CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (May 12, 2011) – Ever since animals, such as lizards and starfish, were observed regenerating missing body parts, people have wondered where the new tissues come from. In the case of the planarian flatworm, Whitehead Institute researchers have determined that the source of this animal's extraordinary regenerative powers is a single, pluripotent cell type. Most advanced animals, including mammals, have a system of specialized stem cells. In humans, we have blood stem cells in our bone marrow that make blood and immune cells, skin stem cells that produce ...

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have identified a bacterium in field-caught mosquitoes that, when present, stops the development of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria in humans. According to the study, the Enterobacter bacterium is part of the naturally occurring microbial flora of the mosquito's gut and kills the parasite by producing reactive oxygen species (or free radical molecules). The study is published in the May 13 edition of Science. "We've previously shown that the mosquito's midgut bacteria can activate ...

New research shows a drug commonly used to treat sickle cell anemia in adults reduces bouts of acute pain and a pneumonia-like illness, cuts hospitalization time and eases other symptoms of the disease in young patients. Results of the randomized, double-blind trial mark a dramatic advance in treatment of children with the inherited blood disorder. "These results show that hydroxyurea has the potential to dramatically improve the quality of life for an entire generation of patients with sickle cell disease," said Winfred Wang, M.D., the study's principal investigator ...

UPTON, NY - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have helped to uncover the nanoscale structure of a novel form of carbon, contributing to an explanation of why this new material acts like a super-absorbent sponge when it comes to soaking up electric charge. The material, which was recently created at The University of Texas - Austin, can be incorporated into "supercapacitor" energy-storage devices with remarkably high storage capacity while retaining other attractive attributes such as superfast energy release, quick recharge time, ...

Younger patients (under age 65) and those with lower health literacy were less likely to stick with telemonitoring technology for tracking their heart failure condition, compared to older patients and those with high health literacy skills, according to new research. Telemonitoring systems use information technology to monitor patients remotely. They are rapidly emerging as a strategy to improve care for patients with heart failure, however, results are mixed. This study finds that patient characteristics are important in determining who will use new technologies and ...

To celebrate the launch of the upcoming Antarctic sailing season, Gap Adventures, the world's adventure travel leader, announces an early bird sale. Travellers who book on the first two sailings of the Antarctica Classic in-Depth tour, departing November 7 and 18, will receive a $1000 discount. "We're excited to introduce the new Antarctic cruising season," says Will Bennett, Gap Adventures' director of operations aboard the M/S Expedition. "A visit to Earth's southernmost continent is truly a once in a lifetime experience, filled with many opportunities ...

Researchers analyzed English comprehension among 210 patients at four New York City hospitals who suffered heart attacks with a heart artery completely blocked. Doctors often refer to this type of heart attack as a STEMI, for ST-elevation myocardial infarction. In follow-up telephone interviews, 34 of the patients (16.2 percent) spoke no English (65 percent spoke Spanish; 6 percent Russian; 6 percent Chinese; 23 percent spoke another language). The patients who reported they understood no English took almost twice as long to get to the hospital compared to those who ...

Sepsis is a major killer in hospital intensive care units. Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have found that manipulating a genetic factor that can launch or throttle the body's defenses can improve survival rates during bacterial infection. "Currently, our therapies for sepsis are very limited," said Mukesh K. Jain, MD, Ellery Sedgwick Jr. Chair, director of the Case Cardiovascular Research Institute, and professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and chief research officer of the Harrington-McLaughlin Heart ...

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DALLAS – May 12, 2011 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a protein that guides blood vessel development and eventually might lead to a treatment to keep cancer cells from spreading. The researchers showed in mice that the Ras interacting protein 1 (Rasip1) is so specific and central to so many cellular processes that without it new blood vessels simply cannot form, said Dr. Ondine Cleaver, assistant professor of molecular biology at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study in the April issue of Developmental Cell. "What we've found is ...

Extraction of the Sprint Fidelis lead (Medtronic) can be safely performed in an experienced large volume center, according to research presented at the 2011 Heart Rhythm Society (HRS) conference in San Francisco last week. The Sprint Fidelis lead has been associated with increased failure rate which resulted in the lead being removed from the market in 2007. However, even if the lead does not fail, physicians are tasked with the decision as to whether or not to prophylactically remove the Sprint Fidelis leads, explained the study's lead author Raed H. Abdelhadi, MD, ...

Merchant Services Professionals ("MSP") has taken superior merchant services to a much higher level. Along with exploding ecommerce and business globalization, MSP has rolled with the punches, risen to the occasion -- and met the challenges. The innovative, conscientious firm has launched a new website to better serve business customers' needs. MerchantServicesProfessionals.com is the virtual spot for "one-stop" servicing of virtually all business marketing and payment processing needs. Since its 2009 inception, this New York-headquartered payment ...

Increasing access to rogue online pharmacies – those which dispense medications without a doctor's prescription – may be an important factor behind the rapid increase in the abuse of prescription drugs. In a report that was released today online by the journal Health Affairs and will also appear in its June edition, investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the University of Southern California (USC) find that states with the greatest expansion in high-speed Internet access from 2000 to 2007 also had the largest increase in admissions for treatment of ...

