The drug ingenol mebutate (trade name: Picato) has been approved in Germany since November 2012 as a gel for the treatment of certain forms of actinic keratosis in adults. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG) the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over diclofenac/hyaluronic acid gel. Such an added benefit cannot be derived from the dossier, however, as the drug manufacturer did not submit any relevant data: it did ...

The genome is full of sequence repetitions. Sequence motif is added after sequence motif, sometimes more than a hundred times. Erratically it seems. And these sequence motifs bind proteins that control transcription factors in regions of the genome where no transcription should occur. A conundrum. Nicolas Thomä, group leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, and his team together with the team of David Shore at the University of Geneva, have now been able to give an answer and assign a function to this seeming inconsistency. In a study published ...

Dapagliflozin (trade name: Forxiga) has been approved in Germany since November 2012 for the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG) the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the current standard therapy. No such added benefit can be derived from the dossier, however, because the drug manufacturer did not present any relevant data for any of the possible therapeutic indications ...

Since ancient times, the pressures of excessive hunting have contributed to the gradual decline of wildlife populations and even the extinction of certain species in many areas. Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) and the Centre for Forestry Research (INIA-CIFOR) have studied the developments in big game in Spain between 1972 and 2007 to gain an understanding of the hunting trends of the last decades. "We have analysed the general trends in official statistics on hunters, hunting weapons, hunting grounds and captures. Our main conclusion is that ...

Solar radiation in Spain has increased by 2.3% every decade since the 1980s, according to a study by researchers from the University of Girona and the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. This increase is linked to the decreased presence of clouds, which has increased the amount of direct radiation reaching us from the Sun. "The mean annual G series over Spain shows a tendency to increase during the 1985-2010 period, with a significant linear trend of + 3.9 W m-2 [2.3% more] per decade." This is the main conclusion of a study published in the magazine 'Global ...

Increases in temperature as a result of climate change are mirrored in lake waters where temperatures are also on the rise. A new study, by Dr. Martin Dokulil, retired researcher from the Institute for Limnology at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, forecasts surface water temperatures in large Austrian lakes for 2050 and discusses the impact on the lakes' structure, function and water quality. The research is published online in Springer's journal Hydrobiologia. Austria has a multitude of lakes varying widely in type, size, flushing, altitude and geographic location. ...

ATHENS, Ohio (June 6, 2013) – Ten years ago, scientists were convinced that a combination of manganese and gallium nitride could be a key material to create spintronics, the next generation of electronic devices that operate on properties found at the nanoscale. But researchers grew discouraged when experiments indicated that the two materials were as harmonious as oil and water. A new study led by Ohio University physicists suggests that scientists should take another look at this materials duo, which once was heralded for its potential to be the building block for devices ...

Researchers have been able to teleport information from light to light at a quantum level for several years. In 2006, researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute succeeded in teleporting between light and gas atoms. Now the research group has succeeded in teleporting information between two clouds of gas atoms and to carry out the teleportation – not just one or a few times, but successfully every single time. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature Physics. "It is a very important step for quantum information research to have achieved such stable results ...

A team of researchers has made a significant discovery which may have a dramatic impact on children stricken with Tay-Sachs disease, a degenerative and fatal neurological condition that often strikes in the early months of life. Available drugs may dramatically ease a child's suffering, say scientists. "There is hope for this disease," says Suleiman Igdoura, lead researcher of the study and an associate professor of biology at McMaster University. "Imagine what that could mean for parents who have a child diagnosed with this incurable condition, who may have only ...

Athens, Ga. – From the neurons that enable thought to the keratinocytes that make toenails grow–a complex canopy of sugar molecules, commonly known as glycans, envelop every living cell in the human body. These complex carbohydrate chains perform a host of vital functions, providing the necessary machinery for cells to communicate, replicate and survive. It stands to reason, then, that when something goes wrong with a person's glycans, something goes wrong with them. Now, researchers at the University of Georgia are learning how changes in normal glycan behavior are ...

Researchers from Germany have found that low levels of vitamin D are associated with high levels of hepatitis B virus (HBV) replication. Findings published online in Hepatology, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, suggest seasonal fluctuations in vitamin D and HBV levels point to a link in these variables among patients with chronic HBV. While highly effective vaccines are available, HBV still remains one of the most significant infectious diseases worldwide. In fact, the World Health Organization (WHO) states that HBV is 50 to 100 ...

In a recent analysis of one outpatient clinic, one in four men seeking medical help for newly-developed erectile dysfunction (ED) was younger than 40 years, and nearly half of young men with the condition had severe ED. While larger population-based studies are needed, the findings, which were published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, suggest that erectile dysfunction in young men may be more prevalent and more serious than previously thought. Erectile dysfunction is a common complaint in men over 40 years of age. Prevalence increases with age, but the prevalence ...

Athens, Ga. – Sub-Saharan Africa has foreign investors flocking to buy its fertile land. Sometimes referred to as "land grabbing," the large-scale buying or leasing of large tracts of land in developing countries shifts indigenous, or customary, land rights from chiefs and local communities to investors or national governments, often stripping native people of a source of income. The laws, its practices and eventual outcomes for the countries and people involved are the topic of one recent study led by University of Georgia anthropologist Laura German. Looking at ...

