Cold Spring Harbor, NY – A team of neuroscientists and informatics experts at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) reports important progress in an effort to understand the relationship between transposons – sequences of DNA that can jump around within the genome, potentially causing great damage – and mechanisms involved in serious neurodegenerative disorders including ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), FTLD (frontotemporal lobar degeneration) and Alzheimer's disease. A close analysis of previously unanalyzed genome data has led ...

TORONTO, ON – Men who experienced childhood sexual abuse are three times more likely to have a heart attack than men who were not sexually abused as children, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto. The researchers found no association between childhood sexual abuse and heart attacks among women. In a paper published online this week in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect, investigators examined gender-specific differences in a representative sample of 5095 men and 7768 women aged 18 and over, drawn from the Center for Disease Control's 2010 ...

New Rochelle, NY, September 6, 2012—The naturally occurring cytokine interleukin-18, or IL-18, plays a key role in inflammation and has been implicated in serious inflammatory diseases for which the prognosis is poor and there are currently limited treatment options. Therapies targeting IL-18 could prove effective against inflammatory diseases of the lung including bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), as described in a review article published in Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research (http://www.liebertpub.com/jir), a peer-reviewed publication ...

DETROIT – Antioxidants, dietary supplements and high-tech brain imaging are among some of the novel strategies that may help detect, treat and even prevent noise-induced hearing loss and tinnitus among American troops, according to researchers at Henry Ford Hospital. A culmination of nearly 25 years of research on noise-induced hearing loss – a growing medical issue that affects more than 12 percent of American troops returning from conflicts around the globe – will be presented Sept. 9 at the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery annual meeting in Washington, ...

WASHINGTON — America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual, says a new report from the Institute of Medicine. Inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness, the report says. However, the knowledge and tools exist to put the health system on the right course to achieve continuous improvement and better quality care at lower cost, added the committee that wrote the report. The ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- A new study led by MIT neuroscientists has found that brain scans of patients with social anxiety disorder can help predict whether they will benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy. Social anxiety is usually treated with either cognitive behavioral therapy or medications. However, it is currently impossible to predict which treatment will work best for a particular patient. The team of researchers from MIT, Boston University (BU) and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) found that the effectiveness of therapy could be predicted by measuring patients' ...

The fourth-quarter comeback to win the game. The tumor that appeared on a second scan. The guy in accounting who was secretly embezzling company funds. The situation may be different each time, but we hear ourselves say it over and over again: "I knew it all along." The problem is that too often we actually didn't know it all along, we only feel as though we did. The phenomenon, which researchers refer to as "hindsight bias," is one of the most widely studied decision traps and has been documented in various domains, including medical diagnoses, accounting and auditing ...

NASA's Aqua satellite flew over Tropical Storm Leslie on Sept. 5 during a picture perfect moment, just as it was being re-classified as a hurricane, and captured two images of the storm. The National Hurricane Center issued the advisory confirming Leslie's hurricane status at 1:45 p.m. EDT after examining visible, infrared, microwave and other data from satellites. Two instruments that fly aboard NASA's Aqua satellite provided infrared and visible imagery of Leslie as it was crossing the threshold from tropical storm to hurricane status on Sept. 5. The Moderate Resolution ...

Grandparents, an increasingly important source of child care in the United States, vary greatly in the kind of care they provide, depending on their age, resources, and the needs of their children, research at the University of Chicago shows. A new UChicago study, based on a National Institute on Aging survey, shows that 60 percent of grandparents provided some care for their grandchildren during a 10-year period, and 70 percent of those who did provided care for two years or more. The results mirror recent U.S. Census data showing the importance of grandparents in ...

As it passed through the northern Caribbean, around south Florida, and into Louisiana and the Middle Mississippi Valley, Hurricane Isaac brought lots of rain, some of it beneficial, and some of it not. Using data from the TRMM satellite, NASA created images of rainfall totals generated along Hurricane Isaac's path. In addition to capturing detailed images of tropical storms, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite is ideally suited to measure rainfall from space. TRMM is managed by NASA and the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA. For increased coverage, TRMM ...

Montreal, September 6, 2012 – Can a computer "read" an online blog and understand it? Several Concordia computer scientists are helping to get closer to that goal. Leila Kosseim, associate professor in Concordia's Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, and a recently-graduated doctoral student, Shamima Mithun, have developed a system called BlogSum that has potentially vast applications. It allows an organization to pose a question and then find out how a large number of people talking online would respond. The system is capable of gauging things like consumer preferences ...

If you end up with a rash on a new tattoo, you should probably think twice before brushing it off as an allergic reaction or a normal part of the healing process. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine documents 19 cases in the Rochester, N.Y., area – the largest ever reported – of tattoos infected with a type of bacteria often found in tap water. Evidence points to a premixed gray ink, the type used in currently popular portrait or photography tattoos, as the culprit. Mary Gail Mercurio, M.D., a dermatologist at the University of Rochester Medical ...

