Initial vaccinations for human papillomavirus (HPV) at a young age is important for maximizing quadrivalent HPV vaccine effectiveness according to a Swedish study published March 13 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. HPV vaccination programs have been launched around the world in hopes of preventing cervical cancer and other HPV-related cancers. While incidence of genital warts is the earliest possible disease outcome to measure the efficacy of the HPV vaccine, the results of such efficacy trials may not be fully generalizable to real-life HPV vaccination ...

HOUSTON -- (March 13, 2013) – Few things in life are inevitable – death, taxes, and, if you live long enough, osteoarthritis. No treatment will stop or significantly slow the disease, and joint replacement is the only definitive treatment. That may change, however, as researchers such as Dr. Brendan Lee (http://www.bcm.edu/genetics/index.cfm?pmid=10940), professor of molecular and human genetics at Baylor College of Medicine (http://www.bcm.edu), and his colleagues unravel the effects of a naturally occurring protein called lubricin or Proteoglycans 4 that appears to ...

University of Montreal researchers found that changes in gravity affect the reproductive process in plants. Gravity modulates traffic on the intracellular "highways" that ensure the growth and functionality of the male reproductive organ in plants, the pollen tube. "Just like during human reproduction, the sperm cells in plants are delivered to the egg by a cylindrical tool. Unlike the delivery tool in animals, the device used during plant sex consists of a single cell, and only two sperm cells are discharged during each delivery event," explained Professor Anja Geitmann ...

Vitamin D supplements significantly reduced blood pressure in the first large controlled study of African-Americans, researchers report in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension. In the prospective trial, a three-month regimen of daily vitamin D increased circulating blood levels of vitamin D and resulted in a decrease in systolic blood pressure ranging from .7 to four mmHg (depending upon the dose given), compared with no change in participants who received a placebo. Systolic blood pressure, the top and highest number in a reading, is pressure in the arteries ...

The precise methodology of Richard Feynman's famous double-slit thought-experiment – a cornerstone of quantum mechanics that showed how electrons behave as both a particle and a wave – has been followed in full for the very first time. Although the particle-wave duality of electrons has been demonstrated in a number of different ways since Feynman popularised the idea in 1965, none of the experiments have managed to fully replicate the methodology set out in Volume 3 of Feynman's famous Lectures on Physics. "The technology to do this experiment has been around for about ...

Doctors at Yale School of Medicine and the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) have called upon their fellow physicians to limit or end the practice of prescribing memory-enhancing drugs to healthy children whose brains are still developing. Their position statement is published in the March 13 online issue of the journal Neurology, the medical journal of the AAN. The statement was written to address the growing trend in which teens use "study drugs" before tests and parents request attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs for children who don't meet the ...

This press release is available in French. Christopher Cameron of the University of Montreal's Department of Biological Sciences and his colleagues have unearthed a major scientific discovery - a strange phallus-shaped creature they found in Canada's Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park. The fossils were found in an area of shale beds that are 505 million years old. Their study, to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13, 2013, confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive ...

Canada's 505 million year-old Burgess Shale fossil beds, located in Yoho National Park, have yielded yet another major scientific discovery – this time with the unearthing of a strange phallus-shaped creature. A study to be published online in the journal Nature on March 13 confirms Spartobranchus tenuis is a member of the acorn worms group which are seldom-seen animals that thrive today in the fine sands and mud of shallow and deeper waters. Acorn worms are themselves part of the hemichordates, a group of marine animals closely related to today's sea stars and sea ...

BOULDER, Colo.— One of the oldest forms of computer memory is back again—but in a 21st century microscopic device designed by physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for possible use in a quantum computer. The NIST team has demonstrated that information encoded as a specific point in a traveling microwave signal—the vertical and horizontal positions of a wave pattern at a certain time—can be transferred to the mechanical beat of a micro-drum and later retrieved with 65 percent efficiency, a good figure for experimental systems like this. ...

Observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) show that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the cosmos took place much earlier than previously thought. The results are published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical Journal. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The most intense bursts of star birth are thought to have occurred in the early Universe, in massive, bright galaxies. These ...

A new method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) could routinely spot specific cancers, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and other maladies early, when they're most treatable, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center suggest in the journal Nature. Each body tissue and disease has a unique fingerprint that can be used to quickly diagnose problems, the scientists say. By using new MRI technologies to scan for different physical properties simultaneously, the team differentiated white matter from gray matter from ...

BOSTON – March 13, 2013 – Joslin scientists have discovered a mechanism that regulates the production of brown fat, a type of fat which plays an important role in heat production and energy metabolism. The findings, which appear in the upcoming issue of Nature, may lead to new therapies that increase BAT formation to treat obesity. Two types of fat tissue are present in humans and other mammals: white adipose tissue (WAT) or white fat, which stores fat; and brown adipose tissue (BAT) or brown fat, which burns fat to produce heat. Brown fat also metabolizes glucose and ...

