The immune system plays a pivotal role in targeting cancer cells for destruction. However, tumor cells are smart and have developed ways to avoid immune detection. A collaborative team of researchers at Moffitt Cancer Center recently discovered a novel mechanism that lung cancer cells use to block detection by a type of immune cell called a natural killer cell (NK cell). NK cells find and destroy virally infected cells and also play an important role in detecting and killing tumor cells. However, tumors produce high amounts of a protein called Transforming Growth ...

Playing a science-based mobile gaming app for 25 minutes can reduce anxiety in stressed individuals, according to research published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The study suggests that "gamifying" a scientifically-supported intervention could offer measurable mental health and behavioral benefits for people with relatively high levels of anxiety. "Millions of people suffering from psychological distress fail to seek or receive mental health services. A key factor here is that many evidence-based treatments ...

Just a fifth of people with hearing problems wear a hearing aid, a study by The University of Manchester has found. The study, published in the journal Ear and Hearing, looked at the habits of 160,000 people in the UK aged 40 to 69 years. It found 10.7 per cent of adults had significant hearing problems when listening to speech in the presence of background noise - but only 2.1 per cent used a hearing aid. One in 10 middle aged adults had substantial hearing problems and were more likely to be from a working class or ethnic minority background. Dr Piers Dawes, from ...

An area of the canine brain associated with reward responds more strongly to the scents of familiar humans than it does to the scents of other humans, or even to those of familiar dogs. The journal Behavioural Processes published the results of the first brain-imaging study of dogs responding to biological odors. The research was led by Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University. "It's one thing when you come home and your dog sees you and jumps on you and licks you and knows that good things are about to happen," Berns says. "In our experiment, ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have analyzed 50 years' worth of hit songs to identify key themes that marketing professionals can use to craft advertisements that will resonate with audiences. "People are exposed to a barrage of advertisements and they often respond by tuning out those advertisements. We wanted to see what we could learn from hit songs to help advertisers break through all that clutter," says Dr. David Henard, a professor of marketing at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research. "We also wanted to see if there were ...

Rats' brains may remember odors they were exposed to while deeply anesthetized, suggests research in rats published in the April issue of Anesthesiology. Previous research has led to the belief that sensory information is received by the brain under general anesthesia but not perceived by it. These new findings suggest the brain not only receives sensory information, but also registers the information at the cellular level while anesthetized without behavioral reporting of the same information after recovering from anesthesia. In the study, rats were exposed to a ...

Researchers with the National Science Foundation-funded BICEP2 Collaboration today announced that their telescope in Antarctica has allowed them to collect what they believe is the first direct evidence for cosmic inflation. Inflation is the cataclysmic event in which, in a fleeting fraction of a second following the Big Bang, the infant universe expanded exponentially, stretching far beyond the view of the best telescopes. Modern astronomy is built around the theory that almost 14 billion years ago, the universe burst into existence in an extraordinary event that ...

VIDEO: Ben-Shahar describes research with fruit flies that shows messenger RNA plays an active as well as a passive role in the cell. In addition to encoding for a protein, it... Click here for more information. Our genome, we are taught, operates by sending instructions for the manufacture of proteins from DNA in the nucleus of the cell to the protein-synthesizing machinery in the cytoplasm. These instructions are conveyed by a type of molecule called messenger RNA (mRNA). Francis ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke engineers have devised a way to improve the efficiency of lithotripsy -- the demolition of kidney stones using focused shock waves. After decades of research, all it took was cutting a groove near the perimeter of the shock wave-focusing lens and changing its curvature. "I've spent more than 20 years investigating the physics and engineering aspects of shock wave lithotripsy," said Pei Zhong, the Anderson-Rupp Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University. "And now, thanks to the willingness of Siemens (a leading lithotripter ...

The team led by evolutionary and developmental biologist Ulrich Technau at the University of Vienna discovered that sea anemones display a genomic landscape with a complexity of regulatory elements similar to that of fruit flies or other animal model systems. This suggests, that this principle of gene regulation is already 600 million years old and dates back to the common ancestor of human, fly and sea anemone. On the other hand, sea anemones are more similar to plants rather to vertebrates or insects in their regulation of gene expression by short regulatory RNAs called ...

Bei Shi, Xianping Long, Ranzun Zhao, Zhijiang Liu, Dongmei Wang and Guanxue Xu, researchers at the First Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical College within the Guizhou Province of China, have reported an approach for improving the use of stem cells for improvement of infarcted heart function and damage to the arteries in the March 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine. They have discovered that mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) transfected with a recombinant adenovirus containing the human receptor activity-modifying protein 1 (hRAMP1) gene (EGFP-hRAMP1-MSCs) when ...

A consortium led by scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has conducted the largest survey yet of how information encoded in an animal genome is processed in different organs, stages of development, and environmental conditions. Their findings paint a new picture of how genes function in the nervous system and in response to environmental stress. They report their research this week in the Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature. The scientists studied the fruit fly, an important model organism ...

