LA JOLLA, Calif., June 10, 2013 — Conventional treatments for diseases such as cancer can carry harmful side effects—and the primary reason is that such treatments are not targeted specifically to the cells of the body where they're needed. What if drugs for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other diseases can be targeted specifically and only to cells that need the medicine, and leave normal tissues untouched? A new study involving Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute's Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D., contributing to work by Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., at the University ...

What started as an experiment to probe brain circuits involved in compulsive behavior has revealed a surprising connection with obesity. The University of Iowa-led researchers bred mice missing a gene known to cause obesity, and suspected to also be involved in compulsive behavior, with a genetic mouse model of compulsive grooming. The unexpected result was offspring that were neither compulsive groomers nor obese. The study, published the week of June 10 in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests that the ...

(Memphis, Tenn. – June 10, 2013) Changes in an epigenetic mechanism that turns expression of genes on and off may be as important as genetic alterations in causing pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), according to a study led by scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and published in the June 10 online edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The results suggest the mechanism called cytosine methylation plays a previously under-appreciated role in the development of leukemia. Cytosine methylation involves adding or removing methyl groups ...

Most of the matter in the universe may be made out of particles that possess an unusual, donut-shaped electromagnetic field called an anapole. This proposal, which endows dark matter particles with a rare form of electromagnetism, has been strengthened by a detailed analysis performed by a pair of theoretical physicists at Vanderbilt University: Professor Robert Scherrer and post-doctoral fellow Chiu Man Ho. An article about the research was published online last month by the journal Physics Letters B. "There are a great many different theories about the nature of dark ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (June 10, 2013) -- An analysis of recent data from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of 97 adolescents who were part of study begun with very low birth weight babies born in 1982-1986 in a Cleveland neonatal intensive care unit has tied smaller brain volumes to poor academic achievement. More than half of the babies that weighed less than 1.66 pounds and more than 30 percent of those less than 3.31 pounds at birth later had academic deficits. (Less than 1.66 pounds is considered extremely low birth weight; less than 3.31 pounds is labeled very low birth ...

Researchers at the University of Southampton have proposed an answer to the long-running debate as to how stable the Earth system is. The Earth, with its core-driven magnetic field, oceans of liquid water, dynamic climate and abundant life is arguably the most complex system in the known Universe. Life arose on Earth over three and a half billion years ago and it would appear that despite planetary scale calamities such as the impacts of massive meteorites, runaway climate change and increases in brightness of the Sun, it has continued to grow, reproduce and evolve ever ...

Elderly mice suffering from age-related heart disease saw a significant improvement in cardiac function after being treated with the FDA-approved drug rapamycin for just three months. The research, led by a team of scientists at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, shows how rapamycin impacts mammalian tissues, providing functional insights and possible benefits for a drug that has been shown to extend the lifespan of mice as much as 14 percent. There are implications for human health in the research appearing online in Aging Cell: heart disease is the leading cause ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – Studies in this latest batch of GEOLOGY postings cover tiny Ediacara organisms, CO2 gas following seismic swarms, the growth of Mount Everest, methane seeps, the remarkably modern character of Cretaceous seawater composition, geodynamic models of the assembly of Rodinia and Gondwana, and whether subduction zones are invading the Atlantic. Other studies cover the Danube Basin, the Andes, the Central Range of Taiwan; and the seafloor near Costa Rica. All article abstracts are open access online. Highlights are provided below. GEOLOGY articles published ...

LIVERMORE, Calif. -- Using data derived from nuclear weapons testing of the 1950s and '60s, Lawrence Livermore scientists have found that a small portion of the human brain involved in memory makes new neurons well into adulthood. The research may have profound impacts on human behavior and mental health. The study supports the importance of investigating the therapeutic potential of applying adult neurogenesis to the treatment of age-related cognitive disorders. Neurogenesis is the process by which neurons are generated from neural stem and progenitor cells, and, until ...

Several years ago, Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center became the first center in the United States to test an Israeli-invented device designed to increase the space between the prostate and the rectum in prostate cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy. Now, results from the international Phase I clinical trial show that the device has the potential to significantly reduce rectal injury, a side effect caused by unwanted radiation exposure that can leave men with compromised bowel function following treatment. Results of the 27-patient prospective ...

Inbreeding is generally deleterious, even in flowering plants. Since inbreeding raises the risk that bad copies of a gene will be expressed, inbred progeny suffer from reduced viability. Many flowering plants are able to recognize and reject their own pollen, thereby preventing inbreeding despite the plants' hermaphroditic nature. This mechanism is a complex trait that involves the interaction of a gene that tags the pollen with an identifier molecule, and a gene that produces a molecule capable of detecting pollen produced by the same plant. Evolutionary biologists ...

Biofuels developed from plant biomass and purpose-grown crops can substantially move California toward its ambitious energy goals, a new report says, but only through the wise allocation of feedstocks and the success of energy efficiency measures throughout the state. That's the conclusion of "California Energy Future: the Potential for Biofuels," a report of the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) co-authored by Energy Biosciences Institute scientists Heather Youngs and Chris Somerville. The study is one of seven produced by the CCST's California's Energy ...

