In a major advance for schizophrenia research, an international team of scientists, led by Jonathan Sebat, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and cellular and molecular medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has identified a gene mutation strongly linked to the brain disorder – and a signaling pathway that may be treatable with existing compounds. The work poses significant and immediate implications for neurobiology and the treatment of schizophrenia because the gene identified by the researchers is an especially attractive target ...

LA JOLLA, CA—Reprogramming adult cells to recapture their youthful "can-do-it-all" attitude appears to leave an indelible mark, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. When the team, led by Joseph Ecker, PhD., a professor in the Genomic Analysis Laboratory, scoured the epigenomes of so-called induced pluripotent stem cells base by base, they found a consistent pattern of reprogramming errors. What's more, these incompletely or inadequately reprogrammed hotspots are maintained when iPS cells are differentiated into a more specialized cell type, ...

A perplexing medical paradox now has an explanation according to research undertaken at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry and published in the current issue of the Public Library of Science. The paradox is that taking folic acid, a B vitamin, lowers homocysteine in the blood which, epidemiological evidence indicates, should lower the risk of heart attack, but clinical trials of folic acid have not shown the expected benefit. The explanation is surprisingly simple; lowering homocysteine prevents platelets sticking, which stops blood clots…something ...

It may look like an over-grown slug, but scientists at Newcastle University believe the sea cucumber could play a vital role in the fight to save our seas - and become an unusual addition to British gourmet food. Not only is this salty Asian delicacy a rich source of nutrients, it is also an important part of the marine ecosystem. Much like worms working soil in a garden, sea cucumbers are responsible for cleaning up the sea bed - moving, consuming and mixing marine sediments. Used widely in Chinese medicine and cuisine, sea cucumbers are also a rich source of glucosamine ...

Menlo Park, Calif. — Two studies published in the February 3 issue of Nature demonstrate how the unique capabilities of the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser—the Linac Coherent Light Source, located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory—could revolutionize the study of life. In one study, an international research team used the LCLS to demonstrate a shortcut for determining the 3-D structures of proteins. The laser's brilliant pulses of X-ray light pulled structural data from tiny protein nanocrystals, avoiding the need to use ...

People who follow a vegan lifestyle — strict vegetarians who try to eat no meat or animal products of any kind — may increase their risk of developing blood clots and atherosclerosis or "hardening of the arteries," which are conditions that can lead to heart attacks and stroke. That's the conclusion of a review of dozens of articles published on the biochemistry of vegetarianism during the past 30 years. The article appears in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Duo Li notes in the review that meat eaters are known for having a significantly higher ...

One of Mother Nature's latest gifts to medical science is stirring excitement with the discovery that the substance — obtained from a coral-reef inhabiting cyanobacterium — appears to be an ideal blueprint for developing new drugs for serious fractures, osteoporosis, and other bone diseases. That's the conclusion of a study on the substance, Largazole, in the journal ACS Medicinal Chemistry Letters. By some estimates, more than half of today's medications are in Largazole's family, the "natural products." They come from trees, snails, scorpion venom, soil bacteria, other ...

As farmers in Hungary ponder spring planting on hundreds of acres of farmland affected by last October's red mud disaster, scientists are reporting that high alkalinity is the main threat to a bountiful harvest, not toxic metals. In a study in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, they also describe an inexpensive decontamination strategy using the mineral gypsum, an ingredient in plaster. Erik Smolders and colleagues note that a dam burst at a factory processing aluminum ore, flooding the surrounding land with more than 700,000 cubic yards of a byproduct ...

Catnip, the plant that attracts domestic cats like an irresistible force, has proven 99 percent effective in repelling the blood-sucking flies that attack horses and cows, causing $2 billion in annual loses to the cattle industry. That's the word from a report published in ACS' biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Junwei Zhu and colleagues note that stable flies not only inflict painful bites, but also transmit multiple diseases. Cattle harried by these bloodsuckers may produce less meat and milk, have trouble reproducing, and develop diseases that can ...

Like espionage agents probing an enemy's fortifications, scientists are snooping out the innermost secrets of the amazing defense mechanisms that plants use to protect themselves from diseases. The effort — intended to discover ways of bolstering those natural defenses and enhance the safety and security of the global food supply — is the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. C&EN Associate Editor Sarah Everts notes that plants use a battery of cunning mechanisms to protect themselves from disease. ...

LA JOLLA, Calif., February 1, 2011 – Stem cells are ideal tools to understand disease and develop new treatments; however, they can be difficult to obtain in necessary quantities. In particular, generating induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be an arduous task because reprogramming differentiated adult skin cells into iPS cells requires many steps and the efficiency is very low – researchers might end up with only a few iPS cells even if they started with a million skin cells. A team at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) set out to improve ...

PORTLAND, Ore. February 1, 2011. Fact: The sex of some species of turtles is determined by the temperature of the nest: warm nests produce females, cooler nests, males. And although turtles have been on the planet for about 220 million years, scientists now report that almost half of the turtle species is threatened. Turtle scientists are working to understand how global warming may affect turtle reproduction. To bring attention to this and other issues affecting turtles, researchers and other supporters have designated 2011 as the Year of the Turtle. Why should we ...

The UA College of Engineering's Hybrid Dynamics and Control Laboratory is developing mathematical analysis and design methods that could radically advance the capabilities of unmanned aircraft and ground vehicles, as well as many other systems that rely on autonomous decision making. Researchers in the lab design computer control systems that may one day allow robotic surveillance aircraft to stay aloft indefinitely. These systems also might be used to safely guide aircraft and automobiles through small openings as they enter buildings. Or they could help airplanes and ...

