A combination of the myxoma virus and the immune suppressant rapamycin can kill glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and deadliest malignant brain tumor, according to Moffitt Cancer Center research. Peter A. Forsyth, M.D., of Moffitt's Neuro-Oncology Program, says the combination has been shown to infect and kill both brain cancer stem cells and differentiated compartments of glioblastoma multiforme. The finding means that barriers to treating the disease, such as resistance to the drug temozolomide, may be overcome. The study, by Forsyth and colleagues in Canada, ...

Bumblebees searching for nectar go for signposts on flowers rather than the bull's eye. A new study, by Levente Orbán and Catherine Plowright from the University of Ottawa in Canada, shows that the markings at the center of a flower are not as important as the markings that will direct the bees to the center. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Naturwissenschaften - The Science of Nature. The first time bees go out looking for nectar, which visual stimuli do they use to identify that first flower that will provide them with the reward they are looking ...

JUPITER, FL-- Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a compound that could counter Parkinson's disease in two ways at once. In a new study published recently online ahead of print by the journal ACS Chemical Biology, the scientists describe a "dual inhibitor"- two compounds in a single molecule-- that attacks a pair of proteins closely associated with development of Parkinson's disease. "In general, these two enzymes amplify the effect of each other," said team leader Phil LoGrasso, a TSRI professor who has been a pioneer ...

A new study by Queen's University researchers has determined that adults who accumulated 150 minutes of exercise on a few days of the week were not any less healthy than adults who exercised more frequently throughout the week. Ian Janssen and his graduate student Janine Clarke studied 2,324 adults from across Canada to determine whether the frequency of physical activity throughout the week is associated with risk factors for diabetes, heart disease and stroke. "The findings indicate that it does not matter how adults choose to accumulate their 150 weekly minutes of ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 20, 2013—At least half of all cases of deafness that develop from birth through infancy in developed countries have a genetic basis, as do many cases of later onset progressive hearing loss. To date, at least 1,000 mutations occurring in 64 genes in the human genome have been linked to hearing loss. Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies are enabling the identification of these deafness-causing genetic variants, as described in a Review article in Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 20, 2013 – African-Americans with Medicaid as their primary insurance were less likely to receive a living kidney transplant (LKT) than patients with private insurance, according to a new study by researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The study is published on the Early View online edition of Clinical Transplantation. "Living kidney transplantation is the optimal treatment for patients with end-stage renal disease, offering the best quality of life and longest survival," said Amber Reeves-Daniel, D.O., assistant professor of nephrology ...

AUSTIN, Texas — Physicists at The University of Texas at Austin have built a tabletop particle accelerator that can generate energies and speeds previously reached only by major facilities that are hundreds of meters long and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. "We have accelerated about half a billion electrons to 2 gigaelectronvolts over a distance of about 1 inch," said Mike Downer, professor of physics in the College of Natural Sciences. "Until now that degree of energy and focus has required a conventional accelerator that stretches more than the length ...

June 20, 2013, New York, NY and Oxford, UK — An advanced tumor is a complex ecosystem. Though derived from a single cell, it evolves as it grows until it contains several subspecies of cells that vary dramatically in their genetic traits and behaviors. This cellular heterogeneity is what makes advanced tumors so difficult to treat. Publishing their findings in today's online issue of Cancer Cell, an international team of scientists led jointly by Professors Colin Goding from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research who is based at the University of Oxford and José Neptuno ...

Changing ocean water temperatures and circulation patterns have profoundly affected key Northeast U.S. Continental Shelf zooplankton species in recent decades, and may be influencing the recovery of Atlantic cod and other fish stocks in the region. NOAA researcher Kevin Friedland and colleagues looked at the distribution and abundance of important zooplankton species, sea surface water temperatures, and cod abundance. They found that zooplankton species critical for the survival of Atlantic cod larvae have declined in abundance in the same areas where Atlantic cod stocks ...

VIDEO: Surgical Theater aims to allow each and every neurosurgeon the ability to "Pre-Live the Future. " The Surgical Rehearsal Platform (SRP) supports a neurosurgeon's goal of providing patients with the best... Click here for more information. Surgical Theater's Surgical Rehearsal Platform™ (SRP) provided neurosurgeons the opportunity to rehearse a complicated cerebral case before entering the operating room, saving the surgical team critical seconds on a time-sensitive ...

The study reveals for the first time how the movement and duplication of segments of DNA known as transposons, is regulated. This prevents a genomic meltdown, and instead enables transposons to live in harmony with their hosts — including humans. Transposons were discovered in the 1940s by Barbara McClintock, who was rewarded in 1983 with the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Ancient relics of these 'jumping genes', as they are sometimes called, make up 50 per cent of the DNA in humans. They are characterised as 'jumping' because they can change their position within ...

NEW YORK, NY (June 20, 2013)—Researchers have found elevated antibodies to gluten proteins of wheat in children with autism in comparison to those without autism. The results also indicated an association between the elevated antibodies and the presence of gastrointestinal symptoms in the affected children. They did not find any connection, however, between the elevated antibodies and celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder known to be triggered by gluten. The results were e-published in the journal PLOS ONE. Gluten, a group of more than 70 proteins in wheat and related ...

