BETHESDA, MD – July 11, 2012 -- Important insights that explain why our ability to ward off infection declines with age are published in a new research report in the July 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, GENETICS (http://www.genetics.org/). A team of U.S. scientists identified genes responsible for this decline by examining fruit flies – a model organism often used to study human biology in an experimentally tractable system – at different stages of their lives. They found that a completely different set of genes is responsible for warding off infection ...

STANFORD, Calif. — Stanford University School of Medicine scientists have laid bare a novel molecular mechanism responsible for the most important symptom of major depression: anhedonia, the loss of the ability to experience pleasure. While their study was conducted in mice, the brain circuit involved in this newly elucidated pathway is largely identical between rodents and humans, upping the odds that the findings point toward new therapies for depression and other disorders. Additionally, opinion leaders hailed the study's inventive methodology, saying it may offer ...

Bethesda, MD—July 11, 2012 – Listed below are the selected highlights for the July 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America's journal, Genetics. The July issue is available online at www.genetics.org/content/current. Please credit Genetics, Vol. 191, JULY 2012, Copyright © 2012. ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Increasing association mapping power and resolution in mouse genetic studies through the use of meta-analysis for structured populations, pp. 959-967 Nicholas A. Furlotte, Eun Yong Kang, Atila Van Nas, Charles R. Farber, Aldons J. Lusis, and Eleazar Eskin Because ...

PHOENIX, Ariz. — July 11, 2012 — Researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) have developed a method of isolating biospecimens that could lead to a less costly, less invasive and more accurate way of diagnosing chronic kidney disease, or CKD. CKD is a major complication of diabetes, high blood pressure and a form of kidney disease known as glomerulonephritis, which is characterized by a progressive deterioration of the kidney's ability to filter waste from the blood. TGen's customized procedure produced high amounts of protein-rich urinary exosomes, ...

The cause of rapid sea level rise in the past has been found by scientists at the University of Bristol using climate and ice sheet models. The process, named 'saddle-collapse', was found to be the cause of two rapid sea level rise events: the Meltwater pulse 1a (MWP1a) around 14,600 years ago and the '8,200 year' event. The research is published today in Nature. Using a climate model, Dr Lauren Gregoire of Bristol's School of Geographical Sciences and colleagues unearthed the series of events that led to saddle-collapse in which domes of ice over North America ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Cellular change thought to happen only in late-stage cancers to help tumors spread also occurs in early-stage lung cancer as a way to bypass growth controls, say researchers at Mayo Clinic in Florida. The finding, reported in the July 11 issue of Science Translational Medicine, represents a new understanding of the extent of transformation that lung cancer — and likely many other tumor types — undergo early in disease development, the scientists say. They add that the discovery also points to a potential strategy to halt this process, known as epithelial-mesenchymal ...

A new study suggests that global budgets for health care, an alternative to the traditional fee-for-service model of reimbursement, can slow the growth of medical spending and improve the quality of care for patients. Researchers from Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy have analyzed claims data from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts's Alternative Quality Contract (AQC), a global budget program in which 11 health care provider organizations were given a budget to care for patients who use BCBSMA insurance. Such a model contrasts with widely ...

AUDIO: A change in the formula of a frequently abused prescription painkiller seems to have convinced many drug abusers to switch to a substance that’s potentially more dangerous. Washington university researchers... Click here for more information. A change in the formula of the frequently abused prescription painkiller OxyContin has many abusers switching to a drug that is potentially more dangerous, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in ...

Scientists have assembled the most detailed chronology to date of the human brain's long, slow slide into full-blown Alzheimer's disease. The timeline, developed through research led by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, appears July 11 in The New England Journal of Medicine. As part of an international research partnership known as the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer's Network (DIAN), scientists at Washington University and elsewhere evaluated a variety of pre-symptomatic markers of Alzheimer's disease in 128 subjects from families ...

Menopausal hormone therapy use is associated with higher odds of high blood pressure, according to research published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. Longer hormone use was associated with further increased odds of high blood pressure, although this association decreased with subjects' ages. The authors of the study, led by Joanne Lind of the University of Western Sydney, included 43,405 postmenopausal women in their study to identify the association. As Dr. Lind explains, the study shows that "longer use of menopausal hormone therapy is associated with ...

Sharing a meal with a former romantic partner is more likely than other, non-food-related activities to make your current partner jealous, according to a study published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The authors, led by Kevin Kniffin of Cornell University, asked undergraduate students to rate their jealousy in response to hypothetical scenarios involving their romantic partner engaging with a former partner, either by email, phone, coffee, or a meal. They found that a meal elicited the highest jealousy ratings, potentially pointing to the importance of ...

When the human genome project was completed in 2003, some expected it to herald a new age of personalized genomic medicine, but the resulting single "reference" sequence has significant shortcomings for these applications and does not account for the actual variability in the human population, as reported in a study published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. Using genomic data from a large number of individuals, the authors of the study, led by Todd Smith of PerkinElmer in Seattle, Washington, show that current genomic research resources and bioinformatics ...

Researchers have found evidence of the earliest known instance of domesticated caprines (sheep and goats) in southern Africa, dated to the end of the first millennium BC, providing new data to the ongoing debate about the origins of domestication and herding practices in this region. The full results are published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by David Pleurdeau of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris and Eugène Marais of the National Museum of Namibia, investigated remains from Leopard Cave in Namibia. They could not determine ...

