This press release is available in Spanish and Portuguese. A collaborative study conducted in Mexico by researchers of the University of West Virginia-Charleston (USA), Universidad Popular Autónoma del Estado de Puebla (Mexico), Universidad de Chile and the Institute of Molecular Epidemiology of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (Chile), revealed that IPAS-Mexico overestimated rates of maternal and abortion mortality up to 35% over the last two decades. The research, recently published in the International Journal of Women's Health highlights that Mexico ...

BOSTON - Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have isolated a previously unknown protein in muscles that spurs their growth and increased power following resistance exercise. They suggest that artificially raising the protein's levels might someday help prevent muscle loss caused by cancer, prolonged inactivity in hospital patients, and aging. Mice given extra doses of the protein gained muscle mass and strength, and rodents with cancer were much less affected by cachexia, the loss of muscle that often occurs in cancer patients, according to the report in the Dec. ...

A team of researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Manuel Serrano, from the Tumour Suppression Group, together with scientists from London and Santiago de Compostela, has discovered that the cellular reprogramming gene SOX2, which is involved in several types of cancers, such as lung cancer and pituitary cancer, is directly regulated by the tumor suppressor CDKN1B(p27) gene, which is also associated with these types of cancer. The same edition of the online version of the journal also includes a study led by Massimo Squatrito, who recently ...

Berkeley — A gene that helps the body convert that big plate of holiday cookies you just polished off into fat could provide a new target for potential treatments for fatty liver disease, diabetes and obesity. Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are unlocking the molecular mechanisms of how our body converts dietary carbohydrates into fat, and as part of that research, they found that a gene with the catchy name BAF60c contributes to fatty liver, or steatosis. In the study, to be published online Dec. 6 in the journal Molecular Cell, the researchers ...

HOLLYWOOD, FL and EVANSTON, IL, December 6, 2012 -- Naurex Inc., a clinical stage company developing innovative treatments to address unmet needs in psychiatry and neurology, today reported positive results from a Phase IIa clinical trial of its lead antidepressant compound, GLYX-13. GLYX-13 is a novel partial agonist of the NMDA receptor. The Phase Ila results are being presented this week at the 51st Annual Meeting of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP). The Phase IIa results show that a single administration of GLYX-13 produced statistically significant ...

Research by Indiana University paleobotanist David L. Dilcher and colleagues in Europe sheds new light on what Charles Darwin famously called "an abominable mystery": the apparently sudden appearance and rapid spread of flowering plants in the fossil record. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers present a scenario in which flowering plants, or angiosperms, evolved and colonized various types of aquatic environments over about 45 million years in the early to middle Cretaceous Period. Dilcher is professor emeritus at IU Bloomington ...

Bisphenol A, a substance found in many synthetic products, is considered to be harmful, particularly, for fetuses and babies. Researchers from the University of Bonn have now shown in experiments on cells from human and mouse tissue that this environmental chemical blocks calcium channels in cell membranes. Similar effects are elicited by drugs used to treat high blood pressure and cardiac arrhythmia. The results are now presented in the journal "Molecular Pharmacology." The industrial chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is worldwide extensively utilized for manufacturing polycarbonates ...

New research in human volunteers has shown that molecular changes to our genes, known as epigenetic marks, are driven mainly by ageing but are also affected by what we eat. The study showed that whilst age had the biggest effects on these molecular changes, selenium and vitamin D status reduced the accumulation of epigenetic changes, and high blood folate and obesity increased them. These findings support the idea that healthy ageing is affected by what we eat. Researchers from the Institute of Food Research led by Dr Nigel Belshaw, working with Prof John Mathers and ...

Jerusalem Dec. 6, 2012 – A new understanding of what takes place on the cellular level during the development of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS and Huntington's diseases, offers promise towards possible new strategies for combating such diseases, say Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers. Neurodegenerative conditions result from an impairment of motor function or cognitive function or both. This impairment results from degeneration in the particular area of the brain responsible for those functions. Although these neurodegenerative ...

People who recall being absolved of their sins, are more likely to donate money to the church, according to research published today in the journal Religion, Brain and Behavior. Researchers from Royal Holloway and the University of Oxford assigned participants two memory tasks. In the first, they were asked to privately recall a sin that they had committed in the past, while in the second, they recalled attending confession for this sin or imagined doing so, if they had not confessed in reality. Each participant was also given an opportunity to donate to a local Catholic ...

We all have E.coli bacteria in our gut but each of us carries a version that is genetically slightly different. The same can be said of most gut microbes: our own gut metagenome, that is the sum of all the genomes of all our gut microbes, appears to be really specific to each of us, and to remain stable over time. For the first time, researchers from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) have studied this metagenome at such a high resolution that individual mutations in the various strains could be analysed. Their findings, published today in Nature, could have ...

Scientists at the Babraham Institute have gained a new understanding of when and how the DNA in developing egg and sperm cells is 'reset', in preparation for making a new embryo. It is well known that small chemical groups can be added to DNA to alter gene activity, these modifications to the DNA are acquired during development in the womb and throughout adult life and can arise from changes in environment. Most of these modifications are removed in immature egg and sperm cells to 'reset' the DNA and to erase any 'environmental memory', but some remain. Decoding this reprogramming ...

