25th July 2013 - Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) led in a study that has identified genes that are potential targets for therapeutic drugs against aggressive breast cancer. These findings were reported in the July 2013 issue of PNAS. Out of the 1.5 million women diagnosed with breast cancer in the world annually, nearly one in seven of these is classified as triple negative. Patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) have tumours that are missing three important proteins that are found in other types of breast cancer. The absence of ...

SAN FRANCISCO, July 26, 2013 -- In the first study of its kind, SF State researchers have shown that younger children who use gestures outperform their peers in a problem-solving task. The task itself is relatively simple -- sorting cards printed with colored shapes first by color, and then by shape. But the switch from color to shape can be tricky for children younger than 5, says Professor of Psychology Patricia Miller. In a new study due to be published in the August, 2013 issue of Developmental Psychology, Miller and SF State graduate student Gina O'Neill found that ...

The Expedition 36 crew completed packing the Materials International Space Station Experiment-8 (MISSE-8) Payload Experiment Container (PEC) and Optical Reflector Materials Experiment-III (ORMatE-III) after it was retrieved during the spacewalk. The MISSE-8 samples have been in orbit for a little over two years and the PEC and ORMatE are manifested for return to Earth on SpaceX 3. MISSE-8 is test bed for materials and computing elements, attached to the outside of the International Space Station, that are being evaluated for the effects of atomic oxygen, ultraviolet direct ...

PHILADELPHIA — Humans are far more than merely the sum total of all the cells that form the organs and tissues. The digestive tract is also home to a vast colony of bacteria of all varieties, as well as the myriad viruses that prey upon them. Because the types of bacteria carried inside the body vary from person to person, so does this viral population, known as the virome. By closely following and analyzing the virome of one individual over two-and-a-half years, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, led by professor of ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 26, 2013 -- Researchers have generated functional hepatocytes from human stem cells, transplanted them into mice with acute liver injury, and shown the ability of these stem-cell derived human liver cells to function normally and increase survival of the treated animals. This promising advance in the development of cell-based therapies to treat liver failure resulting from injury or disease relied on the development of scalable, reproducible methods to produce stem cell-derived hepatocytes in bioreactors, as described in an article in Stem Cells and ...

(CHICAGO) – The results of a new study by neurological researchers at Rush University Medical Center show that a sudden decrease of testosterone, the male sex hormone, may cause Parkinson's like symptoms in male mice. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. One of the major roadblocks for discovering drugs against Parkinson's disease is the unavailability of a reliable animal model for this disease. "While scientists use different toxins and a number of complex genetic approaches to model Parkinson's disease in mice, we have found ...

NASA's Aqua satellite captured an image of smoke from northern Oregon's Sunnyside Turnoff Fire on July 25 as the satellite passed overhead in space. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard Aqua captured an image of the smoke and heat from the Sunnyside Turnoff Fire on July 25 at 21:10 UTC (5:10 p.m. EDT/2:10 p.m. PDT). MODIS has the ability to detect hot spots or fires and they appear red in the image. The Incident Information System called InciWeb noted the Sunnyside Turnoff Fire had covered 48,916 acres by July 26, 2013. ...

Boulder, Colo., USA – July 2013 GSA Bulletin postings cover the solid Earth's influence on the sea; the diverging geologic histories of the North America Cordillera; "ghost glaciers" in Greenland; the Picuris Orogeny, New Mexico, USA; the Corner Brook Lake Block in the Appalachian orogen of western Newfoundland; the Cryogenian Perry Canyon Formation in Utah, USA; geochronology of the Bighorn Basin of Wyoming, USA; and "A cosmic trip: 25 years of cosmogenic nuclides in geology." GSA BULLETIN articles published ahead of print are online at http://gsabulletin.gsapubs.org/content/early/recent; ...

UCLA chemists and molecular biologists have for the first time used a "structure-based" approach to drug design to identify compounds with the potential to delay or treat Alzheimer's disease, and possibly Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease and other degenerative disorders. All of these diseases are marked by harmful, elongated, rope-like structures known as amyloid fibrils, linked protein molecules that form in the brains of patients. Structure-based drug design, in which the physical structure of a targeted protein is used to help identify compounds that will interact ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new report projects that by the middle of this century there will be an average 56 percent drop in the amount of water stored in peak snowpack in the McKenzie River watershed of the Oregon Cascade Range - and that similar impacts may be found on low-elevation maritime snow packs around the world. The findings by scientists at Oregon State University, which are based on a projected 3.6 degree Fahrenheit temperature increase, highlight the special risks facing many low-elevation, mountainous regions where snow often falls near the freezing point. In ...

There is a shortage of dead wood in forests because fallen branches and trees tend to be cleared away. This wood, if available, ought to be decomposing, as it is the habitat of many living beings like lignicolous fungi. These fungi are capable of decomposing dead wood and turning it into organic and inorganic matter. So clearing away the dead wood from the forests is ecologically harmful for the fungi. Nerea Abrego-Antia and Isabel Salcedo-Larralde, biologists in the Department of Plant Biology and Ecology of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country, have recently quantified ...

Researchers at McGill University have discovered a new way to join materials together using ultrasound. Ultrasound – sound so high it cannot be heard – is normally used to smash particles apart in water. In a recent study, the team of researchers, led by McGill professor Jake Barralet, from the faculties of Dentistry and Medicine, found that if particles were coated with phosphate, they could instead bond together into strong agglomerates, about the size of grains of sand. Their results are published in the journal Advanced Materials. Nanoparticles are extremely useful ...

