What to fear most if faced by a cancer diagnosis is the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body. This process called metastasis accounts for over 90% of cancer patient deaths and therefore is a strong focus for cancer researchers. Researchers at BRIC, University of Copenhagen have shown that the enzyme Lysyl Oxidase (LOX) can create a "scarred" microenvironment that enhances cancer spreading. By blocking activity of the LOX enzyme, the researchers succeeded in significantly decreasing metastasis in a model of breast cancer. 'When we inhibit the activity of LOX ...

HOUSTON – An engineered peptide provides a new prototype for killing an entire category of resistant bacteria by shredding and dissolving their double-layered membranes, which are thought to protect those microbes from antibiotics. The synthetic peptide was effective in lab experiments against antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, which cause a variety of difficult-to-treat, potentially lethal infections such as pneumonia and sepsis. The team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center reported its findings online in advance of print ...

A study by health economists at the University of York has, for the first time, produced an estimate of the impact on other NHS patients of new and more costly drugs and other treatments. This research suggests a refinement of the way the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) gauges the cost-effectiveness of new interventions. It also has implications for the prices that the NHS can afford to pay for new drugs when the value-based pricing scheme for all new drugs is introduced by the Government in 2014. The project was funded by the Medical Research ...

PITTSBURGH, Jan. 24, 2013 – Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine may have found an "Achilles heel" in a key HIV protein. In findings published online today in Chemistry and Biology, they showed that targeting this vulnerable spot could stop the virus from replicating, potentially thwarting HIV infection from progressing to full-blown AIDS. Previous research demonstrated that a small HIV protein called Nef interacts with many other proteins in infected cells to help the virus multiply and hide from the immune system. The Pitt group developed a ...

WASHINGTON, January 23, 2013─Important findings on the impact of banning affirmative action in higher education were just published in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) in Online First. Affirmative action in university admissions has long been a matter of public debate, and Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin has placed its use in admissions policy as an issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. AERJ is a top-ranked peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. The article, "Understanding the Impact of Affirmative Action Bans ...

(Philadelphia, PA) - Researchers at Shriner's Hospital Pediatric Research Center at the Temple University School of Medicine, and the University of Pennsylvania have evidence linking the human papillomavirus 16 (HPV16) – the most common cause of cervical cancer – to a common form of childhood epilepsy. They have shown for the first time that HPV16 may be present in the human brain, and found that when they added a viral protein to the brains of fetal mice, the mice all demonstrated the same developmental problems in the cerebral cortex associated with this type of epilepsy, ...

DETROIT – Here's a wake-up call for snorers: Snoring may put you at a greater risk than those who are overweight, smoke or have high cholesterol to have thickening or abnormalities in the carotid artery, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The increased thickening in the lining of the two large blood vessels that supply the brain with oxygenated blood is a precursor to atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries responsible for many vascular diseases. "Snoring is more than a bedtime annoyance and it shouldn't be ignored. Patients need to seek ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – You can train your body, your mind … and your willpower? That's according to a new study by researchers at The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, who say that with a little practice, it may be possible to strengthen and improve your self-control – and lose more weight. The Miriam research team found that individuals with more willpower – or self-control – lost more weight, were more physically active, consumed fewer calories from fat and had better attendance at weight loss group meetings. The same was true for participants ...

PITTSBURGH—When writing or speaking, good grammar helps people make themselves be understood. But when used to concoct a long computer password, grammar — good or bad — provides crucial hints that can help someone crack that password, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated. A team led by Ashwini Rao, a software engineering Ph.D. student in the Institute for Software Research, developed a password-cracking algorithm that took into account grammar and tested it against 1,434 passwords containing 16 or more characters. The grammar-aware cracker surpassed ...

Several studies have found evidence that children who undergo repeated surgical operations with general anesthesia before the age of 4 may be at an increased risk for learning disabilities. In the March issue of Anesthesiology, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report an animal study indicating that several factors – age, the specific anesthetic agent used and the number of doses – combine to induce impairments in learning and memory accompanied by the inflammation of brain tissue. An accompanying paper from the same team finds that the offspring of mice ...

New Haven, Conn.–Like organisms, cities need energy, water, and nutrients, and they need to dispose of wastes and byproducts in ways that are viable and sustainable over the long run. This notion of "urban metabolism" is a model for looking systematically at the resources that flow into cities and the wastes and emissions that flow out from them—to understand the environmental impacts of cities and to highlight opportunities for efficiencies, improvements, and transformation. Yale University's Journal of Industrial Ecology is pleased to announce a special issue on Sustainable ...

The discovery of a new bird-like dinosaur from the Jurassic period challenges widely accepted theories on the origin of flight. Co-authored by Dr Gareth Dyke, Senior Lecturer in Vertebrate Palaeontology at the University of Southampton, the paper describes a new feathered dinosaur about 30 cm in length which pre-dates bird-like dinosaurs that birds were long thought to have evolved from. Over many years, it has become accepted among palaeontologists that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs called theropods from the Early Cretaceous period of Earth's history, around ...

