BETHESDA, MD – DECEMBER 4, 2012 -- It's common knowledge that excessive UV exposure from sunlight raises your chances for skin cancer, but predicting whether someone will actually develop skin cancer remains difficult. In a new research report, scientists from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and the University of Wisconsin–Madison show that the risk for skin cancer involves numerous genetic factors including family history, ethnicity, and genetic variations specific to each individual. Using these factors, the researchers developed a more precise model for ...

Bethesda, MD—December 4, 2012 – Listed below are the selected highlights for the December 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, Genetics. The December issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit Genetics, Vol. 192, December 2012, Copyright © 2012. Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles. ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Genetic variation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: Circuit diversification in a signal transduction network, pp. 1523-1532 Brian L. Chin, Owen Ryan, Fran Lewitter, Charles ...

When we eat too much, obesity may develop as a result of chronically high insulin levels, not the other way around. That's according to new evidence in mice reported in the December 4th Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, which challenges the widespread view that rising insulin is a secondary consequence of obesity and insulin resistance. The new study helps to solve this chicken-or-the-egg dilemma by showing that animals with persistently lower insulin stay trim even as they indulge themselves on a high-fat, all-you-can-eat buffet. The findings come as some of ...

Emory researchers announced results of a new study that has proven successful in the prevention of depression in people diagnosed with epilepsy. Depression is one of the most common psychiatric disorders in people with epilepsy. It affects between 32 and 48 percent of people with the disease. Depression is known to have more of an impact on quality of life than frequent seizures. A team of researchers at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University led a study that applied a revised version of a web- and phone-based method focused on preventing, rather ...

Arthrobotrys oligospora doesn't live a charmed life; it survives on a diet of roundworm. But a discovery by a team led by Mingjun Zhang, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, could give the fungus's life more purpose—as a cancer fighter. Zhang and his team have discovered that nanoparticles produced by A. oligospora hold promise for stimulating the immune system and killing tumors. The findings are published in this month's edition of Advanced Functional Materials. Zhang commonly looks to nature for solutions ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The more states spend on home-delivered meals under the Older Americans Act, the more likely they are to help people who don't need nursing home care to stay in their homes, according to a newly published Brown University statistical analysis of a decade of spending and nursing home resident data. "Despite efforts to rebalance long-term care, there are still many nursing home residents who have the functional capacity to live in a less restrictive environment," wrote gerontology researchers Kali Thomas and Vincent Mor in the article ...

The new generation of bio-based plastic packaging is not only eco-friendly but also has several superior qualities compared to traditional plastic packaging. The plastic packaging industry is moving towards completely bio-based products. The volume of oil used every year in the production of plastics equates to approximately five per cent of the world's total oil consumption. Approximately 40 per cent of all plastics are used in packaging, which puts special pressure on the packaging industry to reduce dependence on oil. The use of renewable natural resources in industrial ...

Scientists have taken inspiration from one of the oldest natural materials to exploit the extraordinary qualities of graphene, a material set to revolutionise fields from computers and batteries to composite materials. Published today in Nature Communications, a Monash University study led by Professor Dan Li has established, for the first time, an effective way of forming graphene, which normally exists in very thin layers, into useful three-dimensional forms by mirroring the structure of cork. Graphene is formed when graphite is broken down into layers one atom thick. ...

"There is a critical need for scientists to address basic questions that have hindered the development of emerging energy resources, including geothermal, wind, solar and natural gas, from underground shale formations," said Mark Zoback, a professor of geophysics at Stanford University. "In this talk we present, from a university perspective, a few examples of fundamental research needs related to improved energy and resource recovery." Zoback, an authority on shale gas development and hydraulic fracturing, served on the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Committee on Shale Gas ...

A new analysis of topographic and gravity data from Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons, indicates that Titan's icy outer crust is twice as thick as has generally been thought. Scientists have long suspected that a vast ocean of liquid water lies under the crust. The new study suggests that the internally generated heat that keeps that ocean from freezing solid depends far more on Titan's interactions with Saturn and its other moons than had been suspected. Howard Zebker, a professor of geophysics and of electrical engineering at Stanford University, will present the ...

Stanford geophysicists are well represented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union this week in San Francisco. Included among the many presentations will be several studies that relate to predicting ­– and preparing for – major earthquakes in the Himalaya Mountains and the Pacific Northwest. The AGU Fall Meeting is the largest worldwide conference in the geophysical sciences, attracting more than 20,000 Earth and space scientists, educators, students, and other leaders. This 45th annual fall meeting is taking place through Dec. 7 at the Moscone Convention Center ...

A software tool called PredictAD developed by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland promises to enable earlier diagnosis of the disease on the basis of patient measurements and large databases. Alzheimer's disease currently takes on average 20 months to diagnose in Europe. VTT has shown that the new method could allow as many as half of patients to get a diagnosis approximately a year earlier. VTT has been studying whether patients suffering from memory problems could be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease at an earlier stage in the light of their measurement values. ...

Fertility tests frequently reveal that males have problems with the quality of their sperm. The problems often relate to sperm senescence, which is a reduction in quality with age. Sperm senescence can arise either before or after the DNA in the sperm cells is produced by a process known as meiosis. So-called "pre-meiotic" senescence results from accumulated damage in the germline cells with increasing age and results in older males having sperm of lower quality. Post-meiotic senescence occurs after the sperm cells have been produced, either during storage of sperm ...

