August 12, 2013, New York, NY – Loss of a gene required for stem cells in the brain to turn into neurons may underlie the most severe forms of neuroblastoma, a deadly childhood cancer of the nervous system, according to a Ludwig Cancer Research study. Published in Developmental Cell today, the findings also provide clues about how to improve the treatment of this often-incurable tumor. Neuroblastoma can appear in nervous tissue in the abdomen, chest and spine, among other regions of the body, and can spawn body-wracking metastasis. The most severe tumors respond poorly ...

An international scientific collaborative led by the Harvard Stem Cell Institute's Kornelia Polyak, MD, PhD, has discovered why women who give birth in their early twenties are less likely to eventually develop breast cancer than women who don't, triggering a search for a way to confer this protective state on all women. The researchers now are in the process of testing p27, a mammary gland progenitor marker, in the tissue of thousands of women collected over a 20-year period—women whose histories have been followed extremely closely—to see if it is an accurate breast ...

DETROIT – Pain is the most common reason a patient sees a physician but few physicians have received adequate training to help their patients, according to a Henry Ford Hospital article published in the Journal of American Osteopathic Association. An estimated 100 million people in the United States are living with chronic pain, which accounts for up to $635 billion annually in health care costs and lost productivity. A 2011 study found that for every medical specialist, there are more than 28,500 patients with chronic pain. Consequently, pain management typically ...

New Rochelle, NY -- Body mass index (BMI) or a change in BMI is often the sole measure used to evaluate whether an intervention intended to combat childhood obesity is effective. But a new study clearly shows that an intervention can have beneficial effects on other health outcomes, such as cardiovascular fitness, regardless of its effect on BMI. Focusing on a single factor like the degree of BMI change is restrictive and can overlook other important outcomes, according to an article published in Childhood Obesity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. ...

White people are more likely to be represented, and in a positive light, than Blacks or Asians in Canadian television advertisements, says a new study from the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). "Previous studies have looked at depictions of race in Canadian media, but this is the first to focus on advertising," says Professor Shyon Baumann, chair of UTM's Department of Sociology. "It's also the first to take a sample of commercials and use quantitative data to find the connections between products and different racial groups." Baumann and PhD student Loretta ...

A new study led by a University of Colorado Cancer Center member recently published in the journal Quality of Life Research reveals that in young, female cancer survivors, quality of life is significantly impaired long after treatment. The study compared 59 cancer survivors to 66 healthy controls and found that, as expected, cancer survivors showed higher stress and anxiety than the general population. Of note, survivors reported particular stress around the issues of sexual problems, physical pain and fatigue. The study also measured hormone levels reflecting woman's number ...

For the majority of cancer patients, it's not the primary tumor that is deadly, but the spread or "metastasis" of cancer cells from the primary tumor to secondary locations throughout the body that is the problem. That's why a major focus of contemporary cancer research is how to stop or fight metastasis. Previous lab studies suggest that metastasizing cancer cells undergo a major molecular change when they leave the primary tumor – a process called epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). As the cells travel from one site to another, they pick up new characteristics. ...

KANSAS CITY, MO—A decade ago, gene expression seemed so straightforward: genes were either switched on or off. Not both. Then in 2006, a blockbuster finding reported that developmentally regulated genes in mouse embryonic stem cells can have marks associated with both active and repressed genes, and that such genes, which were referred to as "bivalently marked genes", can be committed to one way or another during development and differentiation. This paradoxical state—akin to figuring out how to navigate a red and green traffic signal—has since undergone scrutiny by ...

A genetic study of childhood epilepsies has linked two new genes to severe forms of disease and provides a novel strategy for identifying therapy targets. This study used a cutting-edge genetic technique, called exome sequencing, to search for new mutations that are not inherited. The results suggest this may be a highly effective way to find and confirm many disease-causing gene mutations. "It appears that the time for using this approach to understand complex neurological disorders has arrived," said David Goldstein, Ph.D., director of the Human Genome Variation Center ...

New insights into the development of vulnerable atherosclerotic plaques could lead to better treatment or prevention of heart attacks and strokes. In a report being published online in Nature Medicine, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Systems Biology re-evaluated previous assumptions regarding the role of inflammatory cells in atherosclerosis and found that the process relies on proliferation of certain immune cells within plaques and not exclusively on the uptake of cells from the blood. The prevailing theory of atherosclerosis has ...

The largest genome-wide study of its kind has determined how much five major mental illnesses are traceable to the same common inherited genetic variations. Researchers funded in part by the National Institutes of Health found that the overlap was highest between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder; moderate for bipolar disorder and depression and for ADHD and depression; and low between schizophrenia and autism. Overall, common genetic variation accounted for 17-28 percent of risk for the illnesses. "Since our study only looked at common gene variants, the total genetic ...

A large-scale international study on the genes involved in epilepsy has uncovered 25 new mutations on nine key genes behind a devastating form of the disorder during childhood. Among those were two genes never before associated with this form of epilepsy, one of which previously had been linked to autism and a rare neurological disorder, for which an effective therapy already has been developed. The findings suggest a new direction for developing genome-wide diagnostic screens for newborns to identify who is at risk for epilepsy and, potentially, to develop precise ...

