Contact: Michael Bernstein m_bernstein@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6042 Michael Woods m_woods@acs.org 317-262-5907 (Indianapolis Press Center, Sept. 6-11) 202-872-6293 American Chemical Society 21st century vision toxicity testing and risk assessment for agrochemicals INDIANAPOLIS, Sept. 9, 2013 — How will emerging 21st century toxicity testing technologies impact agricultural products? How do they fit in the life cycle of discovery, regulatory registration and product defense or product stewardship? What's the ...

Study identifies fibroblast growth factor 18 as an ovarian cancer biomarker Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women and is often not detected until the later stages of disease, which contributes to poor prognosis. Biomarkers that can be used for early diagnosis and outcome have been identified; however, many of these have not been evaluated at the biological and clinical levels. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Birrer and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital identify fibroblast growth factor ...

Ovarian cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in women and is often not detected until the later stages of disease, which contributes to poor prognosis. Biomarkers that can be used for early diagnosis and outcome have been identified; however, many of these have not been evaluated at the biological and clinical levels. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Michael Birrer and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital identify fibroblast growth factor 18 (FGF18) as a predictive marker for poor overall survival in ovarian cancer patients. ...

Patients with type 2 diabetes have increased levels of circulating glucose and fatty acids, which lead to disease complications. In healthy individuals, β cells within pancreatic islets release insulin in response to glucose and incretins, which are gastrointestinal hormones. Coordination between β cells is predicted to be important for insulin release. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, David Hodson and colleagues at Imperial College London demonstrate that β cell-β cell interactions are important for insulin secretion in human ...

(TORONTO, Canada – Sept. 9, 2013) – Clinical researchers at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre have discovered why multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of the bone marrow, persistently escapes cure by an initially effective treatment that can keep the disease at bay for up to several years. The reason, explains research published online today in Cancer Cell, is intrinsic resistance found in immature progenitor cells that are the root cause of the disease – and relapse – says principal investigator Dr. Rodger Tiedemann, a hematologist specializing in multiple myeloma and ...

Barcelona, Spain: Collecting samples of exhaled breath from people at a high risk of lung cancer could be a cheap and non-invasive method of diagnosing the disease, according to new research. The findings will be presented today (9 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona. Current tests for lung cancer include blood and urine tests, followed by CT scans and chest radiographs. This new method could see people at a high risk of lung cancer receiving an initial breath test to quickly assess their symptoms. Previous research ...

Barcelona, Spain: People with severe asthma, who are often described as 'steroid-dependent', are actually less likely to respond to the treatment they depend on, when compared to people with mild asthma. The study, presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress in Barcelona today (9 September 2013), represents the first analysis of a cohort of patients from an unparalleled research project that will collect over 3 million samples from 300 children and 700 adults with severe and non-severe asthma, and without asthma. Although asthma is common, ...

Barcelona, Spain: The severity of sleep apnoea can independently predict the aggressiveness of malignant skin melanoma, according to a new study. The research, presented today (9 September 2013) at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Annual Congress, adds new evidence to a number of studies that have found a link between cancer and the sleep disorder. Previous studies have looked at a link between sleep apnoea and both mortality and incidence rates from cancer. Some experimental studies in mice have also shown that reduced oxygen levels in the blood, which is common ...

HEIDELBERG -- A preclinical study led by researchers in the United States has found that a new oral drug shows early promise for the treatment of muscular dystrophy. The results, which are published today in EMBO Molecular Medicine, show that VBP15 decreases inflammation in mice with symptoms similar to those found in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The authors found that the drug protects and strengthens muscle without the harsh side effects linked to current treatments with glucocorticoids such as prednisone. Duchenne muscular dystrophy results in severe ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A research team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has used a recently developed technology they call TSUNAMI to create the first animal model of the adult-onset version of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a devastating motor-neuron illness. The same team, led by CSHL Professor Adrian R. Krainer, Ph.D., and including scientists from California-based Isis Pharmaceuticals, as well as the University of Southern California and Stony Brook University, succeeded a year ago in using TSUNAMI to make a mouse model of the disease as it is manifest in ...

The water-soluble metabolite profile of human mesenchymal stem cells is known, but the lipid profile remains unclear. Haiyang Dai and colleagues from Shantou University Medical College used methanol-chloroform and perchloric acid to extract lipid-soluble metabolites and water-soluble metabolites, respectively. Furthermore, a dual phase extraction method using methanol-chloroform and water was used to obtain both water and lipid fractions simultaneously. Among the different extraction procedures, perchloric acid was more efficient in extracting water-soluble metabolites ...

Previous studies by Shaohua Gu and team from Shanghai Pudong New Area Zhoupu Hospital showed that rapamycin-induced autophagy decreased the rate of apoptosis, but the rate of apoptosis was increased after the autophagy inhibitor, 3-methyladenine, was used, indicating autophagy may be involved in mediating neuronal death in cerebral ischemia. A recent study reported by Gu et al showed that autophagic and lysosomal activity is increased in ischemic neurons, and the activation of autophagic and lysosomal pathways can provide nutrition and energy for the survival of ischemic ...

