The so-called signal transducers and activators of transcription (STATs) are involved in the regulation of cell division but details of their functions remain a matter of conjecture. In the development of breast cancer, the role of STAT1 is particularly interesting as high levels of STAT1 activity are known to be correlated with a better prognosis for breast cancer patients. There is a considerable body of evidence that STAT1 can act to suppress tumour growth in breast cancer but how does it function? Important clues are provided by the latest results of Christine Schneckenleithner ...

The domestication of chickens has given rise to rapid and extensive changes in genome function. A research team at Linköping University in Sweden has established that the changes are heritable, although they do not affect the DNA structure. Humans kept Red Junglefowl as livestock about 8000 years ago. Evolutionarily speaking, the sudden emergence of an enormous variety of domestic fowl of different colours, shapes and sizes has occurred in record time. The traditional Darwinian explanation is that over thousands of years, people have bred properties that have arisen through ...

Child custody agreements are useful in helping parents define their roles as caretakers and reach compromises about raising their children, ensuring that children's needs are met and that they are consistently cared for to the satisfaction of both parents. When issues arise, child custody agreements can help parents resolve them. Virginia child custody and/or visitation agreements are tools in the parenting process and they do have limitations. Even with clearly defined agreements, parents can face challenges with co-parents as they balance their roles in their children's ...

A business executive is passed over for an important assignment after she announces her pregnancy. A single mother is verbally harassed by co-workers about her pregnancy. A waitress is denied extra rest breaks medically needed to help keep her pregnancy-induced high blood pressure under control. An office worker is hired, but the employer changes its mind after finding out she is expecting. All of these situations constitute potentially illegal pregnancy discrimination under federal employment law, and under the discrimination laws of most states. Unfortunately, these ...

The latest official unemployment figures show that unemployment among young people has soared to 22.3 per cent, higher than the recession of the 1990s, while the overall unemployment rate is nine per cent. New research from Understanding Society, a study of more than 40,000 UK households, has examined what is driving this uneven employment pattern and finds that young people suffer from a 'double-penalty' in their attempts to find and keep a job. The rise in youth unemployment figures is due to young people being more likely than older workers to be laid off, thus swelling ...

In 1996, following a graduation party in Massachusetts, an 18-year old boy was involved in a fatal car accident after the car he was driving slammed into a telephone pole. At the time of the accident, the boy's blood alcohol content (BAC) was twice the legal limit for adults of .08. An adult hosted the graduation party, though the adult did not provide the alcohol directly to the minor. And because he did not directly provide the alcohol, the host was acquitted of any wrongdoing. While it was a tragedy, the teenager's death and the subsequent acquittal of the party ...

Scientists at University College Dublin have discovered a new way of measuring the potential success rate of an embryo before it is transferred back into the womb during in vitro fertilisation (IVF). According to the findings published online in the journal Fertility and Sterility, the fluid within a woman's ovaries that surrounds the egg or oocyte holds metabolic information that can improve predictions on which embryo is more likely to lead to pregnancy. "We analysed samples of the follicular fluid surrounding the immature ovum or egg before it was retrieved for IVF," ...

By means of cloud computing, enterprises can access scalable computing power and storage capacity. A people cloud, by contrast, supplies a scalable number of workers via the internet. It is used when non-automated tasks are executed, such as allocating images, searching information, or writing texts. The challenge is to maintain the quality of the work results on a constant high level. Now, this is achieved by a quality management system developed by KIT. Also in times of constantly increasing computing power, people are indispensable for executing certain tasks. Such ...

Children involved in bullying – as both a victim and a bully – are three times more likely to have suicidal thoughts by the time they reach 11 years old, according to research from the University of Warwick. In a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the researchers found children who are both victims and bullies ('bully-victims'), are at highly increased risk of considering suicide, or have planned and engaged in suicidal or self-harming behaviour by 11-12 years of age. These increased odds were ...

Three of the world's subspecies of tigers are now extinct. A new study found that the Sumatran tiger subspecies is nearing extinction as a result of human activities, particularly the conversion of natural forests into forestry and agricultural plantations, leading to habitat loss. The study, conducted by Virginia Tech and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is the first of its kind to systematically investigate the use of different land cover types — not just forests but also plantation areas — for tiger habitat. Published in the Public Library of Science's online journal PLoS ...

SALT LAKE CITY — A team of global scientists, led by researchers at Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, has developed a safer and more accurate way to administer warfarin, one of the most commonly prescribed but also potentially dangerous medications in the United States. As part of a worldwide study, the research team developed and tested a new formula that combines individual genetic data with a mathematical model to help physicians more accurately predict patient response to the popular blood-thinning drug. Researchers found that the formula was safer ...

For more than four decades, a drug called diethylstilbestrol (DES) was prescribed to millions of expecting mothers in an effort to prevent miscarriages. Prescriptions for the drug were written until 1971, when researchers discovered a link between prenatal exposure to DES and the development of reproductive tract cancers. Notably, researchers discovered health issues of developing breast cancer not only in the expecting mothers themselves, but also in their daughters decades later after being exposed to DES in utero. These victims have come to be known as the DES daughters. As ...

