CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (October 10, 2013) – Having recently discovered a set of powerful gene regulators that control cell identity in a few mouse and human cell types, Whitehead Institute scientists are now showing that these regulators—which they named "super-enhancers"—act across a vast array of human cell types and are enriched in mutated regions of the genome that are closely associated with a broad spectrum of diseases. The findings, published online today by the journal Cell, suggest that these super-enhancers, first described in Cell several months ago by Whitehead ...

A new study by a University of British Columbia researcher finds that some people are genetically predisposed to see the world darkly. The study, published in Psychological Science, finds that a previously known gene variant can cause individuals to perceive emotional events—especially negative ones – more vividly than others. "This is the first study to find that this genetic variation can significantly affect how people see and experience the world," says Prof. Rebecca Todd of UBC's Dept. of Psychology. "The findings suggest people experience emotional aspects of ...

LA JOLLA, CA -- October 9, 2013 -- A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) has identified key signaling proteins in the inflammation process that contribute to the development of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, sepsis and inflammatory bowel diseases. The finding highlights possible new ways of treating these inflammation disorders, which sicken or kill millions of people around the world each year. "We hope our approach will lead to the development of drugs that augment current anti-inflammatory strategies," said ...

This new method will be a great step forwards to understanding the resulting processes that control gene regulation. These results were published on October 6, 2013 on the website of the review Nature Structural & Molecular Biology. In the cell nucleus, DNA is highly dynamic and changes its spatial configuration, in the same way as during the process of cell division. We already know that the spatial configuration of DNA determines whether the genes are active or inactive, in other words whether they are capable of expression. In this study, the researchers attempted ...

When we are sad the world seemingly cries with us. On the contrary, when we are happy everything shines and all around people's faces seem to rejoyce with us. These projection mechanisms of one's emotions onto others are well known to scientists, who believe they are at the core of the ability to interpret and relate to others. In some circumstances, however, this may lead to gross mistakes (called egocentricity bias in the emotional domain EEB), to avoid them cerebral mechanisms are activated about which still little is known. Giorgia Silani, a neuroscientist at SISSA, ...

Bariatric surgeries, such as a gastric bypass, are currently the most effective anti-obesity therapies. They also lead to a reduced insulin resistance. However, the pitfall of these surgical interventions is that they are highly invasive and often permanent procedures. An international team of scientists led by Dr. Kirk Habegger, Metabolic Disease Institute, University of Cincinnati, and Prof. Dr. Matthias Tschöp, Scientific Director of the Helmholtz Diabetes Center (HDC) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU), Partner of the German Center for Diabetes Research (DZD), ...

This work, published on 10th October on the website of Nature Communications, concerns the role of one protein which is common to these parasites. Called AMA1, it has been at the heart of many years' research on upgrading treatments, such as trying out vaccination against malaria. However, the present authors have reservations about the success of therapeutic strategies which rely solely on the blockage of AMA1, by demonstrating that the malaria and toxoplasmosis parasites, without the protein, can develop normally. With 1 million victims every year, malaria is the most ...

This news release is available in German. Egoism and narcissism appear to be on the rise in our society, while empathy is on the decline. And yet, the ability to put ourselves in other people's shoes is extremely important for our coexistence. A research team headed by Tania Singer from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences has discovered that our own feelings can distort our capacity for empathy. This emotionally driven egocentricity is recognised and corrected by the brain. When, however, the right supramarginal gyrus doesn't function properly ...

Rice University scientists took a lesson from craftsmen of old to assemble microscopic compounds that warn of the presence of dangerous fumes from solvents. The researchers combined a common mineral, zeolite, with a metallic compound based on rhenium to make an "artificial nose" that can sniff out solvent gases. They found that in the presence of the compound, each gas had a photoluminescent "fingerprint" with a specific intensity, lifetime and color. Rice chemist Angel Martí and his students reported their results this month in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The ...

The volcano on the Scottish peninsula Ardnamurchan is a popular place for the study of rocks and structures in the core of a volcano. Geology students read about it in text books and geologists have been certain that the Ardnamurchan volcano have three successive magma chambers. However, an international group of researchers, lead from Uppsala University, Sweden, has now showed that the volcano only has one single magma chamber. The new study is published in Scientific Reports, the new open access journal of the Nature Publishing Group. The 58 million year old Ardnamurchan ...

A new study by KU Leuven-iMinds researchers has uncovered that 145 of the Internet's 10,000 top websites track users without their knowledge or consent. The websites use hidden scripts to extract a device fingerprint from users' browsers. Device fingerprinting circumvents legal restrictions imposed on the use of cookies and ignores the Do Not Track HTTP header. The findings suggest that secret tracking is more widespread than previously thought. Device fingerprinting, also known as browser fingerprinting, is the practice of collecting properties of PCs, smartphones and ...

Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers have settled a century-old debate over whether occurrence of DNA methylation acts to silence gene expression, or if genes are turned off by other means before they are methylated. As explicated today in the journal Nature, methylation in fact enforces gene silencing, and it is levels of a newly identified form of RNA produced by individual genes that determines whether they are turned off by the addition of a methyl (CH3) group by the enzyme DNA methylase 1 (DNMT1). The study, led by HSCI Principal Faculty member Daniel ...

