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Cancer stem cells made, not born

2011-08-19
In cancer, tumors aren't uniform: they are more like complex societies, each with a unique balance of cancer cell types playing different roles. Understanding this "social structure" of tumors is critical for treatment decisions in the clinic because different cell types may be sensitive to different drugs. A common theory is that tumors are a hierarchical society, in which all cancer cells descend from special self-renewing cancer stem cells. This view predicts that killing the cancer stem cells might suffice to wipe out a cancer. New findings by scientists at the Broad ...

UCI researchers chart long-shrouded glacial reaches of Antarctica

2011-08-19
Irvine, Calif. — A vast network of previously unmapped glaciers on the move from thousands of miles inland to the Antarctic coast has been charted for the first time by UC Irvine scientists (http://www.ess.uci.edu/). The findings will be critical to tracking future sea rise from climate change. "This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said UCI earth system science professor Eric Rignot, lead author of a paper on the ice flow published online today in Science Express. "We're seeing amazing flows from ...

Molecular meet and greet

2011-08-19
Boston, Mass. (Aug. 19, 2011)—Researchers at Harvard Medical School have discovered that structural elements in the cell play a crucial role in organizing the motion of cell-surface receptors, proteins that enable cells to receive signals from other parts of the organism. This discovery, published in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Cell, fills a fundamental gap in the understanding of how cells relate to biochemical signals, including pharmaceuticals, and could have profound implications for drug development and the treatment of cancer and other diseases. The findings ...

Kidney drugs hampered by high blood phosphate

2011-08-19
Washington, DC (August 18, 2011) — High blood phosphate levels can set chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients on a rapid path to kidney failure, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). To make matters worse, phosphate appears to interfere with the effectiveness of important kidney medications. The kidneys of patients with CKD cannot efficiently get rid of wastes such as excess phosphate in the blood. As a result, the kidneys become overloaded with phosphate. Carmine Zoccali, MD (CNR-IBIM, Clinical Epidemiology ...

New 'bionic' leg gives amputees a natural gait

New bionic leg gives amputees a natural gait
2011-08-19
A new lower-limb prosthetic developed at Vanderbilt University allows amputees to walk without the leg-dragging gait characteristic of conventional artificial legs. The device uses the latest advances in computer, sensor, electric motor and battery technology to give it bionic capabilities: It is the first prosthetic with powered knee and ankle joints that operate in unison. It comes equipped with sensors that monitor its user's motion. It has microprocessors programmed to use this data to predict what the person is trying to do and operate the device in ways that facilitate ...

Robust preschool experience offers lasting effects on language and literacy

Robust preschool experience offers lasting effects on language and literacy
2011-08-19
Preschool teachers' use of sophisticated vocabulary and analytic talk about books combined with early support for literacy in the home can predict fourth-grade reading comprehension and word recognition, new research from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College finds. The findings, published in Child Development and included in a review article in the August 19, 2011 edition of Science, present evidence that there are lasting, complex and mutually reinforcing effects that flow from strong early childhood classrooms. "We need to take very seriously the importance ...

Parents misled by advocates of single-sex education

2011-08-19
There is no scientific basis for teaching boys and girls separately, according to Lise Eliot from The Chicago Medical School. Her review reveals fundamental flaws in the arguments put forward by proponents of single-sex schools to justify the need of teaching teach boys and girls separately. Eliot shows that neuroscience has identified few reliable differences between boys' and girls' brains relevant to learning or education. Her work is published online in Springer's journal Sex Roles. The first issue Eliot highlights is that single-sex school advocates often claim differences ...

Treatment with vitamin C dissolves toxic protein aggregates in Alzheimer's disease

2011-08-19
Researchers at Lund University have discovered a new function for vitamin C. Treatment with vitamin C can dissolve the toxic protein aggregates that build up in the brain in Alzheimer's disease. The research findings are now being presented in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. The brains of people with Alzheimer's disease contain lumps of so-called amyloid plaques which consist of misfolded protein aggregates. They cause nerve cell death in the brain and the first nerves to be attacked are the ones in the brain's memory centre. "When we treated brain tissue from ...