This news release is available in German. Chlamydia trachomatis is a human pathogen that is the leading cause of bacterial sexually transmitted disease worldwide with more than 90 million new cases of genital infections occurring each year. About 70 percent of women infected with Chlamydia remain asymptomatic and these bacteria can establish chronic infections for months, or even years. Even when it causes no symptoms, Chlamydia can damage a woman's reproductive organs. In addition, standard antibacterial drugs are proving increasingly ineffective in complete eradication, ...

Just below the centre of this image is the blue, twisted form of galaxy NGC 2936, one of the two interacting galaxies that form Arp 142 in the constellation of Hydra. Nicknamed "the Penguin" or "the Porpoise" by amateur astronomers, NGC 2936 used to be a standard spiral galaxy before being torn apart by the gravity of its cosmic companion. The remnants of its spiral structure can still be seen — the former galactic bulge now forms the "eye" of the penguin, around which it is still possible to see where the galaxy's pinwheeling arms once were. These disrupted arms now ...

A study led by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has found for the first time that thirdhand smoke—the noxious residue that clings to virtually all surfaces long after the secondhand smoke from a cigarette has cleared out—causes significant genetic damage in human cells. Furthermore, the study also found that chronic exposure is worse than acute exposure, with the chemical compounds in samples exposed to chronic thirdhand smoke existing in higher concentrations and causing more DNA damage than samples exposed to acute thirdhand smoke, suggesting that ...

The discovery of an unexpected function for a gene that was associated to another process in the organism might be a solution in search of a problem, a clue to unsuspected connections. That is what has happened with RAP1, a gene that protects telomeres— the ends of chromosomes—after researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) surprisingly discovered its key role in obesity. "We still don't know what evolutionary significance to attach to it, but it is at the very least interesting that a telomere gene is related to obesity", says Maria Blasco, ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- An interdisciplinary team that actively involves a nursing home patient's own physician plus a pharmacist has substantially better odds of improving the quality of nursing home care, according to a new systemic review of studies on long-term-stay patients' care. "CMS [Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services] mandates an interdisciplinary approach to nursing home care, so all U.S. nursing homes have teams, but the composition and activity of these teams vary," said Arif Nazir, M.D., Indiana University Center for Aging Research center scientist and assistant ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People who experience any stroke symptoms—but do not have a stroke—may also be more likely to develop problems with memory and thinking, according to new research published in the June 19, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "'Silent strokes' that cause small areas of brain damage have been tied to memory and thinking problems, but it has been difficult to study these 'silent strokes' due to the cost and inconvenience of obtaining brain MRIs," said study author Brendan J. Kelley, MD, of the University ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Neuroscientists may soon be modern-day harpooners, snaring individual brain-cell signals instead of whales with tiny spears made of carbon nanotubes. The new brain cell spear is a millimeter long, only a few nanometers wide and harnesses the superior electromechanical properties of carbon nanotubes to capture electrical signals from individual neurons. "To our knowledge, this is the first time scientists have used carbon nanotubes to record signals from individual neurons, what we call intracellular recordings, in brain slices or intact brains of vertebrates," ...

NEW YORK — One in four people who survive a stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the first year post-event, and one in nine experience chronic PTSD more than a year later. The data suggest that each year nearly 300,000 stroke/TIA survivors will develop PTSD symptoms as a result of their health scare. The study, led by Columbia University Medical Center researchers, was published today in the online edition of PLOS ONE. (Note: the paper will be available online once the embargo lifts: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0066435). "This ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Some parents desire for their children to fulfill their own unrealized ambitions, just as psychologists have long theorized, according to a new first-of-its-kind study. Researchers found the more that parents see their child as part of themselves, the more likely they are to want their child to succeed in achieving their own failed dreams. The results might help explain the actions of so-called "stage moms" or "sports dads" who push their sometimes-unwilling children to become stars of the stage or gridiron, said Brad Bushman, co-author of the study ...

Some snails in Ireland and the Pyrenees are genetically almost identical, perhaps because they were carried across the Atlantic during an 8000-year-old human migration. The snail genetics tie in with studies of human genetics and the colonization of Ireland, according to the research published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Angus Davison and colleagues from the University of Nottingham, UK. Despite being thousands of miles apart, one variety of banded wood snails from Ireland and southern France share similar shell patterns and mitochondrial genes that ...

Approximately 13 million illnesses and over 110,00 hospitalizations may have been averted by the flu vaccine over the last 6 years in the U.S, according to calculations published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Deliana Kostova and colleagues from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers calculated the healthcare burden of flu cases that would have occurred in the absence of vaccination based on factors such as illness and hospitalization rates during the flu season, vaccination coverage and vaccine effectiveness. Based on these ...

Crop yields worldwide are not increasing quickly enough to support estimated global needs in 2050, according to a study published June 19 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Deepak Ray and colleagues from the Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota. Previous studies estimate that global agricultural production may need to increase by 60-110% to meet increasing demands and provide food security. In the current study, researchers assessed agricultural statistics from across the world and found that yields of four key crops- maize, rice, wheat ...

LA JOLLA, CA – June 19, 2013 – Many proteins work like Swiss Army knives, fitting multiple functions into their elaborately folded structures. A bit mysteriously, some proteins manage to multitask even with structures that are unfolded and floppy—"intrinsically disordered." In this week's issue of Nature, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) report their discovery of an important trick that a well-known intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) uses to expand and control its functionality. "We've found what is probably a general mechanism by which IDPs modulate ...