New research on two promising gene therapies suggests that combining them into one treatment not only repairs muscle damage caused by Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but also prevents future injury from the muscle-wasting disease. The work, led by a team at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children's Hospital, is the first to look at the approach in aged mice, a key step toward clinical trials in patients. The findings were published in July in Human Molecular Genetics. "We're excited about the fact that these are older mice and we're still able to see a sustained functional ...

LOS ANGELES (Aug. 9, 2013) – A unique nanoscale drug that can carry a variety of weapons and sneak into cancer cells to break them down from the inside has a new component: a protein that stimulates the immune system to attack HER2-positive breast cancer cells. The research team developing the drug – led by scientists at the Nanomedicine Research Center, part of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in the Department of Neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center – conducted the study in laboratory mice with implanted human breast cancer cells. Mice receiving the ...

Contact: Marco Leyton, Ph.D. marco.leyton@mcgill.ca 514-398-5804 McGill University Terry E. Robinson, Ph.D. ter@umich.edu 734-358-8055 The University of Michigan Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research Brain dopamine may serve as a risk marker for alcohol use disorders There are known risks for and protective factors against the development of alcohol use disorders (AUDs). A new study has found that striatal dopamine responses to alcohol ingestion may serve as a neurobiological marker of vulnerability to AUDs. Specifically, when given alcohol, ...

Research from McGill University suggests that people who are vulnerable to developing alcoholism exhibit a distinctive brain response when drinking alcohol, according to a new study by Prof. Marco Leyton, of McGill University's Department of Psychiatry. Compared to people at low risk for alcohol-use problems, those at high risk showed a greater dopamine response in a brain pathway that increases desire for rewards. These findings, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, could help shed light on why some people are more at risk of suffering ...

The Black Forest wildfire this June was one of the most destructive in Colorado history, in terms of homes lost. It started close to houses and quickly spread through the ponderosa pine canopies on the rolling hills near Colorado Springs. The wildfire destroyed 500 homes in the first 48 hours and killed two people. Hot, dry and windy weather played a role in that wildfire, said Don Smurthwaite, spokesperson with the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho. "Fire seasons are getting longer, western regions are getting drier, and more people are living ...

NEW YORK CITY -- Children who overestimate their popularity are less likely to be bullies than those who underestimate or hold more accurate assessments of their social standing, finds new research to be presented at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. "The more kids overestimated their popularity, the less aggression they displayed," said Jennifer Watling Neal, an assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. "This means that kids who were more accurate in their assessment of their number of friends or who underestimated ...

NEW YORK CITY -- People have more empathy for battered puppies and full grown dogs than they do for some humans -- adults, but not children, finds new research to be presented at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. "Contrary to popular thinking, we are not necessarily more disturbed by animal rather than human suffering," said Jack Levin, the Irving and Betty Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Northeastern University. "Our results indicate a much more complex situation with respect to the age and species of victims, with ...

NEW YORK CITY — Morning sickness, shiny hair, and bizarre and intense cravings for pickles and ice cream — what expectations do pregnant women impose on their bodies, and how are those expectations influenced by cultural perspectives on pregnancy? Danielle Bessett, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Cincinnati, will present her research on this issue at the 108th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. Although previous studies have indicated that women primarily rely on their health care providers and pregnancy guides to find ...

NEW YORK CITY — Immigration judges should be allowed to consider a person's family and social ties to the United States before ordering the deportation of legal permanent residents for minor offenses, says a professor at the University of California, Merced. "The reason legal permanent residents can be deported for minor crimes — even if they have lived in the United States for many years — is that there is little to no due process in immigration courts," sociology Professor Tanya Golash-Boza said. "Under current laws, if a person has a prior conviction for a wide range ...

NEW YORK -- An Indiana University study found that college students' experiences are largely shaped by the debt they accrue, with debt-free students more likely to live the "play hard" lifestyle often associated with the college years, where social lives can trump academics. Sociologist Daniel Rudel said this is one of the first studies to examine how student loan debt affects students' college experiences. He and colleague Natasha Yurk, also a graduate student in the Department of Sociology in IU Bloomington's College of Arts and Sciences, found "real and significant ...

In what is the biggest study of its kind to date, researchers from Technische Universität München (TUM) have identified over 10,000 different proteins in cancer cells. "Nearly all anti-tumor drugs are targeted against cellular proteins," says Prof. Bernhard Küster, Head of the TUM Chair of Proteomics and Bioanalytics. "Identifying the proteome the protein portfolio of tumor cells increases our chances of finding new targets for drugs." The scientists investigated 59 tumor cell lines from the US National Cancer Institute. The "NCI-60" cell lines represent the most common ...

The California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) today released new data based on interviews with more than 44,000 households in California. The survey, conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, covered hundreds of topics affecting state residents' health and well-being. Data on nearly 200 of these topics were released today on AskCHIS, the center's award-winning, free, easy-to-use Web tool that provides data by state, region, county and some service-planning areas in Los Angeles and San Diego counties. Even more data were released through free, downloadable ...

3-N-butylphthalide, a green botanical medicine, is a successfully synthesized and stable chemical drug used for the treatment of ischemic stroke that has independent intellectual property rights in China. The first L-isomer, originally extracted from celery seed, was artificially synthesized from racemic acid, also known as butylphthalide. L-3-n-butylphthalide has been shown to reduce β-amylase-induced neuronal apoptosis and improve cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease animal models. As a neuroprotective drug for cerebrovascular disease, 3-n-butylphthalide has ...

