Using the Canadian Light Source synchrotron and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, a team of researchers from the University of British Columbia has shed light on the ryanodine receptor, a structure within muscle cells that has been linked to life-threatening congenital heart conditions. The findings were published online today in the journal Nature. "The ryanodine receptor is a complex molecular machine within muscle cells," says Filip Van Petegem, an assistant professor in UBC's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and lead author of the study. ...

TORONTO, Ont. — November 1, 2010 — A drug commonly used in Japan and Korea to treat asthma has been found to stop the spread of breast cancer cells traditionally resistant to chemotherapy, according to a new study led by St. Michael's pathologist Dr. Gerald Prud'homme. "Tranilast, a drug approved for use in Japan and South Korea, and not in use in Canada or the U.S., has been used for more than two decades to treat asthma and other allergic disorders including allergic rhinitis and atopic dermatitis," Dr. Prud'homme says. "Now, our study is the first to discover it not ...

VIDEO: Niemann-Pick type C, a fatal genetic disorder that frequently takes years to diagnose, may now be detectable with a simple blood test, according to researchers at Washington University School of... Click here for more information. A fatal genetic disorder that frequently takes years to diagnose may soon be detectable with a simple blood test, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report this week ...

TEMPE, Ariz. – Volunteering is known to provide health benefits to the person doing the volunteering. Now, a new study finds that older adults with functional limitations (trouble conducting daily tasks like cooking meals) in particular appear to reap the benefits from helping others. The new study addresses the question of whether the impact of volunteering on risk of mortality was stronger for older adults with or without functional limitations. "As functional limitations increase, the risk of dying increases, but not among those who volunteered," said Morris Okun, ...

A gamma-ray burst is an immensely powerful blast of high-energy light thought to be generated by a collapsing star in a distant galaxy, but what this collapse leaves behind has been a matter of debate. A new analysis of four extremely bright bursts observed by NASA's Fermi satellite suggests that the remnant from a long-duration gamma-ray burst is most likely a black hole – not a rapidly spinning, highly magnetized neutron star, or magnetar since such a burst emits more energy than is theoretically possible from a magnetar. "Some of the events we have been finding ...

Farmland birds that are poorer parents and less "brainy" are faring worse than other farmland bird species, a study at the University of Bristol has found. The new research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, found that farmland birds are undergoing dramatic decline across the world, but some bird species are suffering more than others. Unexpectedly, the study also found that medium-sized birds, for example, starlings and skylarks in Europe, rather than large birds were found to suffer more in farmland, unlike studies of other animals in other ...

Stock markets react to crisis in a similar way to plants and the human body, according to a major new study that may help to predict future financial down-turns. An extensive analysis of biological and financial data suggests that systems under stress exhibit similar symptoms, whether they be polluted forests, cancer patients or the FTSE 100. There is an uncanny parallel between the way that humans, animals and plants adapt to harsh living conditions and the behaviour under stress of stock market prices and the banking sector, according to a report on the study by a ...

Stone Age humans were only able to develop relatively advanced tools after their brains evolved a greater capacity for complex thought, according to a new study that investigates why it took early humans almost two million years to move from razor-sharp stones to a hand-held stone axe. Researchers used computer modelling and tiny sensors embedded in gloves to assess the complex hand skills that early humans needed in order to make two types of tools during the Lower Palaeolithic period, which began around 2.5 million years ago. The cross-disciplinary team, involving researchers ...

SEATTLE, Wash.—November 3, 2010—Researchers at the Allen Institute for Brain Science and SRI International have published the most systematic study to date of the effects of sleep deprivation on gene expression in the brain. The findings have implications for improving the understanding and management of the adverse effects of sleep deprivation on brain function. The study, available in Frontiers in Neuroscience, has created an extensive and detailed map of gene activity, known as gene expression, in the mouse brain across five behavioral conditions including sleeping, ...

Researchers from the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center observed a statistically significant increase in mean height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) percentiles in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) who were treated with etanercept or etanercept plus methotrexate (MTX). JIA patients treated with MTX alone did not display an increase in growth percentiles. Results of the 3-year study are available online and in the November issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology. ...

