HOUSTON - MET protein levels correlate strongly with epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) phenotype, a treatment-resistant type of colorectal cancer and may be used as a surrogate biomarker, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study results, which compared MET protein expression with protein/gene expression of EMT markers and evaluated impact on survival, were released today at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. "When the epithelial cells that line the colon become cancerous, some of them ...

New research provides critical insights into how normal breast precursor cells may be genetically vulnerable to develop into cancer. The research is published June 4th in the inaugural issue of Stem Cell Reports, an open-access journal from the International Society of Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) published by Cell Press. Scientists discovered that a particular class of normal breast precursor cells have extremely short chromosome ends (known as telomeres). As a result, these cells would be expected to be prone to acquiring mutations that lead to cancer if they managed to ...

Boston, Mass..— According to researchers at Boston Children's Hospital, stem cells that strongly express a gene called WNT3 are biased to develop into cells and tissues including pancreas, liver and bladder. This discovery suggests that other genes may serve as biomarkers for selecting stem cells with a preference for turning into different tissue types. Such markers would make it easier for stem cell scientists to choose the right cell line to start with when generating specific tissues for study. The researchers, led by Wei Jiang, PhD, and Yi Zhang, PhD, of the Program ...

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. (June 4, 2013) – More evidence has surfaced that supports the war on smoking, especially if smokers have an infant in their household. A study published today in the June issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI), found that infants with a family history of allergic disease with lower respiratory tract infections, who are exposed to secondhand smoke are at risk for longer hospital stays. An estimated 20 to 30 percent of otherwise healthy infants develop ...

Stanford University scientists have dramatically improved the performance of lithium-ion batteries by creating novel electrodes made of silicon and conducting polymer hydrogel, a spongy material similar to that used in contact lenses and other household products. Writing in the June 4 edition of the journal Nature Communications, the scientists describe a new technique for producing low-cost, silicon-based batteries with potential applications for a wide range of electrical devices. "Developing rechargeable lithium-ion batteries with high energy density and long cycle ...

The chemical secrets of a concrete Roman breakwater that has spent the last 2,000 years submerged in the Mediterranean Sea have been uncovered by an international team of researchers led by Paulo Monteiro of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Analysis of samples provided by team member Marie Jackson pinpointed why the best Roman concrete was superior to most modern concrete in durability, why its manufacture was less environmentally ...

Despite the clear arguments for controlling parasitic infections, we know surprisingly little about the developmental processes in parasitic nematodes. A good model system for research is provided by Oesophagostomum dentatum, a roundworm which infects the large intestines of pigs, slowing the animals' growth and leading to significant economic losses. A number of chemicals are available to help keep the parasite in check but the worms are growing increasingly resistant to their use and so there is a substantial need for new methods of treatment. From eggs to parasites The ...

The moth genus Monema is represented by medium-sized yellowish species. The genus belongs to the Limacodidae family also known as the slug moths due to the distinct resemblance of their caterpillars to some slug species. Some people know this family as the cup moths, the name derived from the peculiar looking, hard shell cocoon they form. A recent study of the representatives of the Monema genus in China records 4 species and a subspecies present in the country, one of which is newly described to science. The new species has the characteristic yellow coloration for ...

A research team from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the University of Edinburgh and IBM's TJ Watson Research Center has revealed a major breakthrough in the modelling of water that could shed light on its mysterious properties. Water is one of the most common and extensively studied substances on earth. It is vital for all known forms of life but its unique behaviour has yet to be explained in terms of the properties of individual molecules. Water derives many of its signature features from a combination of properties at the molecular level such as high polarizability, ...

The development of structured synthetic materials with unusual electromagnetic properties, so-called metamaterials, promises to provide access to special physical effects of great technological interest. Metamaterials have already been fabricated that have a negative refractive index for electromagnetic waves – bending them in the opposite sense to light waves entering water, for instance – which opens up completely novel opportunities for the manipulation of light. One of these makes it possible, in principle, to create cloaking devices that seem to make objects disappear. ...

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have found a more efficient way to dry products for food manufacture, using tiny, hot bubbles. Instead of boiling a product to evaporate water - the most common technique used by industry - the Sheffield team injected hot microbubbles through the liquid, causing the water to evaporate without boiling. Professor Will Zimmerman, who led the study, explains: "We've applied this principle, called 'cold boiling' to separate water from methanol. Although conventional bubbles have been used in evaporation processes before, they still ...

In animal cells, DNA molecules are normally restricted to the cell nucleus and the mitochondria. When DNA appears outside these organelles – in the so-called cytosol - it most probably originates from a bacterial pathogen or a DNA virus. This is why cytosolic DNA triggers a strong response by the innate immune system. However, various types of insult can also lead to the release into the cytosol of the cell's own DNA. In this case, the resulting immune response may precipitate an autoimmune disease. The innate immune system is the body's first line of defense against ...

Researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that a lake on an island off the coast of Queensland, Australia, has been relatively untouched by changes in climate for the past 7000 years, and has so far also resisted the impact of humans. Blue Lake, one of the largest lakes on North Stradbroke Island, southeast of Brisbane, has been the focus of research examining the lake's response to environmental change over time. Researchers studied the lake's water discharge, water quality and comparisons of historical photos over the past 117 years, as well as fossil pollen ...