Fighting cancer using the body's own defense system is a promising treatment approach. Immune therapies have even become clinical routine in treating a few cancers such as malignant melanoma and prostate cancer. Natural killer cells (or NK cells) are considered to be particularly suitable weapons against cancer. They are part of the innate immune system and respond to a wide range of cancer cells of diverse origin. Moreover, NK cells also kill tumor cells that have lost a specific target and go unnoticed by other immune cells. "The big problem in using NK cells for therapy ...

The ice sheet in West Antarctica is melting faster than expected. New observations published by oceanographers from the University of Gothenburg and the US may improve our ability to predict future changes in ice sheet mass. The study was recently published in the journal Nature Geoscience. A reduction of the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will affect the water levels of the world's oceans. It is therefore problematic that we currently have insufficient knowledge about the ocean circulation near large glaciers in West Antarctica. This means that researchers ...

Disgust – it's an emotion we experience when we encounter things that are dirty, impure, or otherwise contaminated. From an evolutionary standpoint, experiencing the intense, visceral sense of revulsion that comes with disgust presumably helps us to avoid contaminants that can make us sick or even kill us. But new research suggests that disgust not only helps us to avoid impurities, it may also make us better able to see them. If something looks dirty and disgusting, we typically assume it's contaminated in some way; when something is white, however, we are more likely ...

Research led by the University of York has found that the impacts of climate change on rare plants in tropical mountains will vary considerably from site to site and from species to species. While some species will react to climate change by moving upslope, others will move downslope, driven by changes in seasonality and water availability. The researchers believe that this predicted variation, together with the long-term isolation and relative climatic stability of the mountains, may shed light on historical processes behind current patterns of biodiversity. The study, ...

How well are the most important climate models able to predict the weather conditions for the coming year or even the next decade? The Potsdam scientists Dr. Dörthe Handorf and Prof. Dr. Klaus Dethloff from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) have evaluated 23 climate models and published their results in the current issue of the international scientific journal Tellus A. Their conclusion: there is still a long way to go before reliable regional predictions can be made on seasonal to decadal time scales. None of ...

TORONTO, DEC. 6, 2012—Rapid eye movements are significantly delayed in patients with glaucoma, even those in the early stages of the disease, research has found. The findings, led by Dr. Neeru Gupta, an ophthalmologist at St. Michael's Hospital, may shed new light on why glaucoma patients are at increased risk for falls and car accidents. Glaucoma is the leading cause of irreversible blindness. Rapid (or saccadic) eye movements are the quick, simultaneous movements of both eyes in the same direction. They are involved in a myriad of everyday activities, from reading to ...

New research reveals that the greatest demand for liver transplantation due to hepatitis C (HCV)-related liver disease occurs among Americans born between 1941 and 1960. Findings in the December issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD), suggest that continuing increased demand for transplantation is driven by the development of liver cancer in baby boomers with HCV, but that the demand may decrease as patients born in this time period continue to grow older. HCV is the most ...

Poor hand hygiene is often thought to be the main cause of outbreaks of foodborne illnesses. Although it is well recognized that utensils used for food preparation can harbor bacteria, a new study by Qing Wang and her colleagues from the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, USA, is the first to find that viruses can just as easily be spread by cross-contamination from utensils such as knives and graters. Their study is published in the Springer journal Food and Environmental Virology. The leading cause of foodborne illness in the US is currently Norovirus, ...

Scientists have identified the key molecular pathway leading to depression, revealing potential new targets for drug discovery, according to research led by King's College London's Institute of Psychiatry. The study, published today in Neuropsychopharmacology, reveals for the first time that the 'Hedgehog pathway' regulates how stress hormones, usually elevated during depression, reduce the number of brain cells. Depression affects approximately 1 in 5 people in the UK at some point in their lives. The severity of symptoms can range from feelings of sadness and hopelessness ...

December 6, 2012 — (Bronx, NY) — Children with sleep-related breathing problems (such as snoring or apnea) frequently have concurrent behavioral sleep problems (such as waking repeatedly) — and vice versa, according to research led by a scientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. However, children with one type of sleep problem are not routinely evaluated and treated for the other. The findings suggest that pediatricians, respiratory specialists and sleep medicine specialists should work together whenever a sleep problem is suspected. The study ...

Thanks to improved data analysis techniques and a new operating mode, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) aboard NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is now 10 times better at catching the brief outbursts of high-energy light mysteriously produced above thunderstorms. The outbursts, known as terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), last only a few thousandths of a second, but their gamma rays rank among the highest-energy light that naturally occurs on Earth. The enhanced GBM discovery rate helped scientists show most TGFs also generate a strong burst of radio waves, a finding ...

Researchers at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute, have discovered a new genetic process that could one day provide a novel target for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders, such as intellectual disability and autism. The research study, which appears in the December issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, was led by Carl Ernst, a Douglas Institute researcher, an assistant professor in McGill's Department of Psychiatry and a Canada Research Chair in Psychiatric Genetics. Ernst and his colleagues found that genetic mutations that negatively ...

Montreal, December 6, 2012 – Rows of new toys, endless racks of sweaters on clothing store shelves, long lines of books arranged in the bestsellers section at the bookstore. From mall displays to boutique exhibits, long lines of horizontally arranged products are the norm when it comes to the holiday shopping experience. But how does a product's placement on the storeroom shelf influence which one a consumer ultimately chooses? It turns out that the shopper's eye has a very central focus. "Consumers are more likely to purchase products placed in the middle of a display ...