The wing of a fruit fly may hold the key to unraveling the genetic and molecular events that transform a normal cell into a cancerous one. The study, conducted on Drosophila melanogaster by scientists at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) and led by ICREA researcher Marco Milán, has reproduced each of the steps known to take place when a healthy cell turns cancerous. The researchers have thus provided an inexpensive and effective model that will allow the scientific community to scrutinize the genes and molecules involved in each step. Given that ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Homicide moves through a city in a process similar to infectious disease, according to a new study that may give police a new tool in tracking and ultimately preventing murders. Using Newark, N.J., as a pilot case, a team of Michigan State University researchers led by April Zeoli successfully applied public health tracking methods to the city's 2,366 homicides between 1982 and 2008. They found the killings were not randomly located but instead followed a pattern, evolving from the city's center and moving southward and westward over time. Like ...

Bethesda, MD—Breakthrough drugs have made it possible for people to live with HIV longer than ever before, but more work must be done to actually cure the disease. One of the challenges researchers face involves fully eradicating the virus when it is latent in the body. A new report appearing in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology suggests that a cancer drug, called JQ1, may be useful in purging latent HIV infection by activating the virus in the presence of potent therapy – essentially a dead end for the virus. "This drug may be useful as adjunctive ...

In order to be effective, a Conservation Unit must have available a list of the species that live within it. They also should have detailed information about the distribution of species among the available habitats. It would be difficult to correctly plan the conservation actions and/or monitoring programs without some minimal knowledge about the species (who are the object of those measures). "This is why our study is so important to the park", said Dr. Miranda from Universidade Federal do Maranhão (CCAA/UFMA), leading author of the article, published in the open access ...

As a result of field work by associate professor James Davis Reimer and two graduate students from the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan has found two new species of encrusting anemones, or colonial zoanthids, in unexpected locations. The species belong to the genus Neozoanthus, which was previously known only from a single species in the Indian Ocean. Surprisingly, the new species were found in the Pacific Ocean, in southern Japan and on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The study was published in the open access journal ZooKeys. The only previous species ...

This press release is available in German. A group headed by Remco van den Bosch from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has discovered a black hole that shakes the foundations of current models of galaxy evolution. This monster has 17 billion solar masses and is thus significantly heavier than the models predict. And even more significantly: the object could be the most massive black hole known to date. Astronomers believe there is a super-massive black hole at the heart of every galaxy. Its mass ranges from several hundred thousand solar masses to a few billion. ...

Giving customers a chance to complain can be a bad idea if customers believe they're to blame for a product's failure, a new study from the Sauder School of Business at UBC shows. "It's commonly assumed that giving customers a chance to voice grievances allows companies to maintain relationships," says Marketing Professor Darren Dahl, who co-authored the recent Journal of Marketing study with PhD student Lea Dunn. "But our research shows that when a person feels implicated in a product's failure – think building Ikea furniture – they're more likely to shift blame to ...

Researchers have pushed the boundaries of High Dynamic Range (HDR) video to match our own eyes' ability to cope with the real world's ever rapidly changing light intensity - such as sun simply going behind clouds. Now researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick, have found a way to compress and stream HDR video directly to monitors and mobile devices, such as an iPad, bringing enormous benefits to industries including gaming and security. Researchers at WMG at the University of Warwick, working in partnership with spinout company goHDR Ltd, have succeeded in achieving ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 29—Hoping to expand our understanding of auroras and other fleeting atmospheric events, a team of space-weather researchers designed and built NORUSCA II, a new camera with unprecedented capabilities that can simultaneously image multiple spectral bands, in essence different wavelengths or colors, of light. The camera was tested at the Kjell Henriksen Observatory (KHO) in Svalbard, Norway, where it produced the first-ever hyperspectral images of auroras—commonly referred to as "the Northern (or Southern) Lights"—and may already have revealed a previously ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Bacteria that cause the tick-borne disease anaplasmosis in humans create their own food supply by hijacking a process in host cells that normally should help kill the pathogenic bugs, scientists have found. This bacterium, Anaplasma phagocytophilum (Ap), secretes a protein that can start this process. The protein binds with another protein produced by white blood cells, and that connection creates compartments that siphon host-cell nutrients to feed the bacteria, enabling their growth inside the white blood cells. The finding defies conventional wisdom ...

Bethesda, MD—As insects evolve to become resistant to insecticides, the need to develop new ways to control pests grows. A team of scientists from Leuven, Belgium have discovered that the sea anemone's venom harbors several toxins that promise to become a new generation of insecticides that are environmentally friendly and avoid resistance by the insects. Since these toxins disable ion channels that mediate pain and inflammation, they could also spur drug development aimed at pain, cardiac disorders, epilepsy and seizure disorders, and immunological diseases such as multiple ...

Prion diseases represent a family of neurodegenerative disorders associated with the loss of brain cells and caused by proteins called prions (derived from 'protein' and 'infection'). The diseases are found in both humans and animals, such as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease and mad cow disease respectively. Although mostly harmless, prions can transform into infectious agents, which accumulate in the brain and destroy the nervous tissue. But how exactly does the accumulation of prions cause destruction of the brain? "Understanding the process by which prions destroy neurons ...

