Several years ago researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) reported discovering a novel, evolutionary trait in a long-studied population of Escherichia coli, a rod-shaped bacterium commonly found in the lower intestine of mammals. The E. coli added a helping of citrate to its traditional diet of glucose, even though other E. coli can't consume citrate in the presence of oxygen. These same biologists have now analyzed this new trait's genetic origins and found that in multiple cases, the evolving E. coli population needed more than one mutational step before the ...

PHILADELPHIA — Treatment with denosumab, a drug targeted against a protein that helps promote bone destruction, decreased the number of tumor giant cells in patients with giant-cell tumor of the bone, and increased new bone formation, according to the results of a phase II study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. "Giant-cell tumor of the bone is a rare tumor that affects mostly young people," said Sant P. Chawla, M.D., director of the Santa Monica Oncology Center, Santa Monica, Calif. "Radical surgery is ...

It's a battleground down there — in the soil where plants and bacteria dwell. Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there's a dark side to the relationship between the plant and its white knight. According to research reported by a University of Delaware scientific team in the September online edition of Plant Physiology, the most highly cited plant journal, a power struggle ensues as the plant and the "good" bacteria vie over who will control the plant's immune system. "For the brief period when the beneficial ...

NEW YORK - September 21, 2012 - Much of our daily lives are spent completing tasks that involve a degree of waiting, such as remaining on hold while scheduling a doctor's appointment or standing in line at an ATM. Faced with a wait, some people postpone, avoid, or abandon their task. Others endure the wait but feel dissatisfied and frustrated by the experience. Are there ways to improve our outlook and mindset while waiting? A new study shows that seemingly irrelevant environmental cues—such as queue guides, or barriers commonly used in banks and airports—can serve as ...

Three political essays by one of the greatest British statesmen of the last 250 years have been discovered by a historian at Queen Mary, University of London. The new finds constitute the earliest political writings by Edmund Burke (1729-97), dating from around 1757, when he was 27-years-old, a period often described as the 'missing years' of his biography. Professor Richard Bourke, from the School of History at Queen Mary, came across the early essays among a series of notebooks belonging to William Burke, a close friend and distant relation of parliamentarian, Edmund. ...

Researchers from Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified reliable predictors of pain by surveying patients throughout their hospital stays about the severity of their pain and their levels of satisfaction with how their pain was managed by hospital staff. Using this data, interdisciplinary teams treating patients were able to identify patients at higher risk for pain prior to, or immediately upon, their admission to the hospital, and create and implement intervention plans resulting in patients reporting lower levels of pain and higher levels of satisfaction with ...

PHILADELPHIA – We often hear that "knowledge is power." But, that isn't always the case, especially when the knowledge pertains to the health of an unborn child, with murky implications, at best. A new study, led by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, begins to document this exception to the general rule. Barbara Bernhardt, MS, CGC, a genetic counselor at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues contacted a small group of women who are participating in a larger Columbia University study investigating ...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida State University researcher is on a mission to explore the gene-controlling effects of addictive drugs in pursuit of new HIV treatments. Working under the support of a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Florida State biologist Jonathan Dennis is studying a unique ability shared between a promising class of HIV treatments known as histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDIs) and psychostimulant drugs such as cocaine. "Current HIV treatments do just that — they treat the disease by preventing the spread of HIV in ...

New research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, provides intriguing insights into some of the factors that influence how we make moral judgments. Reappraising Our Emotions Allows Cooler Heads to Prevail We might like to think that our judgments are always well thought-out, but research suggests that our moral judgments are often based on intuition. Our emotions seem to drive our intuitions, giving us the gut feeling that something is 'right' or 'wrong.' In some cases, however, we seem to be able to override these ...

TEMPE (Sept. 21, 2012) - It's called mile-a-minute weed or "forest killer." Mikania micrantha is an exotic, invasive species that spreads quickly, covering crops, smothering trees and rapidly altering the environment. Researchers at Arizona State University are spearheading a four-year research project that will explore what factors cause people and the environment to be vulnerable to rapid environmental change, such as an invasion by Mikania. Study findings likely will serve as a harbinger of the future as humans increasingly experience abrupt, extreme conditions associated ...

LONDON, ON – A team of researchers led by London's Dr. Daniel Bainbridge have compiled data from 87 studies worldwide that shows post-anaesthetic deaths have declined as much as 90 percent since before the 1970s. During the same period, the risk of dying from any cause within 48 hours of surgery has decreased by 88 percent. The study covered outcomes in both developed and developing countries, with the findings published in the current issue of the high-profile journal The Lancet. The study calls for use of evidence-based interventions to reduce the disparities between ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY – Researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have solved an important piece of one of neuroscience's outstanding puzzles: how progenitor cells in the developing mammalian brain reproduce themselves while also giving birth to neurons that will populate the emerging cerebral cortex, the seat of cognition and executive function in the mature brain. CSHL Professor Linda Van Aelst, Ph.D., and colleagues set out to solve a particular mystery concerning radial glial cells, or RGCs, which are progenitors of pyramidal neurons, the most common type ...

