Within all our cells lies two meters of DNA, highly ordered in a structure of less than 10 micro meters in diameter. Special proteins called histones act as small building bricks, organising our DNA in this structure. Preservation of the structure is necessary to maintain correct function of our genes, making histones detrimental for maintaining a healthy and functional body. The research group of Associate Professor Anja Groth from BRIC, University of Copenhagen, has just elucidated a function of the protein Codanin-1, shedding light on the rare anemic disease CDAI where ...

Scientists have produced a previously unseen uranium molecule, in a development that could help improve clean-up processes for nuclear waste. The distinctive butterfly-shaped compound is similar to radioactive molecules that scientists had proposed to be key components of nuclear waste, but were thought too unstable to exist for long. Researchers have shown the compound to be robust, which implies that molecules with a similar structure may be present in radioactive waste. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh, who carried out the study, say this suggests the ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — A Michigan State University anthropologist who spent more than a year infiltrating the black market for human kidneys has published the first in-depth study describing the often horrific experiences of poor people who were victims of organ trafficking. Monir Moniruzzaman interviewed 33 kidney sellers in his native Bangladesh and found they typically didn't get the money they were promised and were plagued with serious health problems that prevented them from working, shame and depression. The study, which appears in Medical Anthropology Quarterly, ...

DeliveryMaps.com, a leading resource for delivery maps and applications, announced the Mobile Locater, a new application that helps customers find store locations and information across the US. The Mobile Locater joins a family of services for a wide range of browsers, tablets and smartphones and will be introduced during the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas, NV. The Mobile Locater provides cross-platform support, allowing customers to find pizza store locations on their smartphones or tablets, or at home on their computers. Using this application, customers can ...

The system the UC3M researchers have created, with the collaboration of La Sapienze University of Rome (Italy), facilitates the search for photographs related to a specific theme, time or place that internauts post on social networks like Flickr. Afterwards, the application allows those images to be placed on maps based on their geographic coordinates, and filtered to include only those that the user is most interested in. The result is a digital story that can be shared with other users and which creates a visual summary that can aid in the understanding or documentation ...

Graft-versus-host disease is a life-threatening problem for many bone-marrow transplant recipients. New therapies are urgently needed to control the condition. This study identifies a molecule that controls severity of the disease; blocking the molecule could help control the condition. COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have identified a molecule that helps control the severity of graft-versus-host disease, a life-threatening complication for many leukemia patients who receive a bone-marrow transplant. The study, led by researchers with the Ohio State University Comprehensive ...

WASHINGTON — Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association. "We focused on a widespread cultural belief that equates academic success with a high level of competence and failure with intellectual inferiority," said Frederique Autin, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Poitiers in Poitiers, France. "By being obsessed with success, ...

BOSTON, MA—A new study by Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) researchers found significant variation in the use of head computed tomography (CT) exams among doctors within the emergency department (ED). The study will be published in the April 2012 issue of The American Journal of Medicine. With advanced imaging as a driver of increasing health care costs, strategies to reduce variation in head CT use and other high-cost imaging studies may reduce cost and improve quality of care. This study is part of an effort by researchers at BWH to develop strategies for achieving ...

Lady@OUT is a top-up insurance product that provides female clients with a host of value-added benefits at a small additional premium. "Even though it's a much debated and somewhat controversial topic, statistics prove that women are in fact safer and more responsible drivers than men" says Ernst Gouws, Chief Executive of OUTsurance. "So, even though our female clients are already enjoying the benefit of lower insurance premiums, we realized that in order for us to stay ahead of the game, we'd have to think up a truly impressive product with benefits ...

Beliefs about nature and nurture can affect how patients and their families respond to news about their diagnosis, according to Penn State health communication researchers. Understanding how people might respond to a health problem, especially when the recommendations for adapting to the condition may seem contradictory to their beliefs, is crucial to planning communication strategies, said Roxanne Parrott, Distinguished Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences and Health Policy and Administration. People affected with known genetic or chromosomal disorders, such ...

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have found that 92 percent of more than 1,000 gastroenterologists responding to a survey believed that pressures to increase the volume of colonoscopies adversely impacted how they performed their procedures, which could potentially affect the quality of colon cancer screening. The findings, based on responses from members of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE), are published in the March 2012 issue of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. "The number of colonoscopies has risen dramatically over the past fifteen ...

For the red pigmentation to develop, blood oranges normally require a period of cold as they ripen. The only place to reliably grow them on a commercial scale is in the Sicilian area of Italy around Mount Etna. Here, the combination of sun and cold/sunny days and warm nights provides ideal growing conditions. Scientists have identified the gene responsible for blood orange pigmentation, naming it Ruby, and have discovered how it is controlled. "Blood oranges contain naturally-occurring pigments associated with improved cardiovascular health, controlling diabetes and ...

A recent study led by Gergely Lukacs, a professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine, Department of Physiology, and published in the January issue of Cell, has shown that restoring normal function to the mutant gene product responsible for cystic fibrosis (CF) requires correcting two distinct structural defects. This finding could point to more effective therapeutic strategies for CF in the future. CF, a fatal genetic disease that affects about 60,000 people worldwide, is caused by mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), a ...