Bethesda, MD—Physicians may now be better at detecting breast cancer than ever before, but much more work remains to ensure accurate diagnosis is possible and especially to assess future risk. That's why researchers from Germany have been working to develop a new test of gene action to predict cancer risk both at first diagnosis and into the future. In a new research report appearing in the December 2012 issue of The FASEB Journal, researchers show that the various genetic switches, which are turned on and off in the regular development of every cell in the body, can be ...

Climate scientists are still grappling with one of the main questions of modern times: how high will global temperatures rise if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide doubles. Many researchers are turning to the past because it holds clues to how nature reacted to climate change before the anthropogenic impact. The divergent results of this research, however, have made it difficult to make precise predictions about the impact of increased carbon dioxide on future warming. An international team of scientists have evaluated previously published estimates and assigned ...

ATHENS, Ohio (Nov. 29, 2012)—Astronomers were puzzled earlier this year when NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted an overabundance of dark matter in the heart of the merging galaxy cluster Abell 520. This observation was surprising because dark matter and galaxies should be anchored together, even during a collision between galaxy clusters. Astronomers have abundant evidence that an as-yet-unidentified form of matter is responsible for 90 percent of the gravity within galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Because it is detected via its gravity and not its light, they call ...

ARLINGTON, Va. —The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is looking to the sun for energy in an effort to help Marines do away with diesel-guzzling generators now used in combat outposts, officials announced Nov. 29. The Renewable Sustainable Expeditionary Power (RSEP) program seeks to create a transportable renewable hybrid system that can provide Marines with electricity for a 15-day mission without relying on fuel resupply convoys that often become targets for adversaries. "This program takes on a number of power-related challenges and ultimately will allow the Marine ...

Bethesda, MD—If you're looking to get some of the benefits of exercise without doing the work, here's some good news. A new research report published online in The FASEB Journal shows that low-intensity vibrations led to improvements in the immune function of obese mice. If the same effect can be found in people, this could have clinical benefits for obese people suffering from a wide range of immune problems related to obesity. "This study demonstrates that mechanical signals can help restore an immune system compromised by obesity," said Clinton Rubin, Ph.D., study ...

Washington, D.C. — Oceanic crust covers two-thirds of the Earth's solid surface, but scientists still don't entirely understand the process by which it is made. Analysis of more than 600 samples of oceanic crust by a team including Carnegie's Frances Jenner reveals a systemic pattern that alters long-held beliefs about how this process works, explaining a crucial step in understanding Earth's geological deep processes. Their work is published in Nature on November 29. Magmas generated by melting of the Earth's mantle rise up below the oceanic crust and erupt on the Earth's ...

Philadelphia, PA, November 29, 2012 – A UK-based study team has determined that there is a correlation between childhood intelligence and chronic widespread pain (CWP) in adulthood, according to a new study published in the December issue of PAIN®. About 10-15 percent of adults report CWP, a common musculoskeletal complaint that tends to occur more frequently among women and those from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. CWP is a core symptom of fibromyalgia and is one of the most common reasons for consulting a rheumatologist. "One psychological factor that could ...

CALGARY – A three-month-old Winnipeg girl has become the first patient in Canada to receive an experimental and potentially life-saving form of therapy to improve the function of her liver. Physicians at Alberta Children's Hospital, led by medical geneticist Dr. Aneal Khan, successfully completed a series of liver cell transplants earlier this month on patient Nazdana Ali. Nazdana was born last August with a Urea Cycle Disorder (UCD), a genetic disease that causes ammonia to build up in the body that, if untreated, would lead to brain damage and death. Ammonia is ...

This press release is available in Spanish. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have identified sources of Escherichia coli bacteria that could help restore the reputation of local livestock. Studies by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientist Mark Ibekwe suggest that in some parts of California, pathogens in local waterways are more often carried there via runoff from urban areas, not from animal production facilities. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this work supports the USDA priority of ensuring food safety. Even ...

A new paradigm for understanding the earliest eras in the history of the universe has been developed by scientists at Penn State University. Using techniques from an area of modern physics called loop quantum cosmology, developed at Penn State, the scientists now have extended analyses that include quantum physics farther back in time than ever before -- all the way to the beginning. The new paradigm of loop quantum origins shows, for the first time, that the large-scale structures we now see in the universe evolved from fundamental fluctuations in the essential quantum ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Borrowing from microfabrication techniques used in the semiconductor industry, MIT and Harvard Medical School (HMS) engineers have developed a simple and inexpensive way to create three-dimensional brain tissues in a lab dish. The new technique yields tissue constructs that closely mimic the cellular composition of those in the living brain, allowing scientists to study how neurons form connections and to predict how cells from individual patients might respond to different drugs. The work also paves the way for developing bioengineered implants to replace ...

Vigorous exercise is good for health, but only if it's limited to a maximum daily dose of between 30 and 50 minutes, say researchers in an editorial published online in Heart. The idea that more and more high intensity exercise, such as marathons, can only do you good, is a myth say the US cardiologists, and the evidence shows that it's likely to more harm than good to your heart. "If you really want to do a marathon or full distance triathlon, etc, it may be best to do just one or a few and then proceed to safer and healthier exercise patterns," they warn. "A routine ...

New Rochelle, NY, November 29, 2012—Osteoporosis, or reduced bone mineral density that can increase the risk of fractures, may affect as many as 30% of women and 12% of men worldwide. One risk factor for osteoporosis is vitamin D deficiency. A modified form of the vitamin D receptor present in some individuals may lower their risk for developing osteoporosis, according to an article in Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available on the Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers website. To ...