Boston, MA – New research from Harvard School of Public Health (HPSH) shows that one year after the federal government passed a law banning word descriptors such as "light," "mild," and "low" on cigarette packages, smokers can still easily identify their brands because of color-coding that tobacco companies added to "light" packs after the ban. These findings suggest that the companies have, in effect, been able to evade the ban on misleading wording—thus still conveying the false and deceptive message that lights are safer than "regular" cigarettes. In addition, the ...

Pasadena, CA — Using information gathered from several telescopes, a team of astronomers, including Carnegie's Eric Murphy, searched the sky for very rarely seen dusty starburst galaxies, formed soon after the Big Bang. These galaxies are characterized by an unusually high rate of star formation. They are much more abundant in the early Universe than previously thought. Two of those identified are among the oldest ever found, indicating that these dusty starbursts likely evolve into the most massive galaxies ever observed in the local Universe. The results are published ...

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope have discovered starburst galaxies earlier in the Universe's history than they were previously thought to have existed. These newly discovered galaxies represent what today's most massive galaxies looked like in their energetic, star-forming youth. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. The results, published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature and in the Astrophysical ...

The incidence of genital warts, or condylomata, declined by 93 per cent in girls given the HPV vaccine before the age of 14, according to a Swedish national registry study. The study was carried out by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and published in Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Using a selection of population-based registries, the researchers at Karolinska Institutet studied 124,000 girls and women in Sweden between 10 and 44 years old who had received the HPV vaccine against condyloma and cervical cancer at some time between 2006 and 2010. ...

Results from the Fluid Expansion as Supportive Therapy (FEAST) trial in East Africa show that children who are given fluid to treat shock have an increased risk of death due to cardiovascular collapse at 48 hours. These findings in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine challenge the generally held idea that early and rapid reversal of shock by fluid resuscitation translates into longer-term survival benefits. The FEAST trial was conducted in six African hospitals across Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda without intensive care facilities. It included 3000 children ...

For the first time, researchers have mapped the genomes of tapeworms to reveal potential drug targets on which existing drugs could act. The genomes provide a new resource that offers faster ways to develop urgently needed and effective treatments for these debilitating diseases. Tapeworms cause two of the World Health Organization's 17 neglected tropical diseases; echinococcosis and cysticercosis. The team sequenced the genomes of four species of tapeworm to explore the genetics and underlying biology of this unusual parasite. As an adult it can live relatively harmlessly ...

Results of a study published online in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy today (Thursday), demonstrate that computer models can predict how HIV patients whose drug therapy is failing will respond to a new treatment. Crucially for patients in poorer countries, the models do not require the results of expensive drug resistance tests to make their predictions. The study also showed that the models were able to identify alternative drug combinations that were predicted to work in cases where the treatment used in the clinic had failed, suggesting that their use could ...

Autism results from abnormal cell communication. Testing a new theory, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have used a newly discovered function of an old drug to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the devastating disorder. The findings are published in the March 13, 2013 issue of the journal PLOS ONE. "Our (cell danger) theory suggests that autism happens because cells get stuck in a defensive metabolic mode and fail to talk to each other normally, which can interfere with brain development ...

Some of the brightest galaxies in the universe – infant galaxies that churned out tens of thousands of stars each year at the dawn of the universe – evolved much sooner and in greater numbers than previously thought, according to new measurements obtained by University of Arizona astronomers. The results are published in a set of papers to appear in the journal Nature on March 14 and in the Astrophysical Journal. The research is the most recent example of the discoveries coming from the new international ALMA observatory, which celebrates its inauguration today. ALMA, ...

ORLANDO, Fla., March 13, 2013 – Researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have determined the complete three-dimensional structure of a protein called HNF-4α. HNF-4α controls gene expression in the liver and pancreas, switching genes on or off as needed. People with mature onset diabetes of the young (MODY1), a rare form of the disease, have inherited mutations in the HNF-4α protein. This first-ever look at HNF-4α's full structure, published March 13 in Nature, uncovers new information about how it functions. The study ...

NEW YORK, MARCH 13, 2013 – Researchers have discovered a unique monoclonal antibody that can effectively reach inside a cancer cell, a key goal for these important anticancer agents, since most proteins that cause cancer or are associated with cancer are buried inside cancer cells. Scientists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Eureka Therapeutics have collaborated to create the new human monoclonal antibody, which targets a protein associated with many types of cancer and is of great interest to cancer researchers. Unlike other human therapeutic monoclonal ...

When a batch of bright cosmic objects first appeared in maps in 2008 made with data from the South Pole Telescope, astronomers at the University of Chicago's Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics regarded it only as an unavoidable nuisance. The light sources interfered with efforts to measure more precisely the cosmic microwave background—the afterglow of the big bang. But the astronomers soon realized that they had made a rare find in South Pole Telescope's large survey of the sky. The spectra of some of the bright objects, which is the rainbow of light they emit, ...

In the southern Rift Valley of Kenya, the Maasai people, their livestock and a range of carnivores, including striped hyenas, spotted hyenas, lions and bat-eared foxes, are coexisting fairly happily according to a team of coupled human and natural systems researchers. "I wouldn't call the results surprising," said Meredith Evans Wagner, a visiting scholar from the University of Florida in the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability (CSIS) at Michigan State University and part of the research team. "Other research has shown that people and carnivores can coexist, ...