In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers led by Scott Pruitt at Duke University and Merck Research Laboratories report on a human clinical trial in which modified dendritic cells, a component of the immune system, were tested in patients with melanoma. All cells express a complex known as the proteasome, which acts as the garbage disposal for the cell. There are two types of proteasomes: constitutive proteasomes (cPs), which are found in normal tissues, and immunoproteasomes (iPs), which are found in stressed or damaged cells. In a damaged cell, ...

OAKLAND, Calif., June 24, 2013 – Patients are not at increased risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome in the six-week period after vaccination with any vaccine, including influenza, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases. The retrospective study by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center spanned 13 years and was controlled for seasonality. "If there is a risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome following any vaccine, including influenza vaccines, it is extremely low," said Roger Baxter, MD, co-director of the Kaiser Permanente ...

Myelin, the fatty coating that protects neurons in the brain and spinal cord, is destroyed in diseases such as multiple sclerosis. Researchers have been striving to determine whether oligodendrocytes, the cells that produce myelin, can be stimulated to make new myelin. Using live imaging in zebrafish to track oligodendrocytes in real time, researchers reporting in the June 24 issue of the Cell Press journal Developmental Cell discovered that individual oligodendrocytes coat neurons with myelin for only five hours after they are born. If the findings hold true in humans, ...

Athens, Greece, 24 June 2013. Moderation seems to be key when it comes to eating fish to prevent atrial fibrillation (AF) according to an observational study presented at the EHRA EUROPACE congress held 23 to 26 June in Athens, Greece. The study found a U-shaped association between consumption of marine n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFA) and the risk of developing AF, with people who have both low and high intakes found to suffer more from AF than those with median intakes. The lowest risk of AF was found in those who consumed around 0.63 g marine n-3 PUFA per ...

A five-year programme that mobilised communities to improve the quality of care for mothers and newborns reduced newborn mortality by 30 percent and saved at least 1,000 newborn lives in rural Malawi. The study, carried out in three rural districts in Malawi with a combined population of more than two million, was designed to test whether a combined effort to increase both community awareness and strategies for perinatal care and to improve the quality of healthcare would be more effective than either one alone. The study showed that the combination worked best. "The ...

In an analysis that included a sample of patients in the top portion of Medicare spending, only a small percentage of their costs appeared to be related to preventable emergency department visits and hospitalizations, limiting the ability to lower costs for these patients through better outpatient care, according to a study in the June 26 issue of JAMA. The study is being released early to coincide with its presentation at the AcademyHealth annual research meeting. "High and increasing health care costs are arguably the single biggest threat to the long-term fiscal solvency ...

An NJIT research professor known for his cutting-edge work with carbon nanotubes is overseeing the manufacture of a prototype lab-on-a-chip that would someday enable a physician to detect disease or virus from just one drop of liquid, including blood. "Scalable nano-bioprobes with sub-cellular resolution for cell detection," Biosensors and Bioelectronics, (Elsevier, Vol. 45), which will publish on July 15, 2013 but is available now online, describes how NJIT research professors Reginald Farrow and Alokik Kanwal, his former postdoctoral fellow, and their team have created ...

We now understand the nature of the giant storms on Saturn. Through the analysis of images sent from the Cassini space probe belonging to the North American and European space agencies (NASA and ESA respectively), as well as the computer models of the storms and the examination of the clouds therein, the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country has managed to explain the behaviour of these storms for the very first time. The article explaining the discovery, the lead author being Enrique García Melendo, researcher at the Fundació Observatori Esteve ...

After being drained by the millions of acres to make way for agriculture, wetlands are staging a small comeback these days on farms. Some farmers restore or construct wetlands alongside their fields to trap nitrogen and phosphorus runoff, and research shows these systems can also retain pesticides, antibiotics, and other agricultural pollutants. Important as these storage functions of wetlands are, however, another critical one is being overlooked, says Bill Mitsch, director of the Everglades Wetland Research Park at Florida Gulf Coast University and an emeritus professor ...

Most species at greatest risk from climate change are not currently conservation priorities, according to an International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) study that has introduced a pioneering method to assess the vulnerability of species to climate change. The paper, published in the journal PLOS ONE, is one of the biggest studies of its kind, assessing all of the world's birds, amphibians and corals. It draws on the work of more than 100 scientists over a period of five years, including Wits PhD student and leader of the study, Wendy Foden. Up to 83% of birds, ...

This news release is available in German. In microsystems, metallic components are increasingly replaced by components made of inexpensive polymers. As polymers yield when they are subjected to pressure, the layer thicknesses cannot be measured with sufficient accuracy by means of conventional contact stylus instruments. But precision is of decisive importance in microsystem technology. Here, the scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) come into play: In the medium term, industrial enterprises which measure the thickness of soft polymer layers ...

Hospitals across England reduced the rate of serious bloodstream infections in intensive care units (ICUs) during a two-year programme, research has shown. More than 200 ICUs in England participated in the National Patient Safety Agency's Matching Michigan programme, which aimed to bring down infections linked to central venous catheters to the rate seen in a landmark programme in the US state of Michigan. Reducing the number of infections by more than 60%, the English ICUs were able to equal the low rates seen in the US. "This is a very impressive result," said Professor ...

