New lupus drug results from Scripps Research technology
2011-03-11
LA JOLLA, CA – March 9, 2011 – For Immediate Release – Scientific advances at The Scripps Research Institute were key to laying the foundation for the new drug Benlysta® (belimumab), approved today by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Benlysta®, which treats the most common type of lupus, is the first in a new class of pharmaceuticals that prevents the body from attacking its own critical tissues.
"I am deeply gratified that our scientific findings have proven so valuable to drug discovery," said Richard A. Lerner, MD, president of Scripps Research. "This development ...
Pollution forms an invisible barrier for marine life
2011-03-11
Over 50 percent of the population in the United States and over 60 percent in the world live in coastal areas. Rapidly growing human populations near the ocean have massively altered coastal water ecosystems.
One of the most extensive human stressors is the discharge of chemicals and pollutants into the ocean. In the Southern California Bight, more than 60 sewage and urban runoff sources discharge over 1 billion gallons of liquid on a dry day with the two largest sources of contaminants being sewage from municipal treatment plants and urban runoff from highly modified ...
Weed-eating fish 'key to reef survival'
2011-03-11
Preserving an intact population of weed-eating fish may be vital to saving the world's coral reefs from being engulfed by weed as human and climate impacts grow.
A new study by researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies has found weed-eaters like parrotfish and surgeonfish can only keep coral reefs clear of weed up to a point. After the weeds reach a certain density, they take over entirely and the coral is lost.
For some years researchers have pinned their hopes on the ability of weed-eating fish to keep the weeds at bay while the corals recover ...
Insights from oil spill air pollution study have applications beyond Gulf
2011-03-11
During a special airborne mission to study the air-quality impacts of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill last June, NOAA researchers discovered an important new mechanism by which air pollution particles form. Although predicted four years ago, this discovery now confirms the importance of this pollution mechanism and could change the way urban air quality is understood and predicted.
The NOAA-led team showed that although the lightest compounds in the oil evaporated within hours, it was the heavier compounds, which took longer to evaporate, that contributed most to ...
Molecules work the day shift to protect the liver from accumulating fat
2011-03-11
PHILADELPHIA - The liver normally makes and stores fat, which is required in moderation for normal body function. However, if the process goes awry, excess fat in the liver can cause major liver damage. In fact, fatty liver is a leading cause of liver failure in the United States, and is often brought on by obesity and diabetes. In turn, the increasing prevalence of these diseases has brought with it an epidemic of liver disease.
Abnormal sleep patterns, such as those of shift-workers, can be risk factors for obesity and diabetes. Investigators have known for decades ...
Age affects us all
2011-03-11
Durham, NC — Humans aren't the only ones who grow old gracefully, says a new study of primate aging patterns.
For a long time it was thought that humans, with our relatively long life spans and access to modern medicine, aged more slowly than other animals. Early comparisons with rats, mice, and other short-lived creatures confirmed the hunch. But now, the first-ever multi-species comparison of human aging patterns with those in chimps, gorillas, and other primates suggests the pace of human aging may not be so unique after all.
The findings appear in the March 11 issue ...
Anthropologists link human uniqueness to hunter-gatherer group structure
2011-03-11
TEMPE, Ariz. – One of the most complex human mysteries involves how and why we became an outlier species in terms of biological success.
Research findings published in the March 11 edition of the journal Science by an international team of noted anthropologists, including several from Arizona State University, who study hunter-gatherer societies, are informing the issue by suggesting that human ancestral social structure may be the root of cumulative culture and cooperation and, ultimately, human uniqueness.
Because humans lived as hunter-gatherers for 95 percent of ...
Johns Hopkins scientists reveal role of light sensor in temperature sensation
2011-03-11
A light-sensing receptor that's packed inside the eye's photoreceptor cells has an altogether surprising role in cells elsewhere in the body, Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered. Using fruit flies, they showed that this protein, called rhodopsin, also is critical for sensing temperature.
A report on the work appears March 11 in Science.
"For decades, this well-known molecule — one of the most-studied sensory receptors — was thought to function exclusively in the eye as a light receptor, but now we have found that fly larvae and possibly other organisms use it ...
