Amsterdam, January 29, 2013 – A paper published in the February issue of Computers & Geosciences, describes a case study in which an earth-observing satellite tool, the Tool for High-Resolution Observation Review (THOR), using minimal coding effort, is converted into a practical web-based application, THOR-Online. In addition, a 3D visualization technique is also described in this paper. Initially only operable from a desktop computer, with the approach outlined in the study, THOR is now accessible online from NASA's Precipitation Processing System website. This allows ...

In an article about to be published in EPJ Plus, Daan Frenkel from the University of Cambridge, UK, outlines the many pitfalls associated with simulation methods such as Monte Carlo algorithms or other commonly used molecular dynamics approaches. The context of this paper is the exponential development of computing power in the past 60 years, estimated to have increased by a factor of 1015, in line with Moore's law. Today, short simulations can reproduce a system the size of a bacterium. The author outlines diverse examples of issues arising when seemingly simple simulation ...

More powerful gene-sequencing tools have increasingly been uncovering disease secrets in DNA within the cell nucleus. Now a research team is expanding those rapid next-generation sequencing tests to analyze a separate source of DNA—within the genes inside mitochondria, cellular power plants that, when abnormal, contribute to complex, multisystem diseases. The study team, headed by a specialist in mitochondrial medicine at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), adapted next-generation sequencing to simultaneously analyze the whole exome (all the protein-coding ...

One year after his last treatment, a six-year-old boy with recurrent neuroblastoma is in complete remission for his high-risk metastatic cancer. Doctors reported this case study in the January 2013 issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which was funded in part by a joint grant from the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation, Pierce Phillips Charity and Solving Kids' Cancer. Current treatments for high-risk neuroblastoma patients include chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery, stem cell transplant, and immunotherapy. Less than half of the children ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A protein associated with neuron damage in people with Alzheimer's disease is surprisingly useful in promoting neuron growth in the lab, according to a new study by engineering researchers at Brown University. The findings, in press at the journal Biomaterials, suggest a better method of growing neurons outside the body that might then be implanted to treat people with neurodegenerative diseases. The research compared the effects of two proteins that can be used as an artificial scaffold for growing neurons (nerve cells) from the ...

(Boston)- A new Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) study has found that low-income and minority parents/guardians were receptive toward vaccinating boys against Human Papilloma Virus (HPV). However, racial/ethnic differences emerged in attitudes regarding school-entry mandates. The findings appear online in the journal Clinical Pediatrics. Although low-income and minority men have higher rates of oral HPV infection and are more likely to suffer from HPV-related diseases including penile, anal and oral cancers, few studies have examined parental attitudes after ...

DETROIT – Trying to find just the right balance of time spent in meetings and time performing tasks is a tough problem for managers, but a Wayne State University researcher believes the behavior of ants may provide a useful lesson on how to do it. Using computer simulations derived from the characteristics of ants seeking food, Kai Yang, Ph.D., professor of industrial and systems engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a mathematical model-based methodology to estimate the optimal amount of time spent to develop a product, as well as the cost, in overlapped ...

This press release is available in German. A collection of historical documents from a major project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) will be made publicly available over the next several months and years. On 25 January 2013, German radio broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk will launch a 'documentary audio edition' entitled Die Quellen sprechen ('The Sources Speak'). The series of 16 episodes, to be broadcast on radio and made available online, will present hundreds of letters, diary entries, decrees, orders, newspaper reports ...

PHILADELPHIA – HIV patients who participated in an intervention that helped them identify barriers to taking their drugs properly and develop customized coping strategies took a significantly greater amount of their prescribed doses than those receiving standard care, according to a new study from researchers in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results, published this week in JAMA Internal Medicine, may point to a new strategy to improve adherence to medications for many other conditions. "Nonadherence to medical therapy is a silent ...

Thanks to cultural evolution, male Savannah sparrows are changing their tune, partly to attract "the ladies." According to a study of more than 30 years of Savannah sparrows recordings, the birds are singing distinctly different songs today than their ancestors did 30 years ago – changes passed along generation to generation, according to a new study by University of Guelph researchers. Integrative biology professors Ryan Norris and Amy Newman, in collaboration with researchers at Bowdoin College and Williams College in the U.S., analyzed the songs of male Savannah ...

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. — Getting people to think about morality as a matter of objective facts rather than subjective preferences may lead to improved moral behavior, Boston College researchers report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. In two experiments, one conducted in-person and the other online, participants were primed to consider a belief in either moral realism (the notion that morals are like facts) or moral antirealism (the belief that morals reflect people's preferences) during a solicitation for a charitable donation. In both experiments, those ...

The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series reports a simple way to improve the sensitivity of the test often used to detect traces of explosives on the hands, carry-ons and other possessions of passengers at airport security screening stations. Based on a report by Yehuda Zeiri, Ph.D., and colleagues in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, the new podcast is available without charge at iTunes and from www.acs.org/globalchallenges. In the new episode, Zeiri explains that most ...

