Researchers at the University of East Anglia have made an important advance in understanding genetic changes associated with terminal prostate cancer. Findings published today in the British Journal of Cancer, and funded by the Association for International Cancer Research (AICR), show how a genetic mutation in untreated patients is linked to aggressive cancer later in life. It was previously thought that the mutation only occurred in response to therapy. The research highlights why relapses could occur in some men following hormone therapy. And it could help identify ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Topics in this current batch of Geology articles posted ahead of print include the puzzle of parallel mountain chains; 25 years on the East Pacific Rise; unique episodes in Earth's history; turbidity currents; computer models; Wilson cycles; salt structure beneath the sea bed; the North Scotia Ridge; El Hierro, Canary Islands; sand-sized sub-spherical silica grains; bank pull or bar push; kaolinitic paleosols; Earth's youngest, hottest rocks; 3-D thermo-mechanical numerical models; and the Bohemian Massif. Open Access Papers: 1. Sublithospheric ...

Surgical implants are widely used in modern medicine but their effectiveness is often compromised by how our bodies react to them. Now, scientists at the University of Cambridge have discovered that implant stiffness is a major cause of this so-called foreign body reaction. This is the first time that stiffness of implant materials has been shown to be involved in foreign body reactions. The findings – published in the journal Biomaterials – could lead to major improvements in surgical implants and the quality of life of patients whose lives depend on them. Foreign ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass-- The heroes and villains in animated films tend to be on opposite ends of the moral spectrum. But they're often similar in their hair, which is usually extremely rigid or — if it moves at all — is straight and swings to and fro. It's rare to see an animated character with bouncy, curly hair, since computer animators don't have a simple mathematical means for describing it. However, change may be coming soon to a theater near you: In a paper appearing in the Feb. 13 issue of Physical Review Letters, researchers at MIT and the Université Pierre et Marie ...

In a first-of-its-kind study for Lyme disease, researchers have used live, disease-free ticks to see if Lyme disease bacteria can be detected in people who continue to experience symptoms such as fatigue or arthritis after completing antibiotic therapy. The technique, called xenodiagnosis, attempts to find evidence of a disease-causing microbe indirectly, through use of the natural disease-carrier—in this case, ticks. It was well tolerated by the volunteers, but investigators could not find evidence of Lyme disease bacteria in most of the cases where enough ticks were collected ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — We are all aware of the health benefits of dietary fiber. But what is dietary fiber and how do we metabolize it? Research at the University of Michigan Medical School, the University of York's Structural Biology Laboratory, and institutions in Canada and Sweden, has begun to uncover how our gut bacteria metabolize the complex dietary carbohydrates found in fruits and vegetables. Trillions of bacteria live in human intestines - there are about ten times more bacterial cells in the average person's body than human ones. Known as "microbiota", these ...

Tropical Cyclone Fobane continues to be battered with increasing vertical wind shear as it moves southward through the Southern Indian Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead and saw the bulk of precipitation and bands of thunderstorms were south of the center. On Feb. 12 at 0900 UTC/4 a.m. EST, Tropical Cyclone Fobane had maximum sustained winds near 45 knots/51.7 mph/83.3 kph. Fobane was centered near 27.6 south latitude and 64.7 east longitude, about 596 nautical miles southeast of Port Louis, Mauritius. Fobane is moving to the south-southwest at 11 knots/12.6 ...

Childhood obesity rates have nearly tripled in the previous 30 years and researchers are asking the important question of how this epidemic will impact the future health of these obese children and public health in general. A University of Colorado Cancer Center article recently published in the journal Gerontology shows that even in cases in which obese children later lose weight, the health effects of childhood obesity may be long-lasting and profound. "There were two things going on here. First, the earlier you are exposed to obesity, the earlier we may see the onset ...

With the world watching the Sochi Winter Olympics including the biathlon shooting events, now is the time for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to ban the use of lead shot to prevent wildlife poisoning and health threats to surface and groundwater, says a new paper co-authored this month by a University of Guelph biologist. Thousands of tons of lead shot discharged every year during training by Olympic shooters pose a threat to birds and mammals and to water resources, says Vernon Thomas, professor emeritus in the Department of Integrative Biology. His paper ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas and other useful petroleum products, researchers report. The conversion produces significantly more energy than it requires and results in transportation fuels – diesel, for example – that can be blended with existing ultra-low-sulfur diesels and biodiesels. Other products, such as natural gas, naphtha (a solvent), gasoline, waxes and lubricating oils such as engine oil and hydraulic oil also can be obtained from shopping bags. A report ...

LOS ANGELES – (Feb. 12, 2014) – A promising new therapy has – for the first time – reduced damage to the brain that can be caused by Sanfilippo B (MPS IIIB), a rare and devastating genetic disease, Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) researchers will report today in a presentation at the Lysosomal Disease Network's 10th Annual WORLD Symposium™. Sanfilippo B syndrome is a lysosomal storage disease belonging to the group of mucopolysaccharidoses (MPS) that is characterized by severe and rapid intellectual deterioration. LA BioMed pioneered the research ...

Extracts from algae, rosemary and monk fruit could soon replace synthetic ingredients and food additives such as Blue No. 1, BHT and aspartame that label-conscious grocery shoppers are increasingly shunning. Research is enabling this shift from artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives to naturally derived ones, and could soon yield many more natural options, reports Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society. Melody M. Bomgardner, senior editor at C&EN, notes that the trend has built momentum as concern over negative ...

