DALLAS – Feb. 7, 2013 – UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists have synthesized a peptide that shows potential for pharmaceutical development into agents for treating infections, neurodegenerative disorders, and cancer through an ability to induce a cell-recycling process called autophagy. Autophagy is a fundamental recycling process in which intracellular enzymes digest unneeded and broken parts of the cell into their individual building blocks, which are then reassembled into new parts. The role of autophagy is crucial both in keeping cells healthy and in enabling ...

JUPITER, FL, February 7, 2013 – Using two different compounds they developed, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have been able to show in animal models that inhibiting a specific enzyme protects heart cells and surrounding tissue against serious damage from heart attacks. The compounds also protect against additional injury from restored blood flow after an attack, a process known as reperfusion. The study, which was led by Philip LoGrasso, a professor and senior scientific director of discovery biology at Scripps Florida, appears ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — The stark contrast between America's "me-first" culture and the "collective-good" mentality in China is reflected in the two countries' use of social networking sites, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar. U.S. citizens spend more time on the networking sites, consider them to be more important and have more "friends" on the sites, the research found. The most popular social networking site in the United States is Facebook; in China it's Ozone. Linda Jackson, MSU professor of psychology, said Chinese citizens tend ...

In time for Valentine's Day, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin is featuring several new studies all about relationships – including the link between income in marriage and health, the role of jealousy in becoming a parent, and how humor affects romantic couples in conflict. Being the breadwinner has health costs Men whose wives earn more income are more likely to use erectile dysfunction medication than those who outearn their wives, even when the inequality is small, according to a new study. Researchers looking at more than 200,000 married couples in Denmark ...

Endlessly frustrated by congested roads, computer scientists at California State University, in Fullerton have developed a satellite navigation system, GeoTNavi, which hooks into historical traffic data and current vehicle movements to find the shortest commute and avoid the traffic jams. Writing in the latest issue of the International Journal of Data Mining, Modelling and Management, Shawn Wang and colleagues explain how the California highway system is one of the most complicated and busiest highway systems in the USA with well over 83% of urban interstate congestion. ...

Men who reported permanent stress have a significantly higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes than men who reported no stress. This is the finding of a 35-year prospective follow-up study of 7,500 men in Gothenburg, by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Since the 1970s, a large population based cohort study has been undertaken at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg to monitor the health of men born in Gothenburg between 1915 and 1925. Using this unique material, researchers are now able to show that permanent stress significantly increases the risk ...

Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia have developed a technique that improves and cuts the cost of a technique called electroporation, which involves opening pores in cell membranes using an electric field to introduce substances like drugs and DNA. Current methods are aggressive and expensive whereas the new system manages to apply low voltage electroporation with a small printed circuit board, which costs less than a Euro per unit and does not damage cells. Two US firms in Boston and San Francisco operating in the biotechnology equipment sector have ...

Asians (about 60 percent) are much more likely to be college-educated than Anglos (under 40 percent), according to Rice University's Kinder Institute Houston Area Asian Survey, the first systematic look at the local Asian population based on three surveys conducted over a 16-year period. The findings were released today by Stephen Klineberg, Kinder Institute co-director and Rice sociologist, at an event hosted by the institute at the Asia Society Texas Center. The surveys, conducted in 1995, 2002 and 2011 in conjunction with the annual Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey, ...

PITTSBURGH—Crowdsourcing is an effective way to mobilize people to accomplish tasks on a global scale, but some researchers fear that crowd work for pay could easily become the high-tech equivalent of a sweat shop. Trivial work for rock bottom pay isn't inevitable, however, and they've outlined a research agenda to make crowd work both intellectually and monetarily rewarding. Leading researchers in crowd work from Carnegie Mellon University and other institutions will present their plan, hashed out in a special workshop last spring, at the Association for Computing Machinery's ...

Mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussion, is one of the most common types of neurological disorder, affecting approximately 1.3 million Americans annually. It has received more attention recently because of its frequency and impact among two groups of patients: professional athletes, especially football players; and soldiers returning from mid-east conflicts with blast-related TBI. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of the more than 2 million U.S. soldiers deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan have experienced TBI. A recent study by psychiatrists with the Iowa City ...

The growing ease of DNA sequencing has led to enormous advancements in the scientific field. Through extensive networked databases, researchers can access genetic information to gain valuable knowledge about causative and preventative factors for disease, and identify new targets for future treatments. But the wider availability of such information also has a significant downside — the risk of revealing personal information. Researchers from Tel Aviv University and the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, have developed an algorithm that can identify ...

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), led by Fàtima Bosch, have shown for the first time that it is possible to cure diabetes in large animals with a single session of gene therapy. As published this week in Diabetes, the principal journal for research on the disease, after a single gene therapy session, the dogs recover their health and no longer show symptoms of the disease. In some cases, monitoring continued for over four years, with no recurrence of symptoms. The therapy is minimally invasive. It consists of a single session of various injections ...

