New York, September 27, 2013 -- Clinical trial design for new cancer therapies has historically been focused on the tissue of origin of a tumor, but a paper from researchers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center published on September 26 in Nature Genetics supports a new approach: one based on the genomic signature of a tumor rather than the tissue of origin in the body. It is well known that the emergence of cancer is a multi-step process, but because of the efforts of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), funded by the US National Institutes of Health, and other large-scale ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (September 26, 2013) - Blurred images that are unidentifiable as still pictures become understandable once the images are set in motion. That's because of a phenomenon called "optic flow"—which may be especially relevant as a source of visual information in people with low vision, reports a study 'With an Eye to Low Vision: Optic Flow Enables Perception Despite Image Blur' (published online ahead of print, September 3, 2013) in the October issue of Optometry and Vision Science official journal of the American Academy of Optometry. The journal is published ...

Washington, DC (September 26, 2013) — The short-term risks associated with kidney donation are relatively modest, but because many donors have additional medical conditions, it is important to evaluate their ongoing health. That's the conclusion of a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (CJASN). In more than a third of kidney transplantations performed in the United States, the transplanted organs come from live donors. Research suggests that there are minimal health consequences for donors, but only a few ...

Troy, N.Y. – The first scoop of soil analyzed by the analytical suite in the belly of NASA's Curiosity rover reveals that fine materials on the surface of the planet contain several percent water by weight. The results were published today in Science as one article in a five-paper special section on the Curiosity mission. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Dean of Science Laurie Leshin is the study's lead author. "One of the most exciting results from this very first solid sample ingested by Curiosity is the high percentage of water in the soil," said Leshin. "About 2 ...

Singapore, 27 September 2013 – Species living in rainforest fragments could be far more likely to disappear than was previously thought, says an international team of scientists. In a study spanning two decades, the researchers witnessed the near-complete extinction of native small mammals on forest islands created by a large hydroelectric reservoir in Thailand. "It was like ecological Armageddon," said Luke Gibson from the National University of Singapore, who led the study. "Nobody imagined we'd see such catastrophic local extinctions." The study, just published ...

Cancer encompasses a complex group of diseases traditionally defined by where in the body it originates, as in lung cancer or colon cancer. This framework for studying and treating cancer has made sense for generations, but molecular analysis now shows that cancers of different organs have many shared features, while cancers from the same organ or tissue are often quite distinct. The Pan-Cancer Initiative, a major effort to analyze the molecular aberrations in cancer cells across a range of tumor types, has yielded an abundance of new findings reported in 18 forthcoming ...

Benzathine penicillin G (BPG) is the most essential antibiotic for the treatment and prevention of group A streptococcal infections associated with rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease. Yet while some countries such as South Africa and Brazil have stable supplies, most countries with a high RHD burden often suffer interruptions in supply and also have quality control issues. The problems around supply of this drug are discussed in one of the papers of the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation. The paper is by Dr Rosemary Wyber, ...

As this year's World Heart Day approaches (Sunday September 29), focus is returning to a neglected and entirely preventable heart disease that largely affects the world's youngest and poorest populations: rheumatic heart disease (RHD). To highlight this long-neglected condition, Global Heart, the journal of The World Heart Federation (WHF) is publishing a special issue dedicated to RHD. The World Heart Federation views the publication of the special issue of Global Heart as a vital step in its target of reducing global RHD deaths in under 25s by 25% by 2025. Reducing ...

Without a huge improvement in living conditions, a cure, or a vaccine, rheumatic heart disease (RHD) will continue to blight low-income and middle-income countries. Raising community awareness of the condition, emphasising that untreated sore throat caused by group A streptococcal (GAS) infection can lead to acute rheumatic fever (ARF)/RHD, is a huge part of the battle. The issues around advocacy and awareness are discussed in a paper in the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, written by Dr Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town ...

A paper in the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, analyses the burden of disease and suggests that numbers published to date (ranging from at least 233,000 deaths per year upwards) could be substantial underestimates for a variety of reasons, most commonly lack of high quality (or in some cases any) data from high-prevalence countries and regions. The paper is by Dr Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa and Dr Andrew Steer, Centre for International Child Health ...

Diagnosing and treating sore (strep) throat (primary prevention) in children and adolescents to prevent such cases developing into acute rheumatic fever (ARF) and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) should be a cornerstone in any overall RHD strategy. The issues around primary prevention are discussed in one of the papers in the RHD special issue of Global Heart (the Journal of the World Heart Federation) by authors Dr Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa, and Dr Ganesan Karthikeyan, All India Institute ...

Mortality rates in the first 90 days following hip replacement surgery have halved, according to a study led by the University of Bristol on behalf of the National Joint Registry for England, Wales and Northern Ireland (NJR) and published in The Lancet. A team of researchers led by Professor Ashley Blom from the University of Bristol have analysed data on death after hip replacement for the NJR as one of a programme of in-depth studies. The researchers from Bristol, Oxford, East Anglia and Exeter studied 409,000 patients who had hip replacements for osteoarthritis ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The first rock that scientists analyzed on Mars with a pair of chemical instruments aboard the Curiosity rover turned out to be a doozy – a pyramid-shaped volcanic rock called a "mugearite" that is unlike any other Martian igneous rock ever found. Dubbed "Jake_M" – after Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer Jake Matijevic – the rock is similar to mugearites found on Earth, typically on ocean islands and in continental rifts. The process through which these rocks form often suggests the presence of water deep below the surface, according to Martin Fisk, ...