In a first-of-its-kind feat of science and engineering, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research team has successfully drilled through 800 meters (2,600 feet) of Antarctic ice to reach a subglacial lake and retrieve water and sediment samples that have been isolated from direct contact with the atmosphere for many thousands of years. Scientists and drillers with the interdisciplinary Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling project (WISSARD) announced Jan. 28 local time (U.S. stations in Antarctica keep New Zealand time) that they had used a ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Networks of narrow ridges found in impact craters on Mars appear to be the fossilized remnants of underground cracks through which water once flowed, according to a new analysis by researchers from Brown University. The study, in press in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, bolsters the idea that the subsurface environment on Mars once had an active hydrology and could be a good place to search for evidence of past life. The research was conducted by Lee Saper, a recent Brown graduate, with Jack Mustard, professor of geological ...

Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatments for cancer patients. However, many patients suffer from serious side-effects and a large proportion does not respond to the treatment. Researchers from the Biotech Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC) and Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, now show that the gene FBH1 helps turn up the effect of chemotherapy. "Our results show that the gene FBH1 is crucial in order for some chemotherapeutics to become active in the body and kill the cancer cells. If we can find a feasible method to increase the activity ...

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) may play a wide-ranging role in staving off aging, according to a paper published online ahead of print in the journal Molecular and Cellular Biology. In this review article, a team from China explores the compound's plethora of potential anti-aging pathways. "H2S has been gaining increasing attention as an important endogenous signaling molecule because of its significant effects on the cardiovascular and nervous systems," the team writes. The evidence is mounting, they note, that hydrogen sulfide slows aging by inhibiting free-radical reactions, ...

BEAVERTON, Ore. - New research from Oregon Health & Science University has provided significant insight into the reasons why early-onset puberty occurs in females. The research, which was conducted at OHSU's Oregon National Primate Research Center, is published in the current early online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience. The paper explains how OHSU scientists are investigating the role of epigenetics in the control of puberty. Epigenetics refers to changes in gene activity linked to external factors that do not involve changes to the genetic code itself. The ...

PORTLAND, Ore. – OHSU researchers, in partnership with scientists from several other institutions, have published two new research papers that signal how the next class of powerful medications may currently reside at the bottom of the ocean. In both cases, the researchers were focused on ocean-based mollusks – a category of animal that includes snails, clams and squid and their bacterial companions. Sea life studies aid researchers in several ways, including the development of new medications and biofuels. Because many of these ocean animal species have existed in ...

Researchers employing a century-old observational technique have determined the precise configuration of humulones, substances derived from hops that give beer its distinctive flavor. That might not sound like a big deal to the average brewmaster, but the findings overturn results reported in scientific literature in the last 40 years and could lead to new pharmaceuticals to treat diabetes, some types of cancer and other maladies. "Now that we have the right results, what happens to the bitter hops in the beer-brewing process makes a lot more sense," said Werner ...

Philadelphia, January 29, 2012 – The Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) announced its recommended 2013 adult immunization schedule that includes important updates to the pneumococcal, Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and acellular pertussis), and influenza vaccines. Because current vaccination rates are low, ACIP also urges health care providers to regularly assess patient vaccination histories and implement intervention strategies to increase adherence. This recommendation will be published in Annals of Internal Medicine, ...

In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, researchers used genomic techniques to document the presence of significant numbers of living microorganisms – principally bacteria – in the middle and upper troposphere, that section of the atmosphere approximately four to six miles above the Earth's surface. Whether the microorganisms routinely inhabit this portion of the atmosphere – perhaps living on carbon compounds also found there – or whether they were simply lofted there from the Earth's surface isn't yet known. The finding is of interest to atmospheric scientists, ...

Addiction may result from abnormal brain circuitry in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls decision-making. Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Molecular Imaging Science in Japan collaborating with colleagues from the Montreal Neurological Institute of McGill University in Canada report today that the lateral and orbital regions of the frontal cortex interact during the response to a drug-related cue and that aberrant interaction between the two frontal regions may underlie addiction. Their results are published today in the journal Proceedings of ...

Nationwide, more than one-quarter of hospital-based general practitioners who take over for patients' primary care doctors to manage inpatient care say their average patient load exceeds safe levels multiple times per month, according to a new Johns Hopkins study. Moreover, the study found that one in five of these physicians, known as hospitalists, reports that their workload puts patients at risk for serious complications, or even death. The research, reported in JAMA Internal Medicine, comes as health care systems anticipate an influx of new patients generated by the ...

New Haven, Conn. — In a major breakthrough for uterine serous carcinoma (USC) — a chemo-resistant, aggressive form of endometrial cancer, Yale researchers have defined the genetic landscape of USC tumors, findings that point to new treatment opportunities. The collaborative team—which included researchers with expertise in gynecological cancer, genomics, and computational biology— identified a number of new genes that are frequently mutated in USC. The results of this comprehensive genetic analysis of USC are published in the Jan. 28 Proceedings of the National Academy ...

DURHAM, NC -- Duke University biomedical engineers have developed a new delivery system that overcomes the shortcomings of a promising class of peptide drugs – very small proteins – for treating diseases such as diabetes and cancer. There are more than 40 peptide drugs approved for use in humans and more than 650 are being tested in clinical studies. One example is the hormone insulin, a peptide that regulates the metabolism of carbohydrates in the body and is used as a drug to treat diabetes. Despite their effectiveness, peptide drugs cannot achieve their full potential ...