CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- At first glance, Mars' clouds might easily be mistaken for those on Earth: Images of the Martian sky, taken by NASA's Opportunity rover, depict gauzy, high-altitude wisps, similar to our cirrus clouds. Given what scientists know about the Red Planet's atmosphere, these clouds likely consist of either carbon dioxide or water-based ice crystals. But it's difficult to know the precise conditions that give rise to such clouds without sampling directly from a Martian cloud. Researchers at MIT have now done the next-best thing: They've recreated Mars-like ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Home-delivered meals bring not only food to seniors but also the opportunity to remain in their homes. A new study by Brown University public health researchers projects that if every U.S. state in the lower 48 expanded the number of seniors receiving meals by just 1 percent, 1,722 more Medicaid recipients avoid living in a nursing home and most states would experience a net annual savings from implementing the expansion. Pennsylvania would see the greatest net savings – $5.7 million – as Medicaid costs for nursing home care dropped ...

LA JOLLA, CA—October 7, 2013—Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a new technique for connecting drug molecules to antibodies to make advanced therapies. Antibody-drug conjugates, as they're called, are the basis of new therapies on the market that use the target-recognizing ability of antibodies to deliver drug payloads to specific cell types—for example, to deliver toxic chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells while sparing most healthy cells. The new technique allows drug developers to forge more stable conjugates than are possible with current ...

Philadelphia, PA, October 7, 2013 – The recognition of a causal link between mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes and increased risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer has intensified the demand for genetic testing. Identifying mutations in these large genes by conventional methods can be time consuming and costly. A report in the November issue of the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics describes a new technique using second-generation sequencing technology that is as sensitive as the standard methodology but has the potential to improve the efficiency and productivity ...

Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society and the Kenyan Marine and Fisheries Research Institute have achieved a milestone in Africa: they've helped build a better fish trap, one that keeps valuable fish in while letting undersized juvenile fish and non-target species out. By modifying conventional African basket traps with escape gaps, the marine researchers have proven that the new traps catch larger fish, allow more undersized and non-target fish to escape, increase profits, and—most importantly—minimize the impact of fishing on coastal reef systems. The findings, ...

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a new approach with applications in materials development for energy capture and storage and for optoelectronic materials. According to Charles Schroeder, an assistant professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the results show that peptide precursor materials can be aligned and oriented during their assembly into polypeptides using tailored flows in microfluidic devices. The research was a collaboration between the labs of Schroeder and William Wilson, a research ...

This news release is available in French. Researchers at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center and University of Montreal have discovered that the genomic signature inherited by today's 6 million French Canadians from the first 8,500 French settlers who colonized New France some 400 years ago has gone through an unparalleled change in human history, in a remarkably short timescale. This unique signature could serve as an ideal model to study the effect of demographic processes on human genetic diversity, including the identification of possibly damaging mutations ...

Relapses after treatment for Leishmania infection may be due to a greater infectivity of the parasite rather than drug resistance, as has been previously thought, according to a study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. Visceral leishmaniasis, also called kala-azar, is a parasitic disease that strikes 400,000 people every year and kills around 1 in 10 of its victims. The disease has proven difficult to treat, in part because a large percentage of patients who take the drug of choice, miltefosine, relapse after treatment, ...

San Diego, CA, October 8, 2013 – A new study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine indicates that motor vehicle crashes can be hazardous for pregnant women, especially if they are not wearing a seat belt when the accident occurs. Trauma is a leading cause of maternal and fetal morbidity and mortality. Blunt abdominal trauma is of particular concern to a pregnant woman and her fetus since it can directly and indirectly harm fetal organs as well as shared maternal and fetal organ systems. Car crashes are responsible for most injuries requiring hospitalization ...

WORCESTER, MA -- In a new study published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, UMass Medical School behavioral psychologist and weight loss expert Sherry Pagoto, PhD, and colleagues find that mobile apps to help people lose weight are lacking when it comes to strategies for changing behaviors. "Apps do include evidence-based behavioral strategies, but only a narrow range," said Dr. Pagoto, associate professor of medicine at UMass Medical School. "Strategies that often were missing are ones that help patients with adherence and motivation." In the study "Evidence-based ...

Brain training games, apps, and websites are popular and it's not hard to see why — who wouldn't want to give their mental abilities a boost? New research suggests that brain training programs might strengthen your ability to hold information in mind, but they won't bring any benefits to the kind of intelligence that helps you reason and solve problems. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. "It is hard to spend any time on the web and not see an ad for a website that promises to train your brain, ...

Resolving a long-standing mystery in human evolution, new research from the RIKEN Brain Science Institute indicates that early hominids developed finger dexterity and tool use ability before the development of bipedal locomotion. Combining monkey and human behavior, brain imaging, and fossil evidence, a research team led by neurobiologist Dr. Atsushi Iriki and including Dr. Gen Suwa, an anthropologist from the University of Tokyo Museum, have overturned the common assumption that manual dexterity evolved after the development of bipedal locomotion freed hominid hands ...

BARCELONA, SPAIN (7 October 2013) – Glutamergic agents may one day be used as a novel treatment for mood and anxiety disorders, new research presented at the 26th ECNP Congress suggests. "Our results suggest the glutamatergic system is a truly viable target for antidepressant Profug development," says Professor Gerard Sanacora, from the Yale School of Medicine, Connecticut, US. In his talk, Professor Sanacora detailed how he and his team have used animal models to help understand how stress and other mechanisms that can disrupt glutamatergic function can lead to molecular, ...

