A newly published insight into the biology of many kinds of less-aggressive but still lethal brain tumors, or gliomas, opens up a wide array of possibilities for new therapies, according to scientists at Brown University and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In paper published online Dec. 15 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, they describe how a genetic mutation leads to an abnormal metabolic process in the tumors that could be targeted by drug makers. "What this tells you is that there are some forms of tumors with a fundamentally altered ...

Richmond, Va. (Dec. 15, 2010) – Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) have developed a novel virus-based gene therapy for renal cell carcinoma that has been shown to kill cancer cells not only at the primary tumor site but also in distant tumors not directly infected by the virus. Renal cell carcinoma is the most common form of kidney cancer in adults and currently there is no effective treatment for the disease once it has spread outside of the kidney. The study, published in the journal ...

Absence makes your heart grow fonder, but close-quarters may boost your career. According to new research by scientists at Harvard Medical School, the physical proximity of researchers, especially between the first and last author on published papers, strongly correlates with the impact of their work. "Despite all of the profound advances in information technology, such as video conferencing, we found that physical proximity still matters for research productivity and impact," says Isaac Kohane, the Lawrence J. Henderson Professor of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital ...

A small-scale University of California, San Francisco-led study has identified the first evidence in humans that exposure to bisphenol A (BPA) may compromise the quality of a woman's eggs retrieved for in vitro fertilization (IVF). As blood levels of BPA in the women studied doubled, the percentage of eggs that fertilized normally declined by 50 percent, according to the research team. The chemical BPA, which makes plastic hard and clear, has been used in many consumer products such as reusable water bottles. It also is found in epoxy resins, which form a protective ...

Cold plasma jets could be a safe, effective alternative to antibiotics to treat multi-drug resistant infections, says a study published this week in the January issue of the Journal of Medical Microbiology. The team of Russian and German researchers showed that a ten-minute treatment with low-temperature plasma was not only able to kill drug-resistant bacteria causing wound infections in rats but also increased the rate of wound healing. The findings suggest that cold plasmas might be a promising method to treat chronic wound infections where other approaches fail. The ...

15 December 2010, MDMA or 'ecstasy' increases feelings of empathy and social connection. These 'empathogenic' effects suggest that MDMA might be useful to enhance the psychotherapy of people who struggle to feel connected to others, as may occur in association with autism, schizophrenia, or antisocial personality disorder. However, these effects have been difficult to measure objectively, and there has been limited research in humans. Now, University of Chicago researchers, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, are reporting their new findings in healthy volunteers ...

If everyone in the UK ate their "five a day," and cut their dietary salt and unhealthy fat intake to recommended levels, 33,000 deaths could be prevented or delayed every year, reveals research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables a day accounts for almost half of these saved lives, the study shows. Recommended salt and fat intakes would need to be drastically reduced to achieve similar health benefits, say the authors. The researchers base their findings on national data for the years 2005 ...

Doctors with a profile on the social networking site Facebook may be compromising the doctor-patient relationship, because they don't deploy sufficient privacy settings, indicates research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. The authors base their findings on a survey of the Facebook activities of 405 postgraduate trainee doctors (residents and fellows) at Rouen University Hospital in France. Half those sent the questionnaire returned it. Almost three out of four respondents (73%) said they had a Facebook profile, with eight out of 10 saying they had ...

Interactions between proteins are at the heart of cellular processes, and those interactions depend on the interfaces where the direct physical contact occurs. A new study published this week suggests that there may be roughly a thousand structurally-distinct protein-protein interfaces – and that their structures depend largely on the simple physics of the proteins. Believed to be the first systematic study of the nature of the protein-protein interfaces, the research could help explain the phenomena of "promiscuous" proteins that bind to many other proteins. The results ...

In studies conducted on the fruit fly, researchers at IRB Barcelona headed by ICREA Professor Marco Milán have revealed that organs have the molecular mechanisms to control their proportions. In this process the protein p53 plays a crucial role. The study is published today in the prestigious journal PLoS Biology. The correct establishment of organ proportions, which occurs during embryonic development, is vital for the proper function of all organisms. Alterations in the mechanisms responsible for these processes cause fatal errors in embryos and even cause their death. ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new study of nursing home records shows more residents with dementia are seeking a hospice benefit and using it longer. The study also estimates that 40 percent of nursing home residents die with some degree of dementia. Researchers hope the new data will help policymakers preserve the hospice benefit even as they seek to control Medicare costs. In newly published research analyzing data on more than 3.8 million deceased nursing home residents, researchers at Brown University and Hebrew SeniorLife/Deaconess Medical Center in Boston ...

Researchers from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) have been monitoring a cyclone on Saturn for more than five years. This makes it the longest-lasting cyclone detected to date on any of the giant planets of the Solar System. Images from the Cassini probe were used to carry out this study. "Cyclones – where the wind turns in the same direction as the planet – do not usually last for a long time, and so we were interested to discover one that had gone on for several years on Saturn", Teresa del Río-Gaztelurrutia, lead author of the study and a researcher at ...

MANHATTAN, KS – For years, gardeners have claimed that putting Bounce® fabric softener sheets in their pockets is an effective way to repel pests like mosquitoes and gnats. Any Internet search will uncover countless articles about the bug-repelling properties of Bounce®. Are these claims valid or simply folklore? The authors of a new study say that until now, no quantitative data has existed to substantiate these claims, but their latest research has revealed a definitive answer: Bounce® sheets do indeed repel adult gnats. In a report just published in HortScience, Kansas ...