The seeds of greenhouse-grown corn could hold the key to treating a rare, life-threatening childhood genetic disease, according to researchers from Simon Fraser University. SFU biologist Allison Kermode and her team have been carrying out multidisciplinary research toward developing enzyme therapeutics for lysosomal storage diseases - rare, but devastating childhood genetic diseases – for more than a decade. In the most severe forms of these inherited diseases, untreated patients die in early childhood because of progressive damage to all organs of the body. Currently, ...

LifeShield Security authorized dealers throughout the country can now connect with consumers on a regional level through locally relevant websites that help to identify customers and prospects. Sites also offer special wireless home security deals to each region that are constantly changing. "Local dealers understand the security challenges particular to their own regions and therefore can be more successful at recruiting new customers," said Shannon Dominello, CMO, LifeShield. "Regional sites provide a legitimate local web presence for each dealer that ...

Newly formed emotional memories can be erased from the human brain. This is shown by researchers from Uppsala University in a new study now being published by the academic journal Science. The findings may represent a breakthrough in research on memory and fear. Thomas Ågren, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychology under the supervision of Professors Mats Fredrikson and Tomas Furmark, has shown, that it is possible to erase newly formed emotional memories from the human brain. When a person learns something, a lasting long-term memory is created with the ...

Moving from a high-poverty to lower-poverty neighborhood spurs long-term gains in the physical and mental health of low-income adults, as well as a substantial increase in their happiness, despite not improving economic self-sufficiency, according to a new study published in the Sept. 20 issue of Science by researchers at the University of Chicago and partners at other institutions. Although moving into less disadvantaged neighborhoods did not raise incomes for the families that moved, these families experienced important gains in well-being in other ways. Moving from ...

Bethesda, MD—Everyone knows that what mom eats when pregnant makes a huge difference in the health of her child. Now, new research in mice suggests that what she ate before pregnancy might be important too. According to a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, what a group of female mice ate—before pregnancy—chemically altered their DNA and these changes were passed to her offspring. These DNA alterations, called "epigenetic" changes, drastically affected the pups' metabolism of many essential fatty acids. These results could have a profound impact on ...

Mathematical modeling being tested by researchers at the School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and the IU School of Medicine has the potential to impact the knowledge and treatment of several diseases that continue to challenge scientists across the world. The National Science Foundation recently recognized the work led by Drs. Giovanna Guidoboni, associate professor of mathematics in the School of Science, and Alon Harris, professor of ophthalmology and director of clinical research at the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Eye Institute, ...

A team led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Ho Nyung Lee has discovered a strain relaxation phenomenon in cobaltites that has eluded researchers for decades and may lead to advances in fuel cells, magnetic sensors and a host of energy-related materials. The finding, published in Nano Letters, could change the conventional wisdom that accommodating the strain inherent during the formation of epitaxial thin films necessarily involves structural defects, said Lee, a member of the Department of Energy lab's Materials Science and Technology Division. Instead, the researchers ...

Risk increases with comfort: "Single Sign-On" permits users to access all their protected Web resources, replacing repeated sign-ins with passwords. However, attackers also know about the advantages such a single point of attack offers to them. Andreas Mayer, who is writing his PhD thesis as an external doctoral candidate at the Chair for Network and Data Security (Prof. Dr. Jörg Schwenk) at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, has now been able to significantly increase the security of this central interface for the simpleSAMLphp framework. In the past, no protection against targeted ...

WASHINGTON—Prescription painkillers are responsible for more fatal overdoses in the United States than heroin and cocaine combined. And while most states have programs to curb abuse and addiction, a new report from Brandeis University shows that many states do not fully analyze the data they collect. Experts from the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program Center of Excellence at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management systematically assessed prescription drug monitoring programs and found a patchwork of strategies and standards. Their report ...

Walking to a beat could be useful for patients needing rehabilitation, according to a University of Pittsburgh study. The findings, highlighted in the August issue of PLOS One, demonstrate that researchers should further investigate the potential of auditory, visual, and tactile cues in the rehabilitation of patients suffering from illnesses like Parkinson's Disease—a brain disorder leading to shaking (tremors) and difficulty walking. Together with a team of collaborators from abroad, Ervin Sejdic, an assistant professor of engineering in Pitt's Swanson School of Engineering, ...

A new study of high-tech startups that participated in the Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) shows that these entrepreneurs have a much higher rate of success than typical new ventures and are therefore more likely to contribute to job growth. The study by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship spans the 11-year life of the RBPC, the world's richest and largest business plan competition, which comprises teams of graduate students from throughout the world. The comprehensive and longitudinal study offers insights into the experiential factors that can ...

It's a high-pressure environment within solid tumors. Abnormal blood and lymphatic vessels cause fluids to accumulate, and the uncontrolled proliferation of cancer cells within limited space leads to the buildup of what is called solid stress. Both types of pressure can interfere with the effectiveness of anticancer treatments, but while strategies have been developed that reduce fluid pressures, little has been known about the impact of solid stress or potential ways to alleviate it. Now a Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team has identified factors that ...

If two birds meet deep in the forest, does anybody hear? Until now, nobody did, unless an intrepid biologist was hiding underneath a bush and watching their behavior, or the birds happened to meet near a research monitoring station. But an electronic tag designed at the University of Washington can for the first time see when birds meet in the wild. A new study led by a biologist at Scotland's University of St. Andrews used the UW tags to see whether crows might learn to use tools from one another. The findings, published last week in Current Biology, supported the theory ...