Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have solved a key part of a muscle regeneration mystery plaguing scientists for years, adding strong support to the theory that muscle mass can be built without a complete, fully functional supply of muscle stem cells. "This is good news for those with muscular dystrophy and other muscle wasting disorders that involve diminished stem cell function," says Se-Jin Lee, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of a report on the research in the August issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and professor of molecular biology ...

Incarcerated patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are just as likely to respond to treatment for the disease as patients in the community, according to findings published in the October issue of Hepatology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. The study from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH) in Madison found that HCV patients in prison were just as likely to achieve a sustained viral response (SVR) as non-incarcerated patients. Medical evidence reports that chronic ...

A new regulator for heart formation has been discovered by studying how embryonic stem cells adjust the packaging of their DNA. This approach to finding genetic regulators, the scientists say, may have the power to provide insight into the development of any tissue in the body – liver, brain, blood and so on. A stem cell has the potential to become any type of cell. Once the choice is made, the cell and other stem cells committed to the same fate divide to form organ tissue. A University of Washington-led research team was particularly interested in how stem cells ...

Alexandria, Va., USA – Today, the International and American Associations for Dental Research (IADR/AADR) published a study titled "Enhancing Oral Health via Sense of Coherence: a Cluster Randomized Trial." This study by lead author Orawan Nammontri, University of Sheffield, UK, is published in the IADR/AADR Journal of Dental Research. Sense of coherence (SOC) has been related to oral health behaviors and oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) in observational studies. This cluster randomized trial aimed to test the effect of an intervention to enhance SOC on OHRQoL ...

This press release is available in Spanish.A grass fed to cattle throughout much of the tropics may become a biofuel crop that helps the nation meet its future energy needs, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist. Napiergrass (Pennisetum purpureum) is fairly drought-tolerant, grows well on marginal lands, and filters nutrients out of runoff in riparian areas, according to William Anderson, a geneticist in the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Crop Genetics and Breeding Research Unit in Tifton, Ga. ARS is USDA's principal intramural scientific ...

The deserts of Utah and Nevada have not always been dry. Between 14,000 and 20,000 years ago, when large ice caps covered Canada during the last glacial cooling, valleys throughout the desert southwest filled with water to become large lakes, scientists have long surmised. At their maximum size, the desert lakes covered about a quarter of both Nevada and Utah. Now a team led by a Texas A&M University researcher has found a new water cycle connection between the U.S. southwest and the tropics, and understanding the processes that have brought precipitation to the western ...

Using a continent-spanning telescope, an international team of astronomers has peered to the edge of a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy. For the first time, they have measured the black hole's "point of no return" - the closest distance that matter can approach before being irretrievably pulled into the black hole. A black hole is a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Its boundary is known as the event horizon. "Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," says lead author ...

Fishing hooks aren't the only hooks found in east-central Mexican waters. A new species of freshwater fish described by a North Carolina State University researcher has several interesting – and perhaps cringe-inducing – characteristics, including a series of four hooks on the male genitalia. Females of the new species – the llanos mosquitofish, or Gambusia quadruncus – also have distinguishing characteristics, including a colorful anal spot. A paper describing the new species, which lives in a diversity hotspot and seemingly branched off from its closest relative ...

Studying leukemia in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have reduced a life-threatening complication of stem cell transplants, the only curative treatment when leukemia returns. About 50 percent of leukemia patients who receive stem cells from another person develop graft-versus-host disease, a condition where donor immune cells attack the patient's own body. The main organs affected are the skin, liver and gut. Now, the scientists have shown they can redirect donor immune cells away from these vital organs. Steering immune cells ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- Anyone who owns an electronic device knows that lithium ion batteries could work better and last longer. Now, scientists examining battery materials on the nano-scale reveal how nickel forms a physical barrier that impedes the shuttling of lithium ions in the electrode, reducing how fast the materials charge and discharge. Published last week in Nano Letters, the research also suggests a way to improve the materials. The researchers, led by the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Chongmin Wang, created high-resolution 3D ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The point of no return: In astronomy, it's known as a black hole — a region in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. Black holes that can be billions of times more massive than our sun may reside at the heart of most galaxies. Such supermassive black holes are so powerful that activity at their boundaries can ripple throughout their host galaxies. Now, an international team, led by researchers at MIT's Haystack Observatory, has for the first time measured the radius of a black hole at the center of a distant ...

A strange thing about black holes: they shine. The current issue of Science Express features a paper by the Event Horizon telescope team – a collaboration that includes Avery Broderick, Associate Faculty at Perimeter Institute – that may shed light on the origin of the bright jets given off by some black holes. In a world first, the team has been able to look at a distant black hole and find out where its jets are launched from: the "launchpad". Many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have a huge black hole lurking at their cores. In about 10 percent of such galaxies, ...

Los Angeles, CA (September 27, 2012) – Since the newspaper industry started to experience a major decrease in readership in recent years, many people have deemed the internet and other forms of new media as the culprits. However, a recent study published in the Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, a SAGE Journal, finds that sales are down because readers need more engaging and stimulating content. Study authors Rachel Davis Mersey, Edward C. Malthouse, and Bobby J. Calder suggested that it is crucial for journalists and practitioners to focus their efforts on creating ...

