Every year, more than 16,000 Americans die as a result of what's known as an "aortic dissection" — a catastrophic rupture of the aorta, the body's largest artery. Once thought to be a simple structural failure, aortic dissection is now understood to be caused by an inflammatory process that weakens the artery's walls. University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have been at the forefront of understanding this process. In earlier studies they linked the blood-pressure-regulating molecule, angiotensin II, to the immune signaling protein IL6, which they ...

Ocean acidification due to rising carbon dioxide levels reduces the density of coral skeletons, making coral reefs more vulnerable to disruption and erosion. The results are from a study of corals growing where underwater springs naturally lower the pH of seawater. (The lower the pH, the more acidic.) The findings are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and are the first to show that corals are not able to fully acclimate to low pH conditions in nature. "People have seen similar effects in laboratory experiments," said paper ...

Crop yields worldwide are not increasing quickly enough to support estimated global needs in 2050, according to a study published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by research associate Deepak Ray and colleagues from the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. Previous studies estimate that global agricultural production may need to increase 60 percent to meet increasing demands and provide food security. In the current study, researchers assessed agricultural statistics from across the world and found that yields of four key crops ...

Food is the basis of human survival and development, and its safety is an important issue for people's livelihood, and also an important indicator to measure the quality of people's lives in a country. The statistics showed that the main factor of Chinese food poisoning remained to be microbial pathogens, ranking before the chemical toxin. In food contamination, some common and highly pathogenic pathogens include Listeria monocytogenes, Vibrio parahaemolyticus, Norwalk and Rotavirus, which are the culprit cause of food poisoning. In the hot and humid southern China, the ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Millions of times on a spring day there is a dramatic biomolecular tango where the flower, rather than adorning a dancer's teeth, is the performer. In this dance, the female pistil leads, the male pollen tubes follow, and at the finish, the tubes explode and die. A new paper in Current Biology describes the genetically prescribed dance steps of the pollen tube and how their expression destines the tube for self-sacrifice, allowing flowering plants to reproduce. High school biology leaves off with this: In normal pollination, sperm-carrying ...

The fruits and vegetables we buy in the grocery store are actually still alive, and it matters to them what time of day it is. The discovery, reported on June 20 in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggests that the way we store our produce could have real consequences for its nutritional value and for our health. "Vegetables and fruits, even after harvest, can respond to light signals and consequently change their biology in ways that may affect health value and insect resistance," says Janet Braam of Rice University. "Perhaps we should be storing our vegetables ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke Medicine researchers have identified a receptor in the nervous system that may be key to preventing epilepsy following a prolonged period of seizures. Their findings from studies in mice, published online in the journal Neuron on June 20, 2013, provide a molecular target for developing drugs to prevent the onset of epilepsy, not just manage the disease's symptoms. "Unfortunately, there are no preventive therapies for any common disorder of the human nervous system – Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, schizophrenia, epilepsy – with the exception of blood ...

Scientists have come closer to untangling a unique and intricate relationship between animals and bacteria, providing potential insights into the complex association between humans and the microbes we rely on for our health. Mealybugs, scaly insects that feed on plant juices, have a rare tag-team relationship with bacteria that help the bugs turn plant sap into usable nutrients. Similar to Russian nesting dolls, the bugs house two kinds of bacteria, with one bacterium called Moranella endobia living inside another called Tremblaya princeps. This three-tiered system has ...

Temporal lobe epilepsy, the most common form of epilepsy, is characterized by recurrent seizures throughout life and often behavioral abnormalities, with devastating impacts on patients and their families. Unfortunately, the condition is often not responsive to anticonvulsants. Now scientists report online June 20 in the Cell Press journal Neuron that targeting a particular signaling pathway in mice can prevent the development of temporal lobe epilepsy with just two weeks of treatment, offering hope that researchers will be able to develop effective drugs to mitigate recurrent ...

PHILADELPHIA - Pancreatic cancer carries a dismal prognosis. According to the National Cancer Institute, the overall five-year relative survival for 2003-2009 was 6 percent. Still, researchers and clinicians don't have a non-invasive way to even detect early cells that portent later disease. 'There's no PSA test for pancreatic cancer,' they say, and that's one of the main reasons why pancreatic cancer is detected so late in its course. They have been searching for a human-cell model of early-disease progression. Now, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania ...

Over the last twenty years, astronomers have found that almost all galaxies have a huge black hole at their centre. Some of these black holes are growing by drawing in matter from their surroundings, creating in the process the most energetic objects in the Universe: active galactic nuclei (AGN). The central regions of these brilliant powerhouses are ringed by doughnuts of cosmic dust [1] dragged from the surrounding space, similar to how water forms a small whirlpool around the plughole of a sink. It was thought that most of the strong infrared radiation coming from AGN ...

LA JOLLA, CA – June 20, 2013 – Neuroscientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have filled in a significant gap in the scientific understanding of how neurons mature, pointing to a better understanding of some developmental brain disorders. In the new study, the researchers identified a molecular program that controls an essential step in the fast-growing brains of young mammals. The researchers found that this signaling pathway spurs the growth of neuronal output connections by a mechanism called "mitochondrial capture," which has never been described before. "Mutations ...