A study led by the University of Zaragoza (UNIZAR) has studied precipitation trends in Spain's 10 hydrological basins over the 1946 to 2005 period. The results show that precipitation has declined overall between the months of March and June, reducing the length of the rainy season. The rains are heavier in October in the north west of the country. Since 1946, the average precipitation falling on Spanish hydrological basins has undergone "notable" changes. The researchers observed a widespread decline in March and June, above all in March (except in the basin of the Segura), ...

Frontotemporal dementia is caused by a breakdown of nerve cells in the frontal and temporal region of the brain (fronto-temporal lobe), which leads to, among other symptoms, a change in personality and behavior. The cause of some forms of frontotemporal dementia is a genetically determined reduction of a hormone-like growth factor, progranulin. Scientists around Dr. Anja Capell and Prof. Christian Haass have now shown that various drugs that are already on the market to treat malaria, angina pectoris or heart rhythm disturbances can increase the production of progranulin. ...

The spinach-eating cartoon character Popeye has much to teach us, new research from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows. The muscles' cellular power plants – the mitochondria – are boosted by nitrate, a substance found in abundance in vegetables such as lettuce, spinach and beetroot. For half a century, inorganic nitrate has been associated with negative health effects, but more recently, evidence of the contrary has mounted. In the 1990s, a research group at Karolinska Institutet demonstrated how the body can convert nitrate to NO, a molecule ...

Amsterdam, The Netherlands / Tokyo, Japan, 2 February 2011 – The Waseda University Institute of e-Government has released the 2011 Waseda University World e-Government Ranking, marking its seventh consecutive year of monitoring the development of e-Government worldwide. Singapore is once again at the top of the list. The complete list of the top 15 countries (economies) which have the most advanced development in e-government according to the Waseda Survey are: (1) Singapore, (2) USA, (3) Sweden, (4) Korea, (5) Finland, (6) Japan, (7) Canada, (8) Estonia, (9) Belgium, ...

Biologists at the University of Leicester have published results of a new study into the intricacies of sex in flowering plants. They have found that a gene in plants, called DUO1, acts as a master switch to ensure twin fertile sperm cells are made in each pollen grain. The research identifies for the first time that DUO1 switches on a battery of genes that together govern sperm cell production and their ability to produce seeds.. The findings have implications for plant fertility, seed production – and could be used to help produce improved crops to help meet ...

Gallium nitride (GaN) material holds promise for emerging high-power devices that are more energy efficient than existing technologies – but these GaN devices traditionally break down when exposed to high voltages. Now researchers at North Carolina State University have solved the problem, introducing a buffer that allows the GaN devices to handle 10 times greater power. "For future renewable technologies, such as the smart grid or electric cars, we need high-power semiconductor devices," says Merve Ozbek, a Ph.D. student at NC State and author of a paper describing the ...

Rare fragments of Martian meteorites have been investigated at the University of Leicester revealing one of the ways water flowed near the surface of Mars. Scientists at the University's renowned Space Research Centre, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, examined five meteorite samples – including the very first nakhlite, found a century ago. Nakhlites are a form of meteorite known to have originated on Mars. They are named after the village of El-Nakhla in Egypt where the first one was found in 1911. Findings from the research have been published in Meteoritics ...

Human influence on the landscape, global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and biodiversity are highlighted in a new set of studies led by University of Leicester researchers. How this influence will be reflected in the distinctive geological record forms the basis of the studies published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams from the University of Leicester Department of Geology led the production of the studies into the Anthropocene – a new geological epoch distinguished by the change that man has wrought ...

A wealth of documentary evidence relating to theatres and society in early-modern London has for the first time been brought together online, in an international project led by the University of Southampton. Professor of English at Southampton, John McGavin, has directed research to find and transcribe historical texts relating to eight early theatres north of the Thames, which operated outside the capital's city walls.1 The online database 'Early Modern London Theatres' (EMLoT) has been created as part of this research project, in collaboration with King's College ...

The results of the work, developed at the Mount Sinai Hospital Medical School in New York, in which Ana García-Osta, researcher at the Centro de Investigación Médica Aplicada (CIMA) of the University of Navarra took part, was published in the latest issue of Nature. The article describes the role played by IGF-II in the processes of consolidation of long-term memory. "Through microarray studies (gene identification) we see that the gene that codes this protein increases in the brain of rats exposed to a learning session. On administering IGF-II locally into the hypocampus ...

Tel Aviv — Quantum mechanics, developed in the 1920s, has had an enormous impact in explaining how matter works. The elementary particles that make up different forms of matter — such as electrons, protons, neutrons and photons — are well understood within the model quantum physics provides. Even now, some 90 years later, new scientific principles in quantum physics are being described. The most recent gives the world a glimpse into the seemingly impossible. Prof. Eran Rabani of Tel Aviv University's School of Chemistry and his colleagues at Columbia University have ...

Lung tumors are the number one cause of death among cancer patients, and one cancer in three is lung cancer. Each year, there are 50,000 new cases of the disease in Germany alone. The earlier a tumor can be detected, the greater the chance of healing the patient. But early detection is difficult. In its initial stages, the tumor-related complaints resemble chronic inflammatory reactions. To get a more complete diagnosis, the patient must undergo an X-ray examination or an bronchoscopy. The last procedure often involves irritation of the lung or removal of tissue samples ...