In the cells of humans and other organisms, only a subset of genes are active at any given time, depending largely on the stage of life and the particular duties of the cell. Cells use different molecular mechanisms to orchestrate the activation and deactivation of genes as needed. One central mechanism is an intricate DNA packaging system that either shields genes from activation or exposes them for use. In this system, the DNA strand, with its genes, is coiled around molecules known as histones, which themselves are assembled into larger entities called nucleosomes. ...

South Africa has been financing domestic rainwater harvesting tanks in informal low-income settlements and rural areas in five of that nation's nine provinces. But pathogens inhabit such harvested rainwater, potentially posing a public health hazard, especially for children and immunocompromised individuals, according to a team from the University of Stellenbosch. The research was published ahead of print in Applied and Environmental Microbiology. International studies had indicated that harvested rainwater frequently harbors pathogens, and that, in light of the financing ...

Extremely hot temperatures over land have dramatically and unequivocally increased in number and area despite claims that the rise in global average temperatures has slowed over the past 10 to 20 years. Scientists from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and international colleagues made the finding when they focused their research on the rise of temperatures at the extreme end of the spectrum where impacts are felt the most. "It quickly became clear, the so-called "hiatus" in global average temperatures did not stop the rise in the number, intensity ...

Activation of beta-catenin, the primary mediator of the ubiquitous Wnt signaling pathway, alters the immune system in lasting and harmful ways, a team of Chicago-based researchers demonstrate in the February 26, 2014, issue of Science Translational Medicine. An increase in beta-catenin in certain types of T cells—a class of white blood cells—causes chronic inflammation in the intestine and colon, eventually leading to cancer. The same mechanism is used by colon cancer to propagate itself. The researchers combine data from patients suffering from colitis or colon cancer ...

This is a Hubble Space Telescope composite image of a supernova explosion designated SN 2014J in the galaxy M82. At a distance of approximately 11.5 million light-years from Earth it is the closest supernova of its type discovered in the past few decades. The explosion is categorized as a Type Ia supernova, which is theorized to be triggered in binary systems consisting of a white dwarf and another star — which could be a second white dwarf, a star like our sun, or a giant star. Astronomers using a ground-based telescope discovered the explosion on January 21, 2014. This ...

Brown marmorated stink bugs cause millions of dollars in crop losses across the United States because of the damage their saliva does to plant tissues. Researchers at Penn State have developed methods to extract the insect saliva and identify the major protein components, which could lead to new pest control approaches. "Until now, essentially nothing was known about the composition of stink bug saliva, which is surprising given the importance of these insects as pests and the fact that their saliva is the primary cause of feeding injury to plants and crop losses," said ...

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, released the largest and most comprehensive health and lifestyle analysis of people from a range of Hispanic/Latino origins. The data will enable individuals, communities, and policy makers to tailor better health intervention strategies. "This study lays the foundation for future research on the possible causes of chronic diseases and ways to prevent them, and to help us understand the reasons why Hispanics and Latinos live longer than the general population," said Gregory Talavera, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A rodent in a maze is a staple — even a stereotype — of experimental psychology research. But the maze in the lab of Rebecca Burwell, professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University, is not your grandfather's apparatus. In a new video article published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments, Burwell's research group demonstrates in full detail how the maze can be used to perform automated visual cognitive research tasks with great efficiency. The article is available here: http://www.jove.com/video/51316/automated-visual-cognitive-tasks-for-recording-neural-activity-using The ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. — Feb. 26, 2014 — Somali Americans develop twice the antibody response to rubella from the current vaccine compared to Caucasians in a new Mayo Clinic study on individualized aspects of immune response. A non-Somali, African-American cohort ranked next in immune response, still significantly higher than Caucasians, and Hispanic Americans in the study were least responsive to the vaccine. The findings appear in the journal Vaccine. "This is fascinating," says Gregory Poland, M.D., Mayo Clinic vaccinologist and senior author of the study. "We don't know ...

BOULDER, Colo -- JILA physicists used an ultrafast laser and help from German theorists to discover a new semiconductor quasiparticle—a handful of smaller particles that briefly condense into a liquid-like droplet. Quasiparticles are composites of smaller particles that can be created inside solid materials and act together in a predictable way. A simple example is the exciton, a pairing, due to electrostatic forces, of an electron and a so-called "hole," a place in the material's energy structure where an electron could be, but isn't. The new quasiparticle, described ...

Pine forests are especially magical places for atmospheric chemists. Coniferous trees give off pine-scented vapors that form particles, very quickly and seemingly out of nowhere. New research by German, Finnish and U.S. scientists elucidates the process by which gas wafting from coniferous trees creates particles that can reflect sunlight or promote cloud formation, both important climate feedbacks. The study is published Feb. 27 in Nature. "In many forested regions, you can go and observe particles apparently form from thin air. They're not emitted from anything, ...

Researchers at Columbia University and the University of Cologne have created a new model to successfully predict the evolution of the influenza virus from one year to the next. This advance in our understanding of influenza suggests a new, systematic way to select influenza vaccine strains. The findings appear in Nature on Feb. 26. The flu is one of the major infectious diseases in humans. Seasonal strains of the influenza A virus account for about half a million deaths per year. In a concerted effort, WHO and its Collaborating Centers have closely monitored the evolution ...