Researchers at the RIKEN Plant Science Center (PSC) have clarified a key epigenetic mechanism by which an enzyme in the model plant Arabidopsis protects cells from harmful DNA elements. Published in the April 28th issue of the journal PLoS Genetics, the finding contributes to advancing our understanding of a broad range of biological processes in both plants and animals, opening the door to applications in cancer therapy and agriculture. In everything from protein synthesis to gene expression to development, living cells depend critically for their survival on the successful ...

Advantage Home Care Consulting helps those who wish to start and succeed in an independent, non-franchised in-home care business. To support and sustain our home care agency clients and other related businesses that provide services and products to seniors and disabled adults, the company has launched Advantage Home Care Alliance (AHCA). AHCA is a membership coalition formed for licensed, non-medical, independent home care agencies and other businesses and organizations that provide superior service and products to seniors, the disabled and their families. Membership ...

The practical use of visible light and zinc oxide nanorods for destroying bacterial water contamination has been successfully demonstrated by researchers at the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). Nanorods grown on glass substrates and activated by solar energy have been found to be effective in killing both gram positive and gram negative bacteria – a finding that has immense possibilities for affordable and environmentally friendly water purification techniques. "Most studies so far either work on the use of ultraviolet light or involve a suspension of nanoparticles," ...

McCormack Baron Salazar is pleased to announce the completion of a new website and online social media presence to highlight its real estate and community development work across the United States. "Our new online presence, which includes a new corporate website and a network of individual websites for our communities and residents, reflects the growth and needs of our business," says Vincent Bennett, Chief Operating Officer of McCormack Baron Salazar, a St. Louis-based leader in mixed-income and affordable real estate development. "This effort reflects ...

The fifth dwarf planet of the Solar System, Haumea, and at least one of its two satellites, are covered in crystalline water-ice due to the tidal forces between them and the heat of radiogenic elements. This is the finding of an international research study using observations from the VLT telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The tiny and strange planet Haumea moves beyond the orbit of Neptune. It has the shape of a flattened rugby ball and is around 2,000 km long. It spins completely in less than four hours, at one of the fastest rotation speeds in ...

A Nordic multicentre study, headed by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, shows that pelvic organ prolapse surgery using synthetic mesh can be more effective than traditional surgery. The advantages indicated by the study mainly concern restored genital anatomy and more efficient symptom relief, although there is an associated greater risk of complications. The study is published in the renowned scientific periodical The New England Journal of Medicine. Prolapse is a common post-childbirth condition and involves the loss of support for the vagina and pelvic ...

Even healthy children as young as nine-years-old can start to show an increased risk of future heart problems if they are physically inactive, according to a study in the May issue of Acta Paediatrica. A team of researchers from Sweden and Denmark studied 223 children – 123 boys and 100 girls – with an average age of 9.8 years, assessing their physical activity levels over four days. They found that the children who were more physically active had a lower composite risk factor score for cardiovascular disease (CVD) than the children with lower amounts of moderate ...

Researchers including members from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have developed a new method for making detailed X-ray images of brain cells. The method, called SAXS-CT, can map the myelin sheaths of nerve cells, which are important for conditions such as multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. The results have been published in the scientific journal, NeuroImage. The myelin sheaths of nerve cells are lamellar membranes surrounding the neuronal axons. The myelin layers are important to the central nervous system as they ensure the rapid ...

BOSTON (May 12, 2011) — Germs survive for several days in wind instruments including the clarinet, flute, and saxophone, according to a pilot study published in the International Journal of Environmental Health Research. The researchers, led by Stuart Levy, MD, of Tufts University School of Medicine, urge proper cleaning of these instruments. The data suggest a need for additional research to determine the conditions for survival of germs on shared musical instruments, especially those with wooden reeds. "Thousands of children share musical instruments in elementary ...

A new study from North Carolina State University shows that the vast majority of patients at high risk for heart disease or stroke do a poor job of taking statins as prescribed. That's especially unfortunate, because the same study shows that taking statins can significantly increase the quality and length of those patients' lives. "We found that only 48 percent of patients who have been prescribed statins are taking their prescribed dose on a regular basis after one year – and that number dips to approximately 27 percent after 10 years," says Jennifer Mason, a Ph.D. ...

This release is available in German. All animals move – cheetahs faster, snails more slowly. Muscle contractions are the basis of all movements, at least according to general opinion. But there are animal groups, that don't have any muscles at all, as they branched off from the evolutionary path before muscle cells evolved. However these animal groups, for instance the sea sponges, are not immovable. Sponges are able to contract without muscles. These contractions were already known to sponge divers in ancient Greece, as Aristotele described in 350 BC. A group of ...

A person's vulnerability to nicotine addiction appears to have a genetic basis, at least in part. A region in the midbrain called the habenula (from Latin: small reins) plays a key role in this process, as Dr. Inés Ibañez-Tallon and her team from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany, have now shown. They also shed light on the mechanism that underlies addiction to nicotine (Neuron, May,12, 2011, Vol. 70, Issue 3, pp: 522-535; DOI 10.1016/j.neuron.2011.04.013)*. According to the World Health Organization WHO in Geneva, it is estimated ...