STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine, applying a state-of-the-art imaging system to brain-tissue samples from mice, have been able to quickly and accurately locate and count the myriad connections between nerve cells in unprecedented detail, as well as to capture and catalog those connections' surprising variety. A typical healthy human brain contains about 200 billion nerve cells, or neurons, linked to one another via hundreds of trillions of tiny contacts called synapses. It is at these synapses that an electrical impulse traveling ...

Physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva, Switzerland, have succeeded in trapping antihydrogen – the antimatter equivalent of the hydrogen atom – a milestone that could soon lead to experiments on a form of matter that disappeared mysteriously shortly after the birth of the universe 14 billion years ago. The first artificially produced low energy antihydrogen atoms – consisting of a positron, or antimatter electron, orbiting an antiproton nucleus – were created at CERN in 2002, but until now the atoms have struck normal matter ...

LA JOLLA, CA – November 15, 2010 –– A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has developed a powerful new method for detecting functional sites on proteins. The technique may have broad applications in basic research and drug development. Described in an advance, online publication of Nature on November 17, 2010, the method enables scientists to take a sample of cells, locate the sites on their proteins that have a certain kind of biochemical reactivity, and measure the degree of that reactivity. "It lets us find functional sites on proteins more ...

CHICAGO --- Estrogen is an elixir for the brain, sharpening mental performance in humans and animals and showing promise as a treatment for disorders of the brain such as Alzheimer's disease and schizophrenia. But long-term estrogen therapy, once prescribed routinely for menopausal women, now is quite controversial because of research showing it increases the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke. Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered how to reap the benefits of estrogen without the risk. Using a special compound, they flipped a switch that mimics the effect ...

Viruses have led scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to the discovery of a security system in host cells. Viruses that cause disease in animals beat the security system millennia ago. But now that researchers are aware of it, they can explore the possibility of bringing the system back into play in the fight against diseases such as sudden acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus, dengue and yellow fever. The findings, published in Nature, solve a 35-year-old mystery that began when National Institutes of Health researcher Bernard ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- Like all organisms, bacteria must compete for resources to survive, even if it means a fight to the death. New research led by scientists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine and the University of California, Santa Barbara, describes new complexities in the close chemical combat waged among bacteria. And the findings from this microscopic war zone may have implications for human health and survival. "It has been known for a long time that bacteria can produce toxins that they release into their surroundings ...

NEW YORK, November, 17, 2010 — An international, multi-center study has revealed the discovery of a novel oncogene that is associated with uveal melanoma, the most common form of eye cancer. Researchers have isolated an oncogene called GNA11 and have found that it is present in more than 40 percent of tumor samples taken from patients with uveal melanoma. The findings are being published early online November 17, 2010 in the New England Journal of Medicine and will appear in the December 2, 2010, print issue. "These findings are significant because we now have a much ...

Left ventricular non-compaction (LVNC), a cardiomyopathy about which little is fully understood, is associated with heart failure (HF), stroke and ventricular arrhythmias, according to a study to be presented Nov. 17 at the 2010 American Heart Association (AHA) Scientific Sessions in Chicago. The researchers also will report that advanced imaging technologies reveal that developing these cardiac risks appear to progress over time in patients with LVNC. LVNC is an inherited heart muscle condition in which the muscular wall of the left ventricle appears to be spongy and ...

Stop using racial profiling, says Professor William Press from the University of Texas at Austin. He claims that as well as being politically and ethically questionable, racial profiling does no better in helping law enforcement officials in their task of catching terrorists than standard uniform random sampling techniques. This is the topic of a paper publishing today in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. Racial profiling rests on the idea that people from particular racial or ethnic groups are more ...

Northwestern Medicine physician researchers are revolutionizing treatment of cardiovascular disease by utilizing patients' own stem cells to regenerate heart and vascular tissue. Northwestern Medicine is the lead site for a study examining stem cell transplantation as treatment for critical limb ischemia. Chief investigator Douglas Losordo, MD, director of the Program in Cardiovascular Regenerative Medicine at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and the Eileen M. Foell Professor of Heart Research of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, will present the findings ...

PASADENA, Calif. — Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have demonstrated quantum entanglement for a quantum state stored in four spatially distinct atomic memories. Their work, described in the November 18 issue of the journal Nature, also demonstrated a quantum interface between the atomic memories—which represent something akin to a computer "hard drive" for entanglement—and four beams of light, thereby enabling the four-fold entanglement to be distributed by photons across quantum networks. The research represents an important achievement ...

A new anti-cancer drug aimed at vitamin D receptors on cancer cells has prompted encouraging responses in the levels of PSA (prostate specific antigen) in men with prostate cancer that has become resistant to hormonal therapies. Results of the phase II(a) clinical trial will be presented at the 22nd EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Berlin today (Thursday). The trial found that when the new drug, inecalcitol, was combined with the existing, current therapy (docetaxel and prednisone) 83% of patients responded to the treatment ...

Scientists in Germany have developed a way of smuggling an anti-cancer drug past the protective blood-brain barrier and into brain tumours and metastases using a nanocarrier – a tiny capsule specially designed to pass through cell membranes and deliver its anti-cancer drug to the cancer cell. The blood-brain barrier is formed by a network of closely sealed endothelial cells in the brain's capillaries, and it expresses a high level of proteins that pump foreign molecules away from the brain, while allowing others (such as glucose and insulin) that are necessary to the ...