Melanoma is particularly dangerous because it can form metastases in vital organs such as the lungs, liver or brain. UV radiation is considered to be the most significant triggering factor. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University Hospital and the LIMES Institute of the University of Bonn has now discovered that sunburns contribute to the development of this malignant disease not only through direct alteration of pigment cell genomes but also indirectly through inflammatory processes in the surrounding tissue. The results are now being published online ...

According to their results, these extremely low-volatile organic compounds consist of relatively large molecules which contain an almost equal number of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen atoms. The scientists present a plausible explanation supported by numerous experimental findings of how these vapours are formed almost immediately when plant emissions (e.g. monoterpenes) are released into the air. The vapours can then condense on small aerosol particles (starting from clusters of only a few nanometres in diameter) suspended in the air, causing them to grow to around 100 nanometres ...

New Rochelle, NY, February 26, 2014–Whole body cooling in comatose patients who have suffered a heart attack can limit the damage to brain tissue caused by the restoration of blood flow and oxygen. But new data indicate that in certain patients therapeutic hypothermia is less effective and may even worsen neurological outcomes, as described in an article in Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management website at ...

(Boston)--Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) researchers have demonstrated the potential of using a virtual computer environment for distance healthcare education for an international audience that often has limited access to conventional teaching and training. In this pilot project led by John Wiecha, MD, corresponding author of the study and associate professor of family medicine at BUSM, a virtual world was created in which participants engaged in a learning activity by creating virtual avatars of themselves to navigate through a three-dimensional computer environment ...

Montreal, February 26, 2014 — New acquaintances are often judged by their handshake. Research has now recognized the simple squeeze as an important diagnostic tool in assessing strength and quality of life among critical care patients. In a study published in the journal, Support Care Cancer, Concordia professor Robert Kilgour and his colleagues at the McGill Nutrition and Performance Laboratory confirmed a link between handgrip strength and survival rates. The test was simple: 203 patients fighting advanced-stage cancers squeezed a device known as a dynamometer with ...

ANN ARBOR—Reducing the size of the Lake Erie "dead zone" to acceptable levels will require cutting nutrient pollution nearly in half in coming decades, at a time when climate change is expected to make such reductions more difficult. That's one of the main conclusions of a comprehensive new study that documents recent trends in Lake Erie's health. It offers science-based guidance to policymakers seeking to reduce the size of toxic algae blooms and oxygen-starved regions called hypoxic zones, or dead zones—two related water-quality problems that have seen a resurgence ...

CHAPEL HILL, NC – Creating a vaccine that protects people from all four types of dengue virus has frustrated scientists for decades. But researchers at the University of North Carolina have discovered a new target for human antibodies that could hold the key to a vaccine for the world's most widespread mosquito-borne disease. Using an experimental technique new to the dengue field, the labs of Ralph Baric, PhD, and Aravinda de Silva, PhD, showed that a molecular hinge where two regions of a protein connect is where natural human antibodies attach to dengue 3 to disable ...

For approximately one week every month, millions of women change their economic behavior and become more focused on their social standing relative to other women. According to new research from The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, the ovulatory cycle alters women's behavior by subconsciously motivating them to outdo other women. This research could have important implications for marketers, consumers and researchers. The researchers conducted three studies, one of which had ovulating and nonovulating ...

This news release is available in Spanish. A study led by Dr. Roderic Guigó from the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, as part of the Chronic Lymphatic Leukaemia Genome Consortium, has made new advances in the study of this disease. The work, which was published (in print version) last week in the journal Genome Research, scrutinised the functional profile of the genes and mutations associated with leukaemia. The Spanish Chronic Lymphatic Leukaemia Genome Consortium had previously identified the principal mutations involved in the development of the disease. ...

West Orange, NJ. February 26, 2014. Kessler Foundation researchers have found that among individuals with TBI, depression and self-awareness affect subjective reports of memory, quality of life (QOL), and satisfaction with life. The study was published in the February 2014 issue of Brain Injury. (Yael Goverover, Nancy D. Chiaravalloti: The impact of self-awareness and depression on subjective reports of memory, quality- of-life and satisfaction with life following TBI. (doi:10.3109/02699052.2013.860474) Impairment in self-awareness (the ability to accurately recognize ...

It's an odd twist. For scientists to determine if a cell is functioning properly, they must destroy it. This is what happens in X-ray fluorescence microscopy when biological specimens are exposed to ionizing radiation, which provides images with a level of detail that conventional microscopes just can't match. This exposure can change what is being imaged in profound ways, possibly giving false accounts of how the cell actually works. To address this issue, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory created a new probe that freezes ...

ST. LOUIS – In a study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Saint Louis University researchers have found a link between acute pancreatitis (inflammation of the pancreas) and pancreatic cancer, a finding which may eventually lead to some pancreatic cancers being detected earlier. Principle investigator Banke Agarwal, M.D., associate professor of gastroenterology and hepatology at Saint Louis University, says the study builds on earlier research suggesting a connection between the two illnesses. "Our study demonstrates that there is a much higher ...

Photoreactive compounds developed by scientists of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich directly modulate nerve-cell function, and open new routes to the treatment of neurological diseases, including chronic pain and certain types of visual impairment. All modes of sensory perception are based on communication between nerve cells. Both the response to the primary stimulus and the transmission of the resulting signal depend on the function of specialized receptor proteins that are associated with the surface membranes of neurons. Many sensory neurons respond ...