BARCELONA, SPAIN (6 October 2013) – Increasing evidence suggests that epigenetic regulation is associated with the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and targeting it may one day lead to novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies, research suggests. Scientists at The School for Mental Health and Neuroscience at Maastricht University, the Netherlands, have been performing parallel studies in mice and men to investigate the role of epigenetic mechanisms in ageing and AD. "We have shown that ageing in mice is associated with a variety of epigenetic changes in the ...

BARCELONA (6 October 2013) – The extracellular-signal regulated kinase (ERK) pathway plays a role in multiple drug addictions and appears to modulate neuronal plasticity through epigenetic mechanisms, say French scientists. The discovery could pave the way for new therapeutic options for treating drug addictions, the researchers claim. "The molecular adaptations induced by ERK include epigenetic regulation that causes a stable response that modifies the structure of DNA, hence accounting for long-term neuronal plasticity," says Dr Jocelyne Caboche, from the Pierre-and-Marie-Curie ...

Many subalpine lakes may look beautiful and even pristine, but new evidence suggests they may also be contaminated with potentially hazardous plastics. Researchers say those tiny microplastics are likely finding their way into the food web through a wide range of freshwater invertebrates too. The findings, based on studies of Italy's Lake Garda and reported on October 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that the problem of plastic pollution isn't limited to the ocean. "Next to mechanical impairments of swallowed plastics mistaken as food, many ...

Seniors in long-term care facilities are at high risk of head injuries, with 37% of people experiencing head impact in falls, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Falls account for more than 60% of hospital stays for traumatic brain injury in seniors over age 65 years, and the incidence is increasing, especially in people over age 80. "Recent studies have documented a rapid increase among older adults in age-adjusted rates for fall-related head injuries, especially in the long-term care environment," writes Stephen Robinovitch, ...

Two gene alterations pair up to promote the growth of leukemia cells and their escape from anti-cancer drugs, according to a study in The Journal of Experimental Medicine. Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is an aggressive cancer of the blood that is often treated with a drug called Imatinib (a.k.a. Gleevec). Although Gleevec is highly effective, some cancer cells can develop resistance to the drug. The mechanism that drives this resistance is not completely understood, but there is evidence that cancerous stem-like cells are particularly resistant and help to perpetuate ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Most patients whose breast cancer has spread to their lymph nodes have most of the lymph nodes in their armpit area removed after chemotherapy to determine if any cancer remains. A study conducted through the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group and led by Judy Boughey, M.D., a breast surgeon at Mayo Clinic, shows that a less-invasive procedure known as sentinel lymph node surgery successfully identified whether cancer remained in lymph nodes in 91 percent of patients with node-positive breast cancer who received chemotherapy before their surgery. ...

A new study published by JAMA questions using the rate of postoperative blood clots as a hospital quality measure. The study is being released early online to coincide with the American College of Surgeons 2013 Annual Clinical Congress. The study examined whether surveillance bias (i.e., the greater the intensity of a search for a condition the greater likelihood it will be found) influences the reported rate of venous thromboembolism (VTE; blood clot). Venous thromboembolism, which includes deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE), is a common postoperative ...

Judy C. Boughey, M.D., Kelly K. Hunt, M.D., and colleagues for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology conducted a study to determine the false-negative rate of sentinel lymph node surgery in patients with node-positive breast cancer receiving chemotherapy before surgery. A false-negative is occurrence of negative test results in subjects known to have a disease for which an individual is being tested. The study, published by JAMA, is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Surgeons 2013 Annual Clinical Congress. Axillary ...

Emergency surgery and advanced cardiac disease are risk factors for major adverse cardiac events (MACE) after noncardiac surgery in patients with recent coronary stent implantation, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Surgeons 2013 Annual Clinical Congress. "Approximately 600,000 percutaneous coronary stent procedures are performed annually in the United States. Twelve to 23 percent of these patients undergo noncardiac surgery within 2 years of coronary stent placement," ...

Snake and eel bodies are elongated, slender and flexible in all three dimensions. This striking body plan has evolved many times independently in the more than 500 million years of vertebrate animals history. Based on the current state of knowledge, the extreme elongation of the body axis occurred in one of two ways: either through the elongation of the individual vertebrae of the vertebral column, which thus became longer, or through the development of additional vertebrae and associated muscle segments. Long body thanks to doubling of the vertebral arches A team of ...

Hercules, CA — October 7, 2013 — Since its introduction in 2011, Bio-Rad Laboratory's Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) technology has demonstrated the potential to be a transformative technology, particularly in clinical applications. At the second annual CHI Digital PCR Conference in San Diego, CA, Oct. 7–9, 2013, 12 scientists using Bio-Rad's Droplet Digital PCR systems will highlight ddPCR applications that have advanced their research. These researchers will share how ddPCR technology provides greater precision, reproducibility, and sensitivity than real-time PCR approaches ...

BARCELONA, SPAIN (7 October 2013) – Food addiction is not yet recognised as a mental disorder but certain obese individuals clearly display addictive-like behaviour towards food. To achieve a formal diagnostic status, 'food addiction' requires a stronger evidence base to support the claim that certain ingredients have addictive properties identical to addictive drugs of abuse. This topic is up for debate in the session, 'Binge eating obesity is a food addiction'. This year's fifth edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) recognises 'binge ...