A University of Adelaide researcher has published results that suggest a possible new mechanism to control multiple sclerosis (MS). Dr Iain Comerford from the University's School of Molecular and Biomedical Science earned a three-year fellowship from MS Research Australia to work on this project. It is directed towards understanding how specific enzymes in cells of the immune system regulate immune cell activation and migration. Along with his colleagues, Professor Shaun McColl and PhD students Wendel Litchfield and Ervin Kara, he focused on a molecule known as PI3Kgamma, ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4—Scientists who study the ultra-small world of atoms know it is impossible to make certain simultaneous measurements, for example finding out both the location and momentum of an electron, with an arbitrarily high level of precision. Because measurements disturb the system, increased certainty in the first measurement leads to increased uncertainty in the second. The mathematics of this unintuitive concept – a hallmark of quantum mechanics – were first formulated by the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg at the beginning of the 20th century and became ...

Professor Jeff Shields and colleagues at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science have succeeded in their 15-year effort to unravel the life history of Hematodinium, a single-celled parasite that afflicts blue crabs and is of growing concern to aquaculture operations and wild fisheries around the world. Knowledge of the parasite's complex life cycle—gained by rearing of successive generations across a full year in a VIMS laboratory—will help guide efforts to understand the transmission of Hematodinium within crab populations and shrimp farms, and to develop best practices ...

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are gathering evidence this fall that the feisty fox squirrels scampering around campus are not just mindlessly foraging for food, but engaging in a long-term savings strategy. Humans could learn something about padding their nest eggs from squirrels' diversification efforts. Of course, with squirrels, it's not about money, but about nuts. "Think of them as little bankers depositing money and spreading it out in different funds, and doing some management of those funds," said Mikel Delgado, a doctoral student ...

Nonprescription medications are just as likely a cause of poisoning as prescription drugs, according to a new study by Timothy Wiegand, M.D. from the University of Rochester Medical Center in the US and colleagues. Their work, which analyzes the data from the second annual report of the Toxicology Investigators Consortium (ToxIC), is published online in Springer's Journal of Medical Toxicology. In 2010, the American College of Medical Toxicology established its case registry, ToxIC, which acts as a real-time surveillance system to identify current poisoning trends, and ...

NEW YORK - October 4, 2012 - Consider a Japanese-American woman strolling through a mall. If she passes by a UNIQLO store, is she more likely to opt for sushi than a hamburger when she reaches the food court? Would this cue of Japanese culture draw out her Japanese side? The answer, according to new research from Columbia Business School's Michael Morris, the Chavkin-Chang Professor of Leadership, and Aurelia Mok, Assistant Professor, City University of Hong Kong (she received her Ph.D. from Columbia Business School in 2010), depends on the degree to which she has integrated ...

This press release is available in Spanish.An international research team led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and researchers from Kiel University revealed the atomic‐level structure of the human peptidase enzyme meprin β (beta). The study was published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Now that we know how meprin β looks, how it works and how it relates to diseases, we can search for substances that stop its enzyme activities when they become harmful", explains Xavier Gomis‐Rüth, researcher at ...

Biologists from New York University have uncovered new ways our biological clock's neurons use electrical activity to help keep behavioral rhythms in order. The findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, also point to fresh directions for exploring sleep disorders and related afflictions. "This process helps explain how our biological clocks keep such amazingly good time," said Justin Blau, an associate professor of biology at NYU and one of the study's authors. Blau added that the findings may offer new pathways for exploring treatments to sleep disorders ...

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Although shoulder dislocation can occur at about the same rates in both younger and older patients, injuries in older patients are more likely to be overlooked or misdiagnosed, resulting in years of persistent pain and disability. A new study published in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons examines the differences in dislocation injuries between older and younger patients and suggests an approach to evaluate older patients that could help improve diagnosis and management of interrelated injuries. Study ...

Communication between K-12 teachers and parents has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Parent-teacher communication represents a primary form of parental support or involvement, elements which have recently received much attention given the connections between parental support and academic achievement. In fact, parental involvement at the K-12 level represents a major component in recent education policies at the national level. Joseph Mazer, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Clemson University and and Blair Thompson, assistant ...

New Rochelle, NY, October 4, 2012—Essential medications can be delivered as inhaled drugs to critically ill patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) who require mechanical ventilation to breathe. Aerosol drug delivery is highly complex, however, and if not done properly the medication will not reach the lungs and therapy will be ineffective. The efficacy and safety of aerosol delivery of drugs commonly used in the ICU such as antibiotics, diuretics, and anticoagulants is explored in depth in a review article published in Journal of Aerosol Medicine and Pulmonary Drug Delivery, ...

In recent years, educators have come to focus more and more on the importance of lab-based experimentation, hands-on participation, student-led inquiry, and the use of "manipulables" in the classroom. The underlying rationale seems to be that students are better able to learn when they can control the flow of their experience, or when their learning is "self-directed." While the benefits of self-directed learning are widely acknowledged, the reasons why a sense of control leads to better acquisition of material are poorly understood. Some researchers have highlighted ...

