A new study shows that African American women coinfected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) are less likely to die from liver disease than Caucasian or Hispanic women. Findings in the November issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, indicate that lower liver-related mortality in African American women was independent of other causes of death. Medical evidence reports that nearly five million Americans are infected with HCV, with 80% having active virus in ...

In a new study appearing this month in the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers have unlocked the complex cellular mechanics that instruct specific brain cells to continue to divide. This discovery overcomes a significant technical hurdle to potential human stem cell therapies; ensuring that an abundant supply of cells is available to study and ultimately treat people with diseases. "One of the major factors that will determine the viability of stem cell therapies is access to a safe and reliable supply of cells," said University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) ...

Computational medicine, a fast-growing method of using computer models and sophisticated software to figure out how disease develops -- and how to thwart it -- has begun to leap off the drawing board and land in the hands of doctors who treat patients for heart ailments, cancer and other illnesses. Using digital tools, researchers have begun to use experimental and clinical data to build models that can unravel complex medical mysteries. These are some of the conclusions of a new review of the field published in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine. ...

Troy, N.Y. – Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an ultrasensitive method for detecting sugar molecules – or glycans – coming from living organisms, a breakthrough that will make possible a more detailed understanding of cellular functions than either genetic or proteomic (the study of proteins) information can provide. The researchers hope the new technique will revolutionize the study of glycans, which has been hampered by an inability to easily detect and identify minute quantities of these molecules. "The glycome is richer in information ...

Stem cells are a valuable resource for medical and biological research, but are difficult to study due to ethical and societal barriers. However, genetically manipulated cells from adults may provide a path to study stem cells that avoid any ethical concerns. A new video-protocol in JoVE (Journal of Visualized Experiments), details steps to generate human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) from cells in the peripheral blood. The technique has been developed by Boston University's Dr. Gustavo Mostoslavsky and his colleagues. Stem cells are unique because they can ...

(Nov. 1, 2012 – Chicago, IL) In times of financial hardship, or when opportunities arise, the ability to borrow can be critical. Some people rely on commercial lenders, while others depend on relatives, especially in developing countries. But a new study shows that the presence of banks and relatives together are better than any one source individually. The research, funded by the Consortium on Financial Services and Poverty (CFSP), suggests that not every household in a village needs to use the banking system directly in order to benefit in terms of buffering consumption, ...

Reston, Va. (November 1, 2012) – Molecular imaging with positron emission tomography (PET) has enabled scientists for the first time to visualize binding sites of caffeine in the living human brain to explore possible positive and negative effects of caffeine consumption. According to research published in the November issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, PET imaging with F-18-8-cyclopentyl-3-(3-fluoropropyl)-1-propylxanthine (F-18-CPFPX) shows that repeated intake of caffeinated beverages throughout a day results in up to 50 percent occupancy of the brain's A1 adenosine ...

Capturing and recycling ammonia from livestock waste is possible using a process developed by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers. This invention could help streamline on-farm nitrogen management by allowing farmers to reduce potentially harmful ammonia emissions and concentrate nitrogen in a liquid product to sell as fertilizer. The work was conducted by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists Matias Vanotti and Ariel Szogi at the agency's Coastal Plains Soil, Water and Plant Research Center in Florence, S.C. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific ...

Harvard scientists have solved the long-standing mystery of how some insects form the germ cells – the cellular precursors to the eggs and sperm necessary for sexual reproduction – and the answer is shedding new light on the evolutionary origins of a gene that had long been thought to be critical to the process. As described in a November 1 paper published in Current Biology, a team of researchers led by Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology Cassandra Extavour discovered that a cricket, a so-called "lower" insect, possess a variation of a gene, called ...

Researchers in Japan report that health-related quality of life (HRQOL) for donors following living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) was better than the general Japanese population (the norm). This study—one of the largest to date—found that donors who developed two or more medical problems (co-morbidities) after donation had significantly decreased long-term HRQOL. Full findings are published in the November issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The shortage of viable donor organs continues to ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In a new study, University at Buffalo scientists describe the role that a protein called TFIIB plays in helping cells repair DNA damage, a critical function for preventing the growth of tumors. The research appeared online on Oct. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Early Edition. TFIIB, short for "transcription factor II B," is a protein that binds to DNA in cells to initiate the process of transcription, which is critical for building new proteins. When DNA damage occurs, TFIIB is altered in a way that halts general transcription, ...

Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered a novel target for the treatment of food allergies. Erwin Gelfand, MD, and his colleagues report in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology that levels of the enzyme Pim 1 kinase rise in the small intestines of peanut-allergic mice. Inhibiting activity of Pim 1 markedly reduced the allergic response to peanuts. "Pim 1, and its associated transcription factor, Runx3, play a crucial role in allergic reactions to peanuts," said Dr. Gelfand, senior author and chair of pediatrics at National ...

Montreal, November 1, 2012 – As urban populations expand, downtown buildings are going nowhere but up. The huge energy needs of these skyscrapers mean that these towers are not only office buildings, they're polluters with smokestacks billowing out toxins from the rooftop. Our cities are dirtier than we think. New research from Concordia University just might clean them up. By examining the trajectory and amount of air pollution from a building to its neighbours downwind, Concordia researchers Ted Stathopoulos and Bodhisatta Hajra have come up with environmentally friendly ...