Following spinal cord injury, astrocyte proliferation and scar formation are the main factors inhibiting the regeneration and growth of spinal cord axons, leading to motor and sensory function loss below the level of spinal cord injury. Cell transplantation, bioengineering technology, drugs and other methods can reduce voids of injured spinal cord and suppress glial scar formation, but clinical application results show these methods used alone have no obvious effects. Liang Wu and colleagues from Capital Medical University used rat models of T8 spinal cord contusion, which ...

Renewable energy holds the promise of reducing carbon dioxide emissions. But there are times when solar and wind farms generate more electricity than is needed by consumers. Storing that surplus energy in batteries for later use seems like an obvious solution, but a new study from Stanford University suggests that might not always be the case. "We looked at batteries and other promising technologies for storing solar and wind energy on the electrical grid," said Charles Barnhart, the lead author of the study and a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford's Global Climate and ...

09 Sept 2013 - Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), in collaboration with their counterparts from Canada, Hong Kong and US, have discovered a protein mediator SON plays a critical role in the health and proper functioning of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). This finding was reported on 8th September 2013 in the advanced online issue of the prestigious science journal Nature Cell Biology. Correct expression of genes is essential for a cell to stay alive and to perform other cellular and physiological functions. During gene expression, DNA is first ...

The relationship between crop richness and predator-prey interactions as they relate to pest-natural enemy systems is a very important topic in ecology and greatly affects biological control services. Professor GE Feng and his group from State Key Laboratory of Integrated Management of Pest Insects and Rodents, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences set out to tackle this problem. After 4-years of field experiments, they have developed a novel experimental model system using microlandscape to examine resource concentration hypothesis and discovered the ecological ...

This news release is available in German. A major aim of today's neuroscience is to understand how an organism's nervous system processes sensory input and generates behavior. To achieve this goal, scientists must obtain detailed maps of how the nerve cells are wired up in the brain, as well as information on how these networks interact in real time. The organism many neuroscientists turn to in order to study brain function is a tiny, transparent worm found in rotting soil. The simple nematode C. elegans is equipped with just 302 neurons that are connected by ...

An international team of scientists led by the UK's John Innes Centre and including scientists from Australia, Japan, the US and France has perfected a way of watching genes move within a living plant cell. Using this technique scientists watched glowing spots, which marked the position of the genes, huddle together in the cold as the genes were switched "off". "The movement of genes within the nucleus, captured here using live imaging, seems to play a role in switching their activity on and off", said first author Stefanie Rosa from the John Innes Centre. "In our ...

You can't saw without producing sawdust – and that can be expensive if, for example, the "dust" comes from wafer manufacturing in the photovoltaic and semiconductor industries, where relatively high kerf loss has been accepted as an unavoidable, if highly regrettable, fact of life. But now scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg together with colleagues from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIRO have developed a saw wire that is set to effect dramatic reductions in kerf loss: in place ...

This news release is available in German. How does a classical temperature form in the quantum world? An experiment at the Vienna University of Technology has directly observed the emergence and the spreading of a temperature in a quantum system. Remarkably, the quantum properties are lost, even though the quantum system is completely isolated and not connected to the outside world. The experimental results are being published in this week's issue of "Nature Physics". Quantum and Classical Physics: From the Microscopic to the Macroscopic World The connection between ...

Heidelberg, 9 September 2013 – With only two weeks to go and almost a thousand participants registered, the preparations for The EMBO Meeting 2013 have reached their final stages. This year's conference takes place in Amsterdam from 21-24 September. Kai Simons will deliver the opening keynote lecture and explain how intricate changes in membrane structure can influence how cells work. In further keynote lectures, Hans Clevers will discuss how stem cells are involved in self-renewal and disease and Sir Michael Stratton will talk about how genetic changes contribute to ...

Biologists and physicists from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, found out that not all of the Southern Hemisphere humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) migrate towards the equator at the end of the Antarctic summer. Part of the population remains in Antarctic waters throughout the entire winter. The scientists report this in a current issue of scientific journal PLOS ONE. This surprising discovery based on underwater recordings from the Antarctic acoustic observatory PALAOA. PALAOA is located near the research base Neumayer ...

According to a study, young Chinese managers are unsatisfied with the career opportunities in international companies in their home country. "The promotion expectations of highly qualified Chinese employees are restricted by flat hierarchies and poor chances of permanent employment with which Western companies flexibly react to the needs of the globalised market", the sociologist Junchen Yan from Bielefeld explains. He will present the results of the study at the 32nd German Oriental Studies Conference (Deutscher Orientalistentag, DOT) in Münster in September. Owing to ...

An estimated 1.6 million smokers attempted to quit smoking because of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's "Tips From Former Smokers" national ad campaign, according to a study released by the CDC. As a result of the 2012 campaign, more than 200,000 Americans had quit smoking immediately following the three-month campaign, of which researchers estimated that more than 100,000 will likely quit smoking permanently. These results exceed the campaign's original goals of 500,000 quit attempts and 50,000 successful quits. The study surveyed thousands of adult smokers ...

New research to be presented at the 18th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2013) this week could result in a sea change in how to secure computations. The collaborative work between the University of Bristol and Aarhus University (Denmark) will be presented by Bristol PhD student Peter Scholl from the Department of Computer Science. The paper, entitled 'Practical covertly secure MPC for dishonest majority – or: Breaking the SPDZ limits', builds upon earlier joint work between Bristol and Aarhus and fills in the missing pieces of the jigsaw ...