The number of tumor-associated immune cells is correlated with poor prognosis in cancer patients. Reducing these cells in mouse models of breast cancer reduces tumor metastasis, indicating that tumor-immune interactions are critical for cancer progression. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Shelley Earp and colleagues at the University of North Carolina a Chapel Hill demonstrate that removal of the protein MerTK from immune cells decreased tumor growth in mouse models of breast cancer, melanoma, and colon cancer. Loss of MerTK reduced the release of ...

A new analysis has found that among patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, African Americans more commonly present with advanced disease, and they tend to have shorter survival times than Caucasians despite receiving the same care. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the results suggest that biological factors may account for some racial disparities in cancer survival. Among cancer patients, minorities tend to have a worse prognosis than Caucasians for reasons that are unclear. In African American patients, lower ...

Antimatter has been detected in solar flares via microwave and magnetic-field data, according to a presentation by NJIT Research Professor of Physics Gregory D. Fleishman and two co-researchers at the 44th meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division. This research sheds light on the puzzling strong asymmetry between matter and antimatter by gathering data on a very large scale using the Sun as a laboratory. While antiparticles can be created and then detected with costly and complex particle-accelerator experiments, such particles are otherwise ...

Two drugs, telmisartan and valsartan, which are used to reduce blood pressure in people with diabetes, are associated with a lower risk of hospitalization for heart attack, stroke or heart failure, according to a study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). For people with type 2 diabetes, disease-related vascular illnesses are the main causes of death. Angiotensin-receptor blockers including telmisartan, valsartan, candesartan, irbesartan and losartan, are generally used interchangeably to control blood pressure. However, there is some evidence from ...

Researchers have discovered the genetic processes that cause specific types of bowel cancer. Using this knowledge, they identified cancer drugs that target these genes. Their findings offer the opportunity to develop personalised treatment based on a person's genetic profile. More than one million people develop bowel cancer each year, which is one of the most common causes of death in cancer patients. One in ten colon cancers are caused by mutations in the BRAF gene, a gene commonly associated with skin cancers. Although successful treatments against BRAF mutations in ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — They're young. They've been injured in an assault – so badly they went to the emergency room. And nearly one in four of them has a gun, probably an illegal one. What happens next? A new study by the University of Michigan Injury Center provides data that could be important to breaking the cycle of gun violence that kills more teens and young adults than anything except auto accidents. In the new issue of the journal Pediatrics, the team from the U-M Injury Center reports data from interviews with 689 teens and young adults who came to an emergency ...

London, 8 July 2013: Egg donation is now one of the major reasons why couples travel abroad for fertility treatment. Because this growing trend may circumvent regulations at home or raise concerns about financial inducement, it has also become one of the most controversial. Yet little is known about the women who provide the donor eggs in overseas clinics - their characteristics, their motivation and their compensation. A study performed by ESHRE, which surveyed (by questionnaire) 1423 egg donors at 60 clinics in 11 European countries, has now found that the majority ...

London, 8 July 2013: Phthalates are among a group of industrial chemicals shown in some studies to have adverse effects on reproductive health and development, particularly in the male. As such, they have been collectively defined as "endocrine disruptors", and proposed as one of several possible environmental exposures responsible for a decline in fertility. They are classified in two groups - high molecular weight phthalates are used in the production of plastics, while low molecular weight phthalates are frequently used in the manufacture of cosmetics.(1) Human ...

London, 8 July 2013: Studies over the past 20 years have suggested (though not unequivocally confirmed) that semen quality is in decline, reflected most evidently in falling sperm counts and reduced sperm motility.(1) The explanations have been controversially attributed to environmental factors (such as exposure to toxins) and to male smoking. Now, a new study based on a 20-year follow-up of one of the world's largest study cohorts, suggests that exposure to several factors in utero and in early life may also lead to reduced semen parameters in adulthood - and potentially ...

London -- A study performed in Belgium has shown that low-cost IVF for developing and poor resource countries is feasible and effective, with delivery rates not much different from those achieved in conventional IVF programmes. This proof-of-principle study, say the investigators, suggests that infertility care may now be "universally accessible"."We showed that the IVF methodology can be significantly simplified and result in successful outcomes at levels that compare favourably to those obtained in high resource programs," they note. "We estimate that the cost of our ...

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have found that people with depression have more generalised personal goals than non-depressed people. A study conducted by Dr Joanne Dickson, in the University's Institute of Psychology, Health and Society, analysed the lists of personal goals made by people who suffered with depression and those who didn't. The participants were asked to list goals they would like to achieve at any time in the short, medium or long-term. The goals were categorised for their specificity – for example a global or abstract goal such as, 'to ...

Planets and asteroids, red giants and brown dwarfs -- there are all kinds of objects in our Universe. Debris disks are among them. These are belts consisting of countless dust particles and planetesimals, circling around one central star. "At least one fifth of stars are surrounded by dust belts like these," Prof. Dr. Alexander Krivov from the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena explains. "They are the remains of the formation of planets, in which the unused, building materials are collected," the astrophysicist points out. Therefore debris disks are an important piece in ...