In the movie Angels and Demons, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In real life, trapping atomic antimatter has never been accomplished, until now. A team made up of researchers from the University of Calgary, institutions across Canada and around the world have discovered how to trap atomic antimatter and the results of their discovery is published in the journal Nature. "This is a major discovery. It could enable experiments that result in dramatic changes to the current view of fundamental ...

A new drug that targets proteins responsible for helping cancer cells to repair damage to their DNA has shown promising anti-tumour activity in its first trial in humans. Some patients with a range of solid tumours, many of whom had been treated unsuccessfully for their cancer with other therapies, have seen their tumours shrink or stabilise for periods of between 46 days to more than a year. The research will be presented at the 22nd EORTC-NCI-AACR [1] Symposium on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics in Berlin today (Thursday). Laboratory studies of the drug, MK-4827, ...

WHAT: In a review article appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, examine research under way to address the limitations of currently available influenza vaccines and develop more efficient and reliable strategies to make vaccines to protect against seasonal as well as pandemic influenza. Although licensed seasonal flu vaccines safely and effectively protect most people who receive them from illness and death, the degree of protection varies ...

Scientists at Emory University and the University of St. Andrews have solved the structure of a key protein from Lassa virus, which is endemic to West Africa and can cause a deadly hemorrhagic fever. The structure reveals how the virus evades its host's immune system, and how it hijacks infected cells' vital machinery in a process scientists call "cap-stealing." Details of the structure could guide future efforts at antiviral drug discovery and vaccine development. The results are published in this week's issue of Nature. Lassa virus represents a family of viruses ...

GOLDEN, Colo. (November 17, 2010) – HealthGrades, the nation's leading independent ratings organization, today made available to organ transplant patients a list of those hospitals with the best track record for survival and chances of receiving a donor organ. HealthGrades annual evaluation of the nation's top-performing hospitals in organ transplantation includes clinical quality data, based on patient outcomes, for each of the 210 adult acute care hospitals that perform transplants. This information is available, free to the public, at HealthGrades.com and is intended ...

PHILADELPHIA – A research team from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) designated Kimmel Cancer Center (KCC) at Jefferson has concluded – for the first time – that a multidisciplinary clinic approach to aggressive prostate cancer can improve survival in patients. The results from the 15-year study of the multidisciplinary clinic can be found in the November issue of Journal of Oncology Practice. Stats and Treatment Prostate cancer remains the most common non-skin cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the United States. In fact, about 218,000 ...

A new study found that patients with osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee who also have pain in other joints were more likely to experience greater knee pain. Specifically, pain in the lower back as well as foot pain and elbow pain on the same side as the affected knee were associated with more severe knee pain. Full details appear in the December issue of Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology. Knee OA is the leading cause of disability in the U.S., with nearly 4.3 million adults over age 60 having ...

VIDEO: Cells from a pig's cardiovascular system with different components are labeled simultaneously, using the new Multi-Label technology. Click here for more information. The cells in the different parts of this video are always the same, but, like actors using make-up to highlight different facial features, they have fluorescent labels that mark different cellular components in different colours: blue shows the nucleus, yellow shows tubulin (a component of the cell's scaffolding), ...

Ninety-six per cent of patients with back problems were satisfied with the assessment carried out by a specially trained nurse practitioner, according to a study in the December issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing. Seventy-four per cent were happy to see her rather than wait up to a year to see a surgeon, with less than a quarter of those who preferred to see a surgeon saying that the extra wait was acceptable. The pilot study at Toronto Western Hospital in Ontario, Canada, was judged a resounding success after nurse practitioner Angela Sarro came up with exactly ...

Researchers have trapped and held the atoms, the anti-matter counterpart of hydrogen, using an experiment called ALPHA at CERN in Switzerland. Anti-matter particles are instantly annihilated when they come into contact with matter and, until now, it has not been possible to study anti-hydrogen in any detail. The experiment has brought scientists closer to understanding the structure and composition of anti-matter. The ALPHA experiment was developed to cool and slow down the anti-particles that make up anti-hydrogen and mix them to produce antihydrogen. Some of the ...

Social factors can play a key role in whether or not a child is diagnosed as autistic, a new study has found. Boys were more likely to receive a diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) than girls, even when symptoms were equally severe, according to researchers at the universities of Exeter and Bristol. "We wanted to find out what distinguishes those children without diagnosis but with autistic traits from those who have received a formal ASD diagnosis in the clinic," explained lead researcher Ginny Russell, from Egenis at the University of Exeter. "We thought ...

Scientists at the University of Cambridge are working on ways to improve the efficiency of the ammonia synthesis process. With between 3-5% of the world's natural gas used to create artificial fertilizers, the new research could have major implications for both the agricultural and energy sectors. Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most important chemicals in the modern world, due mainly to its use in the manufacture of artificial fertilisers. Ammonia synthesis (via the "Haber" or "Haber-Bosch" process) is vital to the production of 100 million tons of fertiliser per year, ...