One of the most controversial issues emerging from the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) is the failure of global climate models to predict a hiatus in warming of global surface temperatures since 1998. Several ideas have been put forward to explain this hiatus, including what the IPCC refers to as 'unpredictable climate variability' that is associated with large-scale circulation regimes in the atmosphere and ocean. The most familiar of these regimes is El Niño/La Niña, which are parts of an oscillation in the ocean-atmosphere ...

Bethesda, MD -- The addition of danoprevir to the current treatment regimen for patients with hepatitis C leads to high rates of remission, according to a new article in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. The current standard of care for hepatitis C patients includes a combination of peginterferon and ribavirin. "Despite recent advances, the current hepatitis C treatment regimen is burdensome on the patient and prone to adverse events," said Patrick Marcellin, lead study author from the Service d'Hépatologie and Inserm ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 10, 2013—People who live among the destructive environmental effects of mountaintop coal mining face an increased risk of major depression. The results of a study conducted in the coal mining regions of Central Appalachia that explored the relationship between psychological health and environmental degradation are published in Ecopsychology, a peer-reviewed, online journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Ecopsychology website. Michael Hendryx (current affiliation Indian University, Bloomington) and ...

A new University of Colorado Boulder study indicates drought high in the northern Colorado mountains is the primary trigger of a massive spruce beetle outbreak that is tied to long-term changes in sea-surface temperatures from the Northern Atlantic Ocean, a trend that is expected to continue for decades. The new study is important because it shows that drought is a better predictor of spruce beetle outbreaks in northern Colorado than temperature alone, said lead study author Sarah Hart, a CU-Boulder doctoral student in geography. Drought conditions appear to decrease ...

A byproduct of the manufacture of pulp using the sulfite process for making paper, sodium lignosulfonate, can be used to immobilize and soak up toxic chromium compounds from soil and water, according to research published in the International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development. Konstantin Volchek and Carl Brown of Environment Canada, and Dario Velicogna of Velicogna Consultants Inc in Ottawa, have carried out two successful parallel tests of efficacy on a laboratory scale. The first involved removal of chromium ions from water using reagent binding and ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—In the United States, approximately 1.4 million people suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. Of those injuries, three out of four are minor TBI (mTBI)—a head injury that causes a temporary change in mental status including confusion, an altered level of consciousness, or perceptual or behavioral impairments. According to a literature review appearing in the October 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), falls and motor vehicle accidents are responsible for most cases of mTBI and also are a common cause ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- If you have stopped at a gas station recently, there is a good chance your auto has consumed fuel with ethanol blended into it. Yet the price of gasoline is not substantially affected by the volume of its ethanol content, according to a paper co-authored by an MIT economist. The study seeks to rebut the claim, broadly aired over the past couple of years, that widespread use of ethanol has reduced the wholesale cost of gasoline by $0.89 to $1.09 per gallon. Whatever the benefits or drawbacks of ethanol, MIT's Christopher Knittel says, price issues are ...

Just inland from the familiar salt-loving mangroves that line the Southern tip of the Florida Peninsula lie plant communities that depend on freshwater flowing south from Lake Okeechobee. These communities provide critical habitats to many wildlife species, and as salt water intrudes, it could spell problems for freshwater plants and animals alike. Satellite imagery over the southeastern Everglades confirms long-term trends of mangrove expansion and sawgrass habitat loss near the shore. The trend is related to salt water intrusion caused by sea-level rise and water management ...

HOUSTON – When The Cancer Genome Atlas launched its massively collaborative approach to organ-by-organ genomic analysis of cancers, the brain had both the benefit, and the challenge, of going first. TCGA ganged up on glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and lethal of brain tumors, with more than 100 scientists from 14 institutions tracking down the genomic abnormalities that drive GBM. Five years later, older and wiser, TCGA revisited glioblastoma, producing a broader, deeper picture of the drivers – and potential therapeutic targets – of the disease published ...

For childhood cancer survivors, risk factors associated with lifestyle, particularly hypertension, dramatically increase the likelihood of developing serious heart problems as adults, according to a national study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The Childhood Cancer Survivor Study (CCSS) is one of the first to focus on how hypertension, diabetes, obesity and elevated blood lipids contribute to cardiovascular disease in childhood cancer survivors. The research concentrated on risk ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 10, 2013) –"Pouchitis" developing after surgery for ulcerative colitis (UC) is associated with changes in gene expression, which increase along with disease severity, reports a study in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases, official journal of the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA). The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. "Gene alterations in pouch inflammation and Crohn's disease overlap, suggesting that inflammatory bowel disease is a spectrum, rather than distinct diseases," according ...

(Edmonton) A new study by a University of Alberta researcher shows that children who stutter have less grey matter in key regions of the brain responsible for speech production than children who do not stutter. The findings not only improve our understanding of how the brain is built for speech production and why people stutter, but also affirm the importance of seeking treatment early, using approaches such as those pioneered by the Institute for Stuttering Treatment and Research in the Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine at the U of A, said Deryk Beal, ISTAR's executive ...

Most microbial researchers grow their cells in petri-dishes to study how they respond to stress and damaging conditions. But, with the support of funding from NASA, researchers in LSU's Department of Biological Sciences tried something almost unheard of: studying microbial survival in ice to understand how microorganisms could survive in ancient permafrost, or perhaps even buried in ice on Mars. Brent Christner, associate professor of biological sciences, and colleagues at LSU including postdoctoral researcher Markus Dieser and Mary Lou Applewhite Professor John Battista, ...