Vancouver, British Columbia – Using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of the brain, researchers have identified a sweet spot that operates in a disorderly way when simple sugars are introduced to people with insulin resistance, a precursor to type 2 diabetes. For those who have the metabolic syndrome, a sugar drink resulted in a lower-than-normal release of the chemical dopamine in a major pleasure center of the brain. This chemical response may be indicative of a deficient reward system, which could potentially be setting the stage for insulin resistance. This ...

Vancouver, British Columbia – Peptide-receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) has been a subject of growing research on neuroendocrine tumors, which take up residence in a variety of organs replete with nerve cells that respond to hormone signaling. A countrywide study in Germany deemed PRRT treatment not only safe and effective but life-prolonging, according to a study unveiled during the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2013 Annual Meeting. PRRT is a new and yet-to-be-approved treatment for patients with neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). These develop when ...

Vancouver, British Columbia – No matter where they have hidden, metastatic prostate cancer cells still express some of the same signaling as normal prostate cells; in some cases even more so, as with the PSMA enzyme. Harnessing this enzyme could mean the beginning of a new platform for prostate cancer detection, staging, treatment and post-treatment monitoring, say researchers at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging's 2013 Annual Meeting. "There are currently no ideal imaging techniques in clinical practice that are specific to prostate cancer," said ...

Vancouver, British Columbia – A new patient protocol for aggressive and recurrent lymphoma that combines intensive chemotherapy and radioimmunotherapy (RIT) may become the most powerful cancer-killing therapy available, with the hope that patients' lymphoma can be eradicated as they prepare for bone marrow transplant, say researchers at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. In a study presented at the meeting, survival rates without recurrence improved with the addition of RIT, with some having a 100 percent chance of survival ...

Vancouver, British Columbia – For patients with advanced breast cancer, positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging can improve quality of life and survival by providing physicians with information on the effectiveness of chemotherapy prior to surgery, say researchers presenting at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. Researchers combined separate imaging systems—PET, MR and CT—to map the course of chemotherapy before surgery, otherwise known as neoadjuvant chemotherapy. These different imaging systems ...

Vancouver, British Columbia – When prostate cancer makes a comeback, it becomes increasingly important to have exceptional imaging available to find all possible regions where cancer has spread to other parts of the body, or metastasized, in order to plan the best possible treatment. A relatively new imaging system that simultaneously combines positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance (PET/MR) demonstrates a higher capacity for mapping recurrent prostate cancer than the already high standard of integrated PET and computed tomography (PET/CT), say researchers presenting ...

Progesterone, a female hormone that can be used as a therapy for endometrial cancer, eliminates tumor cells indirectly by binding to its receptor in stromal or connective tissue cells residing in the tumor microenvironment, according to a study from the G.O. Discovery Lab team and collaborators at UCLA. Like tumors of the breast and prostate, endometrial cancer is regulated by hormones. Unlike therapies for breast and prostate cancer, where drugs are given to block hormone signaling, in therapy for endometrial cancer progesterone is given to stimulate its hormone receptor. ...

A significant decline in the numbers of native fish in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin may be linked to released dam water being too cold for breeding. This is just one of the findings from a Griffith University led study which found current water releases back into the Murray-Darling system limit fish reproduction and therefore impact freshwater biodiversity. Griffith University Research Fellow Dr Rob Rolls said the results, published in Freshwater Biology, throw cold water on the notion that large dam releases compensate for the effects of interrupting natural water ...

New research analysing breast cancer mortality data spanning almost 40 years concludes that breast cancer screening does not yet show an effect on mortality statistics. The research, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, analysed mortality trends before and after the introduction of the National Health Service Breast Screening Programme in 1988. The research was based on an analysis of mortality statistics in the Oxford region because, unlike the rest of England, all causes of death on the death certificate, not just the underlying cause, are available ...

LIVERMORE, Calif.— Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have confirmed the particle-by-particle mechanism by which lithium ions move in and out of electrodes made of lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4, or LFP), findings that could lead to better performance in lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, medical equipment and aircraft. The research is reported in an article entitled, "Intercalation Pathway in Many-Particle LiFePO4 Electrode Revealed by Nanoscale State-of-Charge Mapping" in the journal Nano Letters, 2013, 13 (3), pp 866-872. Authors include Sandia physicist ...

Population viability analysis (PVA) is a method used by conservation scientists for a range of purposes – including advancing conservation theory, planning, policy and management. PVAs are particularly important for assessing the risks of population extinction and for comparing alternative management options to protect species. The fact that so many PVAs are already available, for hundreds of species, offers an exciting opportunity for learning and especially for moving from single-species experience to multi-species knowledge. But this opportunity is often lost in translation: ...

A US$12 million investment in rice research has returned more than $70 million in benefits to rice farmers and national economies in four Asian countries, according to a new report. The report looked at a selection of natural resource management technologies rolled out by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) as part of the Irrigated Rice Research Consortium (IRRC) mandate in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It aimed to see whether the technologies delivered benefits such as increased productivity for rice farmers, improved livelihoods and ...

