The unexpected survival of embryonic neurons transplanted into the brains of newborn mice in a series of experiments at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) raises hope for the possibility of using neuronal transplantation to treat diseases like Alzheimer's, epilepsy, Huntington's, Parkinson's and schizophrenia. The experiments, described this week in the journal Nature, were not designed to test whether embryonic neuron transplants could effectively treat any specific disease. But they provide a proof-of-principle that GABA-secreting interneurons, a type ...

White non-Hispanic construction workers are awarded higher workers' compensation settlements in Illinois than Hispanic or black construction workers with similar injuries and disabilities, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. The disparity amounted to approximately $6,000 more for white non-Hispanic claimants compared to minority workers in the same industry, says Lee Friedman, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at UIC and lead author of the study, which was published in the October ...

Scientists at University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) have observed a decrease in the frequency of northeast trade winds and an increase in eastern trade winds over the past nearly four decades, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. For example, northeast trade wind days, which occurred 291 days per year 37 years ago at the Honolulu International Airport, now only occur 210 days per year. Jessica Garza, a Meteorology Graduate Assistant at the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at UHM; Pao-Shin Chu, Meteorology ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Few physicians recommend active surveillance for low-risk prostate cancer rather than pursuing surgery or radiation, according to a Mayo Clinic study being presented at the North Central Section of the American Urological Association's annual meeting Oct. 10 in Chicago. Mayo Clinic urologists also are discussing findings on enlarged prostates, bladder cancer and other research and will be available to provide expert comment to journalists on others' studies. Mayo studies being presented, and their embargo dates and times, include: Active Surveillance ...

Researchers from Johns Hopkins and Northwestern universities have discovered how to control the shape of nanoparticles that move DNA through the body and have shown that the shapes of these carriers may make a big difference in how well they work in treating cancer and other diseases. This study, to be published in the Oct. 12 online edition of the journal Advanced Materials, is also noteworthy because this gene therapy technique does not use a virus to carry DNA into cells. Some gene therapy efforts that rely on viruses have posed health risks. "These nanoparticles ...

New York, NY and Hyderabad (India) – A new report published today by Panthera confirms that widespread illegal hunting and the bushmeat trade occur more frequently and with greater impact on wildlife populations in the Southern and Eastern savannas of Africa than previously thought, and if unaddressed could potentially cause a 'conservation crisis.' The report challenges previously held beliefs of the impact of illegal bushmeat hunting and trade in Africa with new data from experts. While the bushmeat trade has long been recognized as a severe threat to the food resources ...

The Cuban Missile Crisis took place 50 years ago this October, when US and Soviet leaders pulled back from the very brink of nuclear war. This was the closest the world has come to nuclear war, but exactly how close has been a matter of some speculation. The conflict, itself, has been analyzed and interpreted, but the number and types of nuclear weapons that were operational have not. According to fresh analysis available today in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, senior experts calculate the nature of weapons capabilities on both sides, and write ...

The potential of GMES for crisis management and environmental monitoring is highlighted in a new publication with users demonstrating the importance of Earth observation data to European regions. The joint ESA-NEREUS (Network of European Regions Using Space Technologies) publication is a collection of articles that provide insight into how the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) programme is being used in new applications and services across Europe. The articles, prepared by regional end-users, research institutes and industry providers from 17 different ...

With their excellent sensitivity and specificity, the use of these extremely efficient tests on a world-wide scale would allow us to adapt antibiotic treatments to the individual's needs and to be more successful in controlling antibiotic resistance, particularly in hospitals. These works were published in September in two international reviews: Emerging Infectious diseases and The Journal of Clinical Microbiology. These diagnostic tests will allow rapid identification of certain bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics and hence: Allow us to better adapt the treatment ...

Scientists from the University of Southampton have identified a repeating trigger for the largest explosive volcanic eruptions on Earth. The Las Cañadas volcanic caldera on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, has generated at least eight major eruptions during the last 700,000 years. These catastrophic events have resulted in eruption columns of over 25km high and expelled widespread pyroclastic material over 130km. By comparison, even the smallest of these eruptions expelled over 25 times more material than the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, Iceland. By analysing ...

Almost everything that happens inside a cell, including autophagy, is tightly regulated on a biochemical level. Like that, the cell makes sure that processes only take place when they are needed and that they are shut off when the need has expired. "Inside the cell, there exists a network of molecules. Between them, information is constantly being exchanged," says Schmitz, head of the research group "Systems-oriented Immunology and Inflammation Research" at HZI, who also holds a chair at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg. "In a way, it looks like a big city ...

In a study published in the Journal of Neuroscience and funded by the Wellcome Trust, Newcastle University scientists reveal the interaction between the region of the brain that processes sound, the auditory cortex, and the amygdala, which is active in the processing of negative emotions when we hear unpleasant sounds. Brain imaging has shown that when we hear an unpleasant noise the amygdala modulates the response of the auditory cortex heightening activity and provoking our negative reaction. "It appears there is something very primitive kicking in," says Dr Sukhbinder ...

Kidney transplants performed in Europe are considerably more successful in the long run than those performed in the United States. While the one-year survival rate is 90% in both Europe and the United States, after five years, 77% of the donor kidneys in Europe still function, while in the United States, this rate among white Americans is only 71%. After ten years, graft survival for the two groups is 56% versus 46%, respectively. The lower survival rates compared to Europe also apply to Hispanic Americans, in whom 48% of the transplanted kidneys still function after ten ...