Philadelphia, PA – October 4, 2012—Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease in which individuals exhibit high levels of sugar in the blood, either due to insufficient production of insulin—the hormone that allows glucose to be absorbed by body cells—or the body's lack of response to insulin. Type 1 diabetes occurs due to loss or dysfunction of β-cells of the pancreas, the organ that produces insulin. Type 2 diabetes is caused by a defective glucose-insulin regulatory system. The most common control for diabetes is by subcutaneous injection of insulin analogues through ...

CHICAGO—Advanced surgical techniques such as robotic-assisted operations and minimally invasive surgical procedures may extend survival and improve recovery in octogenarians with bladder and colorectal cancers when compared with patients who undergo conventional open operations according to two new studies presented at the 2012 Annual Clinical Congress of the American College of Surgeons. Boston University investigators found robotic-assisted bladder procedures may be a viable option in selected patients aged 80 years and older who would not otherwise have an operation ...

PHILADELPHIA – LAM, short for pulmonary lymphangioleiomyomatosis, affects about 1 in 10,000 women of childbearing age and is characterized by proliferation of smooth muscle-like cells in the lung, destruction of lung tissue, and growth of lymphatic vessels. The disease manifests itself in a wide variety of ways, so it is sometimes difficult to diagnose and there is no cure. The disease is caused by inactivation of either of two genes, TSC1 or TSC2, but to date no animal model has been able to replicate the pathologic features those mutations produce in humans. Now, ...

New research from the University of Helsinki, Finland, suggests that a mother's high blood pressure during pregnancy may have an effect on her child's thinking skills all the way into old age. The study is published in the October 3, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. "High blood pressure and related conditions such as preeclampsia complicate about 10 percent of all pregnancies and can affect a baby's environment in the womb," said study author Katri Räikkönen, PhD. "Our study suggests that even declines in thinking ...

Emissions of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere can be traced back thousands of years in the Greenland ice sheet. Using special analytical methods, researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute, among others, have determined how much methane originates from natural sources and how much is due to human activity. The results go all the way back to Roman times and up to the present, where more than half of the emissions are now man-made. The results are published in the scientific journal, Nature. Methane is an important greenhouse gas, which today is partly emitted ...

An unexpected discovery by astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) is forcing scientists to rethink their understanding of the environment in globular star clusters, tight-knit collections containing hundreds of thousands of stars. The astronomers used the VLA to study a globular cluster called Messier 22 (M22), a group of stars more than 10,000 light-years from Earth. They hoped to find evidence for a rare type of black hole in the cluster's center. They wanted to find what scientists call an intermediate-mass black hole, ...

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – OCTOBER 3, 2012 – Today investigators at Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics in Kansas City reported the first use of whole genome information for diagnosing critically ill infants. As reported in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes STAT-Seq, a whole genome sequencing approach - from blood sample to returning results to a physician - in about 50 hours. Currently, testing even a single gene takes six weeks or more. Speed of diagnosis is most critical in acute care situations, as in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where medical ...

Manta rays are more likely to gather together under either a new or a full moon, according to new research published Oct 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Fabrice Jaine and colleagues at the University of Queensland. The research identifies environmental factors that predict the abundance and behavior of manta rays at Lady Elliott Island in the Great Barrier Reef. The authors comment that knowing these factors is important for conservation efforts, "especially in the context of a changing climate and with targeted fisheries increasingly threatening manta ray populations ...

A fragment of a child's skull discovered at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania shows the oldest known evidence of anemia caused by a nutritional deficiency, reports a new paper published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. The discovery, made by a global team of researchers led by Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo from Complutense University, Madrid, suggests that early human ancestors began eating meat much earlier in history than previously believed. The skull fragment identified is thought to belong to a child somewhat younger than two and shows bone lesions that commonly result ...

Researchers have discovered a panel of 13 blood proteins that may be effective biomarkers to detect malignant mesothelioma, according to a study published Oct. 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Rachel Ostroff from the company SomaLogic, which developed the new test, and colleagues at other institutions. Malignant mesothelioma is a rare, aggressive form of lung cancer that can develop after prolonged exposure to asbestos. Because early diagnosis is difficult, most patients face a poor prognosis and have few options for treatment. In the study, authors compared proteins ...

When making decisions about the value of an assortment of different objects, people approximate an average overall value, which though frequently useful can lead to apparently irrational decision-making. A new study published Oct 3 in PLOS ONE by Jerald Kralik and colleagues at Dartmouth College shows for the first time that non-human primates also make similar 'irrational' choices based on approximation. In the study, researchers found that rhesus monkeys preferred a highly-valued food item (a fruit) alone to the identical item paired with a food of positive but lower ...

Scientists have discovered a rare fossil called Kulindroplax, the missing link between two mollusc groups, which is revealed in a 3D computer model, in research published today in the journal Nature. The researchers have unearthed the worm-like partly shelled Kulindroplax, which they have modelled in a 3D computer animation. Kulindroplax lived in the sea during the Silurian Period, approximately 425 million years ago, when most life lived in the oceans and the first plants were beginning to grow on land. The team found the Kulindroplax fossil, the only one of its kind ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine report the discovery of microbial–dependent mechanisms through which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels their development and growth. The findings are published in the October 3, 2012 Advanced Online Edition of Nature. The association between chronic inflammation and tumor development has long been known from the early work of German pathologist Rudolph Virchow. Harvard University pathologist Harold Dvorak later compared tumors with "wounds that never heal," noting the similarities ...