New research from wildlife ecologists at Michigan Technological University indicates that white-tailed deer may be making the soil in their preferred winter homes unfit to grow the very trees that protect them there. Bryan Murray, a PhD candidate at Michigan Tech, and two faculty members, Professor Christopher Webster and Assistant Professor Joseph Bump, studied the effects on soil of the nitrogen-rich waste that white-tailed deer leave among stands of eastern hemlock, which are among their favorite wintering grounds in the harsh, snowy climate of northern Michigan. ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- In 2010, in the journal Nature, a pair of physicists at the Santa Fe Institute showed that when the population of a city doubles, economic productivity goes up by an average of 130 percent. Not only does total productivity increase with increased population, but so does per-capita productivity. In the latest issue of Nature Communications, researchers from the MIT Media Laboratory's Human Dynamics Lab propose a new explanation for that "superlinear scaling": Increases in urban population density give residents greater opportunity for face-to-face interaction. The ...

To increase their share of leadership positions, women are expected to tick a range of boxes – usually demonstrating improved negotiation skills, networking strengths and the ability to develop a strategic career ladder. "But even these skills are not enough," maintains Professor Isabell Welpe of TUM's Chair for Strategy and Organization. "They ignore the fact that there are stereotypes that on a subconscious level play a decisive role in the assessment of high achievers. Leaders should be assertive, dominant and hard-lined; women are seen as mediators, friendly, social." Economic ...

New research from McMaster University suggests women can remember faces better than men, in part because they spend more time studying features without even knowing it, and a technique researchers say can help improve anyone's memories. The findings help to answer long-standing questions about why some people can remember faces easily while others quickly forget someone they've just met. "The way we move our eyes across a new individual's face affects our ability to recognize that individual later," explains Jennifer Heisz, a research fellow at the Rotman Institute ...

If people are unable to perceive their own errors as they complete a routine, simple task, their skill will decline over time, Johns Hopkins researchers have found — but not for the reasons scientists assumed. The researchers report that the human brain does not passively forget our good techniques, but chooses to put aside what it has learned. The term "motor memories" may conjure images of childhood road trips, but in fact it refers to the reason why we're able to smoothly perform everyday physical tasks. The amount of force needed to lift an empty glass versus a full ...

(INDIANAPOLIS) A cross-disciplinary collaboration of researchers in the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) explores the neural synchrony between circuits in the brain and their behavior under simulated drug addiction. The two-year study could have broad implications for treating addiction and understanding brain function in conditions such as Parkinson's disease. Advanced mathematical models coupled with extensive laboratory testing revealed recurrent stimulant injections in rodents resulted in neural circuits that could easily ...

As antiretroviral drugs that treat HIV have become more commonplace, the incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma, a type of cancer linked to AIDS, has decreased in the United States. The disease, however, remains prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, where poor access to medical care and lab tests only compound the problem. Now, Cornell University engineers have created a new smartphone-based system, consisting of a plug-in optical accessory and disposable microfluidic chips, for in-the-field detection of the herpes virus that causes Kaposi's. "The accessory provides an ultraportable ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., – June 3, 2013 – Scientists, like Buddhist monks and Zen masters, have known for years that meditation can reduce anxiety, but not how. Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, however, have succeeded in identifying the brain functions involved. "Although we've known that meditation can reduce anxiety, we hadn't identified the specific brain mechanisms involved in relieving anxiety in healthy individuals," said Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., postdoctoral research fellow in neurobiology and anatomy at Wake Forest Baptist and lead author of the study. ...

Jerusalem, June 4, 2013 -- The first amphibian to have been officially declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been rediscovered in the north of Israel after some 60 years and turns out to be a unique "living fossil," without close relatives among other living frogs. The Hula painted frog was catalogued within the Discoglossus group when it was first discovered in the Hula Valley of Israel in the early 1940s. The frog was thought to have disappeared following the drying up of the Hula Lake at the end of the 1950s, and was declared ...

From its orbit around the Earth, the NASA-NOAA Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite or Suomi NPP satellite, captured a night-time image of California's Powerhouse Fire. The Suomi NPP satellite carries an instrument so sensitive to low light levels that it can detect wildfires in the middle of the night. The Day/Night band on Suomi/NPP produces Night-Time visible imagery using illumination from natural (the moon, forest fires) and man-made sources (city lights, gas flares). This image was taken during the early morning hours of June 3, 2013. Suomi NPP ...

WASHINGTON, June 4, 2013—It's not easy going green. For home lighting applications, organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) hold the promise of being both environmentally friendly and versatile. Though not as efficient as regular light-emitting diodes (LEDs), they offer a wider range of material choices and are more energy efficient than traditional lights. OLEDs can also be applied to flexible surfaces, which may lead to lights or television displays that can be rolled up and stowed in a pocket. A promising line of research involves combining the OLEDs with inorganic ...

A new study shows compelling evidence that associations between cognitive ability and cortical grey matter in old age can largely be accounted for by cognitive ability in childhood. The joint study by the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital, The Neuro, McGill University and the University of Edinburgh, UK was published today, June 4 in Molecular Psychiatry. It has long been thought that preserving brain cortical thickness was a determining factor in superior cognitive ability in old age; however the rare availability of childhood cognitive scores reveals other ...