For the first time, researchers have linked autism in a mouse model of the disease with abnormalities in specific regions of the animals' chromosomes. The regions contain genes associated with aberrant brain development and activity. "These discoveries in mice may eventually pave the way towards understanding autism in human patients and devising new treatments," said co-senior author, Elliott H. Sherr, MD, PhD, a pediatric neurologist at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital and professor of neurology at UC San Francisco (UCSF). The findings are reported in a study published ...

This adds up to around 1900 fewer such admissions every year, the authors calculate, and confirms the value of public health interventions, such as smoking bans, they say. They base their findings on the number of emergency admissions for asthma among adults aged 16 and over in England between April 1997 and December 2010. Smoking in all public places was banned in July 2007 in England, where the prevalence of asthma is one of the highest in the world, affecting almost 6% of the population. During the study period, 502,000 adults with asthma were admitted as emergencies. ...

A resting heart rate - the number of heart beats per minute - is determined by an individual's level of physical fitness, circulating hormones, and the autonomic nervous system. A rate at rest of between 60 and 100 beats per minute is considered normal. People who are very physically active tend to have a low heart rate at rest, but the authors wanted to find out if heart rate had any bearing on an individual's risk of death, irrespective of their level of cardiorespiratory fitness. They therefore tracked the health of just under 3000 men for 16 years, all of whom ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The first large-scale study of U.S. science faculty with education specialties (SFES) concludes that their training and funding vary considerably depending on their college or university. In a study published in the April 15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers including SF State biology professor Kimberly Tanner conclude that researchers at master's degree-granting institutions are almost twice as likely to have formal training in science education than their colleagues at other institutions. But surprisingly, ...

TORONTO, April 15, 2013—A review of published research has found no evidence that drugs, herbal products or vitamin supplements help prevent cognitive decline in healthy older adults. The review, conducted at St. Michael's Hospital, found some evidence that mental exercises, such as computerized memory training programs, might help. "This review provides some evidence to help clinicians and their patients address what strategies might prevent cognitive decline," said Dr. Raza Naqvi, a University of Toronto resident and lead author of the review. The issue is of particular ...

A team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers has identified a genetic signature that appears to reflect the risk of tumor recurrence or spread in men surgically treated for prostate cancer. If confirmed in future studies, this finding not only may help determine which patients require additional treatment after the cancerous gland has been removed, it also may help address the most challenging problem in prostate cancer treatment – distinguishing tumors that require aggressive treatment from those that can safely be monitored. The report has been issued ...

LEXINGTON, Ky. (April 15, 2013) — Even a mild injury to the brain can have long lasting consequences, including increased risk of cognitive impairment later in life. While it is not yet known how brain injury increases risk for dementia, there are indications that chronic, long-lasting, inflammation in the brain may be important. A new paper by researchers at the University of Kentucky Sanders-Brown Center on Aging (SBCoA), appearing in the Journal of Neuroscience, offers the latest information concerning a "switch" that turns "on" and "off" inflammation in the brain after ...

Physicians at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center have become the first in Virginia to successfully implant a telescope in a patient's eye to treat macular degeneration. The telescope implant is designed to correct end-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most advanced form of AMD and the leading cause of blindness in older Americans. Patients with end-stage AMD have a central blind spot. This vision loss makes it difficult or impossible to see faces, to read and to perform everyday activities such as watching television, preparing meals and ...

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere have decoded the genome of the platyfish, a cousin of the guppy and a popular choice for home aquariums. Among scientists, the fish are meticulously studied for their tendency to develop melanoma and for other attributes more common to mammals, like courting prospective mates and giving birth to live young. Known scientifically as Xiphophorus maculatus, platyfish sport a variety of spectacular colors – brilliant oranges, yellows and a lovely iridescent silver – and myriad striped and speckled ...

A group of researchers led by San Diego State University communication professor Peter Andersen, have teamed up with 40 resorts nationwide to encourage vacationers to be smart about sun protection through Go Sun Smart. The program, funded by the National Institute of Health, kicked off in March at the PGA Golf Resort in Palm Beach, Florida, and Lago Mar Resort and Club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. It will continue to roll out to resorts all over North America this summer. "Our goal is to see if we can get guests at outdoor resorts to be more sun smart," said Andersen. ...

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (04/15/2013) -- Disease-resistant wheat developed over the past half century helped ensure steady world food supplies, but a global team led by researchers from the University of Minnesota warns in a new paper that without increased financial support for disease resistance research, new strains of a deadly fungal disease could leave millions without affordable access to food. The study, published in the current edition of the journal Science, examines how Ug99 – new virulent forms of stem rust first found in Uganda in 1999—could continue its movement ...

Montréal, April 15, 2013 – A team of researchers at the IRCM, led by Dr. Jean-François Côté, made an important discovery in breast cancer, which will published online this week by the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The Montréal scientists identified the DOCK1 protein as a potential target to reduce the progression of metastases in patients suffering from breast cancer, the most common type of cancer in women. Dr. Côté's laboratory is interested in metastasis, which is the spread of cancer from an organ (or part of an organ) ...