New York, February 29, 2012 – A revealing study published in Epilepsy & Behavior provides evidence that the perception of epilepsy is not faring well in social media. Kate McNeil and colleagues from Dalhousie University in Canada analyzed data collected from Twitter to provide a snapshot of how epilepsy is portrayed within the twitter community. Twitter, a social networking platform launched in 2006, allows its users to communicate through posting of "tweets" limited to 140 characters. Twitter has gained worldwide popularity since its inception, with approximately 110 ...

Wild bees are important pollinators and numerous studies dealing with pollination of wild plants and crops underline their vital role in ecosystems functioning. While honey bees can be easily transported to various location when needed, wild bees' presence is dependent on the availability of high quality semi-natural habitats. Some crops, such as apples and cherries, and many wild flowers are more effectively pollinated by wild bees and other insects rather than managed honey bees. Although heavy metal pollution is recognized to be a problem affecting large parts of the ...

Researchers from the Mayo Clinic confirm that ultrasound-based transient elastography (TE) provides excellent diagnostic accuracy for detecting cirrhosis due to recurrent infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection following liver transplantation. Findings from the study published in the March issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, suggest that detection of significant fibrosis is more accurate when comparing patients with chronic HCV of the native liver. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ...

Law enforcement officials who are tasked with identifying a body based on partial skeletal remains have a new tool at their disposal. A new paper from North Carolina State University researchers details how to determine the biological sex of skeletal remains based solely on measurements of the seven tarsal bones in the feet. "Tarsals are fairly dense bones, and can be more durable than other bones – such as the pelvis – that are used to determine biological sex," says Dr. Troy Case, an associate professor of anthropology at NC State and co-author of a paper describing ...

As the baby boomer generation grows older, decisions related to selling the family home and moving, in order to provide aging family members with additional care, will become increasingly important for many American families. For some, this decision will focus on two alternative housing options in particular: assisted living facilities and nursing homes. There are advantages and disadvantages to both types of housing, though both are governed by sets of laws that protect residents and ensure their proper care. Nursing homes have gained a bad reputation over the past ...

A gluten-free, casein-free diet may lead to improvements in behavior and physiological symptoms in some children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), according to researchers at Penn State. The research is the first to use survey data from parents to document the effectiveness of a gluten-free, casein-free diet on children with ASD. "Research has shown that children with ASD commonly have GI [gastrointestinal] symptoms," said Christine Pennesi, medical student at Penn State College of Medicine. "Notably, a greater proportion of our study population reported ...

Already a prominent oil and gas state, Texas can expect its contribution to the nation's energy resources to keep growing. Take the Barnett Shale formation, for instance, near Fort Worth. The Barnett Shale already produces six percent of all natural gas produced in the entire 48 contiguous states, with more production expected. Texas Shale Formations & Hydraulic Fracturing Extracting trapped natural gas from the reservoirs of layered shale rock has, for the first time in just the last several years, become practical and profitable. Conventional drilling equipment ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Using exotic man-made materials, scientists from Duke University and Boston College believe they can greatly enhance the forces of electromagnetism (EM), one of the four fundamental forces of nature, without harming living beings or damaging electrical equipment. This theoretical finding could have broad implications for such applications as magnetic levitation trains, which ride inches above the tracks without touching and are propelled by electro-magnets. As the term indicates, EM is made up of two types of fields – electric and magnetic. Alternating ...

Researchers at Drexel University have found that a majority of women with bulimia nervosa reach their highest-ever body weight after developing their eating disorder, despite the fact that the development of the illness is characterized by significant weight loss. Their new study, published online last month in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, adds to a body of recent work that casts new light on the importance of weight history in understanding and treating bulimia. "Most patients lose a lot of weight as part of developing this disorder, and all dedicate ...

Experts say at least $20 million to $30 million in government research is needed over the next decade to adequately identify and address the possible ecological risks of synthetic biology, an emerging area of research focused on the design and construction of new biological parts and systems, or modification of existing ones, to create new applications in areas ranging from energy to chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Without key research into these risks and appropriate federal oversight, certain synthetic organisms might survive and flourish in natural environments, wreaking ...

If you want big muscles without working out, there's hope. In the March 2012 print issue of the FASEB Journal, scientists from the University of Florida report that a family of protein transcription factors, called "Forkhead (Fox0)" plays a significant role in the regulation of skeletal muscle mass. Specifically, they found that interfering with the activity of these transcription factors prevents muscle wasting associated with cancer and sepsis, and even promotes muscle growth. This discovery is likely to be relevant to any disease, condition or lifestyle that leads to ...

WASHINGTON — Federal laws that motivate or require drug and biologic developers to conduct pediatric studies have yielded beneficial information to guide the use of medications in children, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine. Still, studies involving children continue to be limited, especially in certain areas such as medications' use in newborns and long-term safety and effectiveness in children. The report identifies ways that Congress and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could further improve the utility of clinical information obtained from pediatric ...

Though tax fraud schemes are common, the indictment of 55 people in a single case is not. In early October 2011, a federal grand jury indicted 55 business owners and customers of two southern California businesses, as well as the attorneys, tax preparers and other professionals working with them, in one of the largest tax fraud cases ever seen. Through two companies, Old Quest Foundation and De la Fuente and Ramirez and Associates, the defendants are accused of fraud against the government, seeking around $270 million in fraudulent tax returns. De la Fuente and Ramirez ...