LA JOLLA, CA – January 4, 2011 — Researchers from The Scripps Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Cornell University have produced a long-lasting anti-cocaine immunity in mice by giving them a unique vaccine that combines bits of the common cold virus with a particle that mimics cocaine. In their study, published January 4, 2011, in the advanced online edition of Molecular Therapy, the researchers say this novel strategy might be the first to offer cocaine addicts a fairly simple way to break and reverse their habit. The approach could also be useful ...

DURHAM, N.C. – A tiny light source and sensors at the end of an endoscope may provide a more accurate way to identify pre-cancerous cells in the lining of the esophagus. Developed by biomedical engineers at Duke University and successfully tested on patients during a clinical trial at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the device holds the promise of being a less invasive method for testing patients suspected of having Barrett's esophagus, a change in the lining of the esophagus due to acid reflux. Acid reflux occurs when stomach acid splashes, or refluxes, ...

University of Illinois research has resulted in the development of a novel and widely applicable molecular tool that can serve as a road map for making plant breeding easier to understand. Researchers developed a unified nomenclature for male fertility restorer (RF) proteins in higher plants that can make rapid advancements in plant breeding. "Understanding the mechanism by which RF genes suppress the male sterile phenotype and restore fertility to plants is critical for continued improvements in hybrid technology," said Manfredo J. Seufferheld, U of I assistant professor ...

In the first-ever quantification of energy expended by humans during sleep, a University of Colorado team has found that the metabolic cost of an adult missing one night of sleep is the equivalent of walking slightly less than two miles. The new findings will help researchers further understand one of the important functions of sleep in humans, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Kenneth Wright. Wright, who led the study, said the goal was to measure and quantify energy expenditure during both sleep and wakeful periods. "We found that people do expend more energy when ...

A stack of punch cards from a landmark study published in 1966, and the legwork to track down the study's participants years later, has yielded the longest analysis of the effects of lipoproteins on coronary heart disease. The study, published in a recent issue of the journal Atherosclerosis, tracked almost 1,900 people over a 29-year period, which is nearly three times longer than other studies that examine the link between different sizes of high-density lipoprotein particles and heart disease. It found that an increase in larger high-density lipoprotein particles ...

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researchers in Melbourne, Australia, have discovered how a key viral gene helps viruses evade early detection by the immune system. Their finding is providing new insights into how viruses are able to establish chronic infections, leading scientists to reevaluate their approaches to viral vaccine development. Researchers from the institute's Immunology division together with collaborators at the University of Cambridge (UK) have been studying how the immune system responds to viruses that cause persistent or chronic infections and why ...

ST. PAUL, Minn. –Women who have multiple sclerosis (MS) are more likely to have a gene associated with multiple sclerosis than men with the disease and it is this gene region where environment interacts with the genetics, according to a study published in the January 5, 2011, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Research has shown that the number of people diagnosed with MS has been rising, and the rate has been rising faster for women than for men. The cause of MS is not known, but evidence suggests that it is triggered ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A pair of clinical trials, conducted in part at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, found that two weeks of treatment with rifaximin provides significant relief of irritable bowel syndrome symptoms including bloating, abdominal pain and loose or watery stools. In addition, the studies found that the benefits of treatment with rifaximin (brand name: Xifaxan) persisted for 10 weeks after patients stopped taking the broad-spectrum antibiotic, said Yehuda Ringel, MD, an associate professor of medicine in the UNC School of Medicine and a co-author ...

LOS ANGELES (EMBARGOED UNTIL 5 PM ET on JAN. 5, 2011) – A ground-breaking antibiotic therapy developed at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is the first potential drug treatment to provide irritable bowel syndrome patients with long-lasting relief of their symptoms even after they stop taking the medication, according to a study published in the Jan. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Unlike in traditional therapies, such as when taking antidepressant and other medications that have benefits only while on the drug, patients in the study reported relief of their ...

10-Dec 2010 What happens when galaxies crash together? For years, these cosmic collisions have been blamed for triggering violent outbursts at the hearts of galaxies. Now, a remarkable piece of detective work has given a verdict: galactic mergers do not usually whet the appetite of the black holes that power these active galactic nuclei, meaning other, less dramatic phenomena are responsible. Most galaxies, including our own, have a huge but well-behaved black hole at their heart, while some have messy eaters that suck in vast amounts of matter which then shines brightly ...

This new infrared image of the Lagoon Nebula was captured as part of a five-year study of the Milky Way using ESO's VISTA telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This is a small piece of a much larger image of the region surrounding the nebula, which is, in turn, only one part of a huge survey. Astronomers are currently using ESO's Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) to scour the Milky Way's central regions for variable objects and map its structure in greater detail than ever before. This huge survey is called VISTA Variables in the Via ...

AT A GLANCE The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) released its first-ever guidelines for the treatment of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which will help physicians determine the most appropriate care for infections due to the common bacterium. MRSA is the most common cause of skin infections that send people to the emergency room. Its invasive form kills about18,000 people a year. Treatment of MRSA varies widely. The guidelines will help physicians make good treatment decisions, which may mean not prescribing antibiotics for some ...

[EMBARGOED FOR JAN. 5, 2011] Two doses of the varicella, or chickenpox, vaccine provide excellent protection in children against this highly contagious and, in some cases, severe disease. To be published in the February 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, the findings support the two-dose vaccine regimen recommended in the United States since 2006. (Please see below for a link to the study online.) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began recommending a single dose of varicella vaccine in children aged 1 to 13 years old in 1995. Although the ...

