CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (February 13, 2013) – Whitehead Institute researchers have identified a previously unrecognized layer of genetic regulation that is necessary for the generation of undesirable white fat cells. When this regulation is disrupted, white fat cells are unable to accumulate lipid droplets or mature from their precursors. "We're trying to figure out what the mechanism is—what it takes to make fat cells," says Whitehead Founding Member Harvey Lodish, who is also a professor of biology and a professor of bioengineering at MIT. "The obvious reason we're interested ...

Philadelphia, Pa. (February 13, 2013) – For many patients with difficult-to-treat neuropathic pain, deep brain stimulation (DBS) can lead to long-term improvement in pain scores and other outcomes, according to a study in the February issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons. The journal is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health. About two-thirds of eligible patients who undergo DBS achieve significant and lasting benefits in terms of pain, quality of life, and overall health, according to the ...

A new University of Alberta study shows that busy beavers are helping Canada geese get an earlier start when the birds fly home and begin spring nesting. Ponds in Alberta where beavers were active tended to result in earlier thaw of winter snowpack, giving the geese a better chance at reproductive success, according to the study, published recently in Mammalian Biology. The study is the first to link beavers to early season nesting habits of Canada geese in a Northern climate. A team led by Glynnis Hood, an associate professor in the Department of Science at the ...

Government limits on mold toxins present naturally in grain crops should be expanded to include so-called "masked mycotoxins" that change from harmless to potentially harmful forms in the body, a new study concludes. It appears in ACS' journal Chemical Research in Toxicology. Chiara Dall'Asta and colleagues explain that molds growing naturally on wheat, corn and other plants produce toxic substances termed mycotoxins. Some health experts regard mycotoxins as the most serious chronic dietary risk factor, greater than the potential health threats from pesticides and insecticides. ...

February 13, 2013 Cambridge, MA: The nanotechnology research space is rapidly growing, with vast implications for the healthcare, consumer electronics, surveillance, and defense industries. However, a major limitation to this research is the ability to create particles that vary in shape and function on a micrometer or nanometer scale. To overcome these limitations, chemical engineers at Johns Hopkins University have developed self-assembling particles that are inspired by origami, the traditional Japanese art of folding paper into complex three-dimensional shapes. ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Silicon, the material of high-tech devices from computer chips to solar cells, requires a surface coating before use in these applications. The coating "passivates" the material, tying up loose atomic bonds to prevent oxidation that would ruin its electrical properties. But this passivation process consumes a lot of heat and energy, making it costly and limiting the kinds of materials that can be added to the devices. Now a team of MIT researchers has found a way to passivate silicon at room temperature, which could be a significant boon to solar-cell ...

HOUSTON - Researchers have identified a pivotal protein in a cellular transformation that makes a cancer cell more resistant to treatment and more capable of growing and spreading, making it an inviting new target for drug development. Additionally, the international team led by scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found the cancer drug sunitinib potentially has a new role in treating triple-negative, claudin-low breast cancer, a particularly resistant version of a type of cancer that is already difficult to treat. "We found that FOXC2 lies ...

New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star. The remnant, called W49B, is about a thousand years old as seen from Earth and located about 26,000 light-years away. "W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy," said Laura Lopez, who led the study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It appears ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Feb. 13, 2013) — By relying on hunches rather than posing a few screening questions, primary care clinicians may be missing three-fourths of the alcohol problems in their patients, a newly released analysis shows. "It's often off the radar — people come in for hypertension and are not asked how much they drink," said study co-author Barbara J. Turner, M.D., M.S.Ed., M.A., M.A.C.P., of UT Medicine San Antonio. Primary care offices typically don't have good systems to administer questionnaires to screen for certain problems, including alcohol consumption, ...

About 60 percent of pediatric cancer patients experience malnourishment during treatment. At that point, patients and families have a choice: tube feeding or IV nutrition supplement. Which would you choose? A study published this week in the Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing shows that families' perceptions, especially of the discomfort of tube feeding, leads to choosing IV over tube – despite the fact that tube feeding is usually the better choice, associated with better gut function and lower rates of infection. "Despite the benefits of tube feeding, we found a ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- A molecule already implicated in a number of diverse cellular functions can suppress the growth of tumors in the liver, a Mayo Clinic Cancer Center study has found. Its name is IQGAP1, and when the molecule is active in the cells that surround a tumor cell, this "tumor microenvironment" becomes less hospitable to cancer growth. When the molecule is deficient, cancer thrives. Results of the study appear in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The findings give new insight into cancer metastasis, the ability of a tumor to spread from its primary site ...

SALT LAKE CITY, Feb. 13, 2013 – University of Utah engineers demonstrated it is feasible to build the first organic materials that conduct electricity on their edges, but act as an insulator inside. These materials, called organic topological insulators, could shuttle information at the speed of light in quantum computers and other high-speed electronic devices. The study published this week in the journal Nature Communications will help pioneer a new field of research in materials science, in the same way organic materials lowered the cost and eased production of light-emitting ...

PHILADELPHIA — The recently published genome sequences of seven well-studied ant species are opening up new vistas for biology and medicine. A detailed look at molecular mechanisms that underlie the complex behavioral differences in two worker castes in the Florida carpenter ant, Camponotus floridanus, has revealed a link to epigenetics. This is the study of how the expression or suppression of particular genes by chemical modifications affects an organism's physical characteristics, development, and behavior. Epigenetic processes not only play a significant role in many ...

