BETHESDA, MD – August 9, 2012 -- As upper level undergraduate genetics instructors plan their syllabi for the fall semester, the Genetics Society of America's GENETICS journal offers a new educational resource, articles called "Primers." These articles are designed to bring cutting-edge scientific research into the classroom by making scientific papers accessible to students. The principal learning goal of the Primer is to "make research and genetics accessible to a much broader audience, not just researchers, their postdocs and grad students, but also to undergraduates ...

Bethesda, MD—August 9, 2012 – Listed below are the selected highlights for the August 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS. The August issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit GENETICS, Vol. 191, AUGUST 2012, Copyright © 2012. Please feel free to forward to colleagues who may be interested in these articles. ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS New negative feedback regulators of Egfr signaling in Drosophila, pp. 1213 Jonathan P. Butchar, Donna Cain, Sathiya N. Manivannan, Andrea D. McCue, Liana Bonanno, Sarah Halula, ...

HIGH LEVELS of iron could raise the risk of bowel cancer by switching on a key pathway in people with faults in a critical anti-cancer gene, according to a study published in Cell Reports* today (Thursday). Cancer Research UK scientists, based at the University of Birmingham and the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, found bowel cancers were two to three times more likely to develop in mice with a faulty APC gene that were fed high amounts of iron compared to mice who still had a working APC gene. In contrast, mice with a faulty APC gene fed a diet low ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Most of America's urban cores were designed for walking but offer little in the way of supermarkets, healthy restaurants and other amenities for residents to walk to, according to a study led by a Michigan State University scholar. The study is one of the first to show that poor residents living in declining urban neighborhoods want healthy food choices – evidenced by their willingness to travel long distances to find them. Past research has generally assumed that poor people will shop at whatever store is closest. But compared with suburban residents, ...

Dark matter was first proposed by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in the 1930s. He found that clusters of galaxies were filled with a mysterious dark matter that kept them from flying apart. At nearly the same time, Jan Oort in the Netherlands discovered that the density of matter near the Sun was nearly twice what could be explained by the presence of stars and gas alone. In the intervening decades, astronomers developed a theory of dark matter and structure formation that explains the properties of clusters and galaxies in the Universe, but the amount of dark matter ...

SHREWSBURY, MA – A new study published in Nutrition Journal shows that people can lose weight while consuming typical amounts of sugar or high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) if their overall caloric intake is reduced. "Our research debunks the vilification of high fructose corn syrup in the diet," said James M. Rippe, M.D., one of the study authors. "The results show that equally reduced-calorie diets caused similar weight loss regardless of the type or amount of added sugars. This lends further support to findings by our research group and others that table sugar and HFCS ...

Eighty-nine million Americans were without health insurance for at least one month during the period from 2004 to 2007, and 23 million lost coverage more than once during that time, according to researchers at Penn State and Harvard University. "These findings call attention to the continuing instability and insecurity of health insurance in our country," said Pamela Farley Short, professor of health policy and administration, Penn State. "With more than a third of all Americans under age 65 being uninsured at some point in a four-year period, it's easy to see that the ...

Language use in books mirrors trends in gender equality over the generations in the US, according to a new study by Jean Twenge, from San Diego State University, and colleagues. Their work explores how the language in the full text of more than one million books reflects cultural change in U.S. women's status. The study is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles. Twenge and colleagues, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile of the University of Georgia, examined whether the use of gendered pronouns such as 'he' and 'she' mirrored women's status between 1900-2008, ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Various misconceptions surrounding the continued viability of Medicare can be debunked or discredited, making it more important than ever for voters and policymakers to fully understand the program's existing contours and limitations, according to a paper published by a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits. Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says Medicare has become one of the most controversial federal programs for numerous reasons, but misinformation has played a key role in fostering criticism of it. "Medicare is an important and complicated ...

According to theoretical physicists João da Cruz and Pedro Lind from Lisbon University, Portugal, imposing minimum capital levels for banks may not prevent the insolvency of a minority of banks from triggering a widespread banking system collapse. In a study recently published in EPJ B1, the researchers explain why this measure could instead lead to larger crises. The authors created a model of banks' behaviour to assess the conditions needed to avoid "avalanches" of insolvent banks. Their model is based on a physical system of particles representing how banks are attracted ...

Los Angeles, CA (August 09, 2012) Poorly-performing medical implants have hit the headlines recently, and the trend looks set to continue: the September issue of the Journal of Hand Surgery (JHS) homes in on the unacceptable performance of hand implants for osteoarthritis patients. Citing several recent studies, the editorial asks why these implants – which perform worse that certain hip replacement implants now deemed unacceptable – are still widely used. JHS is an online and print, orthopedic surgery journal published by SAGE. The issue reports on a number of thumb ...

Fresno, Calif. – Consuming grapes may help protect heart health in people with metabolic syndrome, according to new research published in the Journal of Nutrition. Researchers observed a reduction in key risk factors for heart disease in men with metabolic syndrome: reduced blood pressure, improved blood flow and reduced inflammation. Natural components found in grapes, known as polyphenols, are thought to be responsible for these beneficial effects. The randomized, placebo-controlled, crossover study, led by principal investigator Dr. Maria Luz Fernandez and Jacqueline ...

