LA JOLLA, CA – September 23, 2012 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have shown how to synthesize in the laboratory an important set of natural compounds known as terpenes. The largest class of chemicals made by living organisms, terpenes are made within cells by some of the most complex chemical reactions found in biology. The new technique, described in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Chemistry on September 23, 2012, mimics a crucial but obscure biochemical phenomenon that allows cells to make terpenes. The discovery may one day result in ...

In the quest to understand how the brain turns sensory input into behavior, Harvard scientists have crossed a major threshold. Using precisely-targeted lasers, researchers have been able to take over an animal's brain, instruct it to turn in any direction they choose, and even to implant false sensory information, fooling the animal into thinking food was nearby. As described in a September 23 paper published in Nature, a team made up of Sharad Ramanathan, an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, and of Applied Physics, Askin Kocabas, a Post-Doctoral ...

What if you woke up every day to find that the closest grocery store had moved several miles farther away from your home? Over time, you would have to travel hundreds of extra miles to find essential food for yourself and your family. This is potentially a scenario faced by thousands of marine animals affected by climate change. A new study published in Nature Climate Change examines the distribution of various open ocean animals in the North Pacific and explores how that could change over the next century as global ocean temperatures increase and productivity levels ...

Women who were born preterm are at increased risk of complications during pregnancy compared to those born at term, and the risk almost doubles for mothers born before 32 weeks, according to a study in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Pregnancy complications include gestational diabetes, gestational hypertension, and preeclampsia or eclampsia. The findings are based on a study of 7405 women born preterm and 16 714 women born at term between 1976 and 1995 in the province of Quebec. Of the preterm women, 554 were less than 32 weeks at birth and 6851 were at ...

With more women in family medicine in Canada, what does this mean for the specialty and the profession, for patients and for society, asks a Salon opinion piece in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). Female family physicians (FPs) now outnumber males, with 50.6% of the profession now female; this trend will continue as older, mainly male, physicians retire. These changing demographics will have implications for the way medicine is practised and for patients. Female FPs practise differently than men, working fewer hours (47 v. 52), seeing fewer patients but with ...

Castrated men living in Korea centuries ago outlived other men by a significant margin. The findings, reported in the September 25 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that male sex hormones are responsible for shortening the lives of men, the researchers say. The evidence comes after careful study of genealogy records of noble members of the Imperial court of the Korean Chosun dynasty (AD 1392-1910). "This discovery adds an important clue for understanding why there is a difference in the expected life span between men and women," said Kyung-Jin ...

Small proteins in the cornea protect against bacterial infection Exposed tissue surfaces, including skin and mucous membranes, are under constant threat of attack by microorganisms in the environment. The layer of cells that line these areas, known as epithelial cells, are the first line of defense against these pathogens, but the underlying molecular mechanisms that allow them to repel microbes are unknown. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, report that epithelial cells in the cornea, which ...

Exposed tissue surfaces, including skin and mucous membranes, are under constant threat of attack by microorganisms in the environment. The layer of cells that line these areas, known as epithelial cells, are the first line of defense against these pathogens, but the underlying molecular mechanisms that allow them to repel microbes are unknown. In this issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, report that epithelial cells in the cornea, which is highly resistant to bacterial infection, express small antimicrobial ...

VIDEO: This movie shows a pregnant chimpanzee undergoing an ultrasound imaging procedure to explore brain growth in her fetus. Click here for more information. Humans' superior brain size in comparison to their chimpanzee cousins traces all the way back to the womb. That's according to a study reported in the September 25 issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, that is the first to track and compare brain growth in chimpanzee and human fetuses. "Nobody knew ...

This press release is available in French. Women who were born premature are more likely to have pregnancy complications than women who weren't, according to data analyzed by a team lead by Dr. Anne Monique Nuyt, a neonatal specialist and researcher at the Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center and University of Montreal. This is the first study to clearly show the impact of preterm birth (i.e. before 37 weeks of gestation) itself on pregnancy risks. "We knew that to be born with a low birth weight could be associated with increased risk of pregnancy ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – Scientists at Arizona State University have discovered that ants utilize a strategy to handle "information overload." Temnothorax rugatulus ants, commonly found living in rock crevices in the Southwest, place the burden of making complicated decisions on the backs of the entire colony, rather than on an individual ant. In a study published in the early, online version of scientific journal Current Biology, Stephen Pratt, an associate professor in ASU's School of Life Sciences in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Takao Sasaki, a graduate student ...

VIDEO: DNA origami is a process that can be used to self-assemble shapes that are of nanometer dimensions -- 100 nanometers is about 1,000 times shorter than the width of an... Click here for more information. BOSTON, September 24, 2012—Much like the checkout clerk uses a machine that scans the barcodes on packages to identify what customers bought at the store, scientists use powerful microscopes and their own kinds of barcodes to help them identify various parts of a cell, ...

