7 May, 2013 -- Sydney, Australia: A new class of drug targeting skin cancer's genetic material has been successfully tested in humans for the first time, opening the way to new treatments for a range of conditions from skin cancers to eye diseases. The research involves the drug Dz13, a targeted molecular therapy, which was developed at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and has now been found to be safe in a clinical trial of patients with the common skin cancer, basal-cell carcinoma. "This is the first report of a drug of this type to be used in humans," ...

Scientists' picture of how a gene strongly linked to Alzheimer's disease harms the brain may have to be revised, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. People with harmful forms of the APOE gene have up to 12 times the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease compared with those who have other variations of the gene. Many researchers believe that the memory loss and cognitive problems of Alzheimer's result from the buildup over many years of brain amyloid plaques. The plaques are made mostly of a sticky substance called amyloid ...

A polymer solar cell is a type of thin film solar cells made with polymers that produce electricity from sunlight by the photovoltaic effect. Most current commercial solar cells are made from a highly purified silicon crystal. The high cost of these silicon solar cells and their complex production process has generated interest in developing alternative photovoltaic technologies. Compared to silicon-based devices, PSCs are lightweight (which is important for small autonomous sensors), solution processability (potentially disposable), inexpensive to fabricate (sometimes ...

The Ebola virus is among the deadliest viruses on the planet, killing up to 90% of those infected, and there are no approved vaccines or effective therapies. A study published by Cell Press on May 7th in the Biophysical Journal reveals how the most abundant protein making up the Ebola virus—viral protein 40 (VP40)—allows the virus to leave host cells and spread infection to other cells throughout the human body. The findings could lay the foundation for the development of new drugs and strategies for fighting Ebola infection. "Little research is available on how the ...

Diabetics have an increased risk of developing coronary artery disease and plaque build-up in their arteries, even if they receive cholesterol-lowering therapies. New research published in the May 7th issue of the Cell Press journal Cell Metabolism reveals that high blood sugar levels also boost the production of inflammatory cells, which contribute to plaque build-up in blood vessels. The researchers identify the cause of this increased production in inflammatory cells and find that blocking this new pathway could help safeguard the heart health of diabetic patients. "We ...

Charlottesville, VA (May 7, 2013). Researchers at the Center for Injury Biomechanics at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia compared the relative safety afforded by two 1930-vintage leather football helmets and 10 modern football helmets during impacts to players' heads. These researchers found that all 10 modern helmets provided significantly more protection than leather helmets used in the first half of the twentieth century, and demonstrated that differences also exist between modern helmets. Details on their methods and findings are found in "Biomechanical performance ...

NEW YORK, NY (May 7, 2013) — Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes appears to increase the risk of heart disease, the leading cause of death among people with high blood sugar, partly by stimulating the production of calprotectin, a protein that sparks an inflammatory process that fuels the buildup of artery-clogging plaque. The findings, made in mice and confirmed with human data, suggest new therapeutic targets for reducing heart disease in people with type 1 diabetes. Led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers in collaboration with investigators at New ...

Toronto, Canada – Scientists have named a new species of bone-headed dinosaur (pachycephalosaur) from Alberta, Canada. Acrotholus audeti (Ack-RHO-tho-LUS) was identified from both recently discovered and historically collected fossils. Approximately six feet long and weighing about 40 kgs in life, the newly identified plant-eating dinosaur represents the oldest bone-headed dinosaur in North America, and possibly the world. Research describing the new species is published May 7, 2013 in the journal Nature Communications. Acrotholus means "high dome", referring to its ...

San Diego, May 7, 2013 – The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) and the American Urological Association (AUA) are pleased to announce the publication of the joint guideline on radiation therapy after prostatectomy for patients with and without evidence of prostate cancer recurrence. The 81-page document represents an intensive collaboration among experts in the radiation oncology and urology fields, led by Richard K. Valicenti, MD, MA, professor and chair of the department of radiation oncology at the University of California Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center ...

Boston, MA — Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have discovered that a particular type of protein (hormone) found in fat cells helps regulate how glucose (blood sugar) is controlled and metabolized (used for energy) in the liver. Using experimental models and state-of-the-art technology, the scientists found that switching off this protein leads to better control of glucose production from the liver, revealing a potential new target that may be used to treat type 2 diabetes and other metabolic diseases. The study appears online in the May 7, 2013 issue ...

An international team lead by the University of Granada has found that female sparrows will invest more energy into laying eggs according to the male's ability to fill the nest with feathers which serve to insulate the chicks from the cold and keep them alive. Scientists from the University of Granada, in collaboration with the South African University of the Witwatersrand and the Percy FitzPatrick Institute at the University of Cape Town, have discovered that the female house sparrow (Passer domesticus) invests more energy into laying eggs when the male brings more feathers ...

Laminopathies are hereditary diseases that affect mainly the muscle tissue. These diseases include for example Emery-Dreifuss Muscular dystrophy, dilated cardiomyopathy, limb-girdle muscular dystrophy and Hutchison-Gilford progeria syndrome. The underlying defect in these diseases is mutation in the genes encoding lamins or lamin-associated proteins. For example, many mutations in the lamin gene LMNA have been associated with different diseases. Lamins are crucial components of the nuclear lamina that underlies the inner side of nuclear envelope, and provides mechanical ...