Are those liquids explosive?

Are those liquids explosive?
2011-08-19
A team of researchers from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) has developed a method to determine the chemical composition of liquids seized by police and suspected to be explosive. Some of the samples analysed contained substances hazardous to health, such as methanol and boric acid. Each year police forces seize tonnes of pyrotechnic substances which, in principle, are for indoor firework manufacturing (i.e. flares or those used in artistic or sporting events), but which also may end up in the hands of violent groups and hooligans. A group of chemists from ...

Revealed: How sticky egg captures sperm

2011-08-19
Researchers have uncovered exactly how a human egg captures an incoming sperm to begin the fertilisation process, in a new study published this week in the journal Science. The research identifies the sugar molecule that makes the outer coat of the egg 'sticky', which is vital for enabling the sperm and egg to bind together. Researchers across the world have been trying to understand what performs this task for over thirty years. The scientists behind this study believe their work could help address some of the previously unexplained causes of human infertility and ...

CSHL neuroscientists show activity patterns in fly brain are optimized for memory storage

2011-08-19
Large-scale imaging shows mushroom body activity patterns are sparse and randomly distributed Cold Spring Harbor, NY – We know from experience that particular smells are almost inseparable in our minds with memories, some vague and others very specific. The smell of just-baked bread may trigger an involuntary mental journey, even if for a moment, to childhood, or to a particular day during childhood. Or it may, more diffusely, remind someone of grandma. How are these associations forged in the brain and how do we remember them? A research team at Cold Spring Harbor ...

Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger

Boys reach sexual maturity younger and younger
2011-08-19
This release is available in German. Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to prove this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered ...

Study raises doubts about value of heart ultrasound before elective surgery

2011-08-19
TORONTO, Ont., Aug. 18, 2011_A new study has found no evidence that patients who had a heart ultrasound known as an echocardiogram before major surgery had improved survival rates one month or one year after their operation. Some groups of patients actually had worse survival rates, according to Dr. Duminda Wijeysundera, a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences. His study, published in the British Medical Journal, adds to a growing body of evidence that echocardiograms may not be ...

UGA physicist helps uncover new data on adenine, a crucial building block of life

2011-08-19
Athens, Ga. – Early Earth's atmosphere provided little shielding for ultraviolet light from space, so many prebiotic molecules, bombarded by it and light of other wavelengths, had a hard time surviving at all. But some molecules became photostable—able to withstand the assault and thrive as building blocks of life. Five of the many molecules that survived the bombardment from UV light were the nucleic acid bases adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine and uracil. Now, in just published research, a University of Georgia physicist and a collaborator in Germany have shown that ...

Study finds sex differences in mental illness

2011-08-19
WASHINGTON – When it comes to mental illness, the sexes are different: Women are more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety or depression, while men tend toward substance abuse or antisocial disorders, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association. Published online in APA's Journal of Abnormal Psychology, the study looked at the prevalence by gender of different types of common mental illnesses. The researchers also found that women with anxiety disorders are more likely to internalize emotions, which typically results in withdrawal, loneliness ...

Embryo development obeys the laws of hydrodynamics

2011-08-19
Vincent Fleury, a researcher at the Paris Diderot University, studied the early stage of development when embryonic cells first form a flat sheet of cells before folding into a U-shape, resembling a folded pancake. He demonstrated that the formation of a chicken's head is a consequence of the collision between both sides of the embryo flowing at constant speed towards each other. This study captured for the first time on film highly accurate observations of how a chicken embryo evolves during its first two days of development, using time-lapse microscopy. Prior attempts ...

A quick way to grade grasses for ethanol yields

2011-08-19
This release is available in Spanish. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers have developed an inexpensive way to grade the ethanol potential of perennial grasses at the biorefinery's loading dock. That future has been made possible by a team of Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists, including Ken Vogel, Rob Mitchell, and Steve Masterson at Lincoln, Neb.; Hans Jung at St. Paul, Minn.; Bruce Dien at Peoria, Ill.; and Michael Casler at Madison, Wis. ARS is USDA's chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority ...