The skin colour of humans ranges from pale pinkish-white to very dark brown and relates largely to the amount of melanin produced by specialized cells in the body. The synthesis of melanin is under the influence of a bewildering array of genes, each of which naturally occurs in a variety of different forms or alleles, thus accounting for the wide variety of skin colours found in our species. But how precisely the variation is brought about is still unknown. Nine genes account for pigmentation in the fruit fly Colour also differs, albeit sometimes more subtly, in many ...

When did modern humans settle in Asia and what route did they take from mankind's African homeland? A University of Huddersfield professor has helped to provide answers to both questions. But he has also had to settle a controversy. Professor Martin Richards, who heads the University's Archaeogenetics Research Group, co-authors a new article in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. It refutes a recent theory, that there is archaeological evidence for the presence of modern humans in southern Asia before the super-eruption ...

Philadelphia, PA, June 11, 2013 – There is growing evidence that a gene variant that reduces the plasticity of the nervous system also modulates responses to treatments for mood and anxiety disorders. In this case, patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, with a less functional variant of the gene coding for brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), responded less well to exposure therapy. This gene has been implicated previously in treatment response. Basic science studies have convincingly shown that BDNF levels are an important modifier of the therapeutic ...

One of the most remarkable anatomical differences among vertebrate bodies is the relative size of their neck, trunk and tail. This can be illustrated by comparing the bodies of a typical snake and of a long tailed lizard. They are both very long and superficially similar. However, most of the snake's body is a trunk full with organs of the digestive, excretory and reproductive systems, whereas the largest part of the lizard's body is a muscular tail. These different body plans are genetically determined during embryonic development. In the latest issue of the journal Developmental ...

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, June 11, 2013 -- Today's technological innovation enables smartphone users to diagnose serious diseases such as diabetes or lung cancer quickly and effectively by simply breathing into a small gadget, a nanofiber breathing sensor, mounted on the phones. Il-Doo Kim, Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and his research team have recently published a cover paper entitled "Thin-Wall Assembled SnO2 Fibers Functionalized by Catalytic Pt Nanoparticles ...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have discovered a previously undetected layer in the cornea, the clear window at the front of the human eye. The breakthrough, announced in a study published in the academic journal Ophthalmology, could help surgeons to dramatically improve outcomes for patients undergoing corneal grafts and transplants. The new layer has been dubbed the Dua's Layer after the academic Professor Harminder Dua who discovered it. Professor Dua, Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, said: "This is a major discovery that will mean that ...

A University of Adelaide expert says that while the war against smoking in Hollywood movies has been largely won, Asian cinema represents the next major battleground for anti-smoking and anti-cancer groups. Dr Peter Pugsley, Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of Adelaide, says that as smoking rates have been rising in Asia, so too has the depiction of smoking in Asian cinema. Dr Pugsley is the author of a new book on contemporary Asian cinema being published this month. He is also the author of a paper published recently in Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural ...

Infants as young as two months old already exhibit growth patterns that can predict the child's weight by age 5, according to researchers at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing and Tennessee State University. "Almost from birth, we quickly saw this growth pattern emerge in our curves and growth charts for weight over height," said Susan Ludington, the study's lead investigator and the Carl W. and Margaret David Walter Professor of Pediatric Nursing at Case Western Reserve. Analyzing well-child records, normal-weight babies with a ...

Spanish and US scientists have successfully identified animal species that can transmit more diseases to humans by using mathematical tools similar to those applied to the study of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Their research—recently published in the prestigious journal PNAS—describes how parasite-primate interactions transmit diseases like malaria, yellow fever or AIDS to humans. Their findings could make an important contribution to predicting the animal species most likely to cause future pandemics. Professor José María Gómez of the University of Granada ...

Drug development for a range of conditions could be improved with stem cell technology that helps doctors predict the safety and the effectiveness of potential treatments. Medical Research Council scientists at the University of Edinburgh have been able to generate cells in the laboratory that reach the gold standard required by the pharmaceutical industry to test drug safety. The researchers used stem cell technology to generate liver cells – which help our bodies to process drugs. They found that the cells were equally effective, reaching the same standard, as ...

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes bacteria that are "addicted" to caffeine in a way that promises practical uses ranging from decontamination of wastewater to bioproduction of medications for asthma. Based on a report by Jeffrey Barrick, Ph.D., and colleagues in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from http://www.acs.org/globalchallenges. Some people may joke about living on caffeine, but scientists now have ...

San Diego, CA, June 11, 2013 – In a study using the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), investigators analyzed four years of data and determined that background mortality rates (rates of death irrespective of cause) are crucial in interpreting the numbers of deaths following vaccination. The VSD mortality rate following immunization is lower than the general US population mortality rate, and the causes of death are similar. These background rates can be used in communications to the public about vaccine safety risks, reports the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Public ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Mothers in low-income countries may not understand why their babies are hospitalized after delivery, putting sick newborns at higher risk of health problems and death after being released from the hospital, a new study shows. Forty percent of participating mothers in Ghana with sick infants had no understanding of why their child was in the hospital and another 28 percent had only partial understanding, according to the University of Michigan Health System study that appears in Paediatrics and International Child Health Journal. One-third of the women ...