HOLLYWOOD Fla. — Some deep-sea crabs have eyes sensitive to ultraviolet light, which they may use to snatch glowing plankton and stuff it in their mouths, a new Nova Southeastern University study suggests. Tamara Frank, Ph.D., a marine biologist and associate professor at Nova Southeastern University's Oceanographic Center, who is the principal investigator of the study, said that crabs living the deep-sea zone --- a pitch dark area at the ocean bottom ---- may be using bioluminescence to help sort out their food. Duke University marine biologist Sönke Johnsen. Ph.D., ...

The international Encode project, a collaborative study bringing together hundred of scientists from all round the world, including researchers working at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), published results yesterday mapping the control and regulation of genome activity. These results indicate a total of four million 'switches' controlling the gene activity of 147 types of human cells and tissue. This map provides us with the first comprehensive vision of the genome as a complex web of interactions, and goes far beyond our initial thinking, which assigned ...

With the impending completion of redevelopment on 1 & 7 Ionia and another property closing in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, soon to be announced, urban real estate development firm 616 Development is establishing its brand in the digital space. The company's new website, 616Development.com, offers detailed insights into the company's founding, its core members, key development projects and its unique approach to urban development. Alongside engagement in prominent social networks, the website lays the foundation for the brand's voice in both digital and non-digital ...

NEWPORT, Ore. – Magellanic penguins have a high level of variation in genes associated with the ability to fight infectious disease, but a recent study found that the mechanism the penguins use to ensure that diversity is far from black and white. Found exclusively south of the equator in South America, Magellanic penguins assemble in large nesting colonies along the coasts of Argentina, Chile, and the Falkland Islands. They typically mate for life, producing clutches of two eggs that are cared for by both parents. While individual colonies can number in the millions ...

MINNEAPOLIS – New research shows that professional football players may be at a higher risk of death from diseases that damage the cells in the brain, such as Alzheimer's disease and ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), compared to the general U.S. population. The study is published in the September 5, 2012, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study included 3,439 players with an average age of 57 from the National Football League with at least five playing seasons from 1959-1988. Researchers reviewed death ...

The World Health Organization is about to roll out a new strategy for AIDS prevention in South Africa, a country where more than 5 million people are infected with HIV. Based on a mathematical model, the WHO predicts this strategy will completely eliminate HIV in South Africa within a decade. But not so fast, suggests a group of UCLA researchers. Their work challenges the proposed strategy by showing it could lead to several million individuals developing drug-resistant strains of HIV. And further, they say, it will cost billions of dollars more than the WHO has estimated. ...

Sleep disruptions may be among the earliest indicators of Alzheimer's disease, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report Sept. 5 in Science Translational Medicine. Working in a mouse model, the researchers found that when the first signs of Alzheimer's plaques appear in the brain, the normal sleep-wake cycle is significantly disrupted. "If sleep abnormalities begin this early in the course of human Alzheimer's disease, those changes could provide us with an easily detectable sign of pathology," says senior author David M. Holtzman, MD, ...

Population Council scientists have found that a vaginal ring releasing an anti-HIV drug can prevent the transmission of SHIV in macaques. This study provides the first efficacy data on the delivery of a microbicide from a vaginal ring, and indicates strong potential for the success of such rings in women. Microbicides are compounds that can be applied inside the vagina or rectum to protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV. "This proof-of-concept study confirms that the investment in vaginal rings as a delivery system for HIV prevention is ...

Researchers at the University of Washington have determined that the majority of genetic changes associated with more than 400 common diseases and clinical traits affect the genome's regulatory circuitry. These are the regions of DNA that contain instructions dictating when and where genes are switched on or off. Most of these changes affect circuits that are active during early human development, when body tissues are most vulnerable. By creating extensive blueprints of the control circuitry, the research also exposed previously hidden connections between different ...

The hundreds of researchers working on the ENCODE project have revealed that much of what has been called 'junk DNA' in the human genome is actually a massive control panel with millions of switches regulating the activity of our genes. Without these switches, genes would not work – and mutations in these regions might lead to human disease. The new information delivered by ENCODE is so comprehensive and complex that it has given rise to a new publishing model in which electronic documents and datasets are interconnected. Just as the Human Genome Project revolutionised ...

Albatrosses leverage the energy of the wind to fly with essentially no mechanical cost to themselves, very rarely flapping their wings, and new work published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE offers insight into how exactly they accomplish this feat. The researchers, led by Gottfried Sachs of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Francesco Bonadonna of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), used advanced GPS tracking to determine that the energy gain during the albatross's "dynamic soaring" comes from a repeated oscillation consisting ...

Closer sleeping proximity between fathers and children is associated with a greater decrease in the father's testosterone level, with possible implications for parenting behavior. The full report is published Sep. 5 in the open access journal PLOS ONE. Fathers' testosterone levels have been associated with parenting behavior and involvement across species, with higher levels generally associated with lower parental involvement. The authors of the current study, led by Lee Gettler of the University of Notre Dame, studied 362 fathers in the Philippines to determine whether ...

The first integrated understanding of how the human genome functions will be published this week -- the triumphant result of a collaborative five-year project involving more than 440 researchers working in 32 labs worldwide. The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements project, known as ENCODE, will publish simultaneously on 6 September 2012 a massive number of scientific papers, including 1 main integrative paper and 5 others in Nature; 18 in Genome Research; 6 in Genome Biology; and other affiliated papers in Science, Cell, and other scientific journals. During the ENCODE study, ...