Researchers from Munich and Naples have shown that minimal modification of a synthetic peptide with anti-HIV activity results in a new compound with more than two orders of magnitude higher binding affinity to the chemokine receptor CXCR4 and greatly improved anti-HIV activity. This could be a step toward the design of new, more effective drugs against AIDS, inflammatory diseases, and some forms of cancer. Different strains of HIV-1 use either the chemokine receptor CCR5 or CXCR4 for entry into immune cells. While drugs that block usage of CCR5 by the virus are already ...

PITTSBURGH—Pine trees are one of the biggest contributors to air pollution. They give off gases that react with airborne chemicals – many of which are produced by human activity – creating tiny, invisible particles that muddy the air. New research from a team led by Carnegie Mellon University's Neil Donahue shows that the biogenic particles formed from pine tree emissions are much more chemically interesting and dynamic than previously thought. The study provides the first experimental evidence that such compounds are chemically transformed by free radicals, the same compounds ...

During the Neolithic Age (approximately 10000 BCE), early man evolved from hunter-gatherer to farmer and agriculturalist, living in larger, permanent settlements with a variety of domesticated animals and plant life. This transition brought about significant changes in terms of the economy, architecture, man's relationship to the environment, and more. Now Dr. Ran Barkai of Tel Aviv University's Department of Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern Civilizations has shed new light on this milestone in human evolution, demonstrating a direct connection between the development ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – A Rhode Island Hospital researcher has found that the majority of bariatric surgery patients being treated for obesity have clinically significant obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), but report fewer symptoms than other sleep disorders patients. The study by Katherine M. Sharkey, M.D., Ph.D., of the department of medicine, division of pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine at Rhode Island Hospital, and University Medicine, is published online in advance of print in the journal Sleep and Breathing. "Patients with obstructive sleep apnea frequently complain ...

ARLINGTON, VA, August 9, 2012—The Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society (JPIDS) today released the largest and most rigorous evaluation to date of the impact on reducing the days of antibiotic therapy in a children's hospital using a prospective-audit-with-feedback antibiotic stewardship program (ASP). The study utilized a control group of the 25-member children's hospitals of the Child Health Corporation of America. A companion article describes how the ASP was created within this 317-bed tertiary care children's hospital and clinicians' attitudes toward ...

This press release is available in German.Energy storage systems are one of the key technologies for the energy turnaround. With their help, the fluctuating supply of electricity based on photovoltaics and wind power can be stored until the time of consumption. At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), several pilot plants of solar cells, small wind power plants, lithium-ion batteries, and power electronics are under construction to demonstrate how load peaks in the grid can be balanced and what regenerative power supply by an isolated network may look like in the future. "High-performance ...

Scientists at Tulane University School of Medicine, led by Dr. James Antoon and Dr. Barbara Beckman, have characterized two drugs targeting sphingosine kinase (SK), an enzyme involved in cancer growth and metastasis. New treatments specifically attacking cancer cells, but not normal ones, are critical in the fight against cancer. The results, which appear in the July 2012 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, demonstrate the role of SK in drug resistance and therapeutic potential of SK inhibitors. "Sphingosine kinase is a relatively new molecular target," says ...

New Rochelle, NY, August 9, 2012—Women comprise nearly half of the HIV-infected population worldwide, but these 15.5 million women tend to be under-represented in clinical trials of anti-HIV drug therapies. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has created a database from 40 clinical studies to assess gender differences in the efficacy of antiretroviral treatments. The results of this study are presented in an article in AIDS Patient Care and STDs, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the AIDS Patient Care ...

Researchers have successfully tested a vaccine for the deadly Nipah virus in monkeys, raising hopes that it could provide similar protection for humans. With greater than a 75 percent fatality rate and the ability to be transmitted directly from person to person, Nipah has long been a significant concern for infectious-disease experts. The virus, which is carried naturally by fruit bats, was first discovered in Malaysia in 1998. Outbreaks have occurred in nearly every year since, in Singapore, Bangladesh and India. "This vaccine is based on a protein from Hendra virus, ...

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SALINA, KAN. -- The type of relationship a woman has with her ex-partner is a factor in how the couple shares custody of children, according to a Kansas State University expert on postdivorce and co-parenting relationships. In a study of divorced or separated mothers sharing physical custody of their children with their former partners, Mindy Markham, assistant professor of family studies and human services on the university's Salina campus, identified three patterns of co-parenting -- continuously contentious, always amicable and bad to better -- as well as negative ...

Women with uterine fibroids larger than 10 cm have a new nonsurgical treatment choice –hormone acting drugs followed by uterine artery embolization, a new study shows. The new treatment option can replace hysterectomy, which leaves women infertile. The study, conducted at the Yonsei University College of Medicine in Seoul South Korea, included 40 women with 10 cm or larger uterine fibroids. Twelve of the women received gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists to shrink their fibroids before undergoing uterine artery embolization, said Man Deuk Kim, MD, PhD, lead ...

Breast cancers that depend on the hormones estrogen and progesterone are susceptible to treatments targeting these hormones. Take away this dependence and you lose a valuable treatment option. A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published as a featured article in the journal Oncogene shows how progesterone does just this – by suppressing a key microRNA, progestins return breast cancer cells to a stem-cell-like state in which they haven't yet differentiated, and are thus more resistant to chemotherapies and more likely to carry a poor prognosis. "The reason we ...