Philadelphia, PA, January 31, 2013 – Disulfiram was the first medication approved for the treatment of alcoholism over 50 years ago. It works, at least in part, by preventing the metabolism of an alcohol by-product, acetaldehyde. High levels of acetaldehyde in the body quickly cause unpleasant symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, headache, and accelerated heart rate. Thus, disulfiram provides a very strong incentive to avoid drinking. Beginning in the late 1990s, a series of studies conducted at Yale University found that disulfiram reduced the consumption of cocaine, ...

Proteins are elementary building blocks of life. They often perform vital functions. In order to become active, proteins have to fold into three-dimensional structures. Misfolding of proteins leads to diseases such as Alzheimer's or Creutzfeld-Jakob. So which strategies did nature develop over the course of evolution to improve protein folding? To examine this question, the chemist Dr. Frauke Gräter (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies) looked far back into the history of the Earth. Together with her colleague Prof. Gustavo Caetano-Anolles at the University of ...

A recent discovery funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) may very well lead to a process that not only benefits every uniformed service member of the Department of Defense, but everyone else as well: protection from Chemical/Biological agents, to self-cleaning apparel, to effortless thermal management, to fuel purification as well as enhanced control of leaks—especially oil and fuels. In 2006, AFOSR Program Manager Dr. Charles Lee funded Professor Gareth McKinley at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring nanocomposite technology ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. (January 31, 2013) – Researchers using a newly approved advanced computed tomography (CT) system were able to significantly reduce radiation exposure in patients undergoing coronary CT angiography (CCTA), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. "Radiation exposure during diagnostic imaging is a substantial public concern," said Marcus Y. Chen, M.D., lead author of the study from the advanced cardiovascular imaging laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "Minimizing radiation exposure while maintaining ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Corn crop residues are often left on harvested fields to protect soil quality, but they could become an important raw material in cellulosic ethanol production. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research indicates that soil quality would not decline if post-harvest corn cob residues were removed from fields. This work, led by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) soil scientist Brian Wienhold, supports the USDA priority of developing new sources of bioenergy. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency. Wienhold ...

Texas Biomed scientists in San Antonio have found that moderate gum disease in an animal model exposed to an AIDS- like virus had more viral variants causing infection and greater inflammation. Both of these features have potential negative implications in long term disease progression, including other kinds of infections, the researchers say in a new report. The public health message from the study is that even mild inflammation in the mouth needs to be controlled because it can lead to more serious consequences, said Luis Giavedoni, Ph. D, a Texas Biomed virologist and ...

It would be a terrible thing if laboratories striving to grow graphene from carbon atoms kept winding up with big pesky diamonds. "That would be trouble, cleaning out the diamonds so you could do some real work," said Rice University theoretical physicist Boris Yakobson, chuckling at the absurd image. Yet something like that keeps happening to experimentalists working to grow two-dimensional boron. Boron atoms have a strong preference to clump into three-dimensional shapes rather than assemble into pristine single-atom sheets, like carbon does when it becomes graphene. ...

Recent natural disasters illustrate vulnerability of older people: majority of deaths from the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) and Hurricane Katrina (2005) occurred among older people. Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute at the University of York and Simon Fraser University's Gerontology Research Centre in Canada are calling for better awareness among policy makers and the public of the impact climate change and deteriorating environmental quality will have on an ageing population. According to UN projections, by 2050, nearly 25 per cent of the global ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – In the last decade, a new strain of MRSA has emerged that can spread beyond hospital walls, putting everyone at risk of contracting the dangerous bacterial infection. This particular strain of MRSA – known as USA300 – contains a chunk of genes not shared by any other strains, though it is unclear how this unique genetic material enables the bacteria to survive and persist in the community. Now, research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine has pinpointed a gene that causes the infection to linger on the skin longer than other strains, ...

January 31, 2013, New York, NY and Brussels, Belgium – Clear communication between cells is essential to every aspect of the body's internal function. But since cells can't talk, or send emails, how do they communicate? The answer, in a nutshell, is by dispatching signaling molecules that selectively bind to protein receptors on the outer surface of other cells with which they must "talk." This activates the tail end of such receptors inside the cell, initiating a cascade of enzymatic reactions, or signaling pathways that reach into the nucleus, turning genes on and off. ...

Researchers from the group on stem cells and cancer at IMIM (Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute) have deciphered one of the gene regulation circuits which would make it possible to generate hematopoietic blood cells, i.e. blood tissue stem cells. This finding is essential to generate these cells in a laboratory in the future, a therapy that could benefit patients with leukaemia or other diseases who need a transplant and who, in many cases, do not have a compatible donor. In the process of generating stem cells, many molecule signals intervene which, through ...

This press release is available in German. The disk surrounding the young star TW Hydrae is regarded as a prototypical example of planetary nurseries. Due to its comparatively close proximity of 176 light-years, the object plays a key role in cosmological birth models. Using the Herschel Space Telescope, researchers including Thomas Henning from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg have, for the first time, determined the mass of the disk very precisely. The new value is larger than previous estimates and proves that planets similar to those of our solar ...