The middle cerebral artery territory comprises the corticospinal tract, which is responsible for fine motor activity of the hands, and the corticoreticulospinal tract, which is involved in postural control and locomotor function, and therefore, motor weakness is one of the most disabling sequelae of a middle cerebral artery infarct. However, little is known about motor outcomes in patients with a complete middle cerebral artery territory infarct. Prof. Sung Ho Jang and colleagues from College of Medicine, Yeungnam University investigated 23 patients with a complete middle ...

In multiple sclerosis, gray matter atrophy is extensive, and cognitive deficits and mood disorders are frequently encountered. It has been conjectured that focal atrophy is associated with emotional decline. However, conventional MRI has revealed that the pathological characteristics cannot fully account for the mood disorders. Dr. Aiyu Lin and colleagues from the First Affiliated Hospital of Fujian Medical University used the voxel-based morphometry method to compare the difference in the clinical manifestations and imaging parameters of Chinese patients with multiple ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- By tracking the previously unknown movements of a set of specialized cells, Whitehead Institute scientists are shedding new light on how the immune system mounts a successful defense against hostile, ever-changing invaders. Central to the immune response is the activity inside structures known as germinal centers (GCs), which form in the body's lymph nodes upon detection of a foreign virus or bacteria. Within the GCs, populations of antibody-producing B cells move through continual cycles of mutation in an effort to generate antibodies perfectly suited ...

Boston, Mass., -- A mother's perceived social status predicts her child's brain development and stress indicators, finds a study at Boston Children's Hospital. While previous studies going back to the 1950s have linked objective socioeconomic factors -- such as parental income or education -- to child health, achievement and brain function, the new study is the first to link brain function to maternal self-perception. In the study, children whose mothers saw themselves as having a low social status were more likely to have increased cortisol levels, an indicator of stress, ...

Results from a longitudinal study show that children who exhibit lower conscientiousness (e.g., irresponsible, careless, not persevering) could experience worse overall health, including greater obesity, as adults. The Oregon Research Institute (ORI) study examines the relationship between childhood personality and adult health and shows a strong association between childhood conscientiousness (organized, dependable, self-disciplined) and health status in adulthood. ORI scientist Sarah Hampson, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health, Hawaii report ...

Washington, D.C—The key to understanding Earth's evolution is to look at how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface. Researchers at the Carnegie Institution, with colleagues at the University of Illinois, have for the first time been able to experimentally simulate the pressure conditions in this region to measure thermal conductivity using a new measurement technique developed by the collaborators and implemented by the Carnegie team on the mantle material magnesium oxide (MgO). They found ...

Bending light beams to your whim sounds like a job for a wizard or an a complex array of bulky mirrors, lenses and prisms, but a few tiny liquid bubbles may be all that is necessary to open the doors for next-generation, high-speed circuits and displays, according to Penn State researchers. To combine the speed of optical communication with the portability of electronic circuitry, researchers use nanoplasmonics -- devices that use short electromagnetic waves to modulate light on the nanometer scale, where conventional optics do not work. However, aiming and focusing this ...

A collaborative biological survey that focused on the insects of French Polynesia has resulted in the discovery of over 100 tiny predatory beetle species in Tahiti, 28 of these species newly described in the open-access journal ZooKeys. The predatory beetles range in size from 3-8 mm long, and have evolutionarily lost their flight wings, making them homebodies living in small patches of mountain forest. The author, James Liebherr of Cornell University, states "It is exhilarating working with such a fauna, because every new locality or ecological situation has the high ...

Opening our eyes and seeing the world before us, full of objects, is a simple action we may take for granted. Yet our brain is constantly carrying out a huge analysis only to let us see a flower, a pen, the face of our children. Where exactly in our brain does shape become meaning? A group of scientists coordinated by Davide Zoccolan of SISSA of Trieste, in collaboration with the team headed over by Riccardo Zecchina of Polytechnic University of Turin (within the Programma Neuroscienze 2008/2009 financed by Compagnia di San Paolo), studied a specific area of the brain ...

The day before the child's death was not a pleasant one, because it was not a sudden injury that killed the 10-13 year old child who was buried in the medieval town of Ribe in Denmark 800 years ago. The day before death was full of suffering because the child had been given a large dose of mercury in an attempt to cure a severe illness. This is now known to chemist Kaare Lund Rasmussen from University of Southern Denmark – because he and his colleagues have developed a new methodology that can reveal an unheard amount of details from very shortly before a person's death. ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have identified new markers of tuberculosis (TB) that may help in the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments. Published online in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, the study investigated the proteins that are released by a break down of the lung structure in TB patients. Lung damage causes both transmission of infection and mortality. They found that fragments released by break down of the lung's key proteins (collagen and elastin), are increased in the sputum of patients with TB. They also discovered that ...

August 9, 2013, Shenzhen, China - In a study published in Cell Research, Chinese scientists from Zhejiang University and BGI have completed the genome sequencing and analysis of the endangered Chinese alligator (Alligator sinensis). This is the first published crocodilian genome, providing a good explanation of how terrestrial-style reptiles adapt to aquatic environments and temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD). The Chinese alligator is a member of the alligator family that lives in China. It is critically endangered with a population of ~100 wild and ~10,000 ...