After a spinal cord injury a number of factors impede the regeneration of nerve cells. Two of the most important of these factors are the destabilization of the cytoskeleton and the development of scar tissue. While the former prevents regrowth of cells, the latter creates a barrier for severed nerve cells. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried and their colleagues from the Kennedy Krieger Institute and University of Miami in the United States, and the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, have now shown that the cancer drug Taxol reduces ...

Plants are attacked by a multitude of insects and mammals. As defense against these herbivores they developed complex defense mechanisms over the course of evolution: spines, thorns, leaf hairs and a number of toxic chemical substances. For decades it has been controversially discussed whether the production of defense traits incurs costs to the plants. Now, using a new method the ecologists and plant biologists of the University of Zürich together with their American colleagues demonstrate these costs accurately in a Proceedings of the Royal Society article. For their ...

DETROIT – Light, or photodynamic, therapy can help preserve the voice and vocal cord function for patients with early stage laryngeal (voice box) cancer, according to a study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. "Photodynamic therapy is an effective treatment for early laryngeal squamous cell carcinomas, offering patients a less invasive option with fewer side effects than other therapies, while preserving the voice," says study co-author Vanessa G. Schweitzer, FACS, M.D., a senior staff physician in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford. ...

"Fathers transmit their smoking habits to a statistically significant level to their sons, and the same is true of mothers and daughters. However, if a mother smokes it does not seem to impact on the probability of her son smoking, and similarly a father that smokes does not affect his daughter", Loureiro, a researcher at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC), in Spain, and co-author of the study, tells SINC. The research, which has been published in the journal Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, is based on information from the British Household ...

Participating in community service activities and helping others is not just good for the soul; it has a healing effect that helps alcoholics and other addicts become and stay sober, a researcher from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine reports. In a review article published in the Volume 29 issue of Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, Maria E. Pagano, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine, sheds light on the role of helping in addiction recovery, using the program of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a prime example. She cites a growing ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---DNA, that marvelous, twisty molecule of life, has an alter ego, research at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine reveals. On rare occasions, its building blocks "rock and roll," deforming the familiar double helix into a different shape. "We show that the simple DNA double helix exists in an alternative form---for one percent of the time---and that this alternative form is functional," said Hashim M. Al-Hashimi, who is the Robert L. Kuczkowski Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biophysics at U-M. "Together, these ...

DETROIT – Using a novel surgical approach, it's possible to rebuild the trachea and preserve a patient's voice after removing an invasive throat tumor, according to a new report from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. This case study is the first of its kind to not only document a successful technique to create a fully functional trachea, or windpipe, but also report a rare type of malignant tumor in an adult's trachea. Most commonly, this type of tumor is seen in newborns and very rarely occurs in the neck, says lead study author Samer Al-Khudari, M.D., with the Department ...

Montreal, January 28, 2011 – The mystery began in 1976. Adolfo Pampena was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that caused a strange combination of symptoms and was associated with the occurrence of multiple tumours in his stomach and colon. His medical team was stumped and was unable to answer the most important questions for him and his family: the cause of his disease and the risk for future generations. Now, 35 years later, the answers are at hand thanks to a genetic study led by investigators at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI ...

It is well known that teenagers take risks — and that when they do, they like to have company. Teens are five times more likely to be in a car accident when in a group than when driving alone, and they are more likely to commit a crime in a group. Now, a new study sheds light on why. Temple University psychologists Jason Chein and Laurence Steinberg set out to measure brain activity in adolescents, alone and with peers, as they made decisions with inherent risks. Their findings, published this month in Developmental Science, demonstrate that when teens are with friends ...

What sounds like science fiction is actually possible: thanks to magnetic stimulation, the activity of certain brain nerve cells can be deliberately influenced. What happens in the brain in this context has been unclear up to now. Medical experts from Bochum under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Klaus Funke (Department of Neurophysiology) have now shown that various stimulus patterns changed the activity of distinct neuronal cell types. In addition, certain stimulus patterns led to rats learning more easily. The knowledge obtained could contribute to cerebral stimulation being ...

Toronto – Will Academy Award nominees Nicole Kidman and Annette Bening be at higher risk for a divorce if they win the Oscar for best actress next month? A long line of best actress winners including Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Halle Berry and Kate Winslet experienced the end of their marriages not long after taking home their awards. A study by researchers at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management and Carnegie Mellon University finds that Oscar winners in the Best Actress category are at a higher risk of divorce than nominees who do not win. By contrast, ...

The rise of social media has allowed people to connect and re-connect with friends, colleagues and family from across the world. A new paper by University of Minnesota computer scientists in the College of Science and Engineering provides insights into how the analysis of our social networking interactions could discover things like the emergence or decline of leadership, changes in trust over time, and migration and mobility within particular communities online. The paper, "Computational Modeling of Spatio-temporal Social Networks: A Time-Aggregated Graph Approach," ...

