When facing a flood, ants build rafts and use both the buoyancy of the brood and the recovery ability of workers to minimize injury or death, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on February 19, 2014 by Jessica Purcell from University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and colleagues. Furthermore, the queen ant is placed in the middle and protected on all sides by the rafting ants. When put in harm's way, social animals are often able to work together to enhance the survival and welfare of the group. Ants living on flood plains are known to link to together to create rafts ...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common primary malignant adult brain tumor and, despite treatment advances in recent years, the average survival of patients enrolled in clinical trials is less than 16 months with few patients living beyond five years. GBM tumors are characterized by angiogenesis — the formation of new blood vessels that support tumor growth stimulated by the GBM-produced vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A). Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets VEGF-A production to block the growth of tumor-derived blood vessels. "Clinical trials evaluating ...

HOUSTON — The angiogenesis inhibitor bevacizumab (Avastin) failed to increase overall survival (OS) or statistically significant progression-free survival (PFS) for glioblastoma patients in the frontline setting, according to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine, and was first presented on the plenary session of the American Society of Clinical Oncology 2013 Annual Meeting by Mark Gilbert, M.D., professor in MD Anderson's Department of Neuro-Oncology. Glioblastoma is ...

BALTIMORE – February 19, 2014. Adding bevacizumab (Avastin) to standard chemotherapy and radiation treatment does not improve survival for patients newly diagnosed with the often deadly brain cancer glioblastoma, researchers report in the Feb. 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "We didn't see an improvement in overall survival or a statistically significant increase in progression-free survival, as defined in the context of this trial," says the study's senior author, Minesh P. Mehta, M.B., Ch.B., Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Maryland ...

Researchers at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California, San Diego, have developed software that greatly expands the types of multi-scale QM/MM (mixed quantum and molecular mechanical) simulations of complex chemical systems that scientists can use to design new drugs, better chemicals, or improved enzymes for biofuels production. A paper outlining the research, titled 'An Extensible Interface for QM/MM Molecular Dynamics Simulations with AMBER' and conducted by members of the Walker Molecular Dynamics Lab (WMD) at SDSC, was featured on the cover ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 19, 2014 -- Life can be messy at all scales, requiring different organizational strategies -- from cleaning the house, to removing damaged or expired cells from the body to avoid cancer progression. In a messy house, people use computers to manage paper and photo clutter; companies use computer systems to track their inventory. Now a team of researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., is taking a similar approach to cell-molecular inventory control for cancer. They have created computer models, using their programming framework (PySB), ...

PHILADELPHIA – A new study provides evidence for what many people who experience headache have long suspected—having more stress in your life leads to more headaches. The study released today will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 26 to May 3, 2014. For the study, 5,159 people age 21 to 71 in the general population were surveyed about their stress levels and headaches four times a year for two years. Participants stated how many headaches they had per month and rated their stress level on a scale of zero to ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Emergency rooms are less likely to transfer critically injured patients to trauma centers if they have health insurance, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The counterintuitive finding suggests that insured patients are more at risk for receiving sub-optimal trauma care than uninsured patients are. Although a majority of severely injured trauma patients are initially taken to trauma centers, at least one-third are taken to non-trauma centers. In these cases, emergency room doctors must assess the ...

A reduced risk of cervical lesions among Danish girls and women at the population level is associated with use of a quadrivalent HPV vaccine after only six years, according to a new study published February 19 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Two HPV vaccines are currently available and have proven to be highly effective against HPV16/18-associated cervical cancer. One of these vaccines, a quadrivalent vaccine, was licensed in Denmark in 2006, and it was subsequently incorporated into general childhood vaccination programs for girls free of charge and ...

Although the time and cost of sequencing an entire human genome has plummeted, analyzing the resulting three billion base pairs of genetic information from a single genome can take many months. In the journal Bioinformatics, however, a University of Chicago-based team—working with Beagle, one of the world's fastest supercomputers devoted to life sciences—reports that genome analysis can be radically accelerated. This computer, based at Argonne National Laboratory, is able to analyze 240 full genomes in about two days. "This is a resource that can change patient management ...

DOWNERS GROVE, Ill. – February 19, 2014 – New research shows that the addition of confocal laser endomicroscopy to high-definition white-light endoscopy enables improved real-time endoscopic diagnosis of Barrett's esophagus dysplasia (neoplastic tissue) by using targeted biopsies of abnormal mucosa to reduce unnecessary mucosal biopsies and potentially reduce costs. It may also positively influence patient care by changing the plan for immediate endoscopic management. The study appears in the February issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific ...

VIDEO: Zoom into the cloudy heart of an active galaxy. This animation shows an artist's rendition of the cloudy structure revealed by a study of data from NASA's Rossi X-Ray Timing... Click here for more information. Picture a single cloud large enough to span the solar system from the sun to beyond Pluto's orbit. Now imagine many such clouds orbiting in a vast ring at the heart of a distant galaxy, occasionally dimming the X-ray light produced by the galaxy's monster black ...