VIDEO: This movie shows two coronal mass ejections (CMEs) erupting from the sun on Jan. 23, 2013. The first was not directed at Earth; the second one is, but is not... Click here for more information. On Jan. 23, 2013, at 9:55 a.m. EST, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection, or CME. Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and ESA/NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, show ...

Is it possible to put a price tag on the natural world? A researcher at The University of Nottingham has been examining the rise of a new concept — ecosystem services — to describe the multitude of resources supplied to us by Mother Nature. Academic Dr Marion Potschin, of the University's Centre for Environmental Management, is among an international team of researchers who have been investigating the ethical considerations of this new concept, which some have argued turns nature into a 'commodity'. In a paper published in the journal BioScience, Dr Potschin and her ...

Like flocks of birds, cells coordinate their motions as they race to cover and ultimately heal wounds to the skin. How that happens is a little less of a mystery today. Researchers once thought only the cells at the edge of a growing patch of wounded skin were actively moving while dividing cells passively filled in the middle. But that's only part of the picture. Rice University physicist Herbert Levine and his colleagues have discovered that the process works much more efficiently if highly activated cells in every part of the patch exert force as they pull their neighbors ...

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 24, 2013 — UC Irvine neuroscientists have developed a way to stop epileptic seizures with fiber-optic light signals, heralding a novel opportunity to treat the most severe manifestations of the brain disorder. Using a mouse model of temporal lobe epilepsy, Ivan Soltesz, Chancellor's Professor and chair of anatomy & neurobiology, and colleagues created an EEG-based computer system that activates hair-thin optical strands implanted in the brain when it detects a real-time seizure. These fibers subsequently "turn on" specially expressed, light-sensitive ...

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, show that reservoirs of uropathogenic E. coli within the bladder exist in higher numbers post-menopause than pre-menopause in a mouse model, a finding that could help explain the greater prevalence of urinary tract infections in post-menopausal women. They also found that estrogen supplementation reduced the numbers of such reservoirs dramatically. The research was published online ahead of print in the journal Infection and Immunity. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) afflict an estimated 13 million ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Vocabulary instruction in the early years is not challenging enough to prepare students for long-term reading comprehension, argues a study led by a Michigan State University education researcher. The study, which appears in Elementary School Journal, analyzed commonly used reading curricula in U.S. kindergarten classrooms. It found that, generally, the programs do not teach enough vocabulary words; the words aren't challenging enough; and not enough focus is given to make sure students understand the meaning of the words. "Vocabulary instruction ...

This press release is available in French. Montreal, January 24, 2013 – People who take immunosuppressive drugs to treat lupus do not necessarily increase their cancer risk according to new research led by scientists at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC). This landmark study, which was published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases this month, addresses long-standing fears of a link between lupus medication and cancer. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), commonly known as lupus, is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune ...

ANN ARBOR—Female mice exposed to Bisphenol A through their mother's diet during gestation and lactation were found to be hyperactive, exhibit spontaneous activity and had leaner body mass than those not exposed to the chemical, researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health have discovered. BPA is a chemical most commonly found in the lining of food cans and cash register receipts. It once was in many hard plastic bottles, including baby bottles, but many companies have removed it as concerns about exposure have come to light in recent years. These ...

(Boston) – According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported sexual or physical abuse before age 11 had a greater risk of uterine fibroids in adulthood compared with women who had no such abuse history. The association was strongest for women who experienced sexual abuse. The study, which is published online in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, was led by Lauren A. Wise, ScD, senior epidemiologist at SEC and associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of ...

Ice cores drilled in the Greenland ice sheet, recounting the history of the last great warming period more than 120,000 years ago, are giving scientists their clearest insight to a world that was warmer than today. In a paper published today in the journal Nature, scientists have used a 2,540 metre long Greenland ice core to reach back to the Eemian period 115-130 thousand years ago and reconstruct the Greenland temperature and ice sheet extent back through the last interglacial. This period is likely to be comparable in several ways to climatic conditions in the future, ...

In a genome-wide analysis of 13 metastatic prostate cancers, scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found consistent epigenetic "signatures" across all metastatic tumors in each patient. The discovery of the stable, epigenetic "marks" that sit on the nuclear DNA of cancer cells and alter gene expression, defies a prevailing belief that the marks vary so much within each individual's widespread cancers that they have little or no value as targets for therapy or as biomarkers for treatment response and predicting disease severity. A report of the discovery, ...

Jülich, 23 January 2013 – An international team of researchers has found a new method of producing molecular magnets. Their thin layer systems made of cobalt and an organic material could pave the way for more powerful storage media as well as faster and more energy-efficient processors for information processing. The results of this research have been published in the current issue of the renowned journal Nature (DOI: 10.1038/nature11719). In order to boost the performance of computers and reduce their energy requirements, processors and storage media have become smaller ...

(Edmonton) University of Alberta researchers used fossilized teeth to identify at least 23 species of small meat-eating dinosaurs that roamed western Canada and the United States, 85 to 65 million years ago. Until now, only seven species of small two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs from the North American west had been identified. U of A palaeontologist Philip Currie and student Derek Larson examined a massive dataset of fossil teeth that included samples from members of the families to which Velociraptor and Troodon (possibly the brainiest dinosaur) belong. "Small meat-eating ...