It was in trying to answer a question related to the functioning of our biological clock that a team lead by Ueli Schibler, a professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, has developed a method whose applications are proving to be countless. The researchers wanted to understand how 'timed' signals, present in the blood and controlled by our central clock, located in the brain, act on peripheral organs. In order to identify gene activator proteins, called transcription factors, involved in this process, they have developed an original screening technique called ...

Berkeley — A new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, represents a major advance in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms behind aging while providing new hope for the development of targeted treatments for age-related degenerative diseases. Researchers were able to turn back the molecular clock by infusing the blood stem cells of old mice with a longevity gene and rejuvenating the aged stem cells' regenerative potential. The findings will be published online Thursday, Jan. 31, in the journal Cell Reports. The biologists found ...

Sophia Antipolis, 31 January 2013. A large population-based study from Finland has shown that being unmarried increases the risk of fatal and non-fatal heart attack in both men and women whatever their age. Conversely, say the study investigators, especially among middle-aged couples, being married and cohabiting are associated with "considerably better prognosis of acute cardiac events both before hospitalization and after reaching the hospital alive". The study, published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, was based on the FINAMI myocardial infarction ...

This press release is available in French. English Premier League soccer players, NHL hockey players, France's Top 14 club rugby players, and even elite amateur athletes have better developed cognitive functions than the average university student, according to a perception study undertaken by Professor Jocelyn Faubert of the University of Montreal's School of Optometry. The study demonstrates a possible outcome of the increased cortical thickness that has been found in areas of trained athletes' brains. It also offers researchers new avenues for exploring the treatment ...

Obesity and its related conditions such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and stroke are among the most challenging of today's healthcare concerns. Together, they constitute the biggest killer in western society. New findings, published in Cell, have identified a target that could hold the key to developing safe therapies to treat obesity and its associated conditions. Although recent research has begun to unravel some of the pathways that control how information is processed by our nervous system regulating body weight and cardiovascular function, the exact ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., January 31, 2013 – Cancer cells need food to survive and grow. They're very good at getting it, too, even when nutrients are scarce. Many scientists have tried killing cancer cells by taking away their favorite food, a sugar called glucose. Unfortunately, this treatment approach not only fails to work, it backfires—glucose-starved tumors actually get more aggressive. In a study published January 31 in the journal Cell, researchers at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute discovered that a protein called PKCζ is responsible for this paradox. The ...

Clarksburg, Md. – BrightFocus Foundation, a nonprofit organization that funds research worldwide to save sight and mind, today released the results of a survey of more than 170 leading biomedical scientists that explores the most significant barriers to progress in ending brain and eye diseases. The survey indicates that a lack of dependable funding is threatening to create a deficit of highly skilled scientists at a time when the nation could soon face a health care crisis brought on by devastating disorders like Alzheimer's, macular degeneration, and glaucoma. "Cures ...

Bethesda, MD—A team of scientists from Canada, Thailand and Morocco have found that DHEA-S may prevent neurocognitive impairment that affects a significant percentage of AIDS patients. In a report appearing in the February 2013 issue of The FASEB Journal, they describe how a network of steroid molecules found in the brain, termed "neurosteroids," is disrupted during HIV infection leading to brain damage. This suggests that treatment with one of these steroid molecules, called DHEA-S, may offset the disruption caused by the virus to prevent or reduce brain damage. "From ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Jan. 31, 2013 – Some people with the flu emit more of the air-borne virus than others, suggesting that the current recommendations for infection control among health care providers may not be adequate, according to a new study from researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. The study is published in the Jan. 31 online edition of The Journal of Infectious Disease. "Our study provides new evidence that infectiousness may vary between influenza patients and questions the current medical understanding of how influenza spreads," said Werner Bischoff, ...

A new way of measuring the mass of supermassive black holes could revolutionise our understanding of how they form and help to shape galaxies. The technique, developed by a team including Oxford University scientists, can spot the telltale tracer of carbon monoxide within the cloud of gas (mostly hydrogen) circling a supermassive black hole at the centre of a distant galaxy. By detecting the velocity of the spinning gas they are able to 'weigh' (determine the mass) of the black hole. Detailed information on supermassive black holes, thought to be at the heart of most ...

Melbourne scientists have discovered how female steroid hormones can make dramatic changes to the genetic material in breast cells, changes that could potentially lead to breast cancer. Researchers from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, have identified how pregnancy hormones send signals to critical molecules on the DNA to make changes in the epigenome. The epigenome is a series of chemical tags that modify DNA, controlling which genes are switched on and off. Professor Jane Visvader, Dr Bhupinder Pal, Professor Geoff Lindeman ...

It came out of Siberia, swirling winds over an area that covered almost the entire Arctic basin in the normally calm late summer. It came to be known as "The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012," and for some observers it suggested that the historic sea ice minimum may have been caused by a freak summer storm, rather than warming temperatures. But new results from the University of Washington show that the August cyclone was not responsible for last year's record low for Arctic sea ice. The study was published online this week in Geophysical Research Letters. "The ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A national shortage of critical care physicians and beds means difficult decisions for healthcare professionals: how to determine which of the sickest patients are most in need of access to the intensive care unit. What if patients' electronic health records could help a physician determine ICU admission by reliably calculating which patient had the highest risk of death? Emerging health technologies – including reliable methods to rate the severity of a patient's condition – may provide powerful tools to efficiently use scarce and costly health resources, ...

