The threat from a heart attack doesn't end with the event itself. Blockage of blood flow to the heart can cause irreversible cell death and scarring. With transplants scarce, half the people who live through a heart attack die within five years. Scientists are trying to address this problem by engineering cardiac tissue to patch up damaged areas. Now doctoral students Sharon Fleischer and Ron Feiner — under the supervision of Dr. Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology — ...

Atlanta, September 23, 2013 -- A secondary analysis of the historic RTOG 9202 prostate cancer trial examined results of men with intermediate-risk prostate cancer who had received long-term hormonal therapy after radiation therapy, and concluded that there were no additional benefits when compared to short-term hormonal therapy, according to research presented today at the American Society for Radiation Oncology's (ASTRO's) 55th Annual Meeting. Men with advanced prostate cancer typically receive hormonal therapy to reduce the level of androgens, or male hormones, in ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 23, 2013–Moderate reductions in body temperature can improve outcomes after a person suffers a traumatic brain injury (TBI). New research that identifies positive effects of mild hypothermia on brain tissue is presented in an article published in Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Therapeutic Hypothermia and Temperature Management website at http://www.liebertpub.com/ther. The article "Effects of Mild Hypothermia Treatment ...

Southeastern China was hit by the most powerful typhoon of 2013 on Sept. 22, when Typhoon Usagi came ashore landfall in the Guangdong Province during the evening. NASA's TRMM satellite observed very heavy rainfall just south of the eye as the center was landfalling. When Typhoon Usagi, the Japanese word for "rabbit," made landfall it had maximum sustained winds near 95.6 knots (~110 mph). According to Xinhuanet.com news, 25 people were killed by the storm. Over 310,000 residents were displaced due to the storm. Xinhuanet reported economic losses totaled as much as ...

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Sibling bullying is a type of violence that is prevalent in the lives of most children, but little is known about it, researchers say. Clemson University psychology professor Robin Kowalski said the phenomenon has been overlooked. Kowalski and and co-author Jessica Skinner explored the extent to which sibling bullying is viewed to be normal and the perceived differences between victims and perpetrators. They recently published their findings in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. The purpose of the study was to profile sibling bullying by examining ...

URBANA, Ill. -- Although sorghum lines underwent adaptation to be grown in temperate climates decades ago, a University of Illinois researcher said he and his team have completed the first comprehensive genomic analysis of the molecular changes behind that adaptation. Patrick Brown, an assistant professor in plant breeding and genetics, said having a complete characterization of the locations (loci) affecting specific traits will speed up the adaptation of sorghum and other related grasses to new production systems for both food and fuel. Brown is working on the project ...

Although the Rim Fire doesn't show any signs of smoke billowing like it has in the past satellite images, the fire still continues on. The blaze, which started on August 17, 2013, more than a month ago, is currenty 84% contained. Fire officials are currently estimating that complete containment will be achieved around October 1, 2013. The statistics on the fire to date: Acres Burned: 257 126 (402 square miles) Structures Threatened: 0 Containment: 84% Residences Destroyed: 11 Fire Start Date: August 17 2013 Commercial Property Destroyed: 3 Fire Cause: Under ...

When it comes to addressing the obesity epidemic, fast food restaurants are a favorite target, with some communities, such as the city of Los Angeles, going so far as to ban the construction of new, standalone fast food restaurants in neighborhoods with a high density of fast food restaurants that are also plagued by a high obesity rate. But according to a new study coauthored by Michael Bader, an assistant professor of sociology at American University in Washington, D.C., communities contemplating such bans may want to look beyond the number of fast food outlets to the ...

VIDEO: This shows representitative positron emission tomography images of the rat spinal cord.. Click here for more information. Researchers have made an exciting breakthrough – developing a first-of-its-kind imaging tool to examine myelin damage in multiple sclerosis (MS). An extremely difficult disease to diagnose, the tool will help physicians diagnose patients earlier, monitor the disease's progression, and evaluate therapy efficacy. Case Western Reserve University School ...

Typhoon Pabuk continued to strengthen as it moved north through the northwestern Pacific Ocean on Sept. 23, and NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared image of the storm. The NASA image showed powerful thunderstorms east of the storm's center. On Sept. 23 at 3:17 UTC/Sept. 22 at 11:17 p.m. EDT NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Typhoon Pabuk in the northwestern Pacific Ocean and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument captured an infrared image. The AIRS image showed very high, powerful storms with very cold cloud top temperatures wrapped around the eastern ...

Accidents also traumatize small children. Around one in ten children still suffers from a post-traumatic stress disorder a year after a road accident or burn injury, reliving aspects of the traumatic experience in the form of flashbacks or nightmares. In doing so, young children keep replaying the stressful memories while avoiding anything that might remind them of the accident in any way. As a result of this constant alertness to threatening memories, the children can develop sleeping disorders, concentration problems or aggressive behavior. Assessing the risk of illness ...

People can be easily tricked into believing an artificial finger is their own, shows a study published today [23 September] in The Journal of Physiology. The results reveal that the brain does not require multiple signals to build a picture body ownership, as this is the first time the illusion has been created using sensory inputs from the muscle alone. The discovery provides new insight into clinical conditions where body representation in the brain is disrupted due to changes in the central or peripheral nervous systems e.g. stroke, schizophrenia and phantom limb syndrome ...