Encouraging new evidence suggests that the bulk of the world's fisheries – including small-scale, often non-industrialized fisheries on which millions of people depend for food – could be sustained using community-based co-management. "The majority of the world's fisheries are not – and never will be – managed by strong centralized governments with top-down rules and the means to enforce them," according to Nicolas Gutiérrez, a University of Washington doctoral student in aquatic and fishery sciences who is lead author of a paper that goes online Jan. 5 in the journal ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – The conventional view of the history of the Earth is that the oceans became oxygen-rich to approximately the degree they are today in the Late Ediacaran Period (about 600 million years ago) after staying relatively oxygen-poor for the preceding four billion years. But biogeochemists at the University of California, Riverside have found evidence that shows that the ocean went back to being "anoxic" or oxygen-poor around 499 million years ago, soon after the first appearance of animals on the planet, and remained anoxic for 2-4 million years. What's more, ...

Personal motivation may be the biggest factor in determining the length of time it takes for a patient to return to work following a total knee replacement, according to new research published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS). "Although the physical demands of a patient's job certainly have some influence on their ability to return to work following a primary total knee replacement, the patient's characteristics, particularly motivation, play a more important role," said study author Joseph F. Styron, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University. According ...

Genetic resistance to antibiotics is not the only trick bacteria use to resist eradication– they also have a second defence strategy known as persistence that can kick in. Researchers reporting in the Journal of Medical Microbiology have now demonstrated for the first time that interplay occurs between the two mechanisms to aid bacterial survival. The findings could lead to novel, effective approaches to treat multi-drug resistant (MDR) infections. 'Persister' bacterial cells are temporarily hyper-resistant to all antibiotics at once. They are able to survive (normally) ...

London, UK (January 6, 2011) - For global warming policy, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference (Copenhagen Summit) was a major disappointment. Designed to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, the Summit concluded without a binding agreement because of deep divisions on the distribution of emissions reductions and costs. In addition, the United States failed to take action on a carbon cap-and-trade bill in 2010. Confronting this policy vacuum, leading climate economist William Nordhaus argues in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, ...

Peer into any stream in a South American rainforest and you may well see a small shoal of similar-looking miniature catfish. But don't be fooled into thinking that they are all the same species. An extensive investigation of South American Corydoras catfish, (reported in Nature 6.1.11), reveals that catfish communities- although containing almost identically coloured and patterned fish, could actually contain three or more different species. Establishing for the first time that many species are mimetic; that is, they evolve to share the same colour patterns for mutual ...

'High-dose vitamin D3 during intensive treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis: a double-blind randomised control trial' is published in The Lancet on 6 January 2011. Dr Adrian Martineau is available for interview, to arrange please contact: Alex Fernandes Communications Office Queen Mary, University of London Tel: 020 7882 7910 Mobile: 07528 711332 a.fernandes@qmul.ac.uk END ...

[EMBARGOED FOR JAN. 5, 2011] For those infected with the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus, extreme obesity was a powerful risk factor for death, according to an analysis of a public health surveillance database. In a study to be published in the February 1, 2011, issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers associated extreme obesity with a nearly three-fold increased odds of death from 2009 H1N1 influenza. Half of Californians greater than 20 years of age hospitalized with 2009 H1N1 were obese. (Please see below for a link to the study online.) Data from ...

Artistry from science: Cornell University researchers have unveiled striking, atomic-resolution details of what graphene "quilts" look like at the boundaries between patches, and have uncovered key insights into graphene's electrical and mechanical properties. (Nature, Jan. 5, 2010.) Researchers focused on graphene – a one atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms bonded in a crystal lattice like a honeycomb or chicken wire – because of its electrical properties and potential to improve everything from solar cells to cell phone screens. But graphene doesn't grow in perfect ...

When vaccinating children against varicella (chicken pox), researchers at Yale School of Medicine have found, two doses are better than one. In fact, the odds of developing chicken pox were 95 percent lower in children who had received two doses of the vaccine compared with those who had received only one dose. Published in the February 1 issue of Journal of Infectious Diseases, the study was led by Eugene D. Shapiro, M.D., professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Yale and his colleagues at Yale and Columbia universities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...

The University of Minnesota's Water Resources Center has authored a first-ever, comprehensive report designed to protect and preserve Minnesota's lakes, rivers and groundwater for the 21st century and beyond. The report is being formally presented to the Minnesota House of Representative's Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Policy and Finance Committee today at 8:15 a.m., Wednesday, Jan. 5 in Room 5 of the State Office Building, St. Paul. The Minnesota Water Sustainability Framework, commissioned by the 2009 Minnesota Legislature, is intended to serve as a legislative ...

Boulder, CO, USA - The Jan.-Feb. 2011 GSA Bulletin focuses on river geomorphology; submarine landslides and submarine uplift; the Sangamon paleosol in the Lower Mississippi Valley; the nature and formation of basins, plateaus, cratons, and mountains around the world, including continent building, plate tectonics, and subduction zones, and magmatism; charcoal accumulation rates and teleconnections among regional climates; zircon dating of Amazon River sand; the Messinian salinity crisis; and characteristics of the Sierra Madera impact structure. Keywords: Sandy River, ...