Scientists have established a genetic mouse model for primary ovarian insufficiency (POI), a human condition in which women experience irregular menstrual cycles and reduced fertility, and early exposure to estrogen deficiency. POI affects approximately one in a hundred women. In most cases of primary ovarian insufficiency, the cause is mysterious, although genetics is known to play a causative role. There are no treatments designed to help preserve fertility. Some women with POI retain some ovarian function and a fraction (5-10 percent) have children after receiving ...

The hormone estrogen stimulates the growth of breast cancers that are estrogen-receptor positive, the most common form of breast cancer. The drug tamoxifen blocks this estrogen effect and prolongs the lives of, and helps to cure, patients with estrogen-sensitive breast cancer. About 30 percent of these patients have tumors that are resistant to tamoxifen. This study shows how these resistant tumors survive and grow, and it identifies an experimental agent that targets these breast cancers. COLUMBUS, Ohio – A study by researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive ...

Scientists' discovery of an important step in the body's process for healing wounds may lead to a new way of treating inflammation. A study published today in Current Biology details how an international team of researchers led by Monash University's Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) discovered the mechanism, which shuts down the signal triggering the body's initial inflammatory response to injury. When the body suffers a wound or abrasion, white blood cells, or leukocytes, travel to the site of the injury to protect the tissue from infection and start ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- When the parasite responsible for malaria infects human red blood cells, it launches a 48-hour remodeling of the host cells. During the first 24 hours of this cycle, a protein called RESA undertakes the first step of renovation: enhancing the stiffness of the cell membranes. That increased rigidity impairs red blood cells' ability to travel through the blood vessels, especially at fever temperatures, according to a new study from researchers at MIT, the Institut Pasteur and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). This marks the ...

Washington, DC, August 30, 2012 – Less than half of U.S. schools address pandemic preparedness in their school plan, and only 40 percent have updated their school plan since the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, according to a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). A team of researchers from Saint Louis University collected and analyzed survey responses from approximately 2,000 school nurses serving primarily elementary, middle, ...

Bethesda, MD—A research report published in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Leukocyte Biology offers a possible explanation of why some cancer vaccines are not as effective as hoped, while at the same time identifies a new therapeutic strategy for treating autoimmune problems. In the report, scientists suggest that cancer, even in the very early stages, produces a negative immune response from dendritic cells, which prevent lymphocytes from working against the disease. Although problematic for cancer treatment, these flawed dendritic cells could be valuable therapeutic ...

An entire group of millipedes previously unknown in Australia has been discovered by a specialist – on museum shelves. Hundreds of tiny specimens of the widespread tropical family Pyrgodesmidae have been found among bulk samples in two museums, showing that native pyrgodesmids are not only widespread in Australia's tropical and subtropical forests, but are also abundant and diverse. The study has been published in the open access journal ZooKeys. "Most pyrgodesmid species are so small they could be easily overlooked," explained millipede specialist Dr Robert Mesibov, ...

Rats born to mothers fed high-fat diets but who get normal levels of fat in their diets right after birth avoid obesity and its related disorders as adults, according to new Johns Hopkins research. Meanwhile, rat babies exposed to a normal-fat diet in the womb but nursed by rat mothers on high-fat diets become obese by the time they are weaned. The experiments suggest that what mammalian babies — including humans — get to eat as newborns and young children may be more important to their metabolic future than exposure to unhealthy nutrition in the womb, the Hopkins ...

Fewer women than men are asked to write in the leading scientific journals. That is established by two researchers from Lund University in Sweden, who criticise the gender bias. In the 30 August issue of Nature, researchers have published an article showing that a much lower percentage of women than men are invited to write articles in News & Views in Nature and Perspectives in Science. "We believe that fewer women than men are offered the career boost of invitation-only authorship in each of the two leading science journals" says Daniel Conley, a researcher at Lund ...

Dark chocolate lovers can handle a wider range of bitter tastes before rejection compared to milk chocolate fans, according to Penn State food scientists. In a test of bitterness rejection levels in chocolate, people who prefer milk chocolate quickly detected -- and disliked -- milk chocolate with a bitter substance added to the candy, according to Meriel Harwood, a graduate student in food science. Dark chocolate fans had significantly higher tolerance to the added bitterness than people who like milk chocolate. "In some cases, you may be able to detect a change in ...

VIDEO: This movie compares the blood flow dynamics in a cross-section of the foot between a healthy individual and a diabetic patient with PAD. Differences are clearly visible in both the... Click here for more information. WASHINGTON, Aug. 30, 2012—For many diabetics, monitoring their condition involves much more than adhering to a routine of glucose sensing and insulin injections. It also entails carefully monitoring the ongoing toll this disease takes on their body. An ...

Reservoirs near the mouth of the Susquehanna River just above Chesapeake Bay are nearly at capacity in their ability to trap sediment. As a result, large storms are already delivering increasingly more suspended sediment and nutrients to the Bay, which may negatively impact restoration efforts. Too many nutrients rob the Bay of oxygen needed for fish and, along with sediment, cloud the waters, disturbing the habitat of underwater plants crucial for aquatic life and waterfowl. "The upstream reservoirs have served previously to help reduce nutrient pollutant loads to ...