ANN ARBOR – Poets and physicians know that a scarred heart cannot beat the way it used to, but the science of reprogramming cells offers hope--for the physical heart, at least. A team of University of Michigan biomedical engineers has turned cells common in scar tissue into colonies of beating heart cells. Their findings could advance the path toward regenerating tissue that's been damaged in a heart attack. Previous work in direct reprogramming, jumping straight from a cell type involved in scarring to heart muscle cells, has a low success rate. But Andrew Putnam, ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (Feb. 12, 2014) -- Research led by a University of Oregon doctoral student in California's Santa Cruz Mountains has uncovered geologic evidence that supports historical narratives for two earthquakes in the 68 years prior to San Francisco's devastating 1906 disaster. The evidence places the two earthquakes, in 1838 and 1890, on the San Andreas Fault, as theorized by many researchers based on written accounts about damage to Spanish-built missions in the Monterey and San Francisco bay areas. These two quakes, as in 1906, were surface-rupturing events, the ...

It's not quite Star Trek communications—yet. But long-distance communications in space may be easier now that researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have designed a clever detector array that can extract more information than usual from single particles of light. Described in a new paper,* the NIST/JPL array-on-a-chip easily identifies the position of the exact detector in a multi-detector system that absorbs an incoming infrared light particle, or photon. That's the norm for digital photography cameras, ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new method for accurately measuring a key process governing a wide variety of cellular functions that may become the basis for a "health checkup" for living cells. The NIST technique measures changes in a living cell's internal redox (reduction-oxidation) potential, a chemistry concept that expresses the favorability of reactions in which molecules or atoms either gain or lose electrons. Redox reactions are important to cell chemistry because they regulate many genes and the proteins ...

Commonly used disinfectants do not kill human papillomavirus (HPV) that makes possible non-sexual transmission of the virus, thus creating a need for hospital policy changes, according to researchers from Penn State College of Medicine and Brigham Young University. "Because it is difficult to produce infectious HPV particles for research, little has been known about HPV susceptibility to disinfection," said Craig Meyers, Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Penn State College of Medicine. Use of disinfectants on HPV in health care settings has been ...

When it comes to influential positions in the entertainment industry, minorities and women are represented at rates far below what would be expected given their percentage of the general population, according to a new study done at UCLA's Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In fact, the report shows, the proportion of female and minority actors, writers, directors and producers in films and TV ranges from just one-twelfth to one-half of their actual population percentage. "The report paints a picture of an industry that is woefully out of ...

Members of the German research network BIOACID (Biological Impacts of Ocean Acidification) are developing a model that links ecosystem changes triggered by ocean acidification and climate change with their economic and societal consequences. Workshops and interviews with stakeholders from the Norwegian fishing industry and tourism sector, the government and environmental organisations help them to identify key aspects for their assessment. During the past ten years, scientists have learned a lot about the effects of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. It has become ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — The rapid conversion of natural lands to cement-dominated urban centers is causing great losses in biodiversity. Yet, according to a new study involving 147 cities worldwide, surprisingly high numbers of plant and animal species persist and even flourish in urban environments — to the tune of hundreds of bird species and thousands of plant species in a single city. Contrary to conventional wisdom that cities are a wasteland for biodiversity, the study found that while a few species — such as pigeons and annual meadow grass — are shared across ...

In 4 years of follow up of 1464 participants in the randomized controlled trial Randomised Evaluation of Normal vs. Augmented Levels of RRT (RENAL) study, Martin Gallagher (The George Institute for Global Health, Sydney, Australia) and colleagues found that patients with acute kidney injury (AKI) in an intensive care unit (ICU) who require renal replacement therapy (RRT; hemodialysis combined with hemofiltration) do not benefit from higher intensity RRT. At a median of 43.9 months follow up, mortality (63% in the low intensity and 63% in the high intensity group), as well ...

It is a common notion that type 2 diabetes is precipitated by substantial progressive weight gain, but a study published this week in PLOS Medicine suggests that this might not be true. Dorte Vistisen and Kristine Færch, from the Steno Diabetes Center in Gentofte, Denmark, and colleagues analyzed data from participants of the Whitehall II cohort, a group of London-based civil servants who have been followed for more than a decade, to see what changes in body weight and other parameters had occurred in people in the years before they were diagnosed with diabetes. 6,705 ...

Prions can be notoriously destructive, spurring proteins to misfold and interfere with cellular function as they spread without control. New research, publishingin the open access journal PLOS Biology on February 11 2014, from scientists at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research reveals that certain prion-like proteins, however, can be precisely controlled so that they are generated only in a specific time and place. These prion-like proteins are not involved in disease processes; rather, they are essential for creating and maintaining long-term memories. "This protein ...

WASHINGTON — A panel of 55 genes, almost all of which are impacted by the loss of a particular protein, appears to predict if breast cancer will become invasive, leading to poorer survival, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center report in PLOS ONE. The panel represents loss of a powerful tumor suppressor gene, SYK, as well as genetic alterations in 51 other genes that are directly affected by the loss of a copy of the SYK gene and the absence of its protein. "Without SYK, the protein it makes, and genetic disruption in a set of genes thought ...

The risk of a kidney donor developing kidney failure in the remaining organ is much lower than in the population at large, even when compared with people who have two kidneys, according to results of new Johns Hopkins research. The results, published in the Feb. 12 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, describes what is believed to be the largest study ever conducted of kidney disease risk in living kidney donors, encompassing all such donors in the United States over a 17-year period. The same researchers reporting in the same journal also showed ...