New York, NY and Uppsala, Sweden, September 24, 2012 – Death plays a big role in keeping things alive. Consider the tightly orchestrated suicide of cells--a phenomenon essential to everything from shaping an embryo to keeping it free of cancer later in life. When cells refuse to die, and instead multiply uncontrollably, they become what we call tumors. An intricate circuitry of biochemical reactions inside cells coordinates their self-sacrifice. Tracing that circuitry is, naturally, an important part of cancer research. In a major contribution to that effort Dr. Ingvar ...

SAN DIEGO (Sept. 24, 2012) – Healing touch combined with guided imagery (HT+GI) provides significant clinical reductions in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms for combat-exposed active duty military, according to a study released in the September issue of Military Medicine. The report finds that patients receiving these complementary medicine interventions showed significant improvement in quality of life, as well as reduced depression and cynicism, compared to soldiers receiving treatment as usual alone. The study, led by the Scripps Center for Integrative ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—In the first study to detail the health of Pacific Islanders living in the United States, University of Michigan researchers have found alarmingly high rates of obesity and smoking. The preliminary findings are being presented today (Sept. 24) at a conference in Los Angeles on health disparities among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. "Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are the second fastest growing minority population in the U.S.," said Sela Panapasa, a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research and principal investigator of the ...

New research from the University of Copenhagen and Copenhagen University Hospital shows that low levels of vitamin D are associated with a markedly higher risk of heart attack and early death. The study involved more than 10,000 Danes and has been published in the well-reputed American journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. Vitamin D deficiency has traditionally been linked with poor bone health. However, the results from several population studies indicate that a low level of this important vitamin may also be linked to a higher risk of ischemic heart ...

Satellite measurement of sea surface temperatures has yielded clear evidence of major changes taking place in the waters of Australia's Great Barrier Reef over the past 25 years, marine scientists have found. The changes have big implications for the future management of the GBR and its marine protected areas say Dr Natalie Ban and Professor Bob Pressey of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, who led the study with Dr Scarla Weeks from the University of Queensland. "When we looked back at satellite data collected since 1985, ...

A new multi-national survey reveals the extent of misconceptions about when is the right time to start taking action to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD). In a four-country survey sample of 4,000 adults, 49 per cent answered age 30 years or older when asked at what age they believe people should start to take action about their heart health to prevent conditions such as heart disease and stroke. The fact is that CVD can affect people of all ages and population groups, and the risk begins early in life through unhealthy diets, lack of physical activity and exposure to ...

It is much harder to keep up with a conversation in a crowded bar than in a quiet little café, but scientists wishing to eavesdrop on cells can now do so over the laboratory equivalent of a noisy room. A new method devised by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in collaboration with the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), both in Heidelberg, Germany, provides a new approach for studying the proteins cells release to communicate with each other, react to changes, or even to help them move. Published online today in Nature Biotechnology, the work ...

Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have discovered that a chemical can trigger the maturation of small eggs to healthy, mature eggs, a process that could give more women the chance of successful IVF treatment in the future. The results have been published in the revered journal PloS ONE. Women and girls treated for cancer with radiotherapy and chemotherapy are often unable to have children as their eggs die as a result of the treatment. Although it is now possible to freeze eggs and even embryos, this is not an option for girls who have yet to reach puberty. ...

Researchers at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have identified a molecule in the immune system that could affect hunger and satiety. The researchers hope that new treatments for obesity will benefit from this finding. Interleukin-6 is a chemical messenger in our immune system that plays an important role in fighting off infection. However, recent research has, surprisingly, shown that it can also trigger weight loss. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, have been investigating and managed to identify the specific types ...

Researchers at King's College London have for the first time identified a gene linked to age-related degeneration of the intervertebral discs in the spine, a common cause of lower back pain. Costing the UK an estimated £7billion a year due to sickness leave and treatment costs, the causes of back pain are not yet fully understood. Until now, the genetic cause of lower back pain associated with lumbar disc degeneration (LDD) was unknown, but the largest study to date, published this week in the journal Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, has revealed an association with the ...

This press release is available in German. The relationship between species determines how rapidly they evolve. Parasites and their hosts coevolve more rapidly, and partners in a mutualistic relationship can evolve more slowly. But this view is obviously too simplistic. The rate of evolution in a mutualistic relationship does not depend only on the type of interactions, but also on the number of individuals involved, according to a model developed by researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. Therefore, while partners can benefit ...

Europe accounted for two thirds of the world-wide newly installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity in 2011, with 18.5 GW. Its overall PV capacity totalled 52 GW. The yearly electricity produced by PV could power a country with the electricity demand of Austria, which corresponds to 2% of the EU's electricity needs. These are some of the highlights of the 2012 Photovoltaics Status Report published today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. The study summarises and evaluates the current activities regarding manufacturing, policies and market implementation world-wide. ...

The high elevation flat surfaces characteristic of the Norwegian landscape are in geologically terms young, according to a paper in Nature Geoscience. In a paper recently published in Nature Geoscience, researchers from the University of Bergen (UiB) and ETH Zurich have demonstrated that ice sheets have extensively shaped the fjords of Norway for the last 2.8 million years. – However, the massive sediment record deposited offshore Norway during this period tells us a more complex story, explains Postdoctoral Fellow Philippe Steer at UiB's Department of Earth Science ...