Aging rates, gender gap in mortality similar across all primates
2011-03-11
DURHAM, N.C. -- Humans aren't the only ones who grow old gracefully, says a new study of primate aging patterns.
For a long time it was thought that humans, with our relatively long life spans and access to modern medicine, aged more slowly than other animals. Early comparisons with rats, mice, and other short-lived creatures confirmed the hunch. But now, the first-ever multi-species comparison of human aging patterns with those in chimps, gorillas, and other primates suggests the pace of human aging may not be so unique after all.
The findings appear in the March 11 ...
Depression may increase the risk of kidney failure
2011-03-11
Depression is associated with an increased risk of developing kidney failure in the future, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). Approximately 10% of the US population will suffer from depression at some point during their lifetime.
Lead investigator, Dr. Willem Kop (Department of Medical Psychology and Neuropsychology at the University of Tilburg, the Netherlands) and colleagues studied 5,785 people from four counties across the United States for 10 years. The participants were 65 years ...
Coffee drinking linked to reduced stroke risk in women
2011-03-11
Drinking more than a cup of coffee a day was associated with a 22 percent to 25 percent lower risk of stroke, compared with those who drank less, in a study reported in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Low or no coffee consumption was associated with an increased risk of stroke in a study of 34,670 women (ages 49 to 83) followed for an average 10.4 years. It's too soon to change coffee-drinking habits, but the study should ease the concerns of some women, researchers noted.
Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. "Therefore, ...
New gene sites affecting nonalcoholic fatty liver disease discovered
2011-03-11
NAFLD is a condition where fat accumulates in the liver (steatosis) and can lead to liver inflammation (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis or NASH) and permanent liver damage (fibrosis/cirrhosis). NAFLD affects anywhere from 11% to 45% of some populations and is associated with obesity, hypertension, and problems regulating serum lipids or glucose.
"These findings will help us to better diagnose, manage, and treat NAFLD in the future and help explain why some but not all people with obesity develop particular complications of obesity; some carry genetic variants that predispose ...
Optical illusions show vision in a new light
2011-03-11
Optical illusions have fascinated humans throughout history. Greek builders used an optical illusion to ensure that that their columns appeared straight (they built them with a bulge) and we are all intrigued by the mental flip involved in the case of the young girl/old woman faces. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Neuroscience demonstrates a more serious use of these illusions in understanding how the brain assesses relative size.
Researchers from University College London looked at two well known illusions: the Ebbinghaus illusion, ...
Thrill-seeking females work hard for their next fix
2011-03-11
It seems that women become addicted to cocaine more easily than men and find it harder to give up. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Sex Differences reinforces this position by showing that the motivation of female rats to work for cocaine is much higher than males.
Researchers from the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute, University of Michigan, found that rats bred to have an elevated stress response and increased impulsiveness are more easily trained to reward themselves with cocaine. They are also more determined, ...
Science paper reveals real-time working of the spliceosome
2011-03-11
VIDEO:
Video of spliceosomes -- the complex of specialized RNA and protein subunits that acts as molecular scissors and tape during gene transcription -- at work.
Click here for more information.
WORCESTER, Mass.—Making a movie at the molecular level? A new method of imaging molecule-sized machines as they do the complex work of cutting and pasting genetic information inside the nucleus is the subject of a just-published paper in the journal Science, and the movies have revealed ...
UWM study finds work climate the main reason women leave engineering
2011-03-11
MILWAUKEE — Women who leave engineering jobs after obtaining the necessary degree are significantly more likely to leave the field because of an uncomfortable work climate than because of family reasons, according to a study being undertaken at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM).
Nearly half of women in the survey who left an engineering career indicated they did so because of negative working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary, the study shows.
Despite successful interventions to increase the numbers of women earning degrees in ...
Can bees color maps better than ants?
2011-03-11
In mathematics, you need at most only four different colors to produce a map in which no two adjacent regions have the same color. Utah and Arizona are considered adjacent, but Utah and New Mexico, which only share a point, are not. The four-color theorem proves this conjecture for generic maps of countries, but actually of more use in solving scheduling problems, scheduling, register allocation in computing and frequency assignment in mobile communications and broadcasting.