Tampa, FL (July 25, 2013) -- Many experts believe that chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has several root causes including some viruses. Now, lead scientists Shara Pantry, Maria Medveczky and Peter Medveczky of the University of South Florida's Morsani College of Medicine, along with the help of several collaborating scientists and clinicians, have published an article in the Journal of Medical Virology suggesting that a common virus, Human Herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), is the possible cause of some CFS cases. Over 95 percent of the population is infected with HHV-6 by age 3, ...

Environmental consultants, research ecologists, nature conservation agencies, city managers, translators, and many others, all need to put names to plants at one time or another. The sources used often are not scientifically up-to-date, making it difficult to figure out the accepted name or proper vernacular to use in a vast country like Canada. The VASCAN database simplifies this task for all users. The database content was developed by a team of botanists led by Dr. Luc Brouillet, a specialist of the Canadian flora, curator of the Marie-Victorin Herbarium, and a researcher ...

Scientists use tools called gradients to understand how molecules interact in biological systems. Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new technique for creating biomolecular gradients that is both simpler than existing techniques and that creates additional surface characteristics that allow scientists to monitor other aspects of molecular behavior. A gradient is a material that has a specific molecule on its surface, with the concentration of the molecule sloping from a high concentration on one end to a low concentration at the other end. ...

The new species Echinophyllia tarae is described from the remote and poorly studied Gambier Islands, French Polynesia. Although the new species is common in the lagoon of Gambier Islands, its occurrence elsewhere is unknown. Echinophyllia tarae lives in protected reef habitats and was observed between 5 and 20 m depth. It is a zooxanthellate species which commonly grows on dead coral fragments, which are also covered by crustose coralline algae and fleshy macroalgae. This species can grow on well illuminated surfaces but also encrusts shaded underhangs and contributes ...

This news release is available in German. As part of the innate immune system natural killer cells (NK cells) play an important role in immune responses. For a long time they have been known as the first line of defense in the fight against infectious diseases. Therefore, researchers assumed that the body needs as many active NK cells as possible. However, scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) have now shown that the principle "the more the better" does not apply to this type of immune cells. "During certain phases of the immune response ...

WASHINGTON D.C. -- The mineral molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which, when solid, behaves in many ways like grease, has semiconducting properties that make it a promising alternative to silicon or graphene in electronic devices. It also strongly absorbs visible light, and so it has been widely employed in light-sensing photodetectors, which are used in a wide range of technologies, such as environmental sensing, process control in factories, and optical communication devices. Researchers at the National University of Singapore have now found a way to boost the performance ...

NEW YORK, NY -- Patients who receive a drug-eluting stent (DES) and demonstrate high platelet reactivity on clopidogrel are more likely to have blood clots form on the stent and to suffer a heart attack; however, these patients are less likely to develop bleeding complications. One-year results of the ADAPT-DES trial will be published online July 26, 2013, in The Lancet. The findings were first presented at last year's Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics (TCT) annual scientific symposium. ADAPT-DES is the largest study ever to explore the overall treatment implications ...

This news release is available in German. X chromosomes are very special genetic material. They differ in number between men and women. To achieve equality between sexes, one out of two X chromosomes in women is silenced. In flies, the opposite happens: in male flies, the only available X chromosome is highly activated, to compensate for the absence of the second X-chromosome. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics (MPI-IE) in Freiburg have now shown how the RNA molecules and proteins involved in the activation find and stick to ...

Recently, climate change, including global warming, has been a "hot" news item as many regions of the world have experienced increasingly intense weather patterns, such as powerful hurricanes and extended floods or droughts. Often the emphasis is on how such extreme weather impacts humans, from daily heat index warnings to regulating CO2 emissions. While the media continues to present climate change as a controversial issue, many scientists are working hard to gather data, collaborate across disciplines, and use experimental and modeling techniques to track how organisms ...

PHILADELPHIA - A small percentage of people diagnosed with a mysterious neurological condition may only experience psychiatric changes - such as delusional thinking, hallucinations, and aggressive behavior - according to a new study by researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, people who had previously been diagnosed with this disease, called anti-NMDA receptor (anti-NMDAR) encephalitis, had relapses that only involved psychiatric behavior. In an article published Online First in JAMA Neurology, researchers suggest that, ...

Hanover, N.H.—The ability to pay attention to relevant information while ignoring distractions is a core brain function. Without the ability to focus and filter out "noise," we could not effectively interact with our environment. Despite much study of attention in the brain, the cellular mechanisms responsible for the effects of attention have remained a mystery... until now. In a study appearing in the journal Nature, researchers from Dartmouth's Geisel School of Medicine and the University of California Davis studied communications between synaptically connected neurons ...

A new study of 100 private water wells in and near the Barnett Shale showed elevated levels of potential contaminants such as arsenic and selenium closest to natural gas extraction sites, according to a team of researchers that was led by UT Arlington associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry Kevin Schug. The results of the North Texas well study were published online by the journal Environmental Science & Technology Thursday. The peer-reviewed paper focuses on the presence of metals such as arsenic, barium, selenium and strontium in water samples. Many of these ...

Despite being much-maligned, materialism is not always bad for consumers. Loneliness may cause materialism, but the opposite is not necessarily true, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "It is widely believed that there is a vicious cycle in which loneliness leads to materialism and materialism in turn contributes to loneliness. But, contrary to popular beliefs about the universal perils of materialism, the pursuit of material possessions as part of a lifestyle of 'happy hedonism' may not actually be detrimental to consumer well-being when ...