Recently, doctors have begun to categorize breast cancers into four main groups according to the genetic makeup of the cancer cells. Which category a cancer falls into generally determines the best method of treatment. But cancers in one of the four groups — called "basal-like" or "triple-negative" breast cancer (TNBC) — have been particularly tricky to treat because they usually don't respond to the "receptor-targeted" treatments that are often effective in treating other types of breast cancer. TNBC tends to be more aggressive than the other types and more likely ...

ANN ARBOR—The larger the group, the smaller the chance of forming interracial friendships, a new University of Michigan study shows. Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study examines how the size of a community affects the realization of people's preferences for friends. U-M researchers Siwei Cheng and Yu Xie tested their theoretical model using both simulated and real data on actual friendships among 4,745 U.S. high school students. "We found that total school size had a major effect on the likelihood that students would form interracial ...

Writers: Emil Venere, (765) 494-4709, venere@purdue.edu Sources: Ji Soo Yi, 765-496-7213, yij@purdue.edu Bum chul Kwon, kwonb@purdue.edu Related Web site: Ji Soo Yi: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~yij/ PHOTO CAPTION: Purdue industrial engineering doctoral candidate Bum chul Kwon demonstrates a new system that allows treadmill users to read while they run. The system, called ReadingMate, adjusts text on a monitor to counteract the bobbing motion of a runner's head so that the text appears still. (Purdue University photo/Mark Simons) A publication-quality ...

Researchers from Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok and the Natural History Museum, London (Thanit Siriboon, Chirasak Sutcharit, Fred Naggs and Somsak Panha) discovered many new taxa of the brightly coloured carnivorous terrestrial snails family Streptaxidae. Terrestrial snails are primarily herbivores and only a rare few groups like this one are carnivorous. The animals come from several limestone areas across the world, including some threatened by human exploitation, especially by quarrying. Three new species from the genus Perrottetia were described from north and ...

INDIANAPOLIS and WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- Information collected from individual patients at doctor's office and hospital visits could be used to improve health care and reduce costs on a national scale, according to a discussion paper released by the Institute of Medicine. As health care records move to electronic systems, there is an opportunity to compile information taken from individuals and use it to conduct large studies that advance the entire health care system, said Michael D. Murray, PharmD, MPH, the Regenstrief Institute investigator and Purdue University professor ...

How do nerve cells -- which can each be up to three feet long in humans -- keep from rupturing or falling apart? Axons, the long, cable-like projections on neurons, are made stronger by a unique modification of the common molecular building block of the cell skeleton. The finding, which may help guide the search for treatments for neurodegenerative diseases, was reported in the April 10 issue of Neuron by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Microtubules are long, hollow cylinders that are a component of the cytoskeleton in all cells ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – People with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often have trouble communicating and interacting with others because they process language, facial expressions and social cues differently. Previously, researchers found that propranolol, a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure, anxiety and panic, could improve the language abilities and social functioning of people with an ASD. Now, University of Missouri investigators say the prescription drug also could help improve the working memory abilities of individuals with autism. Working memory represents ...

April 15, 2013 – San Francisco - A brain-training task that increases the number of items an individual can remember over a short period of time may boost performance in other problem-solving tasks by enhancing communication between different brain areas. The new study being presented this week in San Francisco is one of a growing number of experiments on how working-memory training can measurably improve a range of skills – from multiplying in your head to reading a complex paragraph. "Working memory is believed to be a core cognitive function on which many types of ...

AURORA, Colo. (April 15, 2013) – A newly published study of patients with pulmonary fibrosis has discovered multiple genetic variations that should help with future efforts to treat the disease. Pulmonary fibrosis is a condition where lung tissue becomes thickened, stiff and scarred. Currently in the United States, there are no drugs approved for use in cases of the condition's most common and severe form, which is known as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) because the cause of the disease is not known. In those cases, the median survival time after diagnosis is two ...

As small and active flying mammals, bats have very high mass-specific energy requirements and as such continually adjust their rates of activity and metabolism in response to ambient temperature and other seasonal variation. In particular, during the autumn mating season, male bats must carefully balance time spent foraging (to gain enough fat to last the winter hibernation) with time spent finding a mate. Because both activities require significant effort, how do male bats do it? In an upcoming issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, Nina Becker and colleagues ...

Specific DNA once dismissed as junk plays an important role in brain development and might be involved in several devastating neurological diseases, UC San Francisco scientists have found. Their discovery in mice is likely to further fuel a recent scramble by researchers to identify roles for long-neglected bits of DNA within the genomes of mice and humans alike. While researchers have been busy exploring the roles of proteins encoded by the genes identified in various genome projects, most DNA is not in genes. This so-called junk DNA has largely been pushed aside ...

AUDIO: Learn about research on decision-making in this podcast with Carlos Brody, an associate professor of molecular biology affiliated with the Princeton Neuroscience Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.... Click here for more information. Making decisions involves a gradual accumulation of facts that support one choice or another. A person choosing a college might weigh factors such as course selection, institutional reputation and the quality of ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University believe they have solved a puzzle that has vexed science since plants first appeared on Earth. In a groundbreaking paper published online this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers provide the first three-dimensional model of an enzyme that links a simple sugar, glucose, into long-chain cellulose, the basic building block within plant cell walls that gives plants structure. Cellulose is nature's most abundant renewable biomaterial and an important resource for production of biofuels that ...