Researchers in Algeria are taking inspiration from nature to help them devise an automated way ...
Shallow-water shrimp tolerates deep-sea conditions
2011-03-11
By studying the tolerance of marine invertebrates to a wide range of temperature and pressure, scientists are beginning to understand how shallow-water species could have colonised the ocean depths.
Scientists believe that climate changes at various at various times during Earth's history caused extinctions of creatures living at bathyal (1,000,000 metres) and abyssal (>4,000 m) depths. These extinctions were apparently followed by re-colonisation of the deep sea by shallow-water species, which subsequently evolved into the species well adapted for life in this ...
Newly discovered role for enzyme in neurodegenerative diseases
2011-03-11
Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's are partly attributable to brain inflammation. Researchers at the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now demonstrate in a paper published in Nature that a well-known family of enzymes can prevent the inflammation and thus constitute a potential target for drugs.
Research suggests that microglial cells – the nerve system's primary immune cells – play a critical part in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. The over-activation of these cells in the brain can cause ...
Ultra high speed film
2011-03-11
How fast an intense laser pulse can change the electrical properties of solids is revealed by researchers from Kiel University in the current edition of Nature (09.03.2011). Scientists in the team of Professor Michael Bauer, Dr. Kai Roßnagel and Professor Lutz Kipp from the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, together with colleagues from the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Colorado in Boulder, U.S.A., are following the course of electronic switching processes which occur within fractions of a second (femtoseconds). The results of their research ...
Scientists discover cause of rare skin cancer that heals itself
2011-03-11
Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) scientists under the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore are part of an international team of researchers [1]who became the first in the world to discover the gene behind a rare skin cancer which grows rapidly for a few weeks before healing spontaneously, according to research published in Nature Genetics [2] today.
The peculiar behaviour of this rare self-healing cancer, called multiple self-healing squamous epithelioma (MSSE), was discovered to be caused by a failure in the gene called TGFBR1, which is ...
American birds of prey at higher risk of poisoning from pest control chemicals
2011-03-11
A new study by scientists from Maryland and Colorado using American kestrels, a surrogate test species for raptorial birds, suggests that they are at greater risk from poisoning from the rodenticide diphacinone than previous believed. The research, published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, considers the threat posed by diphacinone as its usage increases following restrictions on the use of similar pesticides.
"Recent restrictions on the use of some rodenticides may result in increased use of diphacinone," said lead author Dr. Barnett Rattner from the US Geological ...
Complementary technology could provide solution to our GPS vulnerability
2011-03-11
The GNSS Interference, Detection and Monitoring Conference 2011 follows Tuesday's Royal Academy of Engineering report that set out the risks of GPS disruption from solar storms or illegal jamming and assessed what can be done to reduce impacts on society.
Solutions put forward included eLORAN (Enhanced Long Range Navigation), a revamped version of the 1950's LORAN terrestrial radio navigation systems used extensively by the US military which have been brought into the digital age and demonstrated as an ideal accompaniment to GPS. eLoran uses high-power, land-based transmitters, ...
Acquisition of robotic technology leads to increased rates of prostate cancer surgery
2011-03-11
A new study conducted by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center and Yale School of Medicine shows that when hospitals acquire surgical robotic technology, men in that region are more likely to have prostate cancer surgery. The study, "The Association between Diffusion of the Surgical Robot and Radical Prostatectomy Rates", was published this week in the online edition of the journal Medical Care.
"The use of the surgical robot to treat prostate cancer is an instructive example of an expensive medical technology becoming rapidly adopted without clear proof of its benefit," ...
Nanotech-enabled consumer products continue to rise
2011-03-11
WASHINGTON – Nanotech consumer products continue to grow at a consistent pace.
According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) over 1,300 manufacturer-identified, nanotechnology-enabled products have entered the commercial marketplace around the world. The most recent update to the group's five-year-old inventory reflects the continuing use of the tiny particles in everything from conventional products like non-stick cookware to more unique items such as self-cleaning window treatments.
"The use of nanotechnology in consumer products continues to grow ...
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