New York, March 8, 2012 — A new JDRF-funded study shows that many of the genes known to play a role in type 1 diabetes (T1D) are expressed in pancreatic beta cells, suggesting that the cell responsible for producing insulin may be playing a part in its own destruction to lead to T1D. Published in the March issue of PLoS Genetics, researchers in Belgium suggest this interpretation after producing an extensive catalogue of more than 15,000 genes expressed in human islets, forming the most extensive characterization of human islets reported to date. The researchers, ...

URBANA – When faced with a choice between a deluge or a controlled deluge in May 2011 that would protect the city of Cairo, Illinois, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chose the latter by ordering an intentional breach of the Mississippi River levee at Bird's Point, but was it the right decision? "The decision was a difficult and complex engineering problem with significant social and political trade-offs between loss of human lives and loss of properties in urban and rural areas," said University of Illinois researcher Ken Olson. "But it was a calculated risk built on ...

(BALTIMORE, MD.) – The scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases has released its March Special Supplement focusing entirely on the research design of and pilot data from the Pneumonia Etiology Research for Child Health (PERCH) Project, which seeks to identify the causes of pneumonia among the world's most vulnerable populations. PERCH, led by the International Vaccine Access Center (IVAC) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in collaboration with 7 research centers worldwide, is the largest and most comprehensive study of the etiology of childhood ...

If you're a woman, older adult, or have higher levels of education, you're less likely to be sufficiently physically active. Those are some of the findings of a new University of Alberta study examining people's actual and perceived access to sport fields as catalysts for physical activity. "We know there are many studies indicating that the actual or perceived access to facilities is associated with physical activity, but it is not clear whether the perceived environment or objective environment exert stronger influences on physical activity," says study author Nicoleta ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers at Oregon State University have tapped into the extraordinary power of carbon "nanotubes" to increase the speed of biological sensors, a technology that might one day allow a doctor to routinely perform lab tests in minutes, speeding diagnosis and treatment while reducing costs. The new findings have almost tripled the speed of prototype nano-biosensors, and should find applications not only in medicine but in toxicology, environmental monitoring, new drug development and other fields. The research was just reported in Lab on a Chip, a ...

Researchers announce today that they have completed the genome sequence for the gorilla, the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. While confirming that mankind's closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team shows that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome. This is the first time scientists have been able to compare the genomes of all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This study provides a unique perspective on human origins and is an important resource ...

Johns Hopkins scientists have published laboratory data refuting studies that suggest blood vessels that form within brain cancers are largely made up of cancer cells. The theory of cancer-based blood vessels calls into question the use and value of anticancer drugs that target these blood vessels, including bevacizumab (Avastin). "We don't question whether brain cancer cells have the potential to express blood vessel markers and may occasionally find their way into blood vessels, but we do question the extent to which this happens," says Charles Eberhart, M.D., Ph.D., ...

Philadelphia, PA, March 9, 2012 – Imaging has been identified as one of the key drivers of increased healthcare costs. A new study from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School has found significant variation in the use of head computed tomography (CT), even within a single emergency department. Strategies to reduce such variation in head CT use may reduce cost and improve quality of care. The study appears online in advance of publication in the April issue of The American Journal of Medicine. A recent measure approved by the Centers for Medicare and ...

Coral reefs are among the ecosystems most severely threatened by global warming, but hopeful new evidence has emerged that some coral species may be able to adapt to warmer oceans. In a study published in the journal PLoS One, an international team of researchers reports that coral populations which unexpectedly survived a massive bleaching event in 2010 in South-East Asian waters had previously experienced severe bleaching during an event in 1998. The team analysed what happened at three sites during the 2010 event and found that in Indonesia, corals responded to higher ...

One only has to be reminded of the BSE crisis and the MMR vaccine scare to recognise the importance of having policy informed by the best available science. Now, a collaboration of over fifty academics and policy makers from around the world have come together to agree a new research agenda on the role of science in public policy. The findings appear today Friday, 09 March in PLoS ONE, a leading interdisciplinary open-access journal. The importance of using science for public policy has long been recognised, but recent years have seen a growing debate over how this is ...

LONDON – (March 8, 2012) -- Ecotourism activities that use food to attract and concentrate wildlife for viewing have become a controversial topic in ecological studies. This debate is best exemplified by the shark dive tourism industry, a highly lucrative and booming global market. Use of chum or food to attract big sharks to areas where divers can view the dwindling populations of these animals has generated significant criticism because of the potential for ecological and behavioral impacts to the species. However, the debate has been largely rhetorical due to a lack ...

Washington, DC – A new linguistic study of how individuals interpret various types of utterances sheds more light on how literal and contextual meaning are distinguished. The study, "A novel empirical paradigm for distinguishing between What is Said and What is Implicated," to be published in the March 2012 issue of the scholarly journal Language, is authored by Ryan Doran, Gregory Ward, Meredith Larson, Yaron McNabb, and Rachel E. Baker, a team of linguists based at Northwestern University. A preprint version is available online at: http://lsadc.org/info/documents/2012/press-releases/doran-et-al.pdf Within ...

