BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Chemists at Indiana University Bloomington have produced detailed descriptions of the structure and molecular properties of human folate receptor proteins, a key development for designing new drugs that can target cancer and inflammatory diseases without serious side effects. The researchers, from the lab of Charles Dann III, assistant professor of chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences, published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dann said the results should help chemists create more effective antifolate ...

PITTSBURGH—For almost 20 years, it has been a wide-held belief that talking on a cellphone while driving is dangerous and leads to more accidents. However, new research from Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that talking on a cellphone while driving does not increase crash risk. Published in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the study uses data from a major cellphone provider and accident reports to contradict previous findings that connected cellphone use to increased crash risk. Such findings ...

The UK fashion industry is famous all over the world and worth around £37 billion to the economy. However, it is estimated that counterfeit clothing and footwear costs designer brands and retailers around £3.5 billion each year. Recently, new powers were given to customs officers to seize and destroy fake goods but in order to act on these powers they need to be able to tell whether or not a particular item of clothing is the genuine article. Scientists from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) have published research in Applied Optics that demonstrates how a technique ...

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 ...

Free-electron lasers are extremely versatile research tools because their intense, super short light flashes permit a closer look at new materials and even biological molecules; thus, allowing effects to be observed that had not been known previously. For pulsed lasers in the far infrared range, the so-called terahertz range, scientists at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed a robust and fast detector which can measure the arrival of a terahertz pulse with great accuracy. The results were published in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters ...

A new study in the journal Cancer that tracked survival of more than 2,200 adults over the last decade with a highly aggressive form of lymphoma finds that with notable exceptions, medicine has made substantial progress in treating them successfully. To help doctors and researchers better understand who responds well to treatment and who doesn't, the study authors used their findings to create a stratified risk score of patient prognosis. Burkitt Lymphoma is not a common lymphoma but it is especially aggressive. The apparent progress doctors have made over the last two ...

The 8th issue of the open access Biorisk journal is devoted to the topic of development and standardization of monitoring of genetically modified plants (GMP). The new issue, compiled by professionals under the umbrella of the Association of German Engineers (VDI), provides up-to-date research on the issue of developing VDI guidelines for GMP monitoring; now also capturing new faunal species groups as indicators. Each application for approval of GM plants must contain a tailored monitoring plan. However, in Germany current experience with the cultivation of insect-resistant ...

Butterflies and moths were the first biological indicators considered for the purpose of GMO monitoring within the VDI guidelines series. The European community stipulates a monitoring plan in order to trace and identify any harmful effects on human health or the environment of GMO after they have been placed on the market. Butterflies and moths are widely accepted as relevant protection goals and have often been suggested and applied as suitable indicators for the monitoring of environmental quality and changes as one of the major indicators to monitor and assess biodiversity ...

Tessellation patterns that have fascinated mathematicians since Johannes Kepler worked out their systematics 400 years ago – and that more recently have caught the eye of both artists and crystallographers – can now be seen in the laboratory. They first took shape on a surface more perfectly two-dimensional than any sheet of writing paper, a single layer of atoms and molecules atop an atomically smooth substrate. Physicists coaxed these so-called Kepler tilings "onto the page" through guided self-assembly of nanostructures. The experiments were carried out by postdoctoral ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 8, 2013—As many as 20% of adolescents and 44% of young adults have shared nude or semi-nude photos of themselves via cell phone or social networking sites, a behavior known as sexting. Some people do it in the hopes it will lead to a "hook-up" or sexual activity. Sexting behavior and what results people expect may differ depending on a person's gender, relationship status, and sexual identity, are explored in a study published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The ...

Commentary on the trial of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin highlighted some Americans' perception of the influence of race and class on law enforcement in the United States. University of Missouri sociologists recently documented the influence of racial division and economic inequality on the size of a city's police force. Understanding the dynamic relationship among race, economic inequality and the criminal justice system can help America's leaders design policies that increase individuals' security while ensuring justice for all. Crime reporters can ...

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have solved the 40-year-old mystery of the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around the Milky Way. New Hubble observations reveal that most of this stream was stripped from the Small Magellanic Cloud some two billion years ago, with a smaller portion originating more recently from its larger neighbour. The Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting our galaxy, are at the head of a huge gaseous filament known as the Magellanic Stream. Since the Stream's discovery in ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Despite widespread cuts to physical education classes and recess, an Indiana University study has shown that schools can play an important role in helping their students live healthier lives. Schools that implemented coordinated school health programs saw increases in students' physical activity. "With support from teachers, administrators and parents, our schools can become healthier places," said Mindy Hightower King, evaluation manager at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at IU Bloomington. "Despite budget cuts and increasing emphasis ...