Tornado-like vortexes can be produced in bizarre fluids which are controlled by quantum mechanics, completely unlike normal liquids. New research published today in the journal Nature Communications demonstrates how massed ranks of these quantum twisters line up in rows, and paves the way for engineering quantum circuits and chips measuring motion ultra-precisely. The destructive power of rampaging tornadoes defeats the human ability to control them. A Cambridge team has managed to create and control hundreds of tiny twisters on a semiconductor chip. By controlling where ...

Drinking three to four cups of coffee per day may help to prevent type 2 diabetes according to research highlighted in a session report published by the Institute for Scientific Information on Coffee (ISIC), a not-for-profit organisation devoted to the study and disclosure of science related to coffee and health. Recent scientific evidence has consistently linked regular, moderate coffee consumption with a possible reduced risk of developing type 2 diabetes. An update of this research and key findings presented during a session at the 2012 World Congress on Prevention ...

Using DNA detection techniques developed at the University, the team mapped the presence of foxes in Tasmania, predicted their spread and developed a model of their likely distribution as a blueprint for fox eradication, but swift and decisive action is needed. University of Canberra professor in wildlife genetics and leader of the team, Stephen Sarre, found foxes are widespread in northern and eastern Tasmania and the model developed by his team forecasts they will spread even further with likely devastating consequences for the island's wildlife. "There's nothing ...

After years of basic research, scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are increasingly able to understand the mechanisms underlying the human Usher syndrome and are coming ever closer to finding a successful treatment approach. The scientists in the Usher research group of Professor Dr. Uwe Wolfrum are evaluating two different strategies. These involve either the repair of mutated genes or the deactivation of the genetic defects using agents. Based on results obtained to date, both options seem promising. Usher syndrome is a congenital disorder that causes ...

New research from the University of Southampton has shown that copper can prevent horizontal transmission of genes, which has contributed to the increasing number of antibiotic-resistant infections worldwide. Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in bacteria is largely responsible for the development of antibiotic-resistance, which has led to an increasing number of difficult-to-treat healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs). The newly-published paper, which appears in the journal mBio, shows that while HGT can take place in the environment, on frequently-touched surfaces, ...

One of the big challenges of biomedicine is understanding the origin of illnesses in order to improve early detection and significantly increase recovery rates, as well as being able to do what CNIO researchers call preventive molecular medicine, which consists of identifying those individuals who have a greater molecular risk of suffering certain pathologies in order to prevent them. The ageing of the organism, and therefore of the cells and tissues it is made of, represents the greatest risk factor for the majority of developed-world illnesses, including cancer. A team ...

San Francisco, CA —Researchers from the Carnegie Institution are rolling out results from the new Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS, for the first time at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meetings in San Francisco. The groundbreaking technology and its scientific observations are uncovering a previously invisible ecological world. To watch a video about how AToMS is helping researchers look at the world in a whole new way, click here. AToMS, which launched in June 2011, uniquely combines laser and spectral imaging instrumentation onboard a twin-engine aircraft ...

DURHAM, NC -- About 75 percent of Africa's savannahs and more than two-thirds of the lion population once estimated to live there have disappeared in the last 50 years, according to a study published this week in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. The study, led by Duke University researchers, estimates the number of lions now living on the savannahs to be as low as 32,000, down from nearly 100,000 in 1960. Lion populations in West Africa have experienced the greatest declines. "The word savannah conjures up visions of vast open plains teeming with wildlife. ...

How do driverless vehicles navigate through intersections? Faster and safer than if humans were in charge, according to researchers with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Autonomous vehicles will turn themselves over to an automated intersection controller, which adjusts the trajectory and speed of the vehicles to prevent crashes, said Ismail Zohdy of Cairo, Egypt, a Ph.D. student in civil engineering at Virginia Tech, and Hesham Rakha, director of the Center for Sustainable Mobility at the transportation institute and professor of civil engineering at the university. ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 4, 2012—Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) can develop into bone cells and are useful for tissue engineering and regeneration. However, when grown in the laboratory they quickly lose their ability to continue dividing and they die. A method for genetically engineering hMSCs so they become immortal and still retain their ability to become bone cells is described in an article published in BioResearch Open Access, a bimonthly peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the BioResearch Open Access ...

Wilmington, DE – This month, Molecular Pharmaceutics reported promising findings from the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Delaware, about the potential for nanotechnology to deliver chemotherapeutic agents in a way that attacks cancer cells without harming healthy cells. To date, nanoparticle-based drug delivery approaches have been poorly developed for the treatment of childhood leukemia, which comprises 30% of childhood cancers. In the Nemours study, encapsulated dexamethasone ("dex") ...

MANHATTAN, Kan. -- A new study may help scientists produce better climate-resistant corn and other food production plants by putting a spin on the notion that we are what we eat. Kansas State University geneticists and colleagues found that by applying a genetic-analysis method used to study and prioritize the genes in humans, it improved the likelihood of finding critical genes in food production plants. These genes control quantitate traits in plants, such as how the plants grow and when they flower. Additionally, this method can be used to study how food production ...