Contact: Bingyun Sun, 778.782.9097, bingyun_sun@sfu.ca Carol Thorbes, PAMR, 778.782.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca Simon Fraser University is Canada's top-ranked comprehensive university and one of the top 50 universities in the world under 50 years old. With campuses in Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, B.C., SFU engages actively with the community in its research and teaching, delivers almost 150 programs to more than 30,000 students, and has more than 120,000 alumni in 130 countries. Simon Fraser University: Engaging Students. Engaging Research. Engaging Communities. ...

Creeping climate change in the Southwest appears to be having a negative effect on pinyon pine reproduction, a finding with implications for wildlife species sharing the same woodland ecosystems, says a University of Colorado Boulder-led study. The new study showed that pinyon pine seed cone production declined by an average of about 40 percent at nine study sites in New Mexico and northwestern Oklahoma over the past four decades, said CU-Boulder doctoral student Miranda Redmond, who led the study. The biggest declines in pinyon pine seed cone reproduction were at the ...

Miniaturized laboratory-on-chip systems promise rapid, sensitive, and multiplexed detection of biological samples for medical diagnostics, drug discovery, and high-throughput screening. Using micro-fabrication techniques and incorporating a unique design of transistor-based heating, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are further advancing the use of silicon transistor and electronics into chemistry and biology for point-of-care diagnostics. Lab-on-a-chip technologies are attractive as they require fewer reagents, have lower detection limits, ...

A multi-site clinical trial including the University of Colorado Cancer Center shows that the benefit of Bright IDEAS problem-solving skills training goes beyond teaching parents to navigate the complex medical, educational, and other systems that accompany a child's diagnosis of cancer – the training also leads to durable reduction in mothers' levels of anxiety and symptoms of posttraumatic stress, and improves overall coping with a child's illness. Results of the study were published online last week in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Earlier research shows that ...

PHILADELPHIA – A recently described master regulator protein may explain the development of aberrant cell growth in the pancreas spurred by inflammation A team from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania profiled gene expression of mouse pancreatic ductal and duct-like cells from different states - embryonic development, acute pancreatitis and K-ras mutation-driven carcinogenesis - to find the molecular regulation of these processes. Broadly speaking, two cellular compartments are important in a normal pancreas, endocrine cells, which produce ...

In certain circles, such as publishing, it has been well-documented that female authors have taken male pen names to attract a larger audience and/or get their book published. But should marketers actually highlight gender and activate stereotypes to sell more products? A new study by USC Marshall Professor Valerie Folkes and Ohio State University Professor Shashi Matta looks at the issue of product perception of consumers through the lens of gender stereotypes. The researchers conclude that while traditional gender stereotypes can still have a significant influence on ...

TORONTO, ON – Cities around the world can significantly reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by implementing aggressive but practical policy changes, says a new study by University of Toronto Civil Engineering Professor Chris Kennedy and World Bank climate change specialist Lorraine Sugar, one of Kennedy's former students. Kennedy and Sugar make the claim in 'A low carbon infrastructure plan for Toronto, Canada,' published in the latest issue of The Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering. The paper aims to show how cities can make a positive difference using realistic, ...

Ants are just about everywhere you look, and yet it's largely unknown how they manage to be so ubiquitous. Scientists have understood the carnal mechanism of ant reproduction, but until now have known little of how successful the daughters of a colony are when they attempt to found new colonies. For the first time, Stanford biologists have been able to identify specific parent ants and their own children in wild ant colonies, making it possible to study reproduction trends. And in a remarkable display of longevity, an original queen ant was found to be producing new ...

SAN FRANCISCO – February 12, 2013 – New findings from a landmark clinical trial show that although certain gene variants may predict whether a person is likely to develop age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a potentially blinding eye disease that afflicts more than nine million Americans, these genes do not predict how patients will respond to Lucentis™ and Avastin™, the two medications most widely used to treat the "wet" form of AMD. This new data from the Comparison of AMD Treatment Trials (CATT), published online in Ophthalmology, the journal of the American Academy ...

Edmonton—Ever wonder how sometimes people still get through security with explosives on their person? Research done in the University of Alberta's Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering has revealed a new way to better detect these molecules associated with explosive mixtures. A team of researchers including post-doctoral fellows Seonghwan Kim, Dongkyu Lee and Xuchen Liu, with research associate Charles Van Neste, visiting professor, Sangmin Jeon from the Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea), and Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering ...

Women who took folic acid supplements in early pregnancy almost halved the risk of having a child with autism. Beginning to take folic acid supplements later in pregnancy did not reduce the risk. This is shown in new findings from the ABC Study and Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study published in the Journal of The American Medical Association (JAMA). Women who took folic acid supplements from four weeks before conception to eight weeks into pregnancy had a 40 per cent lower risk of giving birth to children with childhood autism (classic autism). Use of folic acid ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Cyclone Gino as the storm continues to wind up in the southern Indian Ocean, consolidating and strengthening. Infrared data shows the storm has strengthened but it is headed for cooler waters which will weaken it in coming days. On Feb. 12 at 0841 UTC, NASA Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard the Aqua satellite captured infrared imagery of Cyclone Gino that showed the storm developed a large area of very cold, high cloud top temperatures around its center indicating powerful thunderstorms. Cloud top temperatures ...