A natural trigger that enables stem cells to become any cell-type in the body has been discovered by scientists. Researchers have identified a protein that kick-starts the process by which stem cells can develop to into different cells in the body, for instance liver or brain cells. Their discovery could help scientists improve techniques enabling them to turn stem cells into other cell types in the laboratory. These could then be used to test drugs or help create therapies for degenerative conditions such as Parkinson's disease, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis ...

The annual duck hunting season in the United States is traditionally big business, but while bird numbers are rising faster than they have for decades, the number of hunters continues to fall. Far from being good news for ducks a new study in the Wildlife Society Bulletin shows how the loss of revenue from 'duck stamps' could result in millions of lost dollars for vital conservation work. "The last 15 years have brought hunting opportunities not seen since the turn of the last century," said Dr Mark Vrtiska from Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. "The waterfowl population ...

The federal government invested more than $25 billion in health information technology (IT) as a result of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act; yet, little is known about how IT applications improve patient safety and protect their privacy. Now, a University of Missouri nursing informatics expert suggests that sophisticated IT leads to more robust and integrated communication strategies among clinical staff, which allows staff to more efficiently coordinate care and better protect patient privacy. Greg Alexander, an associate professor in the MU Sinclair School ...

This press release is available in German. (Jena) On their mission to the moon in 1969 the Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin created arguably the most famous footprints ever. Since the time the astronauts of the Apollo 11 Mission stepped onto the surface of our satellite their footprints remain almost unchanged. And as no breath of wind will ever be able to blow them away they will be visible forever. Not quite so old but equally 'immortal' are many traces that have been left behind by humans at the South Pole of the Earth. This is the result of a report ...

A University of Colorado Cancer Center review published this week in the journal Lancet Oncology describes possible long-term side-effects of new, targeted therapies in pediatric cancer patients: what we don't know may hurt us. "As pediatricians who treat kids with cancer, we expect the side-effects of traditional chemotherapies: low white blood count, infections, even long-term heart trouble or infertility. But there's the impression that these new, molecularly targeted agents are much less toxic. That may be true, especially in adult patients, but until we have more ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Now that President Obama has put climate change back on the table in his second inaugural address, a new national poll finds growing public support for regulating greenhouse gas emissions and requiring utilities to switch to lower-carbon fuel sources. The percentage of Americans who think climate change is occurring has rebounded, according to the Duke University national online survey, and is at its highest level since 2006. The study also finds that while Americans support regulating greenhouse gas emissions, they do not favor market-based approaches ...

VIDEO: Antarctica's Don Juan Pond, the world's saltiest body of water, needs its salt to keep from freezing into oblivion. Scientists had assumed that the saltwater brine that sustains the pond... Click here for more information. PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Antarctica's Don Juan Pond might be the unlikeliest body of water on Earth. Situated in the frigid McMurdo Dry Valleys, only the pond's high salt content — by far the highest of any body of water on the planet — ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (February 7, 2013) – Injury to the subcortical structures of the inner brain is a major contributor to worsening neurological abnormalities after "awake craniotomy" for brain tumors, reports a study in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. During a procedure intended to protect critical functional areas in the outer brain (cortex), damage to subcortical areas—which may be detectable on MRI scans—is a major ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (February 7, 2013) – For women with aneurysms involving the brain blood vessels, pregnancy and delivery don't appear to increase the risk of aneurysm rupture, reports a paper in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. The study also finds that women with known, unruptured aneurysms have a very high rate of cesarean delivery—which isn't supported by evidence and "may not be necessary," according to Dr. Brian ...

In the evening of Feb. 5, 2013, the sun erupted with two coronal mass ejections or CMEs that may glance near-Earth space. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show that the first CME began at 7 p.m. EST and left the sun at speeds of around 750 miles per second. The second CME began at 10:36 p.m. EST and left the sun at speeds of around 350 miles per second. Historically, CMEs of this speed and direction have been benign. Not to be confused with ...

When migrating, sockeye salmon typically swim up to 4,000 miles into the ocean and then, years later, navigate back to the upstream reaches of the rivers in which they were born to spawn their young. Scientists, the fishing community and lay people have long wondered how salmon find their way to their home rivers over such epic distances. How do they do that? A new study, published in this week's issue of Current Biology and partly funded by the National Science Foundation, suggests that salmon find their home rivers by sensing the rivers' unique magnetic signature. ...

Three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera for studying "charge exchange," a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space. The unique collaboration involved heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science divisions at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and resulted in the first successful demonstration of the Sheath Transport Observer for the Redistribution of Mass (STORM) instrument and a never-before-flown ...

Self-esteem, optimism and perceived control influence depression in stroke survivors and their spouse caregivers — who should be treated together, according to research presented at the American Stroke Association's International Stroke Conference 2013. Researchers, who analyzed 112 depressed stroke survivors up to 8 weeks after hospital discharge and their spouses, found self-esteem and optimism influenced each partners' depression. "We usually have been focused on the outcome of the stroke survivor, but we found that the self-esteem and optimism of the spouse caretaker ...