AMHERST, Mass. – Just-forming stars, like growing babies, are always hungry and must "feed" on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth. Now a team of astronomers including Robert Gutermuth, a University of Massachusetts Amherst expert in imaging data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, reports observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be twins, that is, a binary star. The discovery is reported this month in Nature. The extremely young object, dubbed LRLL 54361, is about 100,000 years ...

DURHAM, N.C. – Just as horses shake off pesky flies by twitching their skin, ships may soon be able to shed the unwanted accumulation of bacteria and other marine growth with the flick of a switch. Duke University engineers have developed a material that can be applied like paint to the hull of a ship and will literally be able to dislodge bacteria, keeping it from accumulating on the ship's surface. This buildup on ships increases drag and reduces the energy efficiency of the vessel, as well as blocking or clogging undersea sensors. The material works by physically ...

The rate of chemical processes in cells is dictated by the speed of movement (diffusion) of molecules needed for a given reaction. Using a versatile method developed at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, researchers were able to predict for the first time the diffusion coefficients of all proteins in Escherichia coli. The achievement is important not only for biologists and chemists, but also for... transport companies. Understanding of chemical foundations of life requires knowledge about the rate of chemical reactions in ...

A team of scientists have described twenty four new species of dipterans belonging to Quichuana genus, of which only a further 24 species were known. The researchers, including two Spanish biologists, have been studying the forests of Central and Southern America for ten years and they have now published their results in the 'Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society'. A ten-year study in forests of the American continent has resulted in the description of 24 new insect species from the Quichuana genus that are also known as 'flower flies'. Up until now only a further ...

Research led by Queen Mary, University of London, has shown that recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is possible for some patients, and has identified two treatments most likely to lead to recovery. The latest results from the PACE trial* show that cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET), as supplements to specialist medical care, increase the likelihood of recovery from CFS three-fold compared to other treatments studied. The trial, carried out in collaboration with researchers from King's College London, the University of Oxford ...

Simple 'blast' fences called baffles could deliver improvements in air quality for people living near airports, new research has found. Placed behind a runway, the baffles could serve as a 'virtual chimney', funnelling emissions from aircraft engines upwards where they can disperse more effectively, thereby reducing the environmental impact on people living nearby. Prototype baffles have been tested by a team of researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University, Cranfield University, University of Southampton and the University of Cambridge, with funding from the ...

Philadelphia, PA, January 31, 2013 – Disulfiram was the first medication approved for the treatment of alcoholism over 50 years ago. It works, at least in part, by preventing the metabolism of an alcohol by-product, acetaldehyde. High levels of acetaldehyde in the body quickly cause unpleasant symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, headache, and accelerated heart rate. Thus, disulfiram provides a very strong incentive to avoid drinking. Beginning in the late 1990s, a series of studies conducted at Yale University found that disulfiram reduced the consumption of cocaine, ...

Proteins are elementary building blocks of life. They often perform vital functions. In order to become active, proteins have to fold into three-dimensional structures. Misfolding of proteins leads to diseases such as Alzheimer's or Creutzfeld-Jakob. So which strategies did nature develop over the course of evolution to improve protein folding? To examine this question, the chemist Dr. Frauke Gräter (Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies) looked far back into the history of the Earth. Together with her colleague Prof. Gustavo Caetano-Anolles at the University of ...

A recent discovery funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) may very well lead to a process that not only benefits every uniformed service member of the Department of Defense, but everyone else as well: protection from Chemical/Biological agents, to self-cleaning apparel, to effortless thermal management, to fuel purification as well as enhanced control of leaks—especially oil and fuels. In 2006, AFOSR Program Manager Dr. Charles Lee funded Professor Gareth McKinley at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology exploring nanocomposite technology ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. (January 31, 2013) – Researchers using a newly approved advanced computed tomography (CT) system were able to significantly reduce radiation exposure in patients undergoing coronary CT angiography (CCTA), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. "Radiation exposure during diagnostic imaging is a substantial public concern," said Marcus Y. Chen, M.D., lead author of the study from the advanced cardiovascular imaging laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. "Minimizing radiation exposure while maintaining ...

This press release is available in Spanish. Corn crop residues are often left on harvested fields to protect soil quality, but they could become an important raw material in cellulosic ethanol production. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research indicates that soil quality would not decline if post-harvest corn cob residues were removed from fields. This work, led by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) soil scientist Brian Wienhold, supports the USDA priority of developing new sources of bioenergy. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency. Wienhold ...

Texas Biomed scientists in San Antonio have found that moderate gum disease in an animal model exposed to an AIDS- like virus had more viral variants causing infection and greater inflammation. Both of these features have potential negative implications in long term disease progression, including other kinds of infections, the researchers say in a new report. The public health message from the study is that even mild inflammation in the mouth needs to be controlled because it can lead to more serious consequences, said Luis Giavedoni, Ph. D, a Texas Biomed virologist and ...