Patients recovering from a right foot injury or surgery should think twice about how soon they want to begin driving again. According to a new study from the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery (JBJS), it takes much longer to brake when the driver is wearing an immobilization device - like a splint or brace, than it does when wearing normal footwear. Driving is important to many people's social and professional lives, so when a person's right ankle or foot must be immobilized after an injury or surgery, one of the first questions an orthopaedic surgeon hears is, "When can ...

Carrageenan, is a polymer derived from red seaweed which helps to create a protective physical barrier in the nasal cavity and has proven to be an effective antiviral in the treatment of the common cold. The present study assessed the efficacy of Carrageenan against influenza viruses, including the pandemic H1N1 influenza strain. Results showed that the polymer directly binds to influenza viruses, effectively blocking the virus from attaching to cells and spreading further. In animal experiments, Carrageenan demonstrated equivalent efficacy when compared to the drug Tamiflu. ...

Humans are consuming an increasing amount of the Earth's total annual land plant production, new NASA research has found. As the human population continues to grow and more societies develop modern economies, this rate of consumption is increasing both as a whole and on a per capita basis globally. In addition to as food, plants are consumed for paper, clothing, livestock feed, firewood, biofuels, building and packaging materials, among other uses. A NASA research group led by Marc Imhoff at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., first quantified this global ...

CHICAGO (December 15, 2010) – Delaying elective surgical procedures after a patient has been admitted to the hospital significantly increases the risk of infectious complications and raises hospital costs, according to the results of a new study in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The occurrence of infection following surgical procedures continues to be a major source of morbidity and expense despite extensive prevention efforts that have been implemented through educational programs, clinical guidelines, and hospital-based policies. ...

University of Guelph researchers have finally figured out why female squirrels are so darn promiscuous. Turns out it has nothing to do with genes and everything to do with how many males are knocking at their door. "Their behaviour is overwhelmingly influenced by opportunity," said graduate student Eryn McFarlane, who, along with integrative biology professor Andrew McAdam and a team of researchers from across Canada, solved a mystery that has baffled biologists for years. Their findings appear in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. Female squirrels are less ...

An effort to increase biofuel production has led scientists to discover genes in yeast that improve their tolerance to ethanol, allowing them to produce more ethanol from the same amount of nutrients. This study, published in the December 2010 issue of Genetics (http://www.genetics.org), shows how genetically altered yeast cells survive higher ethanol concentrations, addressing a bottleneck in the production of ethanol from cellulosic material (nonfood plant sources) in quantities that could make it economically competitive with fossil fuels. "Our hope is that this ...

SAN FRANCISCO -- The northernmost mummified forest ever found in Canada is revealing how plants struggled to endure a long-ago global cooling. Researchers believe the trees -- buried by a landslide and exquisitely preserved 2 to 8 million years ago -- will help them predict how today's Arctic will respond to global warming. They also suspect that many more mummified forests could emerge across North America as Arctic ice continues to melt. As the wood is exposed and begins to rot, it could release significant amounts of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ...

OAK BROOK, Ill. – Dec. 15, 2010 – Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., have developed a new skills assessment tool for colonoscopy trainees. A report outlining the development and validation of the Mayo Colonoscopy Skills Assessment Tool (MCSAT), designed for the assessment of cognitive and motor skills during colonoscopy training, appears in the December issue of GIE: Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, the monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE). Ensuring that gastroenterology fellows and surgery ...

By determining what goes missing in human cells when the gene that is most commonly mutated in pancreatic cancer gets turned on, Johns Hopkins scientists have discovered a potential strategy for therapy. The production of a particular cluster of genetic snippets known as microRNAs is dramatically reduced in human pancreatic tumor cells compared to healthy tissue, the researchers report in a study published Dec. 15 in Genes and Development. When the team restored this tiny regulator, called miR-143/145, back to normal levels in human pancreatic cancer cells, those cells ...

In a proof of principal study in mice, scientists at Johns Hopkins and the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) have shown that a set of genetic instructions encased in a nanoparticle can be used as an "ignition switch" to rev up gene activity that aids cancer detection and treatment. The switch, called a promoter, is a set of chemical letters that interacts with DNA to turn on gene activity. In this case, the scientists used a promoter called PEG-Prom, cloned by VCU researcher Paul Fisher, Ph.D. PEG-Prom is activated only when inside cancer cells, not in normal ones. "With ...

Athens, Ga. – University of Georgia researchers have developed a technique that can diagnose a common type of pneumonia within minutes, potentially replacing existing tests that can take several days for results. The researchers, whose findings are detailed online in the journal PLoS ONE, detected Mycoplasma pneumoniae, which causes atypical or "walking pneumonia," in true clinical samples with over 97 percent accuracy using a recently-developed nanotechnology-based platform. "If you can make a positive identification from a 10-minute test, then appropriate antibiotics ...

People who watch funny videos on the internet at work aren't necessarily wasting time. They may be taking advantage of the latest psychological science—putting themselves in a good mood so they can think more creatively. "Generally, positive mood has been found to enhance creative problem solving and flexible yet careful thinking," says Ruby Nadler, a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario. She and colleagues Rahel Rabi and John Paul Minda carried out a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. ...