Patients with uncontrolled renovascular hypertension saw a significant improvement in their blood pressure with renal artery stent deployment. The multicenter HERCULES trial, evaluating the safety and effectiveness of the RX Herculink Elite Stent, found that patients with higher blood pressure levels at baseline had the most dramatic reduction in blood pressure following intervention. Trial details appear in Catheterization and Cardiovascular Interventions, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI). Narrowing ...

A new study published in the journal Respirology reveals that water pipe smoking, such as hookah or bong smoking, affects lung function and respiratory symptoms as much as cigarette smoking. Most users of water pipes and many physicians believe that smoking through a water pipe filters out the toxic components of tobacco and is considerably less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Led by Mohammad Hossein Boskabady, MD, PhD, of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, researchers set out to compare lung function and respiratory symptoms among water pipe smokers, deep or ...

A team of researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Research Institute defined a new treatment for a potentially fatal lung disease in patients with a primary immunodeficiency known as common variable immunodeficiency (CVID).The findings are published in the Journal of Clinical Immunology. Common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) is the most common primary immunodeficiency that requires regular treatment with medication, specifically immunoglobulin (antibodies) replacement therapy. With immunoglobulin therapy, deaths from infection ...

PASADENA, Calif.—As an animal develops from an embryo, its cells take diverse paths, eventually forming different body parts -- muscles, bones, heart. In order for each cell to know what to do during development, it follows a genetic blueprint, which consists of complex webs of interacting genes called gene regulatory networks. Biologists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have spent the last decade or so detailing how these gene networks control development in sea-urchin embryos. Now, for the first time, they have built a computational model of one ...

"Wisdom comes with winters," Oscar Wilde once said. And it's certainly comforting to think that aging benefits the mind, if not the body. But do we really get wiser as time passes? There are many way to define what exactly wisdom is, but previous literature suggests that having wisdom means that you are also good at resolving conflict. But conflict is not handled the same way across cultures. Americans have been shown to emphasize individuality and solve conflict in a direct manner, such as by using direct persuasion. In contrast, the Japanese place a greater emphasis ...

Corals are an invaluable part of the marine ecosystem, fostering biodiversity and protecting coastlines. But they're also increasingly endangered. Pathogenic bacteria, along with pollution and harmful fishing practices, are one of the biggest threats to the world's coral populations today. One of the solutions to the crisis may lie in human medicine. Prof. Eugene Rosenberg of Tel Aviv University's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, working in collaboration with Dr. Ilil Atad of his own laboratory and Prof. Yossi Loya of TAU's Department of Zoology, ...

A smooth blanket of snow in the winter can help boost dryland crop productivity in the summer, and no-till management is one way to ensure that blanket coverage, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research. Agricultural Research Service (ARS) soil scientist David Huggins conducted studies to determine how standing crop residues affect snow accumulation and soil water levels across entire fields. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this work supports the USDA priority of responding to climate change. Huggins, who works at ...

Bethesda, MD — Scientists have moved closer toward helping people grow big, strong muscles without needing to hit the weight room. Australian researchers have found that by blocking the function of a protein called Grb10 while mice were in the womb, they were considerably stronger and more muscular than their normal counterparts. This discovery appears in the September 2012 issue of The FASEB Journal. Outside of aesthetics, this study has important implications for a wide range of conditions that are worsened by, or cause muscle wasting, such as injury, muscular dystrophy, ...

DETROIT — A Wayne State University researcher has developed technology that opens new possibilities for health care and medical applications of electronic devices. Yong Xu, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering, has developed a simple technology compatible with silicon-on-insulator (SOI) complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) processes for making flexible electronics. "A Silicon-On-Insulator Complementary-Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor Compatible Flexible Electronics Technology," published recently in Applied Physics ...

BOSTON -- Two papers led by scientific teams from the Cancer Genetics Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) shed new light on the genetic mechanisms underlying cellular energy and metabolism and, at the same time, highlight both the challenges and opportunities of genetic approaches to cancer treatment. Appearing in the September 2012 issues of The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) and Nature Medicine, the new findings reveal surprising insights into how PML regulates metabolism via the fatty acid oxidation (FAO) pathway and, in the process, uncover ...

This composite image shows a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth. Many new stars, some of them very massive, are forming in the star cluster NGC 1929, which is embedded in the nebula N44, so named because it is the 44th nebula in a catalog of such objects in the Magellanic Clouds. The massive stars produce intense radiation, expel matter at high speeds, and race through their evolution to explode as supernovas. The winds and supernova shock waves carve out huge cavities ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- University of Missouri researchers have developed new software using smartphones' GPS and imaging abilities, that determine the exact location of distant objects as well as monitor the speed and direction of moving objects. The software could eventually allow smartphone-armed soldiers to target the location of their enemies. On the home front, the software could be used by everyone, including golfers judging distance to the green and biologists documenting the location of a rare animal without disturbing it. "The great advantage of a smartphone is that ...

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., August 30, 2012 — Los Alamos National Laboratory expertise in radiation detection and shielding is poised to help a national team of scientists better understand a mysterious region that can create hazardous space weather near our home planet. The Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) analyzer is one of a suite of instruments that was successfully launched today as part of the Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission—an effort by NASA and the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory to gain insight into the Sun's influence on Earth and near-Earth ...