CLEVELAND -- Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified a molecule linked to more aggressive forms of breast cancer – a discovery that could point the way to potential cures. Until this study, the ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule called miR-181a had never before been tied to breast cancer metastasis. But when scientists found elevated levels of the molecule in late-stage breast cancer tissues, they in turn tested an inhibitor in mouse models. The approach not only prevented metastasis, but also extended the animals' lives. "Overall, ...

(Edmonton) Make no mistake, Alex Clark and Lionel Messi were not separated at birth. Both might be stars in their own right, but Clark, associate dean of research in the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, realizes he's not about to woo stadiums of crazed soccer fans like FC Barcelona's all-time top scorer. "It would probably take you about five seconds of watching Lionel Messi move the ball to work out who is the more talented soccer player; however, a lot of health research would see us as very similar," says Clark, noting they're both male, under 5-foot-11, ...

Daejeon, Republic of Korea, December 17th, 2012—Cell phones are getting ever smarter today, savvy enough to tell you where to go and what to buy in shopping centers or department stores. Although still in nascent stages, indoor positioning and navigation using mobile phones will be arriving anytime soon. People widely rely on the Global Positioning System (GPS) for location information, but unlike outdoor environments, GPS does not work well in indoor spaces or urban canyons with streets cutting through dense blocks of high-rise buildings and structures. GPS requires ...

There is no difference between proton radiotherapy (PRT) and intensity-modulated radiotherapy (IMRT) when comparing the toxicity among Medicare beneficiary patients with prostate cancer at 12 months post-treatment according to a study published December 14 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. IMRT is the standard form of radiotherapy for the treatment of prostate cancer, accounting for more than 80% of all treatments. Alternative treatments for radiotherapy have emerged, with the most notable being PRT. PRT treatment has surfaced partly due Medicare reimbursement, ...

A father's death can have long-term effects on a child's later success in life and can be particularly harmful if the father passes away during a child's late childhood or early adolescence, according to new research by a University of Missouri anthropologist. Recognizing the impact that a father's death can have on adolescents could lead to improved counseling and assistance programs, especially for needy families in the developing world. "Certain negative effects of a father's death can't be compensated for by the mother or other relatives," said Mary Shenk, assistant ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 17, 2012—The health care system in the U.S. is a $2.5 trillion industry and depends heavily on communication and the transfer of information via the Internet. This puts it at ever-increasing risk of a cyberterrorism attack, which could jeopardize lives and threaten patient care and privacy. Cyber threats are on the rise, and U.S. health care organizations must be better prepared to deal with them, according to an article published in Telemedicine and e-Health, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). ...

Want your children to be healthier snackers? A new Cornell study finds that serving children combined snacks of vegetables and cheese led them to eat 72 percent fewer calories — and be just as satisfied as those who were served only potato chips. "Snack combos are fun to eat, and they take longer to eat than potato chips. This is why kids find them satisfying and why they eat so much less," said Brian Wansink, professor of marketing at the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. In the forthcoming Pediatrics study, 201 elementary ...

Current special education laws are geared towards integrating special-needs children into the general classroom environment from a young age, starting as early as preschool. Prof. Tova Most of Tel Aviv University's Jaime and Joan Constantiner School of Education and the Department of Communications Disorders at the Stanley Steyer School of Health Professions says that these laws present a unique set of challenges for children with hearing loss, and that a sense of isolation may inhibit a successful education. While studies show that many children with hearing loss are ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A desire for expensive, high-status goods is related to feelings of social status - which helps explain why minorities are attracted to bling, a new study suggests. Previous research had shown that racial minorities spend a larger portion of their incomes than do whites on conspicuous consumption – buying products that suggest high status. But a new study showed that whites could be induced to crave expensive, high-status products if they imagined themselves in a low-status position. These findings cast doubt on the notion that urban minorities have ...

BETHESDA, Md. (Dec. 17, 2012)—It is well known that people with Down syndrome (DS) suffer from marked muscle weakness. Even the simple tasks of independent living, such as getting out of a chair or climbing a flight of stairs, can become major obstacles. This can reduce the quality of life for those with DS and lead to a loss of independence. Now, a new study sheds light on some of the suspected causes of muscle weakness. Led by scientists from Syracuse University, a research team has investigated muscle weakness in a mouse model of DS. "If we understand the cause of ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Finding ways to diagnose cancer earlier could greatly improve the chances of survival for many patients. One way to do this is to look for specific proteins secreted by cancer cells, which circulate in the bloodstream. However, the quantity of these biomarkers is so low that detecting them has proven difficult. A new technology developed at MIT may help to make biomarker detection much easier. The researchers, led by Sangeeta Bhatia, have developed nanoparticles that can home to a tumor and interact with cancer proteins to produce thousands of biomarkers, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Sulfur compounds in petroleum fuels have met their nano-structured match. University of Illinois researchers developed mats of metal oxide nanofibers that scrub sulfur from petroleum-based fuels much more effectively than traditional materials. Such efficiency could lower costs and improve performance for fuel-based catalysis, advanced energy applications and toxic gas removal. Co-led by Mark Shannon, a professor of mechanical science and engineering at the U. of I. until his death this fall, and chemistry professor Prashant Jain, the researchers ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Though it seems like an oxymoron, Arctic hurricanes happen, complete with a central "eye," extreme low barometric pressure and towering 30-foot waves that can sink small ships and coat metal platforms with thick ice, threatening oil and gas exploration. Now climate scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and in England report the first conclusive evidence that Arctic hurricanes, also known as polar lows, play a significant role in driving ocean water circulation and climate. Results point to potentially cooler conditions in Europe and North ...