DURHAM, N.C. – In a first-of-its-kind operation in the United States, a team of doctors at Duke University Hospital helped create a bioengineered blood vessel and implanted it into the arm of a patient with end-stage kidney disease. The procedure, the first U.S. clinical trial to test the safety and effectiveness of the bioengineered blood vessel, is a milestone in the field of tissue engineering. The new vein is an off-the-shelf, human cell-based product with no biological properties that would cause organ rejection. Using technology developed at Duke and at a spin-off ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Supplemental child restraints should be used by all children through age 8. When appropriate child safety restraint systems—based on a child's age and weight—are in use during motor vehicle crashes, the rates of mortality and serious injury significantly decrease. Most parents don't know that their older children—ages 4 to 8—should use additional measures to protect them from serious injury or death in case of a crash. In a literature review appearing in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), researchers ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Facebook and other social networking web sites have revolutionized the way people create and maintain relationships. However, new research shows that Facebook use could actually be damaging to users' romantic relationships. Russell Clayton, a doctoral student in the University of Missouri School of Journalism, found that individuals who use Facebook excessively are far more likely to experience Facebook–related conflict with their romantic partners, which then may cause negative relationship outcomes including emotional and physical cheating, breakup and ...

New Rochelle, NY, June 6, 2013— Immunocompromised mice, created by inactivating the genes that would allow them to recognize and attack donor cells or organs, are critical for studies of bone marrow reconstitution. A more rapid and reliable technique for identifying these mice in breeding colonies is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a peer-reviewed open access journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the BioResearch Open Access website. Alejandro Ferrer, Adam Schrum, and Diana Gil, College of Medicine, Mayo ...

NASA's TRMM satellite passed over Tropical Storm Andrea right after it was named, while NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of the storm's reach hours beforehand. TRMM measures rainfall from space and saw that rainfall rates in the southern part of the storm was falling at almost 5 inches per hour. NASA's Terra satellite passed over Tropical Storm Andrea on June 5 at 16:25 UTC (12:25 p.m. EDT) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument, captured a visible image of the storm. At that time, Andrea's clouds had already extended ...

Liver transplantation is the mainstay of treatment for patients with end-stage liver disease, the 12th leading cause of death in the United States, but new research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, published in the online journal Cell Stem Cell today, suggests that it may one day become possible to regenerate a liver using cell therapy in patients with liver disease. Investigators discovered that a human embryonic stem cell can be differentiated into a previously unknown liver progenitor cell, an early offspring of a stem cell, and produce mature and functional ...

Scientists at the Danish Stem Cell Center, DanStem, at the University of Copenhagen have discovered that they can make embryonic stem cells regress to a stage of development where they are able to make placenta cells as well as the other fetal cells. This significant discovery, published in the journal Cell Reports today, has the potential to shed new light on placenta related disorders that can lead to problematic pregnancies and miscarriages. Embryonic stem cells can make all kinds of adult cells in the human body such as muscle, blood or brain cells. However, these ...

Research from the University of Sheffield has found that the wider range of policy approaches and measures which have been introduced in all EU Member States over the past five years have had a significant impact on preventing businesses and people from engaging in undeclared work. The research, led Professor Colin Williams from the University of Sheffield, found an incremental decline in the size of the undeclared economy from the equivalent of 22.3 percent of GDP in 2003 to 18.4 percent by 2012 - although with big differences between countries, revealing a clear north-south ...

This news release is available in German. Loading a lithium-ion battery produces lithium atoms that are taken up by the graphite layers of the negative electrode. However, the capacity of graphite is limited to one lithium atom per six carbon atoms. Silicon could take up to ten times more lithium. But unfortunately, it strongly expands during this process – which leads to unsolved problems in battery applications. Looking for an alternative to pure silicon, scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen have now synthesized a novel framework structure consisting ...

Every 6.6 years, the comet Giacobini-Zinner circulates through the inner solar system and passes through the perihelion, the closest point to the Sun of its orbit. Then, the comet sublimates the ices and ejects a large number of particles that are distributed in filaments. The oldest of these particles have formed a swarm that the Earth passes trough every year in early October. The result is a Draconid meteor shower –meteors from this comet come from the northern constellation Draco–, which hits the Earth's atmosphere at about 75,000 km/h, a relatively slow speed in comparison ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study by researchers from Brown University finds more evidence that breastfeeding is good for babies' brains. The study made use of specialized, baby-friendly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the brain growth in a sample of children under the age of 4. The research found that by age 2, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breastmilk. The ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Human Argonautes (hAgo), are key proteins involved in a process known as RNA interference. RNAi, as it is often called, is a mechanism that cells use to regulate gene expression. Human Argonaute-2 (hAgo2) is known as "slicer" for its unique ability among the 4 human Argonaute proteins to directly cut messenger RNA -- which carries the information coded in genomic DNA to make a protein -- and thus disable "messages" generated from genes. The atomic resolution structure of hAgo2 solved previously, revealed the active site, a region of the enzyme ...