Lumosity, the leading brain training company, today announced a new web-based, big data methodology for conducting human cognitive performance research. Lumosity's research platform, the Human Cognition Project, contains the world's largest and continuously growing dataset of human cognitive performance, which currently includes more than 40 million people who have been tracked for up to 6 years. The study, published today in the open-access journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, examined how Lumosity's dataset can provide insights into the lifestyle correlates of cognitive ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Human sleeping and waking patterns are largely governed by an internal circadian clock that corresponds closely with the 24-hour cycle of light and darkness. This circadian clock also controls other body functions, such as metabolism and temperature regulation. Studies in animals have found that when that rhythm gets thrown off, health problems including obesity and metabolic disorders such as diabetes can arise. Studies of people who work night shifts have also revealed an increased susceptibility to diabetes. A new study from MIT shows that a gene ...

CHAPEL HILL – The trillions of harmful bacteria that populate the human gut represent a continuous threat to our health. Proper intestinal immune function creates a protective barrier between us and the extensive microbial ecosystem in our intestines. Now, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have identified the structures that serve as the foundation for the development of the human intestinal immune system. Specialized immune structures in the intestines, referred to as gut-associated lymphoid tissues, or GALT, are critical components ...

OAKLAND, Calif., June 20, 2013 — A more accurate and reliable stroke prediction model has been developed to help physicians decide whether to start blood-thinning treatment for patients with atrial fibrillation, as described in the current online issue of the Journal of the American Heart Association. Atrial fibrillation affects millions of Americans. Because the heart-rhythm disturbance promotes the formation of blood clots that can travel to the brain and block an artery, atrial fibrillation independently increases the risk of ischemic stroke four-to-five-fold. The ...

Almost half of the mobile apps running on Apple's iOS operating system access the unique identifier of the devices where they're downloaded, computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have found. In addition, more than 13 percent access the devices' location and more than 6 percent the address book. The researchers developed a new app that detects what data the other apps running on an iOS device are trying to access. The findings are based on a study of 130,000 users of jailbroken iOS devices, where users have purposefully removed restrictions that ...

Scientist describe a new striking species of moth from China with an engaging wing pattern. The new species Stenoloba solaris has its name inspired by the orange circular patch on its wings that resembles the rising sun. The study was published in the open access journal Zookeys. "During a spring expedition to north-west Yunnan, a striking specimen of an undescribed Stenoloba was collected.", explain the authors Drs Pekarsky and Saldaitis. "Only a single male was caught at ultraviolet light on 24 May 2012 near Zhongdian in northwest China's Yunnan province in the remote ...

The Indian monsoon is a complex system which is likely to change under future global warming. While it is in the very nature of weather to vary, the question is how much and whether we can deal with it. Extreme rainfall, for example, bears the risk of flooding, and crop failure. Computer simulations with a comprehensive set of 20 state-of-the-art climate models now consistently show that Indian monsoon daily variability might increase, according to a study just published by scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. "Increased variability – this ...

Does your salad know what time it is? It may be healthier for you if it does, according to new research from Rice University and the University of California at Davis. "Vegetables and fruits don't die the moment they are harvested," said Rice biologist Janet Braam, the lead researcher on a new study this week in Current Biology. "They respond to their environment for days, and we found we could use light to coax them to make more cancer-fighting antioxidants at certain times of day." Braam is professor and chair of Rice's Department of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. Braam's ...

This news release is available in Spanish. Bacterial resistance to drugs leads pharmaceutical labs to be in constant search for new antibiotics to treat the same diseases. For the last thirty years, the sea bottom has yielded a wealth of substances with properties of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Isolated from a marine microorganism off the coast of Alicante by the company BioMar, baringolin shows promising antibiotic activity at a very low concentration. The Combinatorial Lab headed by Fernando Albericio at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB ...

Quebec City, June 20, 2013—Université Laval researchers have developed a highly effective method for converting CO2 into methanol, which can be used as a low-emissions fuel for vehicles. The team led by Professor Frédéric-Georges Fontaine presents the details of this discovery in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society. Researchers have been looking for a way to convert carbon dioxide into methanol in a single step using energy-efficient processes for years. "In the presence of oxygen, methanol combustion produces CO2 and water," explained Professor ...

The Global Innovation Imperatives (Gii) program, administered by the American Chemical Society (ACS) Office of International Activities, today issued a white paper outlining possible solutions for increasing access to safe drinking water in the rural areas of the world. Although focused on the community of Chocontá, in Colombia, the suggested solutions have broader application. Chocontá residents rely on rural aqueducts for their water, but supplies are vulnerable to pollution from nearby agriculture and largely go untreated. City officials asked ACS, the world's largest ...

VIDEO: This video shows a control mouse doing a task to test cognitive skills. The mouse must start the test, then scan and touch the screen at the spot where... Click here for more information. A line of genetically modified mice that Western University scientists call "Forrest Gump" because, like the movie character, they can run far but they aren't smart, is furthering the understanding of a key neurotransmitter called acetylcholine (ACh). Marco Prado and his team at Robarts ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Rhode Island Hospital has reduced the incidence of hospital-associated Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections by 70 percent and reduced annual associated mortality in patients with hospital-associated C. difficile by 64 percent through successive implementation of five rigorous interventions , as reported in the July 2013 issue of The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. Clostridium difficile is a toxin-producing bacterium that lives in the colon. A major cause of morbidity and mortality in the U.S., it can cause life-threatening ...