URBANA – Perennial biofuel crops such as miscanthus, whose high yields have led them to be considered an eventual alternative to corn in producing ethanol, are now shown to have another beneficial characteristic–the ability to reduce the escape of nitrogen in the environment. In a 4-year University of Illinois study that compared miscanthus, switchgrass, and mixed prairie species to typical corn-corn-soybean rotations, each of the perennial crops were highly efficient at reducing nitrogen losses, with miscanthus having the greatest yield. "Our results clearly demonstrate ...

Welcome to "This Week in Blood," a weekly snapshot of the hottest studies from each week's issue of Blood, the official journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH), hand-picked by Blood Editor-in-Chief Bob Löwenberg, MD, and Deputy Editor Nancy Berliner, MD. Systemic delivery of a TLR7 agonist in combination with radiation primes durable anti-tumor immune responses in mouse models of lymphoma, Dovedi et al. This week's plenary paper offers a promising potential new immunotherapeutic modality for the treatment of lymphoma. The authors present convincing data ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — As cancer treatment in pill form transforms how care is delivered, a new Michigan State University study underscores the challenges patients face in administering their own chemotherapy outside the supervised environment of a cancer clinic. Chemotherapy pills can target specific cancers better than some traditional intravenous drugs, said Sandra Spoelstra, an MSU assistant professor of nursing who led the study. But they also can be difficult for patients to take. "Prescriptions for some oral pills have complex instructions," Spoelstra said. ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke researchers are looking to genomic technologies – not the isolation of bacteria or viruses – to quickly detect and diagnose infectious diseases such as the flu and staph. Two studies appearing online Jan. 9, 2013, both in the journal PLOS ONE, show how a pattern of genomic information among infected individuals can be used to accurately pinpoint the cause of infection. "Traditional diagnostic tests for infectious diseases rely on detecting the specific illness-causing pathogens. So you only find what you're looking for," said Geoffrey Ginsburg, ...

SAN DIEGO – Apparent stem cell transplant success in mice may hold promise for people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease. The results of the study were released today and will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 65th Annual Meeting in San Diego, March 16 to 23, 2013. "There have been remarkable strides in stem cell transplantation when it comes to other diseases, such as cancer and heart failure," said study author Stefania Corti, MD, PhD, with the University of Milan in Italy and a member of the American Academy of Neurology. ...

VIDEO: This is a video clip of a bamboo shark embryo responding to an electrical stimulus by ceasing gill movements. Click here for more information. Baby sharks still developing in their egg cases can sense when predators are near, and keep very still to avoid being detected, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Ryan Kempster from the University of Western Australia and colleagues. Adult sharks are known to use highly sensitive ...

You may have to be over a certain age to be a contestant on "Deal or No Deal", but children as young as five start to maximize their profits - in cookies - when making decisions similar to those on the show, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Valerie Dufour and colleagues from the National Center for Scientific Research in France. Children aged 3-9 were given a cookie and presented the option to either keep it or exchange it for one of 6 identical cups containing cookies. The cookies in the cups could be larger, smaller or ...

VIDEO: This is an intravital microscopy of the skin window of tumors in mice injected with SSRBCs or NLRBCs. Click here for more information. The genetic mutation that causes sickle cell anemia also turns red blood cells into potent tumor killers and may offer a new way to treat some cancers that are resistant to existing treatments, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by David S. Terman of Jenomic Research Institute and colleagues ...

People view brown-eyed faces as more trustworthy than those with blue eyes, except if the blue eyes belong to a broad-faced man, according to research published January 9 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Karel Kleisner and colleagues from Charles University in the Czech Republic. The study's results attempt to answer a larger question: What makes us think a person's face looks trustworthy? The authors asked study participants to rate male and female faces for trustworthiness based on two features: eye color and face shape. A significant number of participants found ...

DURHAM, N.C. – By harnessing the very qualities that make sickle cell disease a lethal blood disorder, a research team led by Duke Medicine and Jenomic, a private cancer research company in Carmel, Calif., has developed a way to deploy the misshapen red blood cells to fight cancer tumors. Reporting in the Jan. 9, 2013, edition of the on-line journal, PLOS ONE, the researchers describe a process of exploiting sickle-shaped red blood cells to selectively target oxygen deprived cancer tumors in mice and block the blood vessels that surround them. "Sickle cells appear ...

Using cervical fluid obtained during routine Pap tests, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center have developed a test to detect ovarian and endometrial cancers. In a pilot study, the "PapGene" test, which relies on genomic sequencing of cancer-specific mutations, accurately detected all 24 (100 percent) endometrial cancers and nine of 22 (41 percent) ovarian cancers. Results of the experiments are published in the January 9 issue of the journal, Science Translational Medicine. The investigators note that larger scale studies are needed before clinical implementation ...

Astronomers have discovered hundreds of previously-unknown sites of massive star formation in the Milky Way, including the most distant such objects yet found in our home Galaxy. Ongoing studies of these objects promise to give crucial clues about the structure and history of the Milky Way. The scientists found regions where massive young stars or clusters of such stars are forming. These regions, which astronomers call HII (H-two) regions, serve as markers of the Galaxy's structure, including its spiral arms and central bar. "We're vastly improving the census of our ...