Experiencing a positive family climate as a teenager may be connected to your relationships later in life, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. While research has demonstrated long-term effects of aggression and divorce across generations, the impact of a positive family climate has received less attention. Psychological scientist Robert Ackerman of the University of Texas at Dallas and colleagues wanted to examine whether positive interpersonal behaviors in families might also have long-lasting ...

Zebrafish, the staple of genetic research, may hold the answer to repairing damaged retinas and returning eye-sight to people. University of Alberta researchers discovered that a zebrafish's stem cells can selectively regenerate damaged photoreceptor cells. Lead U of A researcher Ted Allison says that for some time geneticists have known that unlike humans, stem cells in zebrafish can replace damaged cells involved in many components of eyesight. Rods and cones are the most important photoreceptors. In humans, rods provide us with night vision while cones give us a full ...

Spending a lot of time watching television after breast cancer diagnosis is not linked to death in these breast cancer survivors. It appears that after accounting for self-reported physical activity levels after diagnosis, sedentary behavior was not an independent risk factor for death. These findings by Stephanie George, from the National Cancer Institute, and her colleagues, are published online in Springer's Journal of Cancer Survivorship. On the one hand, research indicates that taking part in regular, moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity after a breast ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- Businesses must deal with weary-eyed office workers who are sitting behind computer screens and watching cat videos, shopping online and updating their Facebook statuses. A Kansas State University researcher studied cyberloafing -- wasting time at work on the Internet -- and the effects of Internet use policies and punishment on reducing cyberloafing. Joseph Ugrin, assistant professor of accounting at Kansas State University, and John Pearson, associate professor of management at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, found that company policies ...

Cancer arises from the accumulation of mutations and structural changes in chromosomes, which in some cases give rise to combinations that favour the growth or expansion of the disease. In this context, chromosomes tend to lose or duplicate entire regions, although, the mechanisms that initiate these chromosomal abnormalities are not fully understood. A study published this week in the journal Cell, in which researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) participated, demonstrates a new mechanism that explains how these changes originate in the chromosomes ...

What came first: the bipedal human ancestor or the grassland encroaching on the forest? A new analysis of the past 12 million years' of vegetation change in the cradle of humanity is challenging long-held beliefs about the world in which our ancestors took shape – and, by extension, the impact it had on them. The research combines sediment core studies of the waxy molecules from plant leaves with pollen analysis, yielding data of unprecedented scope and detail on what types of vegetation dominated the landscape surrounding the African Rift Valley (including present-day ...

BOSTON – January 31, 2013 – Joslin scientists report the first generation of human induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with an uncommon form of diabetes, maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY). These cells offer a powerful resource for studying the role of genetic factors in the development of MODY and testing potential treatments. The findings appear in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are adult cells that have been genetically reprogrammed to exhibit the characteristics of embryonic stem cells, including ...

This press release is available in French.Using genome-wide analysis, investigators at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and the University of Montreal have potentially eliminated a lifetime drug prescription that two children with a previously unknown type of adrenal insufficiency had been receiving for 14 years. Over a lifespan, the adjustment in treatment represents an approximate saving of $10,000 in drug and test costs per patient. Moreover, the less invasive treatment regime can potentially reduce the lifetime risk of hypertension in the patients. ...

On January 30, 2013 ACS Nano published a study by Ali Khademhosseini, PhD, MASc, Brigham and Women's Hospital Division of Biomedical Engineering, detailing the creation of innovative cardiac patches that utilize nanotechnology to enhance the conductivity of materials to induce cardiac tissue formation. Creation of these ultra-thin cardiac patches put medicine a step closer to durable, high-functioning artificial tissues that could be used to repair damaged hearts and other organs. The cardiac tissue patches utilize a hydrogel scaffolding reinforced by nanomaterials called ...

Memphis, Tenn. – Children continue to account for a disproportionate percentage of morbidity and mortality from ATV-related accidents – up 240 percent since 1997, according to a Journal of Pediatric Orthopaedics report published by pediatric orthopaedic surgeons at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital. The surgeons – who studied data from the Kids' Inpatient Database – found spine-related injuries from all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) in the United States are more common in older children and in females, unlike males in most trauma studies. ATV-related spine injuries in children ...

NEW YORK, NY — A New York-based physician-researcher from Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, best known for his research into fertility and twinning, has uncovered a potential connection between autism and a specific growth protein that could eventually be used as a way to predict an infant's propensity to later develop the disease. The protein, called insulin-like growth factor (IGF), is especially involved in the normal growth and development of babies' brain cells. Based on findings of prior published studies, Touro researcher Gary Steinman, MD, PhD, proposes that ...

Students who work together and interact online are more likely to be successful in their college classes, according to a study published Jan. 30 in the journal Nature Scientific Reports and co-authored by Manuel Cebrian, a computer scientist at the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California San Diego. Cebrian and colleagues analyzed 80,000 interactions between 290 students in a collaborative learning environment for college courses. The major finding was that a higher number of online interactions was usually an indicator of a higher score in the class. ...

Adding a new member to a working group can create distrust between members and hinder group functions, but a new study suggests that the distrust created is between older group members rather than about the newcomers- especially when previous group performance with just the older group members is poor. The results are part of a study published January 30 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Matthew McCarter and Roman Sheremeta from Chapman University (U.S). Previous studies report that changing members in an existing group hurts group performance, but the underlying ...