The Greenland ice sheet is melting from below, caused by a high heat flow from the mantle into the lithosphere. This influence is very variable spatially and has its origin in an exceptionally thin lithosphere. Consequently, there is an increased heat flow from the mantle and a complex interplay between this geothermal heating and the Greenland ice sheet. The international research initiative IceGeoHeat led by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences establishes in the current online issue of Nature Geoscience (Vol 6, August 11, 2013) that this effect cannot be neglected ...

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology want to put your signature up in lights – tiny lights, that is. Using thousands of nanometer-scale wires, the researchers have developed a sensor device that converts mechanical pressure – from a signature or a fingerprint – directly into light signals that can be captured and processed optically. The sensor device could provide an artificial sense of touch, offering sensitivity comparable to that of the human skin. Beyond collecting signatures and fingerprints, the technique could also be used in biological imaging and ...

An international consortium has shown for the first time evidence of substantial overlap of genetic risk factors shared between bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia and less overlap between those conditions and autism and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a study published this week in Nature Genetics' Advance Online publication. The root cause of psychiatric illnesses such as bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder schizophrenia, autism and ADHD is not fully understood. For more than 125 years, clinicians have ...

Computer simulations have revealed how the electrical conductivity of many materials increases with a strong electrical field in a universal way. This development could have significant implications for practical systems in electrochemistry, biochemistry, electrical engineering and beyond. The study, published in Nature Materials, investigated the electrical conductivity of a solid electrolyte, a system of positive and negative atoms on a crystal lattice. The behaviour of this system is an indicator of the universal behaviour occurring within a broad range of materials ...

Researchers have discovered how genetic mutations linked to Parkinson's disease might play a key role in the death of brain cells, potentially paving the way for the development of more effective drug treatments. In the new study, published in Nature Neuroscience, a team of researchers from UCL, the University of Cambridge and the University of Sheffield showed how defects in the Parkinson's gene Fbxo7 cause problems with 'mitaphagy' – an essential process through which our bodies are able to get rid of damaged cells. Mitochondria are the 'energy powerhouses' of cells. ...

A team of neuroscientists has identified a modification to a protein in laboratory mice linked to conditions associated with Alzheimer's Disease. Their findings, which appear in the journal Nature Neuroscience, also point to a potential therapeutic intervention for alleviating memory-related disorders. The research centered on eukaryotic initiation factor 2 alpha (eIF2alpha) and two enzymes that modify it with a phosphate group; this type of modification is termed phosphorylation. The phosphorylation of eIF2alpha, which decreases protein synthesis, was previously found ...

TORONTO — The growth of deadly plaque inside the walls of arteries may not happen as scientists believed, research from the University of Toronto and Massachusetts General Hospital has found. The research also suggests a new potential target in the treatment of atherosclerosis, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and death globally. The research team found that macrophages, white blood cells that drive atherosclerosis, replicate inside plaques. Moreover, this growth is not reliant on cells outside the plaques called monocytes, as scientists had assumed. "Until ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 5, 2013—Violent and abusive behavior against women, which can be both physically and emotionally harmful, gain societal acceptance when they are glamorized and normalized in popular culture such as books and movies. The main characters' relationship in the best-selling novel Fifty Shades of Grey, for example, helps perpetuate the problem of intimate partner violence against women, according to an article in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. To obtain a copy of the article, press contacts ...

NEW YORK CITY — A new study shows that grandparents and grandchildren have real, measurable effects on each other's psychological well-being long into grandchildren's adulthood. "We found that an emotionally close grandparent-adult grandchild relationship was associated with fewer symptoms of depression for both generations," said Sara M. Moorman, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and the Institute on Aging at Boston College, who will present the study at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. "The greater emotional support ...

NEW YORK CITY — An Indiana University study found that higher-performing elementary school students received a disproportionate number of resources from their parents, compared to their lower-performing peers. Lower-performing students received resources geared toward improving their academic performance, said study author Natasha Yurk, a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at IU Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences. Higher-performing students received greater and more diverse resources, such as shared meals or enrollment in extracurricular activities. ...

NEW YORK CITY — Tolerance toward gays and lesbians is growing within the evangelical community — long a stronghold against homosexuality — with many expressing ambivalent views about the issue, according to a Baylor University study. The emerging voice of the so-called "Messy Middle" — evangelicals who oppose homosexuality on moral grounds but support equal rights such as civil unions for gays — has strong implications for the gay marriage debate, say Baylor researchers, who will present their paper at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. ...

NEW YORK CITY — Need a loan? You appear to have an advantage if you're an African-American female. According to a study by University of Iowa sociologist Sarah Harkness, lenders perceive African-American women just as favorably as white males, and would lend them as much money. The reason: African-American females are generally perceived as single mothers who are industrious and hardworking. Harkness will present her study, titled, "Status Effects in Lending Markets: The Importance of Gender and Race," at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. The ...

NEW YORK CITY — A new study out of the University of Cincinnati not only finds that parents feel responsible for taking action when their children struggle with social issues, but also that parents are influenced by their own childhood memories when it comes to dealing with their kids problems. Jennifer Davis Bowman, a recent graduate of the special education doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, will present her research at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. Bowman's study focuses on the experiences of parents concerned with ...