A novel study of honey bee genetic diversity co-authored by an Indiana University biologist has for the first time found that greater diversity in worker bees leads to colonies with fewer pathogens and more abundant helpful bacteria like probiotic species. Led by IU Bloomington assistant professor Irene L.G. Newton and Wellesley College assistant professor Heather Mattila, and co-authors from Wellesley College and the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, the new work describes the communities of active bacteria harbored by honey bee colonies. The ...

A study of cervical cancer incidence and mortality in North Carolina has revealed areas where rates are unusually high. The findings indicate that education, screening, and vaccination programs in those places could be particularly useful, according to public health researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who authored the report. "In general the rates of incidence and mortality in North Carolina are consistent with national averages," said Jennifer S. Smith, Ph.D., associate professor of epidemiology at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Advances in fuel-cell technology have been stymied by the inadequacy of metals studied as catalysts. The drawback to platinum, other than cost, is that it absorbs carbon monoxide in reactions involving fuel cells powered by organic materials like formic acid. A more recently tested metal, palladium, breaks down over time. Now chemists at Brown University have created a triple-headed metallic nanoparticle that they say outperforms and outlasts all others at the anode end in formic-acid fuel-cell reactions. In a paper published in the ...

Could parental exposure to solvents at work be linked to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in their children? According to an exploratory study by Erin McCanlies, a research epidemiologist from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and colleagues, such exposures could play a role, but more research would be needed to confirm an association. Their pilot study is published online in Springer's Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. The experts' assessment indicated that exposures to lacquer, varnish and xylene occurred more often in the ...

A program that helps obese patients improve healthy behaviors is associated with modest weight loss and improved blood pressure control in a high-risk, low-income group, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Duke University, Harvard University and other institutions. The research is published March 12 in Archives of Internal Medicine. Obesity treatments are not widely available in the U.S. primary care setting, particularly for low-income patients who seek care at community health centers, according to the study's authors. ...

A study by the Children's Oncology Group (COG) reported that five-year survival for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL, the most common type of pediatric cancer) among children treated through COG clinical trials increased from 83.7 percent during the period 1990-1994 to 90.4 percent in the period 2000-2005. The improvements in survival were observed among all children over age 1 regardless of age, sex, ethnicity, or subtype of ALL. This analysis, which is the largest study to date of ALL survival, showed similar gains in 10-year survival. The findings are published March ...

Kandy Magazine announced today that it is now available as a FREE iPad App in Apple's Newsstand and in less than a week has attained a top 100 ranking. To commemorate the release of the Kandy Magazine iPad app in the App Store, the first 100,000 downloads of the newest iPad edition featuring the World's Sexiest DJ Colleen Shannon are complimentary. The Kandy App features in-app social media integration, in-app media libraries, notes, pinch-to-zoom, vertical scroll and easy navigation menus. "As an independent publisher we took a look at the different options ...

For children aged 14 and under, delaying reconstructive surgery for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries may raise their risk of further injury, according to a new study by pediatric orthopaedic surgeons. If surgery occurs later than 12 weeks after the injury, the injury may even be irreparable. "Treating ACL injuries in these children is controversial, because they are still growing and the surgery has a small risk of causing a growth disturbance," said study leader J. Todd Lawrence, M.D., Ph.D., an orthopaedic surgeon at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. ...

A wooden statue of a king, a private offering chapel, a monumental building and remains of over 80 animal mummies found by a University of Toronto-led team in Abydos, Egypt reveal intriguing information about ritual activity associated with the great gods. Professor Mary-Ann Pouls Wegner of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations presented her team's findings at a recent meeting of the Society for the Study of Egyptian Antiquities. The wooden statue is one of very few existing royal wooden statues, and may represent the female king Hatshepsut. She was ...

InfoChem GmbH - a market leader in structure and reaction handling and retrieval - and Eidogen-Sertanty, Inc. - a pioneer in chemical applications for mobile devices - have released SPRESImobile a new, jointly developed application for Apple iPod, iPhone and iPad devices. The application, featuring an innovative user interface, provides researchers and students worldwide access to InfoChem's ChemReact: a database containing over 410,000 chemical reactions and related information. ChemReact is a representative subset of SPRESI, InfoChem's structure and reaction database ...

The experienced Orlando auto accident lawyers of Jaspon & Armas, P.A. obtained a jury verdict of $116,000 for a client in a case against State Farm Insurance. Before filing a lawsuit, State's Farm's top offer was $3,5000 for our client. After being forced to file a lawsuit and just before trial, State Farm's top offer for our client was $25,000. State Farm turned down a counter settlement offer from the firm for $75,000.00, so the attorneys at Jaspon & Armas fought for their client in the Miami-Dade Court. The end result was an award by the jury for the client ...

PHILADELPHIA -- More than 90 percent of humans have antibodies to the Epstein Barr virus. Best known for causing mononucleosis, or "the kissing disease," the virus has also been implicated in more serious conditions, including Hodgkin's, non-Hodgkin's and Burkitt's lymphomas. Yet little is known about exactly how EBV triggers these diseases. Now a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine has the first evidence that an Epstein Barr-like virus can infect and may also be responsible for ...