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Not all aggressive children are aggressive for the same reasons, according to Penn State researchers, who found that some kindergartners who are aggressive show low verbal abilities while others are more easily physiologically aroused. The findings suggest that different types of treatments may be needed to help kids with different underlying causes for problem behavior. "Aggressive responses to being frustrated are a normal part of early childhood, but children are increasingly expected to manage their emotions and control their behavior when ...

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 27, 2012 – Lymph nodes can provide a suitable home for a variety of cells and tissues from other organs, suggesting that a cell-based alternative to whole organ transplantation might one day be feasible, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and its McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine. In a report recently published online in Nature Biotechnology, the research team showed for the first time that liver cells, thymus tissue and insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells, in an animal model, can thrive in lymph ...

An isolated outbreak of a deadly disease known as acute hemorrhagic fever, which killed two people and left one gravely ill in the Democratic Republic of Congo in the summer of 2009, was probably caused by a novel virus scientists have never seen before. Described this week in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, the new microbe has been named Bas-Congo virus (BASV) after the province in the southwest corner of the Congo where the three people lived. It was discovered by an international research consortium that included the University of California, San Francisco ...

NASA's TRMM satellite noticed that the intensity of rainfall in Tropical Storm Nadine has diminished today, Sept. 27. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite passed over Tropical Storm Nadine on Sept. 27 at 0739 UTC (4:39 a.m. EDT) and at 0917 UTC (5:17 a.m. EDT). At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., several TRMM instruments were used to create a full picture of Nadine's weakened rainfall. The image was created with an enhanced infrared image from TRMM's Visible and InfraRed Scanner (VIRS) overlaid with rainfall data derived from ...

VIDEO: Supercomputer models of merging black holes reveal properties that are crucial to understanding future detections of gravitational waves. This movie follows two orbiting black holes and their accretion disk during... Click here for more information. According to Einstein, whenever massive objects interact, they produce gravitational waves -- distortions in the very fabric of space and time -- that ripple outward across the universe at the speed of light. While astronomers ...

Farmers are using maps created with free data from NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey's Landsat satellites that show locations that are good and not good for growing crops. Farmer Gary Wagner walks into his field where the summer leaves on the sugar beet plants are a rich emerald hue -- not necessarily a good color when it comes to sugar beets, either for the environment or the farmer. That hue tells Wagner that he's leaving money in the field in unused nitrogen fertilizer, which if left in the soil can act as a pollutant when washed into waterways, and in unproduced ...

NASA infrared satellite imagery showed Tropical Storm Miriam had strong convection and thunderstorm activity in all quadrants of the storm on Sept. 26, except the western quadrant. That activity waned dramatically in 24 hours because of strong wind shear and cooler sea surface temperatures. The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured infrared data on Tropical Storm Miriam on Sept. 26 at 2047 UTC, when it was off the coast of Baja California. Strongest thunderstorms with very cold cloud top temperatures appear to ...

One day ago, Super Typhoon Jelawat's eye was about 25 nautical miles in diameter, today, Sept. 27, NASA satellite data indicated that eye has grown to 36 nautical miles! The latest infrared image from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies on NASA's Aqua satellite shows a clear eye in Typhoon Jelawat on Sept. 25. The cloud top temperatures of the thunderstorms surrounding the eye exceed -63 Fahrenheit (-52 Celsius) indicating that they are very powerful and heavy rainmakers.. Jelawat also has a rounded shape indicating that circulation is strong ...

NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Storm Ewiniar and noticed strong convection still persists in the storm, despite now being embedded in a subtropical area of low pressure off the coast of Japan. As Tropical Storm Ewiniar continues to move northward it wound up in an elongated area of low pressure (called a trough) off Japan's east coast. The trough is bringing a strong westerly flow of air into Ewiniar. Despite being battered by those winds, infrared data from the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite is showing ...

Washington, D.C. - A study presented at the American Academy of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery Foundation Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. shows that the MD Hearing Aid line offers a reasonable low-cost solution to those who are not using hearing aids or other amplification devices because of cost concerns. In the study, researchers at the Michigan Ear Institute sought to evaluate a novel, inexpensive (under $200.) over- the-counter hearing aid regarding to its acoustic properties and also to test the hearing aid on patients with varying levels of hearing loss ...

This press release is available in French and German.MONTREAL, Canada, September 28, 2012 - Researchers at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Center and University of Montreal have identified genetic origins in 10% of an important form of congenital heart diseases by studying the genetic variability within families. "This is more than the sum of the genes found to date in all previous studies, which explained only 1% of the disease, says Dr. Marc-Phillip Hitz, lead author of the study published in PLOS Genetics, under the direction of Dr. Gregor Andelfinger, pediatric ...

Boston, MA—Over 20 million people in the United States take beta-blockers, a medication commonly prescribed for cardiovascular issues, anxiety, hypertension and more. Many of these same people also have trouble sleeping, a side effect possibly related to the fact that these medications suppress night-time melatonin production. Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have found that melatonin supplementation significantly improved sleep in hypertensive patients taking beta-blockers. The study will be electronically published on September 28, 2012 and will be ...