RUSTON, La. – Dr. Mark DeCoster, the James E. Wyche III Endowed Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech University, will lead a team of Louisiana Tech neuroscientists in presenting a lecture at the Society for Neuroscience's (SfN) annual meeting, October 15 in New Orleans. The lecture titled, "Randomization of submaximal glutamate stimulus to interpret astrocyte effect on calcium dynamics," will be featured as part of Neuroscience 2012 – SfN's annual meeting that provides the world's largest forum for neuroscientists to debut research and network with colleagues ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A new approach that allows objects to become "invisible" has now been applied to an entirely different area: letting particles "hide" from passing electrons, which could lead to more efficient thermoelectric devices and new kinds of electronics. The concept — developed by MIT graduate student Bolin Liao, former postdoc Mona Zebarjadi (now an assistant professor at Rutgers University), research scientist Keivan Esfarjani, and mechanical engineering professor Gang Chen — is described in a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters. Normally, electrons ...

Powdered turmeric has been used for centuries to treat osteoarthritis and other illnesses. Its active ingredient, curcumin, inhibits inflammatory reactions. A new study led by a research team at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich now shows that it can also inhibit formation of metastases. Prostate cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies in the Western world, and is often diagnosed only after metastatic tumors have formed in other organs. In three percent of cases, these metastases are lethal. A research team led by PD Dr. Beatrice Bachmeier at LMU ...

At a meeting with New England commercial fishermen last December, physical oceanographers Glen Gawarkiewicz and Al Plueddemann from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were alerted by three fishermen about unusually high surface water temperatures and strong currents on the outer continental shelf south of New England. "I promised them I would look into why that was happening," Gawarkiewicz says. The result of his investigation was a discovery that the Gulf Stream diverged well to the north of its normal path beginning in late October 2011, causing the warmer-than-usual ...

This press release is available in German.Cancer, diabetes, and excess body weight have one thing in common: they alter cellular metabolism. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg and the Medical University of Vienna together with an international research team have jointly resolved a new molecular circuit controlling cellular metabolism. The previously unknown signalling pathway, acting downstream of the hedgehog protein enables muscle cells and brown fat cells to absorb sugars without relying on insulin. Substances that selectively ...

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Oct. 12, 2012 – Scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have taken the first steps to create neural-like stem cells from muscle tissue in animals. Details of the work are published in two complementary studies published in the September online issues of the journals Experimental Cell Research and Stem Cell Research. "Reversing brain degeneration and trauma lesions will depend on cell therapy, but we can't harvest neural stem cells from the brain or spinal cord without harming the donor," said Osvaldo Delbono, M.D., Ph.D., professor of internal ...

(October 12, 2012) In a new study published in Frontiers, Dr Timothy Durazzo and colleagues from the San Francisco VA Medical Center and University of California, San Francisco, expand upon their decade of research showing that smoking while kicking the alcohol habit impairs memory, learning and other cognitive skills--ultimately making it more difficult to weather the long storm of sobriety. Cigarettes, substance abuse and the military "Given our strong and consistent research findings in both Veterans and civilians on the ill-effects of chronic smoking, we truly hope ...

Despite Pittsburgh's mass exodus of young people in the 1980s, data released today by the University of Pittsburgh's University Center for Social and Urban Research and PittsburghTODAY show that over the past five years Pittsburgh has seen a seven percent influx of young people ages 20-34. The report, Young Adults Report 2012, draws the most comprehensive profile to date of the young men and women in the 32-county Pittsburgh region. Findings are based onPittsburghTODAY's reporting, as well as on an extensive regional survey and focus groups conducted jointly by the University ...

Lance Armstrong's doping scandal may be considered by U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) as "more extensive than any previously revealed in professional sports history," but a new editorial in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) by USADA's Larry D. Bowers shows that it is clearly not the first. From early athletes who used rat poison and heroin to fight fatigue to modern Olympians who perform under the ever-present shadow of high tech hormones, stimulants and steroids, this editorial lays out both the history and the science behind athletic "doping" scandals. Bowers ...

Highlights In the largest study of its kind, a variant within the multidrug resistance 1 (MDR-1) gene in kidney transplant donors was linked to a 69% increased risk for long-term failure of transplanted organs. This variant affects the expression of the protein that the MDR-1 gene encodes, which pumps drugs out of cells. (Immunosuppressant drugs are critical for preventing organ rejection but are also toxic to the kidneys.) Washington, DC (October 11, 2012) — A single genetic variant in kidney donors' cells may help determine whether their transplanted organs will survive ...

Boston, MA -- New research that combines cell phone data from 15 million people in Kenya with detailed information on the regional incidence of malaria has revealed, on the largest scale so far, how human travel patterns contribute to the disease's spread. The findings from researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and seven other institutions indicate that malaria, in large part, emanates from Kenya's Lake Victoria region and spreads east, chiefly toward the capital, Nairobi. The study appears in the October 12, 2012 issue of the journal Science. "This ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – A group of researchers have proposed creating a new web-based data network to help researchers and policymakers worldwide turn existing knowledge into real-world applications and technologies and improve science and innovation policy. Researchers around the world have created datasets that, if interlinked with other datasets and made more broadly available could provide the needed foundation for policy and decision makers. But these datasets are spread across countries, scientific disciplines and data providers, and appear in a variety of inconsistent ...