Headaches are common in year following traumatic brain injury, especially among females

Headaches are common in year following traumatic brain injury, especially among females
2011-08-19
New Rochelle, NY, August 18, 2011—Recurring headaches are common during the year following a traumatic brain injury (TBI), regardless of the severity of the TBI, and they tend to occur more often among females and those with a pre-TBI history of headache, according to an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online at www.liebertpub.com/neu More than 70% of patients who had suffered a TBI reported having headaches during the first year after their injury. This finding is a result of ...

PET scans confirm effectiveness of estrogen-blocking drugs in breast cancer patients

2011-08-19
SEATTLE – For the first time, researchers at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance have demonstrated the feasibility of using serial positron emission tomography (PET) scans, using a special estrogen-containing isotope, to confirm the relative effectiveness of estrogen-blocking and estrogen-depleting therapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer. The results of the research are published online in Clinical Cancer Research. The PET scans, taken before, during and after hormonal therapy, confirmed the superior effectiveness of estrogen-receptor-blocking drugs such as tamoxifen ...

Disordered networks synchronise faster than small world networks

2011-08-19
In this study, Carsten Grabow and colleagues from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, Germany, created a model to test the speed of synchronisation of complex networks in collaboration with the Warwick Complexity Centre, UK. They tested this model using three very different oscillators acting on complex networks, which are known as Kuramoto, Rössler and pulse-coupled oscillators. As a result, for all tested networks they showed that the structure of the coupling between network nodes determines the speed of synchronisation. In short: ...

New component of a plant steroid-activated pathway discovered

2011-08-19
Washington, D.C.— Plant biologists have been working for years to nail down the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of a plant cell to the cell's nucleus. New research from Carnegie scientists Tae-Wuk Kim and Zhiyong Wang, with contributions from the University of California San Francisco, isolated another link in this chain. Fully understanding the brassinosteroid pathway could help scientists better understand plant growth and help improve food and energy crop production. Brassinosteroids ...

Regenerative powers in the animal kingdom explored in special issue of the Biological Bulletin

Regenerative powers in the animal kingdom explored in special issue of the Biological Bulletin
2011-08-19
MBL, WOODS HOLE, MASS.—Why can one animal re-grow tissues and recover function after injury, while another animal (such as a human being) cannot? This is a central question of regenerative biology, a field that has captured the imagination of scientists and the public since the 18th century, and one that is finally gaining traction and momentum through modern methods of analysis. Regeneration of the eye lens in frogs; of neural tissue in the snail; of the spinal cord in the sea lamprey; of the entire viscera in the sea cucumber—these and other capacities of animal regeneration ...

3i and VantagePoint Invest $45m in TouchTunes Interactive Networks

2011-08-19
3i, an international investor focused on private equity, infrastructure and debt management, announced today that it has acquired a minority stake of newly issued shares in TouchTunes Interactive Networks, the world's largest digital interactive out-of-home entertainment provider, for $40 million. Current majority shareholder VantagePoint Capital Partners will invest an additional $5 million. The total investment will support TouchTunes' growth strategy and help bolster its product and service offering. Founded in 1998, TouchTunes is the world's largest digital interactive ...

Message to gay soldiers: It's your army too

Message to gay soldiers: Its your army too
2011-08-19
As the U.S. military prepares for the repeal of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" (DADT), policymakers are looking to other military bodies around the world that have successfully integrated gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) soldiers into military service. Now a new study from Tel Aviv University suggests that an integrated support and education dimension is essential to the successful assimilation of these soldiers into the U.S. armed forces. Dr. Guy Shilo of TAU's Bob Shapell School of Social Work has completed the only quantitative study detailing the LGB experience in the military. ...

New images reveal structures of the solar wind as it travels toward and impacts Earth

2011-08-19
VIDEO: Newly reprocessed archival data from STEREO-A/SECCHI show details of the first Earth-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) of the STEREO mission, from inception on December 12, 2008, to Earth impact on... Click here for more information. Using data collected by NASA's STEREO spacecraft, researchers at Southwest Research Institute and the National Solar Observatory have developed the first detailed images of solar wind structures as plasma and other particles from a coronal ...
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