HOUSTON – (Feb. 26, 2013) – Bone marrow cells that produce brain-derived eurotrophic factor (BDNF), known to affect regulation of food intake, travel to part of the hypothalamus in the brain where they "fine-tune" appetite, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Shiga University of Medical Science in Otsu, Shiga, Japan, in a report that appears online in the journal Nature Communications. "We knew that blood cells produced BDNF," said Dr. Lawrence Chan, professor of molecular and cellular biology and professor and chief of the division of diabetes, endocrinology ...

Ottawa (February 26th, 2013) – Canadian agriculture is faced with great opportunities, but also challenged by water-related risks and uncertainties. An expert panel convened by the Council of Canadian Academies has found that water and land resources in Canada can be more sustainably managed by developing forward-thinking policies and effective land and water management strategies, adopting effective governance mechanisms, and harnessing technological advancements. The agricultural sector is an important contributor to Canada's prosperity and well-being. In 2011, primary ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have identified a group of progenitor cells in the inner ear that can become the sensory hair cells and adjacent supporting cells that enable hearing. Studying these progenitor cells could someday lead to discoveries that help millions of Americans suffering from hearing loss due to damaged or impaired sensory hair cells. "It's well known that, in mammals, these specialized sensory cells don't regenerate after damage," said Alan Cheng, MD, assistant professor of otolaryngology. (In contrast, ...

Huntington's disease, also known as Huntington's chorea, is a hereditary brain disease causing movement disorders and dementia. In Germany, there are about 8,000 patients affected by Huntington's disease, with several hundred new cases arising every year. The disease usually manifests between the ages of 35 and 50. To date, it is incurable and inevitably leads to death. It is caused by a specific genetic defect: In the patient's DNA, which is the carrier of genetic information, there are multiple copies of a certain motif. "Repeats like this are also found in healthy people. ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Fat worms confirm that researchers from Michigan State University have successfully engineered a plant with oily leaves -- a feat that could enhance biofuel production as well as lead to improved animal feeds. The results, published in the current issue of The Plant Cell, the journal of the American Society of Plant Biologists, show that researchers could use an algae gene involved in oil production to engineer a plant that stores lipids or vegetable oil in its leaves – an uncommon occurrence for most plants. Traditional biofuel research has focused ...

Northwestern University's Yonggang Huang and the University of Illinois' John A. Rogers are the first to demonstrate a stretchable lithium-ion battery -- a flexible device capable of powering their innovative stretchable electronics. No longer needing to be connected by a cord to an electrical outlet, the stretchable electronic devices now could be used anywhere, including inside the human body. The implantable electronics could monitor anything from brain waves to heart activity, succeeding where flat, rigid batteries would fail. Huang and Rogers have demonstrated ...

In a substudy of the STAMPEDE trial (Surgical Therapy And Medications Potentially Eradicate Diabetes Efficiently), Cleveland Clinic researchers have found that gastric bypass surgery reverses diabetes by uniquely restoring pancreatic function in moderately obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes. The two-year substudy evaluated the effects of bariatric surgery and intensive medical therapy on blood sugar levels, body composition, and pancreatic beta-cell function. Striking metabolic changes were observed in patients who underwent bariatric surgery compared with ...

The researchers conducted a mirror experiment to show that by changing the position of the mirror in a vacuum, virtual particles can be transformed into real photons that can be experimentally observed. In a vacuum, there is energy and noise, the existence of which follows the uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics. If we act fast enough, we can prevent the particles from recombining – they will then be transformed into real particles that can be detected', says Dr. Sorin Paraoanu from Aalto University. For the experiment, the researchers used an array of superconducting ...

For scientists to improve cancer treatments with targeted therapeutic drugs, they need to be able to see proteins prevalent in the cancer cells. This has been impossible, until now. Thanks to a new microscopy technique, University of Akron researcher Dr. Adam Smith, assistant professor of chemistry, has observed how clusters of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) — a protein abundant in lung and colon cancers, glioblastoma and others — malfunctions in cancer cells. "We can directly observe protein clusters, in a living cell membrane, that are invisible to traditional ...

The overuse of antibiotics has created strains of bacteria resistant to medication, making the diseases they cause difficult to treat, or even deadly. But now a research team at the University of Rochester has identified a weakness in at least one superbug that scientists may be able to medically exploit. Biologists Gloria Culver at Rochester and Keith Connolly, now at Harvard University, thought one key to stopping the bacteria may lie with proteins, so they studied the mechanism behind the development of bacterial ribosomes—the cell's protein-manufacturing machine. ...

(24 February 2013) An estimated 50 per cent of patients consulting a gastroenterologist suffer from functional bowel disorders (FBD), such as dyspepsia or irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). It is characteristic for these conditions that underlying physiological mechanisms are hard to be found. "However, recent research shows that the gut microbiota is a likely candidate for filling some of the gaps in the causal chain leading to FBD," says Professor Fernando Azpiroz, Chairman of the Gut Microbiota & Health Section of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology & Motility ...

(26 February 2013) Clostridium difficile infections have developed into a virtual pandemic over the past two decades. The outcome of standard antibiotic treatment is unsatisfactory: the recurrence rates are high with every relapse increasing the risk of further follow-ups. Faecal microbiota transplantation offers a rapidly acting and highly effective alternative in treating recurrent Clostridium difficile infections (RCDI), as Professor Lawrence J. Brandt (Montefiore Medical Center, New York, USA) points out. According to him, more than 90 per cent of the patients are being ...

