WORCESTER, Mass. — The movement of genetic materials, such as RNA and ribosomes, from the nucleus to the cytoplasm is a critical component in a cell's ability to make the proteins necessary for essential biological functions. Until now, it was believed the nuclear pore complex was the sole pathway between the cell nucleus and cytoplasm for these materials. New evidence published in Cell by Vivian Budnik, PhD, Melissa J. Moore, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, reveals a novel budding mechanism, similar to the process used by some viruses, ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 10, 2012) — The typical naked mole rat lives 25 to 30 years, during which it shows little decline in activity, bone health, reproductive capacity and cognitive ability. What is the secret to this East African rodent's long, healthy life? Scientists from the United States and Israel found a clue. From infancy to old age, naked mole rats are blessed with large amounts of a protein essential for normal brain function. "Naked mole rats have the highest level of a growth factor called NRG-1 in the cerebellum. Its levels are sustained throughout their life, ...

HOUSTON – (May 9, 2012) – With the aid of multiple force sensors and a digital dinosaur, a team of Rice University seniors known as Helping Hands hopes to restore strength and flexibility to the hands and wrists of children with cerebral palsy. "These kids have a real problem with their hands," said Jenna Desmarais, a senior at Rice majoring in mechanical engineering. "The fingers and wrists are locked into a sort of claw-like position. Even after surgery to correct it, they need physical therapy to get stronger." The team's rehabilitation device, the Dino-Might, was ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A hidden facet of a math problem that goes back to Sanskrit scrolls has just been exposed by nanotechnology researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of Connecticut. It turns out we've been missing a version of the famous "packing problem," and its new guise could have implications for cancer treatment, secure wireless networks, microelectronics and demolitions, the researchers say. Called the "filling problem," it seeks the best way to cover the inside of an object with a particular shape, such as filling a triangle with discs ...

SAN ANTONIO (May 10, 2012) — A review of 30 years of life-threatening asthma cases in a San Antonio intensive care unit found that annual ICU admissions for the condition have dropped 74 percent. The study, by UT Medicine San Antonio physicians who reviewed cases at University Hospital between 1980 and 2010, also showed intubation in the emergency department to help patients breathe did not result in longer hospital stays. UT Medicine is the clinical practice of the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. Faculty studied inpatient ...

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Harvesting tropical forests for timber may not be the arch-enemy of conservation that it was once assumed to be, according to a new study led by a University of Florida researcher. Selective logging may be one of the few feasible options left for conserving tropical forests given the huge financial incentives pushing tropical landholders to convert primary forests into cash-generating agricultural plantations. The report analyzed data from more than 100 studies of tropical forests on three continents that had been harvested for timber. Results ...

Researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by Jorge L. Martínez-Torrecuadrada from the Proteomics Unit, have demonstrated that the antibody-based blocking of ephrinB2, a protein involved in angiogenesis and lymphoangiogenesis, may represent an effective strategy for the development of antiangiogenic and antitumoural therapies. The results of this study appeared in this month's issue of Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology. CNIO researchers generated highly-specific human antibodies against ephrin-B2 using a phage display ...

A carbon nanotube sponge that can soak up oil in water with unparalleled efficiency has been developed with help from computational simulations performed at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Carbon nanotubes, which consist of atom-thick sheets of carbon rolled into cylinders, have captured scientific attention in recent decades because of their high strength, potential high conductivity and light weight. But producing nanotubes in bulk for specialized applications was often limited by difficulties in controlling the growth process as well ...

The report "Sequestration: Health Research at the Breaking Point," released today by Research!America, demonstrates the damaging consequences of potential automatic spending cuts, or sequestration, to the nation's medical research enterprise and public health, and offers examples on how these cuts would delay scientific discoveries that could lead to new treatments and cures for deadly diseases. This report provides: The estimated budget cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Agency for Healthcare Research and ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – New findings from NASA's Dawn spacecraft lay the groundwork for the first geological overview of asteroid (4)Vesta and confirm the existence of not one but two giant impact basins in its southern hemisphere. The findings, published today in a set of Science papers, will help scientists better understand the early solar system and processes that occurred as it formed and evolved. The Dawn spacecraft, orbiting asteroid Vesta since July 2011, has already acquired several thousand images of the asteroid's surface, revealing a complex landscape. The images ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. – Patients see potential benefits from direct-to-consumer genetic testing, but are also concerned about how test results will be used, and generally are unwilling to pay more than $10 or $20 for them, according to focus groups conducted by researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Findings by first author Katherine Wasson, PhD, MPH, and colleagues are published in the American Journal of Bioethics Primary Research. Wasson, an assistant professor in Loyola's Neiswanger Institute for Bioethics and Health Policy, is an expert on the ...

Seaweeds are important foundational species that are vital both as food and habitat to many aquatic and terrestrial shore organisms. Yet seaweeds that cling to rocky shores are continually at risk of being broken or dislodged from their holds by crashing waves with large hydrodynamic forces. So how do such seaweeds survive in intertidal zones? Do they have special properties that make them extremely flexible or particularly strong? Patrick Martone (University of British Columbia) has spent a considerable amount of time standing on the shore watching big waves crash ...