Government policies that boost the amount of home ownership in a country are likely to inflict severe damage on the labour market, new research from the University of Warwick suggests. Professor Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick and Professor David Blanchflower from Dartmouth College examine a century of unemployment and home ownership data for the states of the USA from 1900 to 2010. Combining those numbers with modern data on millions of randomly sampled Americans, the researchers show there is a powerful link between the housing market and the later health ...

An international team of physicists, including researchers from the Universities of York and St. Andrews, has demonstrated that chaos can beat order - at least as far as light storage is concerned. In a collaboration led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia, the researchers deformed mirrors in order to disrupt the regular light path in an optical cavity and, surprisingly, the resulting chaotic light paths allowed more light to be stored than with ordered paths. The work has important applications for many branches of physics ...

"So far, magnetic vortex states have been observed only in two dimensions; in other words: Within a plane," explains Sebastian Wintz, physicist at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf. These magnetic vortices typically occur in nanometer-scale magnetic disks. Wintz has now investigated three-dimensional magnetic layer systems together with his colleagues from HZDR and the Swiss Paul Scherrer Institute: The researchers stacked two magnetic disks at a time, which were separated by a thin non magnetic metal layer, on top of each other. Due to this special design, ...

Swedish researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, report that a simple habit may give significant protection against allergy development, namely, the parental sucking on the baby's pacifier. Allergies are very common in industrialized countries. It has been suggested that exposure to harmless bacteria during infancy may be protective against the development of allergy. However, it has been difficult to pinpoint which bacteria a baby should be exposed to, and at what time and by which route this exposure should ideally occur. Swedish researchers ...

Previous scientific studies have suggested that women who use a copper IUD for contraception suffer from worse period pain, but a study at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, that followed 2,100 women over a 30-year period shows that this is not the case. In the study, 19-year-olds born in 1962, 1972 and 1982 were asked questions about their height, weight, pregnancies, children, period pain and contraception. The latest results, published in the leading journal Human Reproduction, reveal that women who use a copper IUD do not suffer from worse period ...

To date, the mechanisms underlying the maintenance of cardiac function at low body temperatures are poorly understood. Now, scientists at the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, together with colleagues at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, have found that certain omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids regulate the cardiac function and hence hibernation. These fatty acids control the process of maintaining a regular heartbeat, achieving lower body temperatures during hibernation and thereby ensuring the hibernator's ...

DALLAS – May 7, 2013 – Patients with advanced bladder cancers that are surgically removed might need additional therapy to prevent recurrence in certain situations, a new UT Southwestern Medical Center study suggests. The five-year international study led by researchers at UT Southwestern validates the use of a marker panel to predict which patients are more likely to have a recurrence of cancer after bladder removal, thereby identifying those patients as good candidates for follow-up chemotherapy. The findings, published in the most recent edition of European Urology, ...

North Carolina State University researchers have identified a new mechanism to convert natural gas into energy up to 70 times faster, while effectively capturing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). "This could make power generation from natural gas both cleaner and more efficient," says Fanxing Li, co-author of a paper on the research and an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State. At issue is a process called chemical looping, in which a solid, oxygen-laden material – called an "oxygen carrier" – is put in contact with natural ...

INDIANAPOLIS -- Research from the Regenstrief Institute, the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and Wishard-Eskenazi Health on medications commonly taken by older adults has found that drugs with strong anticholinergic effects cause cognitive impairment when taken continuously for as few as 60 days. A similar impact can be seen with 90 days of continuous use when taking multiple drugs with weak anticholinergic effect. The study of 3,690 older adults is among the first to explore how length of use of this group of drugs affects the brain. The study is available ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Adults with depression and who receive certain types of anti-depressants have an increased risk of developing Clostridium difficile, a costly and serious hospital-associated infection, according to a new University of Michigan Health System study. Older Americans who were widowed and those who lived alone were also more likely to develop C. difficile, a bacterium that causes a growing number of serious infections in U.S. hospitals and nursing homes and is responsible for more than 7,000 deaths a year in the country. Symptoms range from diarrhea to ...

(NORTHBROOK, IL, MAY 7, 2013) –The American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) third edition of evidence-based lung cancer guidelines, Diagnosis and Management of Lung Cancer, 3rd ed: American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines, recommends offering low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scanning for lung cancer screening to people with a significant risk of lung cancer due to age and smoking history. Published as a special supplement to the May issue of CHEST, ACCP's peer-reviewed journal, the guidelines cite evidence to show lung cancer ...

An international team of researchers, led by physician-scientists at Johns Hopkins, reports that a once-daily tablet containing a high dose of a key ragweed pollen protein effectively blocks the runny noses, sneezes, nasal congestion and itchy eyes experienced by ragweed allergy sufferers. Tests showed that treatment with the pill, which contains the protein Ambrosia artemisiifolia major allergen 1, and is placed under the tongue to be absorbed, also reduced the need for anti-allergy drugs to get relief. More than 80 million Americans are allergic to ragweed. The ...

Over 20 million people in Europe suffer from osteoarthritis which can lead to extensive damage to the knee and hip cartilage. Stem cells offer a promising way forward but a key challenge has been to design a 'smart material' that is biologically effective for cartilage tissue regeneration. Now researchers have identified a blend of naturally occurring fibres such as cellulose and silk that makes progress towards affordable and effective cell-based therapy for cartilage repair a step closer. The EPSRC-funded study, published in Biomacromolecules and undertaken by University ...