Boston – A first-of-its kind national survey of medical students and residents finds that despite recent efforts by medical schools and academic medical centers to restrict access of pharmaceutical sales representatives to medical trainees, medical students and residents still commonly receive meals, gifts, and industry-sponsored educational materials. The study was completed by a team of researchers led by fourth-year Harvard Medical School student Kirsten Austad and Aaron Kesselheim, M.D., J.D., M.P.H., an internist and health policy researcher in the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology ...

Researchers at Pompeu Fabra University (Spain) have created a high resolution atlas of the heart with 3D images taken from 138 people. The study demonstrates that an average image of an organ along with its variations can be obtained for the purposes of comparing individual cases and differentiating healthy forms from pathologies. "This atlas is a statistical description of how the heart and its components – such as the ventricles and the atrium – look," as explained to SINC by Corné Hoogendoorn, researcher at the CISTIB centre of the Pompeu Fabra University. Scientists ...

Firefighters put their lives on the line in some of the most dangerous conditions on Earth. One of their greatest challenges, however, is seeing through thick veils of smoke and walls of flame to find people in need of rescue. A team of Italian researchers has developed a new imaging technique that uses infrared (IR) digital holography to peer through chaotic conflagrations and capture potentially lifesaving and otherwise hidden details. The team describes its breakthrough results and their applications in a paper published today in the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access ...

Scientists have used sugar-coated scaffolding to move a step closer to the routine use of stem cells in the clinic and unlock their huge potential to cure diseases from Alzheimer's to diabetes. Stem cells have the unique ability to turn into any type of human cell, opening up all sorts of therapeutic possibilities for some of the world's incurable diseases and conditions. The problem facing scientists is how to encourage stem cells to turn into the particular type of cell required to treat a specific disease. But researchers at the University of Manchester's School ...

Feeling comfortable and confident in sport, health, or PE can be very difficult for some young people who can be seen as a 'risk' of becoming obese. Young people from ethnic minorities, especially girls, are more likely to be physically inactive and unhealthy. This perception needs to be addressed and challenged in school physical education (PE) according to research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which shows how school provision could make use of visual approaches in developing young people's critical learning about the body. When Dr Laura ...

This press release is available in German. Scientists have long been dreaming about building a computer that would work like a brain. This is because a brain is far more energy-saving than a computer, it can learn by itself, and it doesn't need any programming. Privatdozent [senior lecturer] Dr. Andy Thomas from Bielefeld University's Faculty of Physics is experimenting with memristors – electronic microcomponents that imitate natural nerves. Thomas and his colleagues proved that they could do this a year ago. They constructed a memristor that is capable of learning. ...

In collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens of Madrid and the Slovenian Forestry Institute, researchers in the Basque Country have documented two new species of Hydnum, commonly known as ox tongue mushrooms, as part of their study published in the 'Mycologia' journal. This genus is known because many of its fungi are edible. Spanish researchers have headed the discovery of two mushroom species belonging to the Hydnum genus, a type of fungus commonly used in cooking. "During our study we discovered two new species: Hydnum ovoideisporum and Hydnum vesterholtii, which ...

Alexandria, VA – On June 5, 2012, a massive dock made landfall on Oregon's Agate Beach, just north of Newport. The dock carried with it a host of castaways, including as many as a hundred species of mollusks, anemones, sponges, oysters, crabs, barnacles, worms, sea stars, mussels and sea urchins. A placard on the side written in Japanese revealed that the dock had been unmoored from the Japanese coastal city of Misawa during the catastrophic tsunami on March 11, 2011, bringing with it an essentially intact subtidal community of Asian species to the Pacific Northwest. Although ...

If you accidently kick your toe against a doorframe you are probably going to find it very painful. As a purely intellectual experiment, imagine purposefully kicking a doorframe hard enough to potentially break your toe. When it turns out your toe has been battered but not broken, the pain may be interpreted more as a relief. "It is not hard to understand that pain can be interpreted as less severe when an individual is aware that it could have been much more painful. Less expected, however, is the discovery that pain may be experienced as pleasant if something worse ...

Almost all women experience some nausea or vomiting when pregnant. Approximately one out of every hundred suffers from acute nausea during pregnancy (hyperemesis gravidarum) and may need hospital treatment to restore hydration, electrolytes and vitamins intravenously. "At worst, women may die if they go untreated. Many women find that the condition has an adverse effect on their work and family lives," states Åse Vikanes, senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and specialist in gynaecology and obstetrics. Making up for insufficient research activity ...

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and Yale University have discovered that a specialized receptor, normally found in the nose, is also in blood vessels throughout the body, sensing small molecules created by microbes that line mammalian intestines, and responding to these molecules by increasing blood pressure. The finding suggests that gut bacteria are an integral part of the body's complex system for maintaining a stable blood pressure. A description of the research, conducted in mice and test tubes, appeared online Feb. 11 in the journal Proceedings of the ...

Fresh insights into the protective seal that surrounds the DNA of our cells could help develop treatments for inherited muscle, brain, bone and skin disorders. Researchers have discovered that the proteins within this coating – known as the nuclear envelope – vary greatly between cells in different organs of the body. This variation means that certain disease causing proteins will interact with the proteins in the protective seal to cause illness in some organs, but not others. Until now scientists had thought that all proteins within the nuclear envelope were the ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Afterschool programs seem to be most effective when their organization and implementation is supported by both organizational and community resources, according to Penn State human development researchers. Using a tool to help bridge the gap between research and real life, the researchers evaluated an afterschool program called the Good Behavior Game. "The Interactive System Framework for Dissemination and Implementation is the tool that helps us to bridge research and practice by synthesizing the available research and figuring out what it ...