When UCLA's Christopher T. Russell looks at the images of the protoplanet Vesta produced by NASA's Dawn mission, he talks about beauty as much as he talks about science. "Vesta looks like a little planet. It has a beautiful surface, much more varied and diverse than we expected," said Russell, a professor in UCLA's Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Dawn mission's principal investigator. "We knew Vesta's surface had some variation in color, but we did not expect the diversity that we see or the clarity of the colors and textures, or their distinct boundaries. ...

PHILADELPHIA — When the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, 2010, residents feared that their Gulf of Mexico shores would be inundated with oil. And while many wetland habitats and wildlife were oiled during the three-month leak, the environmental damage to coastal Louisiana was less than many expected, in part because much of the crude never made it to the coast. Research by a trio of geoscientists, including the University of Pennsylvania's Douglas Jerolmack, now offers an explanation for why some of the oil stayed out at sea. Using publicly available ...

For the last few decades, space scientists have generally accepted that the bubble of gas and magnetic fields generated by the sun – known as the heliosphere – moves through space, creating three distinct boundary layers that culminate in an outermost bow shock. This shock is similar to the sonic boom created ahead of a supersonic jet. Earth itself certainly has one of these bow shocks on the sunward side of its magnetic environment, as do most other planets and many stars. A collection of new data from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX), however, now indicate ...

Forests in the Amazon Basin are expected to be less vulnerable to wildfires this year, according to the first forecast from a new fire severity model developed by university and NASA researchers. Fire season across most of the Amazon rain forest typically begins in May, peaks in September and ends in January. The new model, which forecasts the fire season's severity from three to nine months in advance, calls for an average or below-average fire season this year within 10 regions spanning three countries: Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. "Tests of the model suggested that ...

GALVESTON, Texas – April 30, 2012 – The proportion of insured girls and young women completing the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine among those who initiated the series has dropped significantly – as much as 63 percent – since the vaccine was approved in 2006, according to new research from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston. The study, published in the current issue of Cancer, reveals the steepest decline in vaccine completion among girls and young women aged nine to 18 – the age group that derives the greatest benefit from the vaccine, which ...

VIDEO: Associate professor Michael Davies (Robinson Institute, University of Adelaide) discusses the findings of a study into the risk of major birth defects associated with assisted reproductive technologies. Click here for more information. A University of Adelaide study has identified the risk of major birth defects associated with different types of assisted reproductive technology. In the most comprehensive study of its kind in the world, researchers from the University's ...

Commercial ships travel across most of the globe and could provide better warnings for potentially deadly tsunamis, according to a study published May 5 by scientists at the University of Hawaii – Manoa (UHM) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. James Foster, lead author and Assistant Researcher at the UH School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and colleagues were able to detect and measure the properties of the tsunami generated by the magnitude 8.8 earthquake in Maule, Chile (February 2010), even ...

PHILADELPHIA, May 5, 2012 – U.S. Army researcher Maj. Gary H. Wynn, M.D., shared new analysis on why some Soldiers suffering from combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) never seek care or drop out of treatment early during a presentation today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting. His presentation, "Epidemiology of Combat-Related PTSD in U.S. Service Members: Lessons Learned," also described the approaches the Army is using to address this issue and improve overall patient outcomes. Currently, fewer than half of the Soldiers who report ...

BOSTON, MA—Brown seems to be the color of choice when it comes to the types of fat cells in our bodies. Brown fat expends energy, while its counterpart, white fat stores it. The danger in white fat cells, along with the increased risk for diabetes and heart disease it poses, seems especially linked to visceral fat. Visceral fat is the build-up of fat around the organs in the belly. So in the battle against obesity, brown fat appears to be our friend and white fat our foe. Now a team of researchers led by Jorge Plutzky, MD, director of The Vascular Disease Prevention ...

Research carried out at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD), University of Exeter, has concluded that it would be a safe and cost-effective strategy to screen people with type 2 diabetes who have not yet developed diabetic retinopathy, for the disease once every two years instead of annually. The research is supported by funding from the National Institute for Health Research Peninsula Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care (NIHR PenCLAHRC). It is published today (00:01hrs BST Monday 7th May 2012) on-line in Diabetes Care. Diabetic ...

DENVER (May 6, 2012) - Eye color may be an indicator of whether a person is high-risk for certain serious skin conditions. A study, led by the University of Colorado School of Medicine, shows people with blue eyes are less likely to have vitiligo. It then follows, according to scientists, that people with brown eyes may be less likely to have melanoma. Vitiligo is an autoimmune skin disease in which pigment loss results in irregular white patches of skin and hair. Melanoma is the most dangerous kind of skin cancer. The study is published online by the journal Nature ...

Gaining access to the inner workings of a neuron in the living brain offers a wealth of useful information: its patterns of electrical activity, its shape, even a profile of which genes are turned on at a given moment. However, achieving this entry is such a painstaking task that it is considered an art form; it is so difficult to learn that only a small number of labs in the world practice it. But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons ...

An abrupt cooling in Europe together with an increase in humidity and particularly in windiness coincided with a sustained reduction in solar activity 2800 years ago. Scientists from the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ in collaboration with Swedish and Dutch colleagues provide evidence for a direct solar-climate linkage on centennial timescales. Using the most modern methodological approach, they analysed sediments from Lake Meerfelder Maar, a maar lake in the Eifel/Germany, to determine annual variations in climate proxies and solar activity. The study published ...