Scientists from the University of Sheffield have unlocked one of the secrets to DNA repair –helping doctors identify DNA base damage and a patient's susceptibility to certain types of cancer. Groundbreaking research led by Dr David Williams from the University of Sheffield's Department of Chemistry and an international collaboration of expert researchers has discovered how some proteins recognise damaged bases within DNA which, if untreated, could lead to cancer. Dr Williams said: "Proteins carry out all the day-to-day processes needed for survival. If the DNA bases ...

The mere mention of the word "herpes" usually conjures negative images and stereotypes, but most people have been infected with some form of the virus. For most, a sore appears, heals and is forgotten, although the virus remains latent just waiting for the right circumstances to come back. Now, the mystery behind what triggers the virus to become active again is closer to being solved thanks to new research published in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology's November 2012 issue. In the report, scientists show how the immune system may lose its control over the virus when facing ...

A new study conducted by researchers at the University of Cordoba links moderate physical activity in males with better hormone levels and sperm characteristics that favour reproduction compared to sedentary men. Semen quality at large has dropped in the last 50 years. Amongst other factors, this is due to exposure to external agents and alcohol and tobacco consumption. This decline in sperm properties has caused an increase in reproductive problems. Therefore, experts have studied the possible relationship between sperm quality and lifestyle habits in males. Published ...

Boston, Mass.—Researchers at Boston Children's Hospital have found that microscopic particles containing proteins and nucleic acids called exosomes could potentially protect the fragile lungs of premature babies from serious lung diseases and chronic lung injury caused by inflammation. The findings explain earlier research suggesting that while transplanting a kind of stem cell called mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) could help reduce lung injury and prevent inflammation in a mouse model, the fluid in which the cells were grown was more effective than the cells themselves. The ...

ANN ARBOR—It looks like Mother Nature was wasting her time with a multimillion-year process to produce crude oil. Michigan Engineering researchers can "pressure-cook" algae for as little as a minute and transform an unprecedented 65 percent of the green slime into biocrude. "We're trying to mimic the process in nature that forms crude oil with marine organisms," said Phil Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau professor and a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan. The findings will be presented Nov. 1 at the 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers ...

Scientists have identified a molecular 'flag' in women with breast cancer who do not respond or have become resistant to the hormone drug tamoxifen. Tamoxifen – used alongside traditional chemotherapy and radiotherapy – blocks the female hormone oestrogen that, in certain breast cancers, is required by the tumour to grow; it has been shown to improve cancer survival rates by up to one third. However, about one third of patients with the appropriate type of breast cancer – known as oestrogen receptor positive breast cancer – do not respond to tamoxifen or develop resistance ...

This press release is available in German. Fog is an atmospheric phenomenon that afflicts millions of drivers every day, impairing visibility and increasing the risk of an accident. The ways people respond to conditions of reduced visibility is a central topic in vision research. It has been shown that people tend to underestimate speeds when visibility is reduced equally at all distances, as for example, when driving with a uniformly fogged windshield. But what happens when the visibility decreases as you look further into the distance, as happens when driving in ...

"Nature teaches beasts to know their friends," wrote Shakespeare. In humans, nature may be less than half of the story, a team led by University of Colorado Boulder researchers has found. In the first study of its kind, the team found that genetic similarities may help to explain why human birds of a feather flock together, but the full story of why people become friends "is contingent upon the social environment in which individuals interact with one another," the researchers write. People are more likely to befriend genetically similar people when their environment ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Cancer cells grow fast. That's an essential characteristic of what makes them cancer cells. They've crashed through all the cell-cycle checkpoints and are continuously growing and dividing, far outstripping our normal cells. To do this they need to speed up their metabolism. CSHL Professor Adrian Krainer and his team have found a way to target the cancer cell metabolic process and in the process specifically kill cancer cells. Nearly 90 years ago the German chemist and Nobel laureate Otto Warburg proposed that cancer's prime cause was a change ...

Until now, we knew that ticks primarily transmit two pathogens to humans in Switzerland: the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi – which causes borreliosis – and the early-summer-meningoencephalitis virus, which can cause cerebral inflammation. Now, microbiologists from the University of Zurich confirm the existence of another tick disease in Switzerland – neoehrlichiosis. The pathogenic bacteria Candidatus Neoehrlichia mikurensis was first discovered in ticks and rodents in Europe and Asia in 1999. In 2010, Head of Molecular Diagnostics at the Institute of Medical Microbiology ...

Older adults left in the wake of Hurricane Sandy will likely suffer disproportionately in the days ahead, based on data from other recent natural disasters. For example, three quarters of those who perished in Hurricane Katrina were over the age of 60, according to the spring 2006 edition of Public Policy & Aging Report from The Gerontological Society of America (GSA). Similarly, a recent issue of the Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences reported that the May 2008 earthquake in Wenchuan, China, was associated with a twofold increase ...

A new RAND Corporation study examining the impact of retail medical clinics on the receipt of primary medical care finds mixed evidence about whether the clinics may disrupt doctor-patient relationships. The study found that people who visit retail medical clinics are less likely to return to a primary care physician for future illnesses and have less continuity of care. However, there was no evidence retail medical clinics disrupted preventive medical care or management of diabetes, two important measures of quality of primary care. The findings, published online by ...

Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. The results are published in the Oct. 31 online edition of the journal ACS Nano. "Carbon has the potential to deliver high performance at a low cost," said study senior author Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of a working solar cell that has all of the components made of carbon. This study builds on previous ...

Clinical hypnosis can effectively reduce hot flashes and associated symptoms among postmenopausal women, according to a new study conducted by researchers at Baylor University's Mind-Body Medicine Research Laboratory. Hypnotic relaxation therapy reduced hot flashes by as much as 80 percent, and the findings also showed participants experienced improved quality of life and a lessening of anxiety and depression. The mind-body therapy study of 187 women over a five-week period measured both physical symptoms of hot flashes and women's self-reporting of flashes. The women ...

There's good news for fans of black raspberries: A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist and his commercial colleague have found black raspberries that have resistance to a disease-spreading aphid. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) horticulturist Chad Finn with the agency's Horticultural Crops Research Unit in Corvallis, Ore., and colleague Michael Dossett of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are the first to find and report black raspberry resistance to the large raspberry aphid. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research ...

Women who drink green tea may lower their risk of developing some digestive system cancers, especially cancers of the stomach/esophagus and colorectum, according to a study led by researchers from Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. The study by lead author Sarah Nechuta, Ph.D., MPH, assistant professor of Medicine, was published online in advance of the Nov. 1 edition of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Wei Zheng, M.D., Ph.D., MPH, professor of Medicine, chief of the Division of Epidemiology and director of the Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center, was the principal ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A Medicare rule that blocks thousands of nursing home residents from receiving simultaneous reimbursement for hospice and skilled nursing facility (SNF) care at the end of life may result in those residents receiving more aggressive treatment and hospitalization, according a new analysis. "This study is the first, to the knowledge of the authors, to attempt to understand how treatments and outcomes vary for nursing home residents with advanced dementia who use Medicare SNF care near the end of life and who do or do not enroll in Medicare ...

As men and women age, increasing quantities of fat tissue inevitably take up residence in skeletal muscle. A small study of older and younger men conducted at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University suggests that a build-up of a fat molecule known as ceramide might play a leading role in muscle deterioration in older adults. The results of the study were published online this month by the Journal of Applied Physiology, a publication of the American Physiological Society. The study enrolled ten 10 men in their mid-seventies to ...

VIDEO: For the last decade, prematurity has been the leading cause of infant mortality in the US. As a result of prematurity, many infants enter this world too early with a... Click here for more information. For the last decade, prematurity has been the leading cause of infant mortality in the United States. As a result of prematurity many infants enter this world too early with a small chance of survival. In order to help treat these extremely premature infants, physicians ...

A consortium of Quebec researchers coordinated by the Medical Genetics Service of the Sainte-Justine UHC has just published the findings of a 25-year study on the treatment of tyrosinemia, a life-threatening liver disease of genetic origin, which is screened at birth in the province of Quebec, where it is much more frequent than anywhere else in the world. "After five years of treatment, no trace of the disease can be detected in the liver of newborns who were treated with nitisinone starting from the first month of life," states Dr. Grant Mitchell of the Sainte-Justine ...

Flame retardants in the polyurethane foam of millions of upholstered sofas, overstuffed chairs and other products have ignited a heated debate over safety, efficacy and fire-safety standards -- and a search for alternative materials. That's the topic of a cover story package in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of ACS, the world's largest scientific society. An overview of the package describes the controversy, fostered largely by a California chemist, who claims that flame retardants pose unacceptable toxic hazards and ...

The yeast used to make beer has yielded what may be the first gene for beer foam, scientists are reporting in a new study. Published in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, the discovery opens the door to new possibilities for improving the frothy "head" so critical to the aroma and eye appeal of the world's favorite alcoholic beverage, they say. Tomás G. Villa and colleagues explain that proteins from the barley and yeast used to make beer contribute to the quality of its foam. The foamy head consists of bubbles containing carbon dioxide gas, which yeast ...

In an advance toward analyzing blood and urine instantly at a patient's bedside instead of waiting for results from a central laboratory, scientists are reporting development of a new micropump capable of producing pressures almost 500 times higher than the pressure in a car tire. Described in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry, the pumps are for futuristic "labs-on-a-chip," which reduce entire laboratories to the size of a postage stamp. Shaorong Liu and colleagues explain that powerful pumps are critical for high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a mainstay laboratory ...

Using the legendary properties of heartwood from the black locust tree as their inspiration, scientists have discovered a way to improve the performance of softwoods widely used in construction. The method, reported in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, involves addition of similar kinds of flavonoid compounds that boost the health of humans. Ingo Burgert and colleagues explain that wood's position as a mainstay building material over the centuries results from a combination of desirable factors, including surprising strength for a material so light in weight. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Hypertension is one of the greatest epidemics threatening the health of people in low and middle-income countries. For patients struggling with high blood pressure in countries with limited access to health care, the key to improving health may be as simple as a phone call. New University of Michigan research evaluated the impact of automated calls from a U.S.-based server to the mobile phones of patients with hypertension (high blood pressure) in Honduras and Mexico. The program was designed to be a low-cost way of providing long distance checkups ...