This is a joint press release from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, ETH Zurich in Switzerland, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. Limiting climate change to target levels will become much more difficult to achieve, and more expensive, if action is not taken soon, according to a new analysis from IIASA, ETH Zurich, and NCAR. The new paper, published today in Nature Climate Change, explores technological, policy, and social changes that would need to take place in the near ...

Better targeted treatments for 20 per cent of renal failure patients are on the horizon following a key discovery about the role of white blood cells in kidney inflammation. In a study published today in Nature Medicine, researchers from Monash University tracked the movements of white blood cells, or leukocytes, leading to a new understanding of their behaviour in both healthy and diseased kidneys. Leukocytes play important protective roles in the body's immune system, but in some cases they cause damaging inflammation. Glomerulonephritis is an inflammatory disease ...

Blocking a single tiny blood vessel in the brain can harm neural tissue and even alter behavior, a new study from the University of California, San Diego has shown. But these consequences can be mitigated by a drug already in use, suggesting treatment that could slow the progress of dementia associated with cumulative damage to miniscule blood vessels that feed brain cells. The team reports their results in the December 16 advance online edition of Nature Neuroscience. "The brain is incredibly dense with vasculature. It was surprising that blocking one small vessel could ...

A team led by Michel Sadelain, MD, PhD, Director of the Center for Cell Engineering at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has shown for the first time the effectiveness of a new technique that could allow the development of more-specific, cell-based immune therapies for cancer. Their findings were reported online today in Nature Biotechnology. Immunotherapies — which make use of patients' own immune cells that have been augmented in the laboratory — have shown some early success in the treatment of blood cancers including certain types of leukemia. For most cancers, ...

LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL DEC. 16, 2012 AT 1 P.M. EST) – Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute researchers have reprogrammed ordinary heart cells to become exact replicas of highly specialized pacemaker cells by injecting a single gene (Tbx18)–a major step forward in the decade-long search for a biological therapy to correct erratic and failing heartbeats. The advance will be published in the Jan 8 issue of Nature Biotechnology and also will be available today on the journal's website. "Although we and others have created primitive biological pacemakers before, this study ...

Intense but small-scale polar storms could make a big difference to climate predictions according to new research from the University of East Anglia and the University of Massachusetts. Difficult-to-forecast polar mesoscale storms occur frequently over the polar seas, however they are missing in most climate models. Research published today in Nature Geoscience shows that their inclusion could paint a different picture of climate change in years to come. Polar mesoscale storms are capable of producing hurricane-strength winds which cool the ocean and lead to changes ...

December 16, 2012, Shenzhen, China – A research team, led by Institute of Zoology of Chinese Academy of Sciences and BGI, has successfully reconstructed a continuous population history of the giant panda from its origin to the present. The findings suggested whereas global changes in climate were the primary drivers in panda population fluctuation for millions of years, human activities were likely to underlie recent population divergence and serious decline. This work reveals a good example for assessing and establishing the best conservation method for other endangered ...

New research led by Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry suggests that the cognitive test used in Alzheimer's drug trials is flawed. The current standard cognitive test for the disease is the ADAS Cog. The new research, published as two studies in Alzheimer's & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, investigates the role of the test and questions its effectiveness. The studies show that the ADAS Cog is not subtle enough to properly track changes in the early stages of Alzheimer's. This is important because data from this key ...

Older people often worry about dementia and while some risks are known, for example alcoholism or stroke, the effects of illness are less clear. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Critical Care looks at illness requiring hospitalization and treatment in the intensive care unit (ICU) and finds that infection or severe sepsis, neurological dysfunction, such as delirium, or acute dialysis are all independently associated with an increased risk of a subsequent diagnosis of dementia. This study was based on a random 5% of older (66 years or above) ...

A new model of the how the protein coat (capsid) of viruses assembles, published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biophysics, shows that the construction of intermediate structures prior to final capsid production (hierarchical assembly) can be more efficient than constructing the capsid protein by protein (direct assembly). The capsid enveloping a virus is essential for protection and propagation of the viral genome. Many viruses have evolved a self-assembly method which is so successful that the viral capsid can self assemble even when removed from its host ...

Turning vast amounts of genomic data into meaningful information about the cell is the great challenge of bioinformatics, with major implications for human biology and medicine. Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine and colleagues have proposed a new method that creates a computational model of the cell from large networks of gene and protein interactions, discovering how genes and proteins connect to form higher-level cellular machinery. The findings are published in the December 16 advance online publication of Nature Biotechnology. "Our ...

PHILADELPHIA – Research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) reveals that sons of male rats exposed to cocaine are resistant to the rewarding effects of the drug, suggesting that cocaine-induced changes in physiology are passed down from father to son. The findings are published in the latest edition of Nature Neuroscience. "We know that genetic factors contribute significantly to the risk of cocaine abuse, but the potential role of epigenetic influences – how the expression of certain genes related ...