A recent study by UC Santa Barbara scientists analyzed whole-body fish samples taken from oil-and-gas production platforms and natural sites for heavy metal pollutants. The results showed all but four elements were relatively consistent at both types of location. The findings were published in the Bulletin of Marine Science. The research, led by fish expert Milton S. Love, a research biologist with UCSB's Marine Science Institute, entailed collecting a total of 196 fish –– 18 kelp bass (Paralabrax clathratus), 80 kelp rockfish (Sebastes atrovirens), and 98 Pacific sanddab ...

Researchers have identified a protein that they believe may help predict breast cancer prognosis, potentially relieving thousands of women at low risk from having to undergo painful, oft-debilitating therapies, while insuring the most successful treatments for those at high risk. The research was published ahead of print in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology. Using bioinformatics techniques, the authors showed that the levels of expression of some 1,200 genes that are directly controlled by the enzyme, EZH2, correlates with the aggressiveness of breast cancer ...

In the search for clean, green sustainable energy sources to meet human needs for generations to come, perhaps no technology matches the ultimate potential of artificial photosynthesis. Bionic leaves that could produce energy-dense fuels from nothing more than sunlight, water and atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide, with no byproducts other than oxygen, represent an ideal alternative to fossil fuels but also pose numerous scientific challenges. A major step toward meeting at least one of these challenges has been achieved by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy ...

SEATTLE – A team of researchers led by Janet Stanford, Ph.D., of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has discovered that mutations in the gene BTNL2, which encodes a protein involved in regulating T-cell proliferation and cytokine production – both of which impact immune function – increase the risk of developing prostate cancer. The findings, by Stanford and colleagues from the University of Washington Genome Sciences Department and the National Human Genome Research Institute, are online ahead of the print issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention. A ...

This news release is available in French. Despite all the research done on Alzheimer's, there is still no early diagnostic tool for the disease. By looking at the brain wave components of individuals with the disease, Professor Tiago H. Falk of INRS's Centre Énergie Matériaux Télécommunications has identified a promising avenue of research that may not only help diagnose the disease, but also assess its severity. This non-invasive, objective method is the subject of an article in the journal PLOS ONE. Patients with Alzheimer's disease currently undergo neuropsychological ...

University of Alberta researchers have found that abundant materials in the Earth's crust can be used to make inexpensive and easily manufactured nanoparticle-based solar cells. The U of A discovery, several years in the making, is an important step forward in making solar power more accessible to parts of the world that are off the traditional electricity grid or face high power costs, such as the Canadian North, said researcher Jillian Buriak, a chemistry professor and senior research officer of the National Institute for Nanotechnology, based on the U of A campus. Buriak ...

PHILADELPHIA— A new drug target to treat depression and other mood disorders may lie in a group of GABA neurons (gamma-aminobutyric acid –the neurotransmitters which inhibit other cells) shown to contribute to symptoms like social withdrawal and increased anxiety, Penn Medicine researchers report in a new study in the Journal of Neuroscience. Experts know that people suffering from depression and other mood disorders often react to rejection or bullying by withdrawing themselves socially more than the average person who takes it in strides, yet the biological processes ...

Research findings provide direct evidence that people with chronic diseases are more likely to be food insecure - that is suffering from inadequate, insecure access to food as a result of financial constraints. Previous research has shown that food insecurity rates are highest among low-income households, in households reliant on social assistance, reporting Aboriginal status, renting rather than owning their dwelling, and lone-parent female-led (see recent annual report from PROOF). Even taken together though, these factors provide only a partial explanation for the vulnerability ...

URBANA, Ill. – Is anyone surprised that brushes with the law are often related to finances? As one jailed man interviewed in a new University of Illinois study put it, "Most of us are in here because of money." Incarcerated men know they will need better financial skills to succeed when they're released from prison, but most distrust the system, are more open to educators from outside their facility, and believe they need personal rather than classroom instruction, said Angela Wiley, a U of I professor of applied family studies and co-author of the article published in ...

HOUSTON -- A prominent protein activated by inflammation is the key instigator that converts glioblastoma multiforme cells to their most aggressive, untreatable form and promotes resistance to radiation therapy, an international team lead by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported online today in the journal Cancer Cell. The discovery by scientists and physicians points to new ways to increase radiation effectiveness and potentially block or reverse progression of glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and lethal form of brain tumor. "We ...

VIDEO: Hidden for all of human history, a 460-mile-long canyon has been discovered below Greenland's ice sheet. Using radar data from NASA's Operation IceBridge and other airborne campaigns, scientists led by... Click here for more information. Data from a NASA airborne science mission reveals evidence of a large and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice. The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is at least 460 miles (750 ...

Whales have been shown to increase the pigment in their skin in response to sunshine, just as we get a tan. Research published today in Nature journal, Scientific Reports, reveals that not only do some species of whales get darker with sun exposure, incurring DNA damage in their skin just like us, they also accumulate damage to the cells in the skin as they get older. Experts in the response of skin to UV radiation at Newcastle University, UK were called in after marine biologists in Mexico noticed an increasing number of whales in the area had blistered skin. Analysing ...

Physicists have reproduced a pattern resembling the cosmic microwave background radiation in a laboratory simulation of the big bang, using ultracold cesium atoms in a vacuum chamber at the University of Chicago. "This is the first time an experiment like this has simulated the evolution of structure in the early universe," said Cheng Chin, professor in physics. Chin and his associates reported their feat in the Aug. 1 edition of Science Express, and it will appear soon in the print edition of Science. Chin pursued the project with lead author Chen-Lung Hung, PhD'11, ...