New research refutes a commonly held belief that certain eye movements are associated with lying. The idea that looking to the right indicates lying, while looking left suggests truth telling, is shown to be false in a report published July 11 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Caroline Watt of the University of Edinburgh, completed three different studies to show that there was no correlation between the direction of eye movement and whether the subject was telling the truth or lying. "A large percentage of the public believes that certain eye ...

Bochum, 11.7.2012 No. 242 Tracked step for step ATP splitting in membrane protein dynamically measured for the first time RUB researchers report in the Journal of Biological Chemistry How a transport protein obtains its driving force from the energy storage molecule ATP, has been tracked dynamically by RUB researchers. Using time-resolved infrared spectroscopy, they measured the structural changes in the bacterial membrane protein MsbA and its interaction partner ATP. The researchers led by Prof. Dr. Eckhard Hofmann and Prof. Dr. Klaus Gerwert from the Biophysics ...

A team of researchers from Greece and Spain have managed to synthesize silver nanoparticles, which are of great interest thanks to their application in biotechnology, by using strawberry tree leaf extract. The new technology is ecological, simple, cheap and very fast. Strawberry tree leaf (Arbutus unedo) and silver nitrate (AgNO3). With just these two ingredients scientists can now produce silver nanoparticles, a material that is used in advanced technologies from compounds for distributing medicines through to electronic devices, catalysts, contaminant solvents. The ...

A team of scientists at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and University of Cambridge has made a significant advance in using nano-devices to create accurate electrical currents. Electrical current is composed of billions and billions of tiny particles called electrons. NPL scientists have developed an electron pump – a nano-device – which picks these electrons up one at a time and moves them across a barrier, creating a very well-defined electrical current. The device drives electrical current by manipulating individual electrons, one-by-one at very high speed. ...

The Iberian wolf lives in increasingly humanised landscapes, with limited food resources and its presence is not always welcome. But, according to Spanish researchers, food availability plays a secondary role compared to landscape characteristics, which can offer refuge and allow wolves to remain in human-dominated environments in Galicia. The habitat of the Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus) varies greatly across the Iberian Peninsula and its diet revolves around what is available, ranging from wild animals to domestic waste. In contrast, this predator is able to survive ...

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have developed a unique computer program that helps Asian students to improve their understanding of accented English speech in noisy environments. The team of researchers from the Schools of Psychology, Education, and English, recognised that some Asian students find it difficult to understand the range of different English accents spoken. They identified that some Asian students have particular difficulties with differentiating sounds at the end (e.g. rope versus robe) and start (e.g. tin versus thin) of spoken English ...

Deaths by suicide among mental health patients treated at home have reached 150 to 200 a year in England, latest national figures reveal – but suicides among patients on mental health wards continue to fall. The annual report by the University of Manchester's National Confidential Inquiry into Homicide and Suicide by People with Mental Illness (NCI) examined homicide and suicide figures for all four countries of the United Kingdom among mental health patients and found in-patient suicides have shown a sustained fall across all countries. In contrast, the number of suicides ...

A new drug combination could offer hope to children with neuroblastoma – one of the deadliest forms of childhood cancer – by boosting the effectiveness of a promising new gene-targeted treatment. Researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research in London have found a way to overcome the resistance of cancer cells to a drug called crizotinib, which recently showed positive early results in its first trial in children with cancer. Crizotinib has already been licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration for use in adult cancers, but early experience suggests tumours ...

A new international plan to tackle cyber crime has been launched Queen's University Belfast. The new research roadmap has been developed by leading international cyber security researchers along with industry and government experts who gathered for Second World Cyber Security Summit at the Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) at Queen's in March. More than 80 invited participants from around the world attended the event. They included Chief Scientific Advisor from the UK Home Office - Professor Bernard Silverman, Cyber Security Division Director of US Homeland ...

(BOSTON) -- Prenatal and early childhood exposure to the chemical solvent tetrachloroethylene (PCE) found in drinking water may be associated with long-term visual impairments, particularly in the area of color discrimination, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers has found. The study by epidemiologists and biostatisticians at BUSPH, working with an ophthalmologist from the BU School of Medicine, found that people exposed to higher levels of PCE from gestation through age 5 exhibited poorer color-discrimination abilities than ...

It's a project 500 million years in the making. Only this time, instead of playing on a movie screen in Jurassic Park, it's happening in a lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Using a process called paleo-experimental evolution, Georgia Tech researchers have resurrected a 500-million-year-old gene from bacteria and inserted it into modern-day Escherichia coli(E. coli) bacteria. This bacterium has now been growing for more than 1,000 generations, giving the scientists a front row seat to observe evolution in action. "This is as close as we can get to rewinding ...

This press release is available in German. It is not primary tumors that are responsible for the majority of cancer deaths, but rather their metastases. Physiologists and neuropathologists from the University of Zurich have now identified the origin of metastasis formation, thereby becoming the first to reveal the pathway of metastasizing intestinal cancer cells out of the blood stream. The results allow new approaches in the development of cancer therapies. Every year, over seven million people die of cancer worldwide. Thanks to more effective therapy and better ...