A recent summit that brought together international multidisciplinary experts has provided a foundation for addressing what is the leading cause of disability in the United States: osteoarthritis. Currently, validated pharmacologic interventions do not exist for effectively eliminating pain and restoring function during progression of osteoarthritis, a disease whose prevalence is expected to dramatically rise within the next decade and inflict a huge economic impact on society. The summit, which was hosted by Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, is a first ...

If you've been thinking our world is more green than frozen these days, you're right. A recent study has found that spring is indeed arriving earlier – and autumn later – in the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The reason? The urban landscape traps heat in the summer and holds it throughout the winter, triggering leaves to turn green earlier in the spring and to stay green later into autumn. The result is a new, extended growing season. Scientists used high-resolution satellite data collected over the past 25 years to look at the number days that trees have green ...

LOS ANGELES (March 9, 2012) – Rowan T. Chlebowski, M.D., Ph.D., an LA BioMed investigator whose research activities have focused on breast cancer therapy and prevention, and chronic diseases impacting women's health, is co-author of a study that indicates that women who use the estrogen-only form of menopausal hormone therapy appear less likely to develop breast cancer in the longer term, according to new research which was recently published The Lancet Oncology. A follow-up study of over 7,500 women from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial who took estrogen for ...

Researchers in New Zealand have developed a prototype Bluetooth-enabled medical monitoring device that can be connected wirelessly to your smart phone and keep track of various physiological parameters, such as body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and movements. The prototype could be extended to include sensors for other factors such as blood glucose as well as markers for specific diseases. The connectivity would allow patients to send data directly to their healthcare provider and receive timely advice and medication suggestions. Writing in the International ...

Detergents are everywhere – in washing powders, dishwashing liquids, household cleaners, skin creams, shower gels, and shampoos. It is the detergent that loosens dirt and fat, makes hair-washing products foam up and allows creams to be absorbed quickly. Up until now, most detergents are manufactured from crude oil – a fossil fuel of which there is only a limited supply. In their search for alternatives, producers are turning increasingly to detergents made from sustainable resources, albeit that these surfactants are usually chemically produced. The problem is that the ...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter HEALY (WAGB 20) successfully experimented with NRL's TacSat-4 communications satellite, Jan. 24, by communicating from the Bering Sea off the western coast of Alaska to Coast Guard Island, Alameda, Calif. Returning from an escort and icebreaking mission to Nome, Alaska, assisting the Russian tanker Renda delivery of emergency fuel to the town, USCGC HEALY — Coast Guard's only polar icebreaker — was approximately 260 nautical miles south of the Arctic Circle at the time of the test. Deployed into a unique, highly elliptical ...

The first global high-resolution map of the boundary between Earth's crust and mantle – the Moho – has been produced based on data from ESA's GOCE gravity satellite. Understanding the Moho will offer new clues into the dynamics of Earth's interior. Earth's crust is the outermost solid shell of our planet. Even though it makes up less than 1% of the volume of the planet, the crust is exceptionally important not just because we live on it, but because is the place where all our geological resources like natural gas, oil and minerals come from. The crust and upper mantle ...

Creating some of life's building blocks in space may be a bit like making a sandwich – you can make them cold or hot, according to new NASA research. This evidence that there is more than one way to make crucial components of life increases the likelihood that life emerged elsewhere in the Universe, according to the research team, and gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by impacts from meteorites and comets assisted the origin of life. In the study, scientists with the Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory ...

Washington, DC, March 9, 2012 -- Hospitals whose infection prevention and control programs are led by a director who is board certified in infection prevention and control have significantly lower rates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bloodstream infections (BSI) than those that are not led by a certified professional, according to a new study published in the March issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official publication of APIC - the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology. A team of researchers ...

Desert ants have adapted to a life in a barren environment which only provides very few landmarks for orientation. Apart from visual cues and odors the ants use the polarized sunlight as a compass and count their steps in order to return safely to their home after searching for food. In experiments with ants of the genus Cataglyphis in their natural habitats in Tunisia and Turkey, behavioral scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, have now discovered that ants can also use magnetic and vibrational landmarks in order to find their way ...

Christian Santangelo, Ryan Hayward and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently employed photographic techniques and polymer science to develop a new technique for printing two-dimensional sheets of polymers that can fold into three-dimensional shapes when water is added. The technique may lead to wide ranging practical applications from medicine to robotics The journal Science publishes the research in its March 9 issue. Researchers used a photomask and ultraviolet (UV) light to "print" a pattern onto a sheet of polymers, a technique called photolithography. ...

Researchers have identified a genetic signature for a severe, often painful food allergy – eosinophilic esophagitis – that could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment for children unable to eat a wide variety of foods. The scientists, from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology that they have pinpointed a dysregulated microRNA signature for eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), a disease that also may cause weight loss, vomiting, heartburn and swallowing difficulties. Interestingly, the dysregulated microRNA ...

The faster a clock ticks, the more precise it can be. Due to the fact that lightwaves vibrate faster than microwaves, optical clocks can be more precise than the caesium atomic clocks which presently determine time. The Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) is even working on several of such optical clocks simultaneously. The model with one single ytterbium ion caught in an ion trap is now experiencing another increase in accuracy. At PTB, scientists have succeeded in exciting a quantum-mechanically strongly "forbidden" transition of this ion and – in particular – ...