated into neurons at 24 months and did not cause tumors. The study will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct1117Antonucci2. The hNSCs were labeled with magnetic ...

Scientists have conclusive evidence that the source of a unique rhythmic sound, recorded for decades in the Southern Ocean and called the "bio-duck," is the Antarctic minke whale (Balaenoptera bonaerensis). First described and named by submarine personnel in the 1960s who thought it sounded like a duck, the bio-duck sound has been recorded at various locations in the Southern Ocean, but its source has remained a mystery, until now. In February 2013, an international team of researchers deployed acoustic tags on two Antarctic minke whales in Wilhelmina Bay off the western ...

Putnam Valley, NY. (Apr. 23, 2014) – People who have had a stroke, often suffer motor deficits with little potential to restore neurological function. However, a study conducted in Taiwan, that will be published in a future issue of Cell Transplantation, but is currently freely available on-line as an unedited early e-pub at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/pre-prints/content-ct1168Chen, has found that when one group of stroke victims had their own peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) injected directly into the brain and a similar group did not, those who received ...

The trope that the likelihood of an accurate group decision increases with the abundance of brains involved might not hold up when a collective faces a variety of factors — as often happens in life and nature. Instead, Princeton University researchers report that smaller groups actually tend to make more accurate decisions while larger assemblies may become excessively focused on only certain pieces of information. The findings present a significant caveat to what is known about collective intelligence, or the "wisdom of crowds," wherein individual observations — even ...

Weight loss and control of blood sugar can reduce the risk of complications in patients with diabetes but this is difficult for many to achieve. A University of California, San Diego School of Medicine randomized controlled trial of obese adults with type 2 diabetes suggests that participants enrolled in a community-based structured weight loss program are able to shed more pounds, improve blood sugar control and reduce or eliminate insulin use and other medications compared to a control group. "Support and a tailored lifestyle intervention have been shown to reduce cardiovascular ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A study of older adults at increased risk for Alzheimer's disease shows that moderate physical activity may protect brain health and stave off shrinkage of the hippocampus– the brain region responsible for memory and spatial orientation that is attacked first in Alzheimer's disease. Dr. J. Carson Smith, a kinesiology researcher in the University of Maryland School of Public Health who conducted the study, says that while all of us will lose some brain volume as we age, those with an increased genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease typically show greater ...

As evidence mounts showing the potential health benefits of probiotics, antioxidants and other nutritional compounds, more and more people are taking supplements. And the chemical industry is getting in on the action. But legitimate skepticism about supplements' health effects could deter growth, so the industry is responding with clinical research to shore up health claims, according to the cover story in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society. Melody M. Bomgardner, a senior editor at C&EN, writes that about half ...

URBANA, Ill. - In a country as wealthy as the United States, it may come as a surprise that one in 12 seniors do not have access to adequate food due to lack of money or other financial resources. They are food insecure. Recent research at the University of Illinois using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) revealed that the seniors who are dealing with hunger are also facing negative health and nutrition consequences. "In 2011, 8.35 percent of Americans over age 60 faced the threat of hunger—that translates to 4.8 million people," ...

The internal surface area of the gastro-intestinal tract has long been considered to be between 180 and 300 square meters. Scientists at the Sahlgrenska Academy have used refined microscopic techniques that indicate a much smaller area. "Actually, the inner surface of the gastro-intestinal tract is only as large as a normal studio apartment," says scientist Lars Fändriks. The digestive tract, which passes from the mouth through the esophagus and onwards through the intestines, has a length of about 5 meters in a normal adult, and is built up with many folds and protrusions. Previous ...

Premier League soccer stars are subjecting their club's junior players to regular insults and practical jokes in a humiliating rite of passage, the British Sociological Association's annual conference in Leeds heard today. [Wednesday 23 April 2014] This was part of an "authoritarian" treatment of youth team players which undermined attempts to change the culture of clubs and produce better footballers, Dr Chris Platts, of Sheffield Hallam University's Academy of Sport and Physical Activity, said. Dr Platts interviewed 303 junior players aged 16 to 18 and 13 coaches ...