A promising new treatment for breast cancer being developed at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) has been shown in cell culture and in animal models to selectively kill cancer stem cells at the original tumor site and in distant metastases with no toxic effects on healthy cells, including normal stem cells. Cancer stem cells are critical to a cancer's ability to recur following conventional chemotherapies and radiation therapy because they can quickly multiply and establish new tumors that are often ...

Babies born to mothers who suffer from a rare metabolic complication during pregnancy are programmed to be overweight, according to a study published today in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study is the first to look at the long term effects on babies born to mothers with intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), also called obstetric cholestasis, a rare complication of pregnancy characterised by the build-up of bile acids in the bloodstream. The findings add to the strong evidence that the environment that babies are exposed to in the womb is a major ...

VIDEO: One in 10 female German or British tourists holidaying in southern Europe suffers sexual harassment. Click here for more information. The European Institute of Studies on Prevention (Irefrea) surveyed more than 6,000 people in various airports in Mediterranean countries during summer 2009 to find out the levels of harassment and sex against one's will that had occurred. According to the experts, one in ten female English or German tourists has fallen victim to these ...

Wild bird populations are generally thought to benefit from being given additional food in winter but our understanding of the effects of such food provision is incomplete. The results of a new study, carried out by researchers at the University of Exeter and the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), has found that feeding wild blue tits in winter resulted in less successful breeding during the following spring. The research, just published in Scientific Reports, revealed that woodland blue tits that were provided with fat balls as a supplementary food during the winter ...

PHILADELPHIA (June 24, 2013)— The brain's pleasure response to tasting food can be measured through the eyes using a common, low-cost ophthalmological tool, according to a study just published in the journal Obesity. If validated, this method could be useful for research and clinical applications in food addiction and obesity prevention. Dr. Jennifer Nasser, an associate professor in the department of Nutrition Sciences in Drexel University's College of Nursing and Health Professions, led the study testing the use of electroretinography (ERG) to indicate increases in the ...

More than half of the countries who signed the WHO 2005 Framework Convention on Tobacco Control have not formed plans to help tobacco users quit. The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC) is a treaty developed to tackle the global tobacco epidemic that is killing 5 million people each year. It came into force in 2005 and is legally binding in 175 countries. The FCTC requires each country to develop plans to help tobacco users in their population to stop -- plans that should be based on strong scientific evidence for what works. Two ...

TORONTO, Ontario (June 24, 2013) – A new method of maturing human heart cells that simulates the natural growth environment of heart cells while applying electrical pulses to mimic the heart rate of fetal humans has led researchers at the University of Toronto to an electrifying step forward for cardiac research. The discovery, announced this week in the scientific journal Nature Methods, offers cardiac researchers a fast and reliable method of creating mature human cardiac patches in a range of sizes. "You cannot obtain human cardiomyocytes (heart cells) from human ...

To fuel phases of fast and aggressive growth, tumors need higher-than-normal amounts of energy and the molecular building blocks needed to build new cellular components. Cancer cells therefore consume a lot of sugar (glucose A number of tumors are also able to catabolize the amino acid glutamine, an important building block of proteins. A key enzyme in amino acid decomposition is isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH). Several years ago, scientists discovered mutations in the gene coding for IDH in numerous types of brain cancer. Very malignant brain tumors called primary glioblastomas ...

This news release is available in Spanish. MOOCs are linked to the appearance of digital culture in all the areas of our lives, from the way we listen to music to the way we take photos, read the newspaper or watch movies. "Before, you had to have a radio, and a camera, go to the newsstand to buy the newspaper or go to the cinema, but now there are applications that enable us to do everything digitally," said the coordinator of the eMadrid network, Carlos Delgado Kloos, during the opening of this conference, dedicated to the transformational effect that the technology ...

Two new Baylor University studies show that Israeli Jewish adults who attend synagogue regularly, pray often, and consider themselves religious are significantly healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts. They also report greater satisfaction with life. "These findings nicely reinforce the inherited Jewish folk wisdom that going to shul (synagogue) is 'good for you,'" said Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D. Levin holds a distinguished chair at Baylor University, where he is University Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health and Director ...

How do fish swim? It is a simple question, but there is no simple answer. Researchers at Northwestern University have revealed some of the mechanical properties that allow fish to perform their complex movements. Their findings, published on June 13 in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, could provide insights in evolutionary biology and lead to an understanding of the neural control of movement and development of bio-inspired underwater vehicles. "If we could play God and create an undulatory swimmer, how stiff should its body be? At what wave frequency should ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Teens and young adults are making use of social networking sites and mobile technology to express suicidal thoughts and intentions as well as to reach out for help, two studies suggest. An analysis of about one month of public posts on MySpace revealed 64 comments in which adolescents expressed a wish to die. Researchers conducted a follow-up survey of young adults and found that text messages were the second-most common way for respondents to seek help when they felt depressed. Talking to a friend or family member ranked first. These young adults also ...

An exotic tree species that changed from prized possession to forest management nightmare serves as a lesson in the unpredictability of non-native species mixing with human interactions, according to researchers. "There are other invasive tree species in Pennsylvania, but the Ailanthus, by far, has been here longer and does more damage than any other invasive tree," said Matthew Kasson, who received his doctorate in plant pathology and environmental microbiology from Penn State. "It's the number one cause of native regeneration failure in clearcuts in Pennsylvania." Kasson, ...