Huntington's disease (HD) is a hereditary disorder characterized by the progressive onset of neurodegeneration. Children of HD patients have a 50% chance of inheriting the disease, but symptoms do not appear until middle age. While genetic testing reliably determines if children of HD sufferers are carriers of the disease, it cannot provide information as to when symptoms will appear. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, David Eidelberg and colleagues at the Feinstein Institute of Medical Research, evaluated changes in the brain metabolism of a small ...

By carefully analyzing a 150-year-old moss bank on the Antarctic Peninsula, researchers reporting in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, on August 29 describe an unprecedented rate of ecological change since the 1960s driven by warming temperatures. "Whilst moss and amoebae may not be the first organisms that come to mind when considering Antarctica, they are dominant components of the year-round terrestrial ecosystem in the small ice-free zones during an austral summer," says Jessica Royles of the British Antarctic Survey and the University of Cambridge. "We ...

MAYWOOD, Il. – Researchers have identified a novel disease gene in which mutations cause rare but devastating genetic diseases known as mitochondrial disorders. Nine rare, disease-causing mutations of the gene, FBXL4, were found in nine affected children in seven families, including three siblings from the same family. An international team of researchers report the discovery in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The lead author is Xiaowu Gai, PhD, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Mitochondrial ...

By lowering the expression of a single gene, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have extended the average lifespan of a group of mice by about 20 percent -- the equivalent of raising the average human lifespan by 16 years, from 79 to 95. The research team targeted a gene called mTOR, which is involved in metabolism and energy balance, and may be connected with the increased lifespan associated with caloric restriction. A detailed study of these mice revealed that gene-influenced lifespan extension did not affect every tissue and organ the same way. For example, ...

A team of neuroscientists has found a key to the reduction of forgetting. Their findings, which appear in the journal Neuron, show that the better the coordination between two regions of the brain, the less likely we are to forget newly obtained information. The study was conducted at New York University by Lila Davachi, an associate professor in NYU's Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, and Kaia Vilberg, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas' Center for Vital Longevity and School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences in Dallas. "When ...

New research in mice reveals why the body is so slow to recover from jet-lag and identifies a target for the development of drugs that could help us to adjust faster to changes in time zone. With funding from the Wellcome Trust and F. Hoffmann La Roche, researchers at the University of Oxford and F. Hoffmann La Roche have identified a mechanism that limits the ability of the body clock to adjust to changes in patterns of light and dark. And the team show that if you block the activity of this gene in mice, they recover faster from disturbances in their daily light/dark ...

MANHASSET, NY – Investigators at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research have discovered a new way to measure the progression of Huntington's disease, using positron emission tomography (PET) to scan the brains of carriers of the gene. The findings are published in the September issue of The Journal of Clinical Investigation. Huntington's disease causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain, which leads to impairments in movement, thinking and emotions. Most people with Huntington's disease develop signs and symptoms in their 40s or 50s, but the onset ...

When a cancer cell sloughs off the edge of a tumor in the breast, it faces a tough road to survive. The cell must not only remain physically intact as it rushes through blood vessels, but it also must find a new organ to lodge itself in, take in enough nutrients and oxygen to stay alive, and begin dividing, all while escaping notice by the body's immune system. A team of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) scientists has discovered that some loose breast cancer cells, have a leg up on survival—the genes they express make them more likely to prosper in bone tissue. ...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA—August 29, 2013—There is no easy way to study diseases of the brain. Extracting brain cells, or neurons, from a living patient is difficult and risky, while examining a patient's brain post-mortem usually only reveals the disease's final stages. And animal models, while incredibly informative, have frequently fallen short during the crucial drug-development stage of research. But scientists at the Gladstone Institutes and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have taken a potentially more powerful approach: an advanced stem-cell technique ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (August 29, 2013) – Whitehead Institute researchers have used the gene regulation system CRISPR/Cas to engineer mouse genomes containing reporter and conditional alleles in one step. Animals containing such sophisticated engineered alleles can now be made in a matter of weeks rather than years and could be used to model diseases and study gene function. "We've used CRISPR/Cas to mutate genes before, but the nature of the targeted mutations has been unpredictable," says Whitehead Founding Member Rudolf Jaenisch. "Now we can make specific deletions defined ...

OAKLAND, Calif., August 29, 2013 — Overweight women with low levels of the hormone adiponectin prior to pregnancy are nearly seven times more likely to develop gestational diabetes, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published today in the journal Diabetes Care. Adiponectin protects against insulin resistance, inflammation and heart disease. Using Kaiser Permanente HealthConnect®, an electronic health records system, the researchers retrospectively identified about 4,000 women who gave voluntary blood samples between 1985 and 1996 during routine care and subsequently ...

A genetic phenomenon that allows for the selection of multiple genetic mutations that all lead to a similar outcome -- for instance the ability to digest milk -- has been characterised for the first time in humans. The phenomenon, known as a 'soft selective sweep', was described in the population of Ethiopia and reveals that individuals from the Eastern African population have adapted to be able to digest milk, but via different mutations in their genetic material. A team of geneticists from UCL, University of Addis Ababa and Roskilde University have shown that five ...