WA, Seattle (September 23, 2013) – Encouraging results from the T1DAL study (Targeting effector memory T cells with alefacept in new onset type 1 diabetes), led by Mark R. Rigby M.D., Ph.D. from Indiana University and Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis and sponsored by the Immune Tolerance Network (ITN) with additional support from JDRF, are published today in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. Alefacept, an engineered fusion protein targeting a surface molecule, CD2, found on T-lymphocytes, was the first biologic therapy approved for moderate to severe plaque ...

New York, NY and Stockholm, Sweden -- A team of researchers affiliated with Ludwig Cancer Research and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report in the current issue of Nature Methods a dramatically improved technique for analyzing the genes expressed within a single cell -- a capability of relevance to everything from basic research to future cancer diagnostics. "There are cells in tumors and in healthy tissues that are not present in sufficient numbers to permit analysis using anything but single-cell methods," explains senior author, Rickard Sandberg, PhD. "This method ...

CHICAGO --- A fear memory was reduced in people by exposing them to the memory over and over again while they slept. It's the first time that emotional memory has been manipulated in humans during sleep, report Northwestern Medicine® scientists. The finding potentially offers a new way to enhance the typical daytime treatment of phobias through exposure therapy by adding a nighttime component. Exposure therapy is a common treatment for phobia and involves a gradual exposure to the feared object or situation until the fear is extinguished. "It's a novel finding," ...

Since the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belts in 1958, space scientists have believed these belts encircling the Earth consist of two doughnut-shaped rings of highly charged particles — an inner ring of high-energy electrons and energetic positive ions and an outer ring of high-energy electrons. In February of this year, a team of scientists reported the surprising discovery of a previously unknown third radiation ring — a narrow one that briefly appeared between the inner and outer rings in September 2012 and persisted for a month. In new research, UCLA ...

LOS ANGELES — Molecular microbiologists at the University of Southern California (USC) have uncovered intricate regulatory mechanisms within the cell that could lead to novel therapeutics for the treatment of cancer and other diseases. Their findings, which have long-standing significance in the basic understanding of cell biology, appear in the journal Nature Cell Biology. "Our research reveals a new regulatory mechanism that coordinates two distinct intracellular processes that are critical to cellular homeostasis and disease development," said Chengyu Liang, M.D., ...

Scientists have moved closer to developing a universal flu vaccine after using the 2009 pandemic as a natural experiment to study why some people seem to resist severe illness. Researchers at Imperial College London asked volunteers to donate blood samples just as the swine flu pandemic was getting underway and report any symptoms they experienced over the next two flu seasons. They found that those who avoided severe illness had more CD8 T cells, a type of virus-killing immune cell, in their blood at the start of the pandemic. They believe a vaccine that stimulates ...

The results of the new study imply that it is hard to fool the brain by providing it with 'energyless' sweet flavours. Our pleasure in consuming sweet solutions is driven to a great extent by the amount of energy it provides: greater reward in the brain is attributed to sugars compared to artificial sweeteners. Professor Ivan de Araujo, who led the study at Yale University School of Medicine USA, says: "The consumption of high-calorie beverages is a major contributor to weight gain and obesity, even after the introduction of artificial sweeteners to the market. We believe ...

A lot of energy is wasted when machines turn hot, unnecessarily heating up their environment. Some of this thermal energy could be harvested using thermoelectric materials; they create electric current when they are used to bridge hot and cold objects. At the Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna), a new and considerably more efficient class of thermoelectric materials can now be produced. It is the material's very special crystal structure that does the trick, in connection with an astonishing new physical effect; in countless tiny cages within the crystal, cerium ...

New research on the most commonly used anaesthetic drug could help to unravel a long-standing mystery about how it induces a pain-free, sleep-like state. General anaesthetics are administered to tens of millions of people every year in hospitals, where they are used to sedate patients undergoing surgery. Despite this, scientists have yet to understand how the drug interacts with its targets in brain cells to achieve this effect. Following years of research on propofol, which has become the most commonly used anaesthetic since it was introduced in the 1980s, researchers ...

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and Imperial College London have identified the site where the widely used anesthetic drug propofol binds to receptors in the brain to sedate patients during surgery. Until now, it hasn't been clear how propofol connects with brain cells to induce anesthesia. The researchers believe the findings, reported online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, eventually will lead to the development of more effective anesthetics with fewer side effects. "For many years, the mechanisms by which anesthetics act ...

Chronic aggressive behaviour exhibited by some boys from disadvantaged families may be due to epigenetic changes during pregnancy and early childhood. This is highlighted by two studies conducted by a team led by Richard E. Tremblay, professor emeritus at the University of Montreal and Moshe Szyf, professor at McGill University, published in the journal PLOS ONE. The first author of the two papers, Nadine Provençal, was jointly supervised by professors Szyf and Tremblay. Epigenetic changes possibly related to the prenatal environment In the first study, published in ...

What woman has not wanted to gobble up a baby placed in her arms, even if the baby is not hers? This reaction, which everyone has noticed or felt, could have biological underpinnings related to maternal functions. For the first time, an international team of researchers has found evidence of this phenomenon in the neural networks associated with reward. "The olfactory -- thus non-verbal and non-visual -- chemical signals for communication between mother and child are intense," explains Johannes Frasnelli, a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Montreal's ...

Many older women with newly diagnosed breast cancer have difficulty accomplishing daily tasks, and African-Americans seem to be disproportionately affected. Those are the findings of a new study published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's results suggest that many breast cancer patients could benefit from receiving therapy to improve their physical function. Many studies conducted in older adults have demonstrated that, compared with Caucasians, African-Americans are more likely to experience functional disability, ...