More than a quarter of over 70s with type 2 diabetes could benefit simply from improving communication and education in the clinic, new research has revealed. A study led by the University of Exeter Medical School and published in The Lancet found that 27 percent achieved better glycaemic control through individualised care alone. At the moment, patients over the age of 70 are treated using a blanket method of aggressively reducing blood glucose levels, but that does little to take their complex needs into account. Dr David Strain, from the University of Exeter Medical ...

Small and large-scale farmers in Riau province, Sumatra, have been blamed for the recent choking smoke smothering Singapore and parts of Malaysia. But scientists in Indonesia have added a third category of 'mid-level entrepreneurs'. These entrepreneurs buy unregulated access to land for oil palm and clear it by burning, seemingly unrestrained by government. Scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre, who have been studying land conversion in Sumatra, say they have identified this third group of local land investors who operate outside the government system, making them ...

VIDEO: Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, have discovered that anti-cancer compounds currently in clinical trials for some types of leukemia could offer hope for treating... Click here for more information. Melbourne researchers have discovered that anti-cancer compounds currently in clinical trials for some types of leukaemia could offer hope for treating the most common type of breast cancer. The researchers, from the Walter ...

Light can oscillate in different directions, as we can see in the 3D cinema: Each lens of the glasses only allows light of a particular oscillation direction to pass through. However, changing the polarization direction of light without a large part of it being lost is difficult. The TU Vienna has now managed this feat, using a type of light – terahertz radiation – that is of particular technological importance. An electrical field applied to an ultra-thin layer of material can turn the polarisation of the beam as required. This produces an efficient transistor for light ...

Philadelphia, PA -- Major depressive disorder is associated with a dysregulation of brain regions including the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. The relationship between structural and functional abnormalities in these brain regions in depressed patients is far from clear. However, both types of changes are assumed to underlie the symptoms of this disorder. This lack of understanding prompted Dr. Bart de Kwaasteniet at the Academic Medical Center in Amsterdam and his colleagues to use a multimodal neuroimaging approach to further investigate this relationship. The ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Researchers at the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging, led by faculty member Donna Wilcock, have recently published a new paper in the Journal of Neuroscience detailing an advance in treatment of Alzheimer's disease. Gammagard™ IVIg is a therapy that has been investigated for treatment of Alzheimer's. Despite small clinical studies that have reported efficacy of the approach, the mechanism of action is poorly understood. The UK researchers set out to investigate the mechanism by which the treatment may act in the brain to lower amyloid ...

Storms, cold, poor harvests -- the year 1816 was a "year without a summer" in European history. The reason was the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Tambora a year earlier. It had thrown huge amounts of sulfur compounds into the stratosphere (at altitudes of 15-50 km) where they spread around the entire globe and significantly weakened solar radiation for several years afterwards. Such intense volcanic eruptions are quite common in Earth's history. To better understand their impact on the climate and the atmosphere, scientists try to reconstruct those eruptions accurately. ...

Latest advances in capturing data on brain activity and eye movement are being combined to open up a host of 'mindreading' possibilities for the future. These include the potential development of a system that can detect when drivers are in danger of falling asleep at the wheel. The research has been undertaken at the University of Leicester with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and in collaboration with the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina. The breakthrough involves bringing two recent developments in the world of ...

This news release is available in German. Almost 200 years ago, Bavarian physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer discovered dark lines in the sun's spectrum. It was later discovered that these spectral lines can be used to infer the chemical composition and temperature of the sun's atmosphere. Today we are able to gain information about diverse objects through light measurements in a similar way. Because often very little light needs to be detected for this, physicists are looking for ever more sensitive spectroscopy methods. In extreme cases, also single particles of light ...

Moths are nocturnal, and they have one major enemy; the bat. As a defense many moths developed ears sensitive to the bat´s echolocation cries, and they have also developed different behaviors to avoid bats. Now it turns out that many moths are able to use both their hearing and their avoidance behavior to an entirely different purpose: to communicate about sex. According to a Danish/Japanese research team the various moth species probably talk about sex in a great number of different ways. This sheds new light on the evolution of sound communication and behavior. Moths ...

A breakthrough in our understanding of the properties of titania (titanium dioxide) - the basis of self-cleaning window technology - has been made by scientists at UCL, uncovering a decades old misunderstanding that has clouded our knowledge of how mixed phase [1] titania catalysts operate. By carrying out cutting-edge computational simulations alongside precise experimental measurements of physical samples of the mineral, scientists at UCL found that the widely accepted explanation for how mixed phase titania catalysts operate was misguided. Their discovery, published ...

Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new metallic bubble wrap that is lighter, stronger and more flexible than sheet metal and more heat- and chemical-resistant than plastic or other polymer-based bubble wraps. Potential applications include automobile body panels, the wing edges of airplanes, suitcases, helmets and cases for computers and other electronic devices. "This material does exactly what sheet metal and other bubble wraps do, but better," said Dr. Afsaneh Rabiei, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and the lead researcher ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A new study led by Florida State University researcher Stephanie Pau shows that tropical forests are producing more flowers in response to only slight increases in temperature. The study examined how changes in temperature, clouds and rainfall affect the number of flowers that tropical forests produce. Results showed that clouds mainly have an effect over short-term seasonal growth, but longer-term changes of these forests appear to be due to temperature. While other studies have used long-term flower production data, this is the first study to combine ...