LOS ANGELES (January 27, 2011) – A team of researchers led by Vicente Gilsanz, MD, PhD, director of Clinical Imaging at The Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, determined that the onset of puberty was the primary influence on adult bone mineral density, or bone strength. Length of puberty did not affect bone density. Reduced bone mineral density leads to osteoporosis, resulting in bones becoming increasingly brittle and at risk for fracture. Osteoporosis is a significant public health issue with the cost of treatment in 2010 estimated at ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The increased frequency of drought observed in Eastern Africa over the last 20 years is likely to continue as long as global temperatures continue to rise, according to UC Santa Barbara scientist Park Williams. The new research, published in Climate Dynamics, indicates that more drought poses increased risk to millions of people in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia, who currently face potential food shortages. "Forecasting precipitation variability from year to year is difficult, and research on the links between global change and precipitation ...

A little disorder goes a long way, especially when it comes to harnessing the sun's energy. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) jumbled the atomic structure of the surface layer of titanium dioxide nanocrystals, creating a catalyst that is both long lasting and more efficient than all other materials in using the sun's energy to extract hydrogen from water. Their photocatalyst, which accelerates light-driven chemical reactions, is the first to combine durability and record-breaking efficiency, making it ...

Princeton University engineers have developed a new laser sensing technology that may allow soldiers to detect hidden bombs from a distance and scientists to better measure airborne environmental pollutants and greenhouse gasses. "We are able to send a laser pulse out and get another pulse back from the air itself," said Richard Miles, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton, the research group leader and co-author on the paper. "The returning beam interacts with the molecules in the air and carries their finger prints." The new technique differs ...

A key mechanism that appears to contribute to blood vessel damage in people with diabetes has been identified by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Blood vessel problems are a common diabetes complication. Many of the nearly 26 million Americans with the disease face the prospect of amputations, heart attack, stroke and vision loss because of damaged vessels. Reporting in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the Washington University researchers say studies in mice show that the damage appears to involve two enzymes, fatty acid synthase ...

So you think global warming is a big problem? What could happen if a 25-million-ton chunk of rock slammed into Earth? When something similar happened 65 million years ago, the dinosaurs and other forms of life were wiped out. "A collision with an object of this size traveling at an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 mile per hour would be catastrophic," according to NASA researcher and New York City College of Technology (City Tech) Associate Professor of Physics Gregory L. Matloff. What does he recommend? "Either destroy the object or alter its trajectory." Dr. Matloff, whose ...

Despite penicillin and the dozens of antibiotics that followed it, streptococcus bacteria have remained a major threat to health throughout the world. The reason: the superb evolutionary skills of this pathogen to rapidly alter its genetic makeup. In a landmark paper published this week in Science, scientists from Rockefeller University and the Sanger Institute have used full genome sequencing to identify the precise steps in the molecular evolution of Streptococcus pneumoniae. Their research shows the changes the genome of this bacterium has undergone in time and during ...

Research from the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine provides new clues for the compulsive behavior and cognitive defects associated with a rare childhood neurological disease called Lesch-Nyhan Disease (LND). Two pathways found to be defective in LND are known to be associated with other neurodegenerative disease, such as Alzheimer's and Parknson's diseases, suggesting common causes of cognitive and behavioral defects in these neurological disorders. The research is published on-line today in the PLoS ONE. "This study is important because it opens ...

INDIANAPOLIS – An antibiotic known for its immunosuppressive functions could also point the way to the development of new anti-cancer agents, researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine have reported. The study determined that the compound, tautomycetin, targets an enzyme called SHP2, which plays an important role in cell activities such as proliferation and differentiation. Interestingly, SHP2 mutations are also known to cause several types of leukemia and solid tumors. The findings were reported in the Jan. 28, 2011, issue of the journal Chemistry and Biology. The ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers have created a new type of "stereo vision" to use in studying ocean waves as they pound against the shore, providing a better way to understand and monitor this violent, ever-changing environment. The approach, which uses two video cameras to feed data into an advanced computer system, can observe large areas of ocean waves in real time and help explain what they are doing and why, scientists say. The system may be of particular value as climate change and rising sea levels pose additional challenges to vulnerable shorelines around the world, ...

HOUSTON - Practicing stress management techniques before prostate cancer surgery may help activate the body's immune response leading to quicker recovery, as well as aid in lowering mood disturbance, according to a new study by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study is published in the February/March edition of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. It's the first to examine the effects pre-surgery stress management training has on immune outcomes in men with prostate cancer undergoing radical prostatectomy (surgical removal of the prostate). ...

Ecology drives evolution. In today's issue of the journal Science, UC Davis expert Thomas Schoener describes growing evidence that the reverse is also true, and explores what that might mean to our understanding of how environmental change affects species and vice-versa. A classic example of ecology influencing evolution is seen in a Galápagos ground finch, Geospiza fortis. In this species, larger beaks dominated the population after dry years when large seeds were more abundant. After wet years, the direction of natural selection reversed, favoring smaller beaks that ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---A majority of African American men said they do not go to the doctor because visits are stressful and physicians don't give adequate information on how to make prescribed behavior or lifestyle changes, a new University of Michigan study shows. When they did go, the majority of the 105 men questioned said they disliked the tone physicians used with them. When those men did visit the doctor, they said it was because they were seeking test results or their family encouraged them to go. Men often said they knew they needed to lose weight, change eating ...