For the first time, an international team of astrophysicists, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists, have unraveled how stars blow up in supernova explosions. Using NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) – a high-energy X-ray observatory - the international collaboration created the first-ever map of radioactive material in a supernova remnant, named Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short. The findings reveal how shock waves likely rip apart massive dying stars, and ultimately end their lives. A supernova is the cataclysmic death of a ...

The final results from an international clinical trial involving nearly 2,000 patients with Crohn's disease support the use of a new management strategy referred to as accelerated step-care as a best practice for the care of active Crohn's disease. The REACT (Randomized Evaluation of an Algorithm for Crohn's Treatment) study, led by Robarts Clinical Trials at Western University (London, Canada) provides valuable new insights for community gastroenterologists which should benefit patients. The results of the study will be presented at the European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Feb. 19, 2014 -- Using a new microscopy method, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory can image and measure electrochemical processes in batteries in real time and at nanoscale resolution. Scientists at ORNL used a miniature electrochemical liquid cell that is placed in a transmission electron microscope to study an enigmatic phenomenon in lithium-ion batteries called the solid electrolyte interphase, or SEI, as described in a study published in Chemical Communications. The SEI is a nanometer-scale film that forms ...

HOUSTON – (Feb. 19, 2014) – Many Texans were struggling to pay for basic health services on the eve of the launch of the Affordable Care Act's Health Insurance Marketplace, according to a report released today by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and the Episcopal Health Foundation. The report also found that even those with health insurance reported dissatisfaction with the cost and availability of services. Most Texans expect more of the same in 2014. The Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS)-Texas report is based on the HRMS, a national project that ...

Several scientists, including one at Simon Fraser University, have made a discovery that strongly links a little understood molecule, which is similar to DNA, to cancer and cancer survival. EMBO Reports, a life sciences journal published by the European Molecular Biology Organization, has just published online the scientists' findings about small non-coding RNAs. While RNA is known to be key to our cells' successful creation of proteins, the role of small non-coding RNAs, a newly discovered cousin of the former, has eluded scientific understanding for the most part. ...

NEW YORK, February 19, 2014 — Investigators from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have reported more encouraging news about one of the most exciting methods of cancer treatment today. The largest clinical study ever conducted to date of patients with advanced leukemia found that 88 percent achieved complete remissions after being treated with genetically modified versions of their own immune cells. The results were published today in Science Translational Medicine. "These extraordinary results demonstrate that cell therapy is a powerful treatment for patients who ...

A new study led by City College of New York psychologist Margaret Rosario found that youths of same-sex orientation are more likely to engage in behaviors associated with cancer risk than heterosexuals. The peer-reviewed findings appear in the February 2014 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Titled "Sexual Orientation Disparities in Cancer-Related Risk Behaviors of Tobacco, Alcohol, Sexual Behaviors, and Diet and Physical Activity: Pooled Youth Risk Behavior Surveys," the study pooled YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Survey) data from 2005 and 2007. The YRBS is ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu) — A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and Russian Academy of Science have demonstrated a new type of holographic memory device that could provide unprecedented data storage capacity and data processing capabilities in electronic devices. The new type of memory device uses spin waves – a collective oscillation of spins in magnetic materials – instead of the optical beams. Spin waves are advantageous because spin wave devices are compatible with the conventional electronic ...

Philadelphia, PA—Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by research groups all over the world. Data from these many and various sources results in different climate projections; hence, the need arises to combine information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates. In a paper published last December in the SIAM Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, authors Matthew Heaton, Tamara Greasby, and Stephan Sain propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information ...

Seeing is believing, but smellizing – a new term for prompting consumers to imagine the smell of a product – could be the next step toward more effective advertising. Researchers came to this conclusion through four studies of products most of us would like to smellize: cookies and cake. Professor of Marketing Maureen Morrin of Temple University's Fox School of Business co-authored Smellizing Cookies and Salivating: A Focus on Olfactory Imagery to examine the impact imagining what a food smells like would have on consumer behavior. "Before we started this project, ...

WACO, Texas (Feb. 18, 2014)-- Baylor University researchers, in collaboration with an international team of scientists, have discovered definitive evidence of the environment inhabited by the early ape Proconsul on Rusinga Island, Kenya. The groundbreaking discovery provides additional information that will help scientists understand and interpret the connection between habitat preferences and the early diversification of the ape-human lineage. Their research findings--published this month in Nature Communications--demonstrate that Proconsul and its primate relative Dendropithecus ...

Ottawa, February, 19, 2014—In the world of science, one of the most exciting things a researcher can do is pin down an answer to a widely asked question. This experience came early for Carleton University graduate Thomas Cullen, who made a discovery about pinnipeds—the suborder that makes up seals, sea lions and walruses—while doing research for his Master's degree under the supervision of Canadian Museum of Nature palaeontologist Dr. Natalia Rybczynski. His discovery, published the journal Evolution, relates to sexual dimorphism (a large variance in size between males ...

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 19, 2014 -- Proteins are the workhorses of the cell, and their correctly folded three-dimensional structures are critical to cellular functions. Misfolded structures often fail to properly perform these vital jobs, leading to cellular stress and devastating neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease. In comparison with the mysteries of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease has a seemingly simple culprit: an expansion in the polyglutamine (polyQ) tract of a protein called "Huntingtin" (Htt). ...