MORGANTOWN, W.Va., August 8, 2013 – The scourge of forests, the emerald ash borer, or EAB, is usually described with words like "destructive" and "pest." A recent study based on data collected by citizen scientists suggests that one more adjective might apply, at least from a bird's perspective: "delicious." In a study published this week in the journal Biological Invasions, U.S. Forest Service entomologist Andrew Liebhold and Cornell University scientist Walter Koenig and others document how an EAB invasion fueled a population boom for four species of birds in the Detroit ...

WASHINGTON D.C., August 8, 2013 -- Tumor cells circulating within a patient's bloodstream can carry cancer from a primary tumor site to distant sites of the body, spreading the disease. Now a team of researchers in China has developed a new microfluidic chip that can quickly and efficiently segregate and capture live circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a patient's blood, with potential applications for cancer screenings and treatment assessments. The researchers describe their technique in the journal Biomicrofluidics, which is produced by AIP Publishing. Many currently ...

WASHINGTON—A landmark immigration bill passed by the Senate would create new pathways to citizenship and provide a much-needed boost to the U.S. economy but would do little to ease immigration-related disparities in health care, according to a new report. "The Senate bill represents the most significant bipartisan effort to reform immigration in many years," says Leighton Ku, PhD, MPH, the author of the new report and the director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS). "It would ...

WASHINGTON, DC—A lot of people mix up the ozone hole and global warming, believing the hole is a major cause of the world's increasing average temperature. Scientists, on the other hand, have long attributed a small cooling effect to the ozone shortage in the hole. Now a new computer-modeling study suggests that the ozone hole might actually have a slight warming influence, but because of its effect on winds, not temperatures. The new research suggests that shifting wind patterns caused by the ozone hole push clouds farther toward the South Pole, reducing the amount of ...

CINCINNATI – New research posted online by the Nature journal Leukemia suggests blocking part of a DNA repair complex that helps some types of leukemia resist treatment can increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy and enhance survival. Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report that their experimental combination treatment strategy – using a small molecular inhibitor along with chemotherapy – was particularly effective at stopping a stubborn leukemia called T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia, or T-ALL. The study involved laboratory cell lines ...

Since 2011, the University of North Carolina has partnered with the government of Malawi to establish a pathology laboratory in the nation's capital, building on an existing decades-long collaboration. The laboratory has provided an invaluable service to patients and has also built capacity at a national teaching hospital, according to an analysis of the first 20 months of operation published (date) online by PLOS ONE. "A robust platform for cancer care and research now exists in a setting where it did not previously, and can serve as a model for similar interventions ...

NJIT Associate Professor Ali Akansu, PhD, wants to prevent another flash crash on Wall Street. An electrical and computing engineer who is an expert in the relatively new field of adapting signal processing to strengthen the security of finance markets, he fights to be heard. Among his weapons are frequent talks to colleagues at IEEE events. He believes that by using new technology—like digital signal processing (DSP) engineering--another flash crash, like the one in 2010 that almost destroyed world-wide financial markets, need never happen again. "There are DSP engineering ...

URBANA, Ill. – The use of soybean meal in diets fed to weanling pigs is limited due to the presence of anti-nutritional factors that young pigs can't tolerate. Therefore, other sources of protein, such as fish meal and plasma, are used in nursery pig diets. But there are other ingredients available to producers as well. Researchers at the University of Illinois have determined the nutritional value of three new protein products that have recently become available as feed ingredients for pigs. Hans H. Stein, a U of I professor of animal sciences, and his team measured ...

Surgery to relieve the damaging pressure caused by hemorrhaging in the brain is a perfect job for a robot. That is the basic premise of a new image-guided surgical system under development at Vanderbilt University. It employs steerable needles about the size of those used for biopsies to penetrate the brain with minimal damage and suction away the blood clot that has formed. The system is described in an article accepted for publication in the journal IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. It is the product of an ongoing collaboration between a team of engineers ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Chemists at Oregon State University have identified a compound that could significantly reduce the cost and potentially enable the mass commercial production of silicon nanostructures – materials that have huge potential in everything from electronics to biomedicine and energy storage. This extraordinary compound is called table salt. Simple sodium chloride, most frequently found in a salt shaker, has the ability to solve a key problem in the production of silicon nanostructures, researchers just announced in Scientific Reports, a professional journal. By ...

MINNEAPOLIS – Drinking two cups of hot chocolate a day may help older people keep their brains healthy and their thinking skills sharp, according to a study published in the August 7, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study involved 60 people with an average age of 73 who did not have dementia. The participants drank two cups of hot cocoa per day for 30 days and did not consume any other chocolate during the study. They were given tests of memory and thinking skills. They also had ultrasounds tests to measure ...

SEATTLE -- A joint Group Health–University of Washington (UW) study in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that higher blood sugar levels are associated with higher dementia risk, even among people who do not have diabetes. Blood sugar levels averaged over a five-year period were associated with rising risks for developing dementia, in this report about more than 2,000 Group Health patients age 65 and older in the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) study. For example, in people without diabetes, risk for dementia was 18 percent higher for people with an average ...