Imagine mucus -- which most people find unpleasant -- actually helping your body maintain its equilibrium, prevent inflammation, and reduce food allergy problems. Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai's Immunology Institute foresee a day when mucus could be manufactured and given to sick people to help them fight inflammation and increase immunity. For the first time ever, they report that mucus in the large intestine provides a valuable anti-inflammatory and self-regulating immune function. In fact, they propose that mucus may one day prove valuable ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Ceramics are not known for their flexibility: they tend to crack under stress. But researchers from MIT and Singapore have just found a way around that problem -- for very tiny objects, at least. The team has developed a way of making minuscule ceramic objects that are not only flexible, but also have a "memory" for shape: When bent and then heated, they return to their original shapes. The surprising discovery is reported this week in the journal Science, in a paper by MIT graduate student Alan Lai, professor Christopher Schuh, and two collaborators ...

How using echocardiography is increasing detection rates of rheumatic heart disease (RHD) many-fold is the subject of one of the papers in the RHD special issue of Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart Federation, and written by Dr Anita Saxena, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India; Dr Liesl Zühlke, University of Cape Town and Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa; and Dr Nigel Wilson, Starship Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand. In 2012, the World Heart Federation introduced new guidelines for diagnosis of RHD using ...

Assessing the risk posed to aquatic organisms by the discharge of certain steroids and pharmaceutical products into waterways is often based on a belief that as the compounds degrade, the ecological risks naturally decline. But there's growing sentiment that once in the environment, some of these bioactive organic compounds may transform in a way that makes their presumed impact less certain. A new study led by the University of Iowa and published online Thursday in the journal Science found this was the case with the anabolic steroid trenbolone acetate and two other ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Sixty years ago scientists could electrically stimulate a region of a mouse's brain causing the mouse to eat, whether hungry or not. Now researchers from UNC School of Medicine have pinpointed the precise cellular connections responsible for triggering that behavior. The finding, published September 27 in the journal Science, lends insight into a cause for obesity and could lead to treatments for anorexia, bulimia nervosa, and binge eating disorder -- the most prevalent eating disorder in the United States. "The study underscores that obesity and ...

Researchers at Institut Hospital del Mar d'Investigacions Mèdiques (IMIM) in Barcelona, in collaboration with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York and other U.S. Institutions, have found that intestinal mucus not only acts as a physical barrier against commensal bacteria and dietary antigens, but also prevents the onset of inflammatory reactions against these agents. This fundamental property of mucus was unknown until now and its discovery could potentially improve the life of people suffering from inflammatory bowel disease. Mucus is a colloidal gel ...

Drexel University researchers are continuing to expand the capabilities and functionalities of a family of two-dimensional materials they discovered that are as thin as a single atom, but have the potential to store massive amounts of energy. Their latest achievement has pushed the materials storage capacities to new levels while also allowing for their use in flexible devices. About three years ago, Dr. Michel W. Barsoum and Dr. Yury Gogotsi, professors in Drexel's College of Engineering, discovered atomically thin, two-dimensional materials -similar to graphene- that ...

Scientists routinely seek to reprogram bacteria to produce proteins for drugs, biofuels and more, but they have struggled to get those bugs to follow orders. But a hidden feature of the genetic code, it turns out, could get bugs with the program. The feature controls how much of the desired protein bacteria produce, a team from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University reported in the September 26 online issue of Science. The findings could be a boon for biotechnologists, and they could help synthetic biologists reprogram bacteria ...

Solar storms — powerful eruptions of solar material and magnetic fields into interplanetary space — can cause what is known as "space weather" near Earth, resulting in hazards that range from interference with communications systems and GPS errors to extensive power blackouts and the complete failure of critical satellites. New research published today increases our understanding of Earth's space environment and how space weather develops. Some of the energy emitted by the sun during solar storms is temporarily stored in Earth's stretched and compressed magnetic ...

New NOAA-led research on tagged humpback whales in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary reveals a variety of previously unknown feeding techniques along the seafloor. Rather than a single bottom feeding behavior, the whales show three distinct feeding approaches: simple side-rolls, side-roll inversions, and repetitive scooping. A recently published paper, in the journal Marine Mammal Science, indicates that bottom side-roll techniques are common in Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary and the Great South Channel study area, a deep-water passage between Nantucket, ...

MADISON – For astrophysicists, the interplay of hydrogen — the most common molecule in the universe — and the vast clouds of dust that fill the voids of interstellar space has been an intractable puzzle of stellar evolution. The dust, astronomers believe, is a key phase in the life cycle of stars, which are formed in dusty nurseries throughout the cosmos. But how the dust interacts with hydrogen and is oriented by the magnetic fields in deep space has proved a six-decade-long theoretical challenge. Now, an international team of astronomers reports key observations that ...

When termites munch on wood, the small bits are delivered to feed a community of unique microbes living in their guts, and in a complex process involving multiple steps, these microbes turn the hard, fibrous material into a nutritious meal for the termite host. One key step uses hydrogen to convert carbon dioxide into organic carbon—a process called acetogenesis—but little is known about which gut bacteria play specific roles in the process. Utilizing a variety of experimental techniques, researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now discovered ...