Boulder, CO, USA – How have humans influenced Earth? Can geoscientists measure when human impacts began overtaking those of Earth's other inhabitants and that of the natural Earth system? Responding to increasing scientific recognition that humans have become the foremost agent of change at Earth's surface, organizers of this GSA technical session have brought together speakers and poster presentations from a variety of sources in order to answer these questions and define the "Geomorphology of the Anthropocene." "Anthropocene" is a fairly new term (first used ca. 2002 ...

Contact: David Hosansky hosansky@ucar.edu 303-497-8611 National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Zhenya Gallon zhenya@ucar.edu 303-497-8607 National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research Christine Wiedinmyer christin@ucar.edu 303-497-1414 National Center for Atmospheric Research Mary Hayden mhayden@ucar.edu 303-497-8116 National Center for Atmospheric Research Scientists launch international study of open-fire cooking and air quality BOULDER -- Expanding ...

SALT LAKE CITY—Many patients who have genetic testing for Lynch syndrome, a hereditary predisposition to colon cancer, receive the inconclusive result "variants of uncertain clinical significance." This can be a problem, as people with Lynch syndrome have a much higher probability to develop colon cancer, and often develop colon cancer at an earlier age than is common among the general population; consequently, they need to begin screening at a much younger age. Now, between two-thirds and three-fourths of these genetic variants can be classified into categories that ...

Vision may be less important to "seeing" than is the brain's ability to process points of light into complex images, according to a new study of the fruit fly visual system currently published in the online journal Nature Communications. University of Virginia researchers have found that the very simple eyes of fruit fly larvae, with only 24 total photoreceptors (the human eye contains more than 125 million), provide just enough light or visual input to allow the animal's relatively large brain to assemble that input into images. "It blows open how we think about vision," ...

Physician-researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine have reported the first effective therapy for a class of previously untreatable and potentially life-threatening tumors often found in children. Announcing their findings in the online first edition of Lancet Oncology, the researchers said the drug imatinib mesylate, marketed as Gleevec as a treatment for chronic myeloid leukemia, provided relief to a significant number of patients with plexiform neurofibromas, tumors caused by neurofibromatosis type 1, or NF1. "Although this was a small study, the results ...

The most-distant, super-luminous supernovae found to date have been observed by an international team, including Raymond Carlberg of the University of Toronto's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The stellar explosions would have occurred at a time when the universe was much younger and probably soon after the Big Bang. "The objects are both unusually bright and unusually slow to fade. These are properties that are consistent with what is known as pair-instability supernova, a rare mechanism for explosion which is expected to happen for high-mass stars with almost ...

Tendon injuries affect athletic horses at all levels. Researchers from the University of Connecticut are studying the use of stem cells in treating equine tendon injuries. Their findings were published Oct. 16 in the Journal of Animal Science Papers in Press. Tendon injuries in horses tend to worsen over time as damage to the tendon creates lesions. Currently, horse owners treat tendon injuries by resting the horse and then carefully exercising the horse to control the growth of scar tissue in the tendon. Unfortunately, this treatment does not always work. "These injuries ...

New Orleans, LA – Research led by Chu Chen, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans, has identified an enzyme called Monoacylglycerol lipase (MAGL) as a new therapeutic target to treat or prevent Alzheimer's disease. The study was published online November 1, 2012 in the Online Now section of the journal Cell Reports. The research team found that inactivation of MAGL, best known for its role in degrading a cannabinoid produced in the brain, reduced the production and accumulation of beta amyloid plaques, a pathological hallmark ...

Many educators have long believed that when words differ on only one sound, early readers can learn the rules of phonics by focusing on what is different between the words. This is thought to be a critical gateway to reading words and sentences. But scientists at the University of Iowa are turning that thinking on its head. A recent study published in "Developmental Psychology" shows certain kinds of variation in words may help early readers learn better. When children see the same phonics regularities, embedded in words with more variation, they may learn these crucial ...

Using advanced microscopes equipped with tissue-penetrating laser light, cancer imaging experts at Johns Hopkins have developed a promising, new way to accurately analyze the distinctive patterns of ultra-thin collagen fibers in breast tumor tissue samples and to help tell if the cancer has spread. The Johns Hopkins researchers say their crisscrossing optical images, made by shining a laser back and forth across a biopsied tissue sample a few millionths of a meter thick, can potentially be used with other tests to more accurately determine the need for lymph node biopsy ...

Fairfax, Va. -- A malarial drug is showing promise in stopping breast cancer before it starts, Mason researchers are discovering during a clinical trial. "The bold long-term goal is a short-term oral treatment that prevents breast cancer by killing the precursor cells that initiate breast cancer," says Lance Liotta, co-director of Mason's Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM). "And it's looking hopeful." The PINC trial (Preventing Invasive Neoplasia with Chloroquine) targets ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, the most common type of pre-invasive ...

Predicting how atherosclerosis, osteoporosis or cancer will progress or respond to drugs in individual patients is difficult. In a new study, researchers took another step toward that goal by developing a technique able to predict from a blood sample the amount of cathepsins—protein-degrading enzymes known to accelerate these diseases—a specific person would produce. This patient-specific information may be helpful in developing personalized approaches to treat these tissue-destructive diseases. "We measured significant variability in the amount of cathepsins produced ...