For more than a decade, scientists have suspected that hairpin-shaped chains of micro-RNA regulate wood formation inside plant cells. Now, scientists at NC State University have found the first example and mapped out key relationships that control the process. The research, published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of June 10, describes how one strand of micro-RNA reduced by more than 20 percent the formation of lignin, which gives wood its strength. Understanding how to reduce lignin at the cellular level could lead to advances in ...

Scientists in Sydney, Australia, have discovered that obesity and type 2 diabetes in pregnancy can program children to develop metabolic problems later in life. The good news is, this legacy is not set in stone—if children of obese mothers are careful about what they eat, it can be overturned. The study, carried out by scientists at the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, is published in the June edition of the journal Epigenetics. By using genetically identical mice as a model, the team investigated the effects of having a mother with obesity and type 2 diabetes. ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – New GSA BULLETIN articles posted online ahead of print on 7 June cover granite, granitoids, and kimberlite; Garwood Valley Antarctica; Death Valley, California, USA; Esan Volcanic Complex, Japan; and Little Lake, California, USA. Some questions addressed include how melting affects granite emplacement; "how do you bury an ancient remnant ice sheet?"; how glaciation affected the evolution of Death Valley; and the risk of eruption at the Esan Volcanic Complex. GSA BULLETIN articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent; ...

Females play a larger role in determining paternity than previously thought, say biologists in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences. Their findings are the subject of a new paper titled "Female mediation of competitive fertilization success in Drosophila melanogaster," published this month by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Stefan Lüpold, a research assistant professor in the college's Department of Biology and the paper's lead author, says the findings have major implications for the study of sexual selection, ...

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infects more than 170 million people worldwide. Approximately 80 percent of infections lead to chronic illness including fibrosis, cirrhosis, cancer and also hepatic iron overload. A new study completed by researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine reveals that HCV not only alters expression of the iron-uptake receptor known as transferrin receptor 1 (TfR1) but that TfR1 also mediates HCV entry. "We have not yet discovered a cure for Hepatitis C, however discovering the relationship between HCV and TfR1 sheds more light ...

Women with a severe form of morning sickness who take antihistamines to help them sleep through their debilitating nausea are significantly more likely to experience adverse pregnancy outcomes, including low birth weight babies and premature births, a UCLA study has found. The findings, the first to link antihistamine use to adverse pregnancy outcomes, are important because babies born before 37 weeks often are hospitalized longer than full term babies, can experience problems breathing and feeding, are more prone to infection and can suffer from developmental problems. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — For patients managing cancer and other chronic health issues, painkillers such as morphine and Vicodin are often essential for pain relief. The body's natural tendency to develop tolerance to these medications, however, often requires patients to take higher doses – increasing risks of harmful side effects and dependency. Now, new research from the University of Michigan Health System and a major pharmaceutical company has identified a novel approach to moderate and severe pain therapy that paves the way for lower dosage painkillers. The findings ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Although many abused women suffer from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or depression, they are not receiving needed mental health services, a University of Missouri researcher found. "More than half of the women participating in our study suffered from depression, PTSD or both illnesses," said Mansoo Yu, an assistant professor of social work in the College of Human Environmental Sciences. "However, most of the survivors had not used mental health services in the past year, even though they reported having access to the services. Social stigmas, ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Biologists from Indiana University and Montana State University have discovered a striking connection between viruses such as HIV and Ebola and viruses that infect organisms called archaea that grow in volcanic hot springs. Despite the huge difference in environments and a 2 billion year evolutionary time span between archaea and humans, the viruses hijack the same set of proteins to break out of infected cells. In eukaryotes -- the group that includes plants and animals -- and in archaea -- micro-organisms with no defined nucleus in their cellular ...

Although scientists have known since the middle of the 19th century that the tropics are teeming with species while the poles harbor relatively few, the origin of the most dramatic and pervasive biodiversity on Earth has never been clear. New research sheds light on how that pattern came about. Furthermore, it confirms that the tropics have been and continue to be the Earth's engine of biodiversity. By examining marine bivalves (two-shelled mollusks including scallops, cockles and oysters), a model system for large-scale ecological and evolutionary analysis, the study ...

Schizophrenia, a chronic and devastating disorder characterized by the breakdown of cognition processes and typical emotional and behavioral responses, has been affecting people throughout history. Scientists believe that several genes are associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia but that no single gene causes the disease by itself. It is likely that interactions between genes and the environment are necessary for schizophrenia to develop and that epigenetic change also plays a role. Researchers from the University of Tokushima in Japan have published in the June ...

AKRON, OHIO, June 10, 2013 – It's not going to happen while you're peering through your binoculars, but African glossy starlings change color more than 10 times faster than their ancestors and even their modern relatives, according to researchers at The University of Akron and Columbia University. And these relatively rapid changes have led to new species of birds with color combinations previously unseen, according to the study funded in part by the National Science Foundation and published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "Many people ...

New research reveals that transplantation of partial livers from deceased adult and teen donors has become less risky for infants and young children, helping to save these young lives. Findings published online in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society, indicate that risk of organ failure and mortality from partial or split liver transplant was comparable to whole organ transplant in this pediatric population. Available livers for transplantation are in short supply, ...