March 16, 2014, Shenzhen, China – In a collaborative study, researchers from Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, BGI, Shantou University Medical College and other institutions identified important alterations of tumor-associated genes and tumorigenic pathways in esophageal squamous cell cancer (ESCC), one of the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. The all-round work was published online today in the international journal Nature, providing a new eye-opening insight into developing novel biomarkers for therapeutic strategies of this ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (March 16, 2014) – For several years, a class of anti-diabetic drugs known as biguanides, has been associated with anti-cancer properties. A number of retrospective studies have shown that the widely used diabetes drug metformin can benefit some cancer patients. Despite this intriguing correlation, it has been unclear how metformin might exert its anti-cancer effects and, perhaps more importantly, in which patients. Now, Whitehead Institute scientists are beginning to unravel this mystery, identifying a major mitochondrial pathway that imbues cancer ...

UNSW scientists have developed a new evolutionary theory on why consuming a diet that is very low in nutrients extends lifespan in laboratory animals - research that could hold clues to promoting healthier ageing in humans. Scientists have known for decades that severely restricted food intake reduces the incidence of diseases of old age, such as cancer, and increases lifespan. "This effect has been demonstrated in laboratories around the world, in species ranging from yeast to flies to mice. There is also some evidence that it occurs in primates," says lead author, Dr ...

Bottom Line: The use of electronic media, such as watching television, using computers and playing electronic games, was associated with poorer well-being in children. Author: Trina Hinkley, Ph.D., of Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues. Background: Using electronic media can be a sedentary behavior and sedentary behavior is associated with adverse health outcomes and may be detrimental at a very young age. How the Study Was Conducted: The authors used data from the European Identification and Prevention of Dietary- and Lifestyle-Induced Health ...

Bottom Line: A diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in older adults was associated with increased risk for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), especially MCI of skills other than memory, and the greatest risk was among patients who had COPD for more than five years. Author: Balwinder Singh, M.D., M.S., of the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn., and colleagues. Background: COPD is an irreversible limitation of airflow into the lungs, usually caused by smoking. More than 13.5 million adults 25 years or older in the U.S. have COPD. Previous research has suggested ...

SAN DIEGO, Calif. (March 17, 2014)—Whenever fishing vessels harvest fish, other animals can be accidentally caught or entangled in fishing gear as bycatch. Numerous strategies exist to prevent bycatch, but data have been lacking on the global scale of this issue. A new in-depth analysis of global bycatch data provides fisheries and the conservation community with the best information yet to help mitigate the ecological damage of bycatch and helps identify where mitigation measures are most needed. "When we talk about fisheries' catch, we're talking about what fishers are ...

University of Adelaide research has provided new hope for the early detection of stomach cancer with the identification of four new biomarkers in the blood of human cancer patients. Stomach or gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the world and the second leading cause of death due to cancer. "Stomach cancer is typically without symptoms in the early stages so most cancers are not diagnosed until the later stages, and the survival rates are therefore low," says Associate Professor Peter Hoffmann, project leader and Director of the University's Adelaide ...

Did the Polynesians beat Columbus to South America? Not according to the tale of migration uncovered by analysis of ancient DNA from chicken bones recovered in archaeological digs across the Pacific. The ancient DNA has been used to study the origins and dispersal of ancestral Polynesian chickens, reconstructing the early migrations of people and the animals they carried with them. The study, led by the University of Adelaide's Australian Centre for Ancient DNA (ACAD) and published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, reveals that previous claims ...

To celebrate its 24th year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a beautiful new image of part of NGC 2174, also known as the Monkey Head Nebula. This colourful region is filled with young stars embedded within bright wisps of cosmic gas and dust. NGC 2174 lies about 6400 light-years away in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Hubble previously viewed this part of the sky back in 2001, creating a stunning image released in 2011, and the space telescope has now revisited the region to celebrate its 24th year of operation. Nebulae are a favourite ...

Farmers in Africa can increase their food production if they avoid over dependence on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and practice agricultural intensification - growing more food on the same amount of land – using natural and resource-conserving approaches such as agroforestry. According to scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), crop production in Africa is seriously hampered by the degradation of soil fertility, water and biodiversity resources. Currently, yields for important cereals such as maize have stagnated at 1 tone per hectare. Climate change ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have found a way to reduce the coercivity of nickel ferrite (NFO) thin films by as much as 80 percent by patterning the surface of the material, opening the door to more energy efficient high-frequency electronics, such as sensors, microwave devices and antennas. "This technique reduces coercivity, which will allow devices to operate more efficiently, reducing energy use and improving device performance," says Goran Rasic, a Ph.D. student at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the work. "We did this work on NFO ...

The body clock's natural rhythm could be utilized to improve current therapies to delay the onset of chronic lung diseases. Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a rhythmic defence pathway in the lung controlled by our body clocks, which is essential to combat daily exposure to toxins and pollutants. Internal biological timers (circadian clocks) are found in almost all living things driving diverse processes such as sleep/wake cycles in humans to leaf movement in plants. In mammals including humans, circadian clocks are found in most cells and ...

New research in Geophysical Research Letters examines earthquake swarms caused by mounting volcanic pressure which may signal an imminent eruption. The research team studied Augustine Volcano in Alaska which erupted in 2006 and found that precursory earthquakes were caused by a block in the lava flow. 36 hours before the first magmatic explosions, a swarm of 54 earthquakes was detected across the 13-station seismic network on Augustine Island. By analyzing the resulting seismic waves, the authors found that the earthquakes were being triggered from sources within the ...