Athens, Ga. – The study of an oxygen-sensing bacterial regulatory protein by chemistry researchers at the University of Georgia has provided molecular insight into the oxygen sensing mechanism, which could ultimately lead to a better understanding of the ageing process and new treatments for human diseases such cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Michael Johnson, a distinguished research professor of chemistry in the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, and Bo Zhang, a UGA chemistry doctoral candidate, have discovered that the fumarate and nitrate reduction regulatory ...

Cross a crow and it'll remember you for years. Crows and humans share the ability to recognize faces and associate them with negative, as well as positive, feelings. The way the brain activates during that process is something the two species also appear to share, according to new research being published this week. "The regions of the crow brain that work together are not unlike those that work together in mammals, including humans," said John Marzluff, University of Washington professor of environmental and forest sciences. "These regions were suspected to work in ...

As temperatures rise and droughts become more severe in the Southwest, trees are increasingly up against extremely stressful growing conditions, especially in low to middle elevations, University of Arizona researchers report in a study soon to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences. Lead author Jeremy Weiss, a senior research specialist in the UA department of geosciences, said: "We know the climate in the Southwest is getting warmer, but we wanted to investigate how the higher temperatures might interact with the highly variable precipitation ...

Immigrant parents' education before migrating is more strongly tied to their children's achievement in the United States than any other social, economic, or linguistic parental attribute, either before or after migration. That's the conclusion of a new study in a special section of the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development on the children of immigrants. The study was carried out by researchers at the Pennsylvania State University. Immigrants come to the United States with different socioeconomic backgrounds and levels of proficiency in English. Past research ...

WASHINGTON, DC —Researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center demonstrate, in animals, that maternal exposure to a high-fat diet or excess estrogen during pregnancy can increase breast cancer risk in multiple generations of female offspring — daughters, granddaughters and even great-granddaughters. This study, published online today in Nature Communications, shows for the first time that the risk of some "familial" breast cancers originate from biological alterations caused by maternal diet during pregnancy that not only affect the directly exposed ...

Researchers have demonstrated that a refined gene therapy approach safely restores the immune systems of some children with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). The rare condition blocks the normal development of a newborn's immune system, leaving the child susceptible to every passing microbe. Children with SCID experience chronic infections, which usually triggers the diagnosis. Their lifespan is two years if doctors cannot restore their immunity. The findings from facilities including the National Institutes of Health, the University of California, Los Angeles ...

UCLA stem cell researchers have found that a gene therapy regimen can safely restore immune systems to children with so-called "Bubble Boy" disease, a life threatening condition that if left untreated can be fatal within one to two years. In the 11-year study, researchers were able to test two therapy regimens for 10 children with ADA-deficient severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). During the study, they refined their approach to include a light dose of chemotherapy to help remove many of the blood stem cells in the bone marrow that are not creating an enzyme called ...

There is now strong evidence that some interventions can prevent falls in people over the age of 65 who are living in their own homes. However, the researchers who reached this conclusion say that care is needed when choosing interventions, as some have no effect. The full details are published this month in The Cochrane Library. This is an update of a previous report that contains data from 51 additional trials, enabling the authors to reach many more conclusions. As people get older they may fall more often. The reasons vary, including problems with balance, vision ...

Inhaled pain relief appears to be effective in reducing pain intensity and in giving pain relief in the first stage of labour, say Cochrane researchers. These conclusions came from a systematic review that drew data from twenty-six separate studies that involved a total of 2,959 women, and are published in The Cochrane Library. Many women would like to have a choice in pain relief during labour and would also like to avoid invasive methods of pain management. Inhaling a mixture of oxygen and either a flurane derivative or nitrous oxide reduces pain, but enable the mother ...

LOS ANGELES – Latinos are more likely to store fat in the pancreas and are less able to compensate by excreting additional insulin, a Cedars-Sinai study shows. The research examining overweight, prediabetic patients, published online by Diabetes Care, is part of a focus by Cedars-Sinai's Heart Institute, Biomedical Imaging Research Institute and Diabetes and Obesity Research Institute, to identify biological measures that could help predict which patients are likely to develop type 2 diabetes. "Prevention of diabetes is our goal," said Richard Bergman, PhD, director ...

Boston – One third of American women of childbearing age are battling obesity, a condition that affects their health and their chances of getting pregnant. Obese women often have poor reproductive outcomes, but the reasons why have not been clearly identified. Now, a novel study led by Catherine Racowsky, PhD, director of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies Laboratory at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), and performed by Ronit Machtinger, M.D., of BWH, in collaboration with Catherine Combelles, PhD, of Middlebury College, gains further insight into the underlying ...

September 10, 2012-- Issued by the UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO Under strict embargo by Nature Communications until Tuesday, September 11, 11 a.m. EST An international team led by University of Toronto physicists has developed a simple new technique using Scotch poster tape that has enabled them to induce high-temperature superconductivity in a semiconductor for the first time. The method paves the way for novel new devices that could be used in quantum computing and to improve energy efficiency. "Who would have thought simply sticking things together can generate entirely ...