A team of scientists has developed a playbook for ending the devastating impact of fibrotic diseases of the liver, lung, kidney, and other organs, which are responsible for as many as 45 percent of all deaths in the industrialized world. Despite the prevalence of these illnesses, which are caused by buildup of scar tissue, there are no approved antifibrotic drugs on the market in the U.S. A top fibrosis expert from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and three other institutions have described drug targets and compounds they hope will prove broadly effective in ...

Researchers in California and Switzerland have discovered that melanomas that develop resistance to the anti-cancer drug vemurafenib (marketed as Zelboraf), also develop addiction to the drug, an observation that may have important implications for the lives of patients with late-stage disease. The team, based at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research (NIBR) in Emeryville, Calif., and University Hospital Zurich, found that one mechanism by which melanoma cells become resistant to vemurafenib also renders them ...

What if you had a "Wayback Television Set" and could watch an entire month of ancient prehistory unfold before your eyes in real time? David Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented just such a scenario to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, CA, when he announced the discovery of a striking astronomical object: a Type Ia supernova with a redshift of 1.71 that dates back 10 billion years in time. Labeled SN SCP-0401, the supernova is exceptional for its detailed spectrum and precision ...

Spin and bias exist in a high proportion of published studies of the outcomes and adverse side-effects of phase III clinical trials of breast cancer treatments, according to new research published in the cancer journal Annals of Oncology [1] today (Thursday). In the first study to investigate how accurately outcomes and side-effects are reported in breast cancer trials, researchers at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada) found that in a third of all trials that failed to show a statistically significant benefit for the treatment ...

This press release is available in German. Dental microwear, the pattern of tiny marks on worn tooth surfaces, is an important basis for understanding the diets of fossil mammals, including those of our own lineage. Now nanoscale research by an international multidisciplinary group that included members of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig has unraveled some of its causes. It turns out that quartz dust is the major culprit in wearing away tooth enamel. Silica phytoliths, particles produced by plants, just rub enamel, and thus have ...

A landmark discovery about how insulin docks on cells could help in the development of improved types of insulin for treating both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. For the first time, researchers have captured the intricate way in which insulin uses the insulin receptor to bind to the surface of cells. This binding is necessary for the cells to take up sugar from the blood as energy. The research team was led by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and used the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne, Australia. The study was published today in the journal Nature. For more ...

HOUSTON – (Jan. 9, 2013) – Magma forms far deeper than geologists previously thought, according to new research at Rice University. A group led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta put very small samples of peridotite under very large pressures in a Rice laboratory to determine that rock can and does liquify, at least in small amounts, as deep as 250 kilometers in the mantle beneath the ocean floor. He said this explains several puzzles that have bothered scientists. Dasgupta is lead author of the paper to be published this week in Nature. The mantle is the planet's middle ...

The discovery of insulin nearly a century ago changed diabetes from a death sentence to a chronic disease. Today a team that includes researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine announced a discovery that could lead to dramatic improvements in the lives of people managing diabetes. After decades of speculation about exactly how insulin interacts with cells, the international group of scientists finally found a definitive answer: in an article published today in the journal Nature, the group describes how insulin binds to the cell to allow the ...

WASHINGTON –A recently published paper by two George Washington University researchers shows that the running foot strike patterns vary among habitually barefoot people in Kenya due to speed and other factors such as running habits and the hardness of the ground. These results are counter to the belief that barefoot people prefer one specific style of running. Kevin Hatala, a Ph.D. student in the Hominid Paleobiology doctoral program at George Washington, is the lead author of the paper that appears in the recent edition of the journal Public Library of Science, or PLOS ...

When Charles Darwin first sketched how species evolved by natural selection, he drew what looked like a tree. The diagram started at a central point with a common ancestor, then the lines spread apart as organisms evolved and separated into distinct species. In the 175 years since, scientists have come to agree that Darwin's original drawing is a bit simplistic, given that multiple species mix and interbreed in ways he didn't consider possible (though you can't fault the guy for not getting the most important scientific theory of all time exactly right the first time). ...

Nearly every major news organization has a Twitter account these days, but just how effective is the microblogging website at spreading news? That's the question University of Arizona professor Sudha Ram set out to answer in a recent study of a dozen major news organizations that use the social media website as one tool for sharing their content. The answer, according to Ram's research, varies widely by news agency, and there may not be one universally applicable strategy for maximizing Twitter effectiveness. However, news agencies can learn a lot by looking at how their ...

The impact of antibiotic misuse has far-reaching consequences in healthcare, including reduced efficacy of the drugs, increased prevalence of drug-resistant organisms, and increased risk of deadly infections. A new study featured in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, found that many patients with Clostridium difficile infection (C. difficile) are prescribed unnecessary antibiotics, increasing their risk of recurrence of the deadly infection. The retrospective report shows ...

Flooding can cause clinical and economic damage to a healthcare facility, but reopening a facility after extensive flooding requires infection prevention and control preparedness plans to ensure a safe environment for patients and healthcare workers. In a study published in the February issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America, clinical investigators report key findings and recommendations related to the closure and re-opening of hospitals impacted by black-water floods. The guidance builds on ...