A University of Louisville scientist has found a way to prevent inflammation and bone loss surrounding the teeth by blocking a natural signaling pathway of the enzyme GSK3b, which plays an important role in directing the immune response. The discovery of UofL School of Dentistry researcher David Scott, PhD, and his team recently published on-line first in the journal Molecular Medicine. The finding not only has implications in preventing periodontal disease, a chronic inflammatory disease that causes tooth loss, but also may have relevance to other chronic inflammatory ...

Chemicals or foods that raise estrogen levels during pregnancy may increase cancer risk in daughters, granddaughters, and even great-granddaughters, according to scientists from Virginia Tech and Georgetown University. Pregnant rats on a diet supplemented with synthetic estrogen or with fat, which increases estrogen levels, produce ensuing generations of daughters that appear to be healthy, but harbor a greater than normal risk for mammary cancer, the researchers report in today's Nature Communications. Although the findings have not yet been validated in humans, the ...

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico 2010 could have been avoided if the experiences of earlier disasters had been put to use, researcher Charles Woolfson, Linköping university, claims. The United States government is now accusing BP of gross negligence and deliberate misconduct, and taking the company to court. On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the ocean south of the southern coast of the US. The explosion led to the deaths of eleven people and an unfathomable environmental catastrophe. Charles Woolfson, former professor of Labour Sociology ...

Serious gaming can be used to enhance surgical skills, but games developed or used to train medical professionals need to be validated before they are integrated into teaching methods, according to a paper in the October issue of the surgical journal BJS. Researchers from The Netherlands reviewed 25 research studies covering 30 serious games published between 1995 and 2012. "Many medical professionals may still have a rather out-dated view of the average gamer as being someone who is too young to vote, afraid of daylight and busy killing mystical dwarves in their parent's ...

VIDEO: The animation shows how the MASP-2 (blue) attaches itself to the complement protein C4 (orange), and the structural rearrangements that occur in the C4 due to this. Note that although... Click here for more information. The complement system is part of the innate immune system and is composed of about 40 different proteins that work together to defend the body against disease-causing microorganisms. The complement system perceives danger signals in the body by recognising ...

This press release is available in German. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, many Americans started driving more due to a fear of flying – and lost their lives in traffic accidents. But why did this happen more frequently in some states than in others? And why didn't Spanish driving habits change in the same way following the 2004 train bombings in Madrid? Wolfgang Gaissmaier and Gerd Gigerenzer from the Harding Center for Risk Literacy at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin present new findings on this topic in the ...

"The most important thing for us is to raise awareness of the dangers of artificial light at night and we have already come a long way now that the American Medical Association (AMA) recently announced its new policy recognizing adverse health effects of exposure to light at night and encouraging further research into the matter," said Prof. Abraham Haim, a leading authority on light pollution, who coordinated the 21st International Congress of Zoology (ICZ) that was held last week at the University of Haifa, Israel. The panel of world experts discussed "Light Pollution ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for forecasting seasonal hurricane activity that is 15 percent more accurate than previous techniques. "This approach should give policymakers more reliable information than current state-of-the-art methods," says Dr. Nagiza Samatova, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the work. "This will hopefully give them more confidence in planning for the hurricane season." Conventional models used to predict seasonal hurricane activity rely on classical ...

The small ostracod Ankylocythere sinuosa measures no more than half a millimetre in length and lives on other crayfish. And, Spanish scientists have discovered it for the first time in Europe. The finding suggests that it arrived along with the invader crayfish Procambarus clarkii some 30 years ago but it is still unknown whether it can invade other crustacean species or whether it benefits or damages the expansion of the already established red swamp crayfish. The red swamp crayfish (Procambarus clarkii) originates from the USA and Mexico and has been present in the Iberian ...

Electronic Jewelry for Health Bracelets and amulets are in the works at Dartmouth's Institute for Security, Technology, and Society (ISTS). Rather than items of mere adornment, the scientists and engineers are constructing personal mobile health (mHealth) devices—highly functional jewelry, as it were. mHealth is a rapidly growing field where technology helps you or your physician monitor your health through mobile devices. This approach can offer more accurate and timely diagnoses as well as lower health costs. However, smartphones are often used to transmit collected ...

University of Adelaide researchers say a small wasp that scientists had forgotten about for more than 200 years is now making a name for itself – as a predator of Australia's most common dangerous spider, the redback. The wasp (Agenioideus nigricornis) was first described scientifically in 1775 by Danish entomologist Johan Christian Fabricius, thanks to samples collected in Australia during Captain Cook's first great voyage (1768). "Since then, scientists have largely forgotten about the wasp," says Professor Andy Austin from the University of Adelaide's Australian ...

Scientists at The University of Nottingham say adverse side-effects caused by the anti-parasitic drug quinine in the treatment of malaria could be controlled by what we eat. The research, carried out by Nottingham scientists on the University's campuses in the UK and Malaysia, indicates that natural variation in our levels of the amino acid, tryptophan, has a marked bearing on how we respond to quinine treatment. It appears that the lower our levels of tryptophan the more likely it is that we would suffer side-effects. And because tryptophan is an essential amino acid ...

VIDEO: Research carried out at Universidad Carlos III in Madrid analyzes the search and visualization systems used by commercial stock photography agencies, whose estimated annual net sales reach over 150 billion... Click here for more information. Stock photography agencies, and not just those companies that dominate the digital photography market, are at the forefront of information search tools. "Their search, visualization and information downloading systems are extraordinarily ...