A new study by Greek researchers suggests that the biologic drug bortezomib (Velcade), a proteasome inhibitor used to treat multiple myeloma (bone marrow cancer), may represent a promising treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study, bortezomib displayed favorable effects in an animal model of inflammatory arthritis that mimics RA, in reducing disease severity and inflammation, and promoting bone healing. Full findings of this study are published in the November issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR). RA is ...

It is hard to believe that they belong to the same species: The large, long-lived queen bee is busy producing offspring throughout her lifetime. The much smaller worker bees, on the other hand, gather food, take care of the beehive, look after and feed the brood – but they are infertile. "The honey bee is an extreme example of different larval development," Professor Frank Lyko explains. Lyko, a scientist at DKFZ, studies how genes are regulated by chemical labeling with methyl groups. This type of regulation is part of what are called epigenetic regulation mechanisms ...

When a team of European researchers sought to discover how a class of antiviral drugs worked, they looked in an unlikely place: the sugar dish. A new research report appearing in the Journal of Leukocyte Biology (http://www.jleukbio.org) suggests that a purified and modified form of a simple sugar chain may stop fast-acting and deadly viruses, such as Ebola, Lassa, or Marburg viruses, in their tracks. This compound, called chlorite-oxidized oxyamylose or COAM, could be a very attractive therapeutic option because not only did this compound enhance the early-stage immune ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 3, 2010 -- The language we speak may influence not only our thoughts, but our implicit preferences as well. That's the finding of a study by psychologists at Harvard University, who found that bilingual individuals' opinions of different ethnic groups were affected by the language in which they took a test examining their biases and predilections. The paper appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. "Charlemagne is reputed to have said that to speak another language is to possess another soul," says co-author Oludamini Ogunnaike, ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Lymphedema is a chronic condition that causes swelling of the limbs and affects physical, mental and social health. It commonly occurs in breast cancer survivors and is the second-most dreaded effect of treatment, after cancer recurrence. Every day, researchers throughout the world learn more about the condition and how it can be treated. Now, University of Missouri researchers are developing a place in cyberspace where relevant and timely information can be easily stored, searched, and reviewed from anywhere with the goal of improving health care through ...

The Atlantic Ocean circulation (termed meridional overturning circulation, MOC) is an important component of the climate system. Warm currents, such as the Gulf Stream, transport energy from the tropics to the subpolar North Atlantic and influence regional weather and climate patterns. Once they arrive in the North the currents cool, their waters sink and with them they transfer carbon from the atmosphere to the abyss. These processes are important for climate but the way the Atlantic MOC responds to climate change is not well known yet. An international team of investigators ...

At least six psyllid species have been found in the citrus-growing areas of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist who is working to control the spread of the psyllid-transmitted citrus greening disease. A few years ago, citrus growers in south Texas noticed a new insect, the Asian citrus psyllid, on their citrus trees. This was a cause for concern, because this tiny pest is responsible for transmitting citrus greening, also known as Huanglongbing (HLB). The disease was first detected in Florida in 2005 and now ...

In a finding that upends decades of scientific theory on reptile reproduction, researchers at North Carolina State University have discovered that female boa constrictors can squeeze out babies without mating. More strikingly, the finding shows that the babies produced from this asexual reproduction have attributes previously believed to be impossible. Large litters of all-female babies produced by the "super mom" boa constrictor show absolutely no male influence – no genetic fingerprint that a male was involved in the reproductive process. All the female babies ...

Athens, Ga. – New University of Georgia research suggests moving threatened animals to protected habitats may not always be an effective conservation technique if the breeding patterns of the species are influenced by a social hierarchy. Research, published in the early online edition of the journal Biological Conservation, found an initial group of gopher tortoises released on St. Catherine's Island, Ga. were three times more likely to produce offspring than a later-introduced group, although the initial group had a much smaller proportion of reproduction-aged males. "There ...

The amount of water flowing in streams and rivers has been significantly altered in nearly 90 percent of waters that were assessed in a new nationwide USGS study. Flow alterations are a primary contributor to degraded river ecosystems and loss of native species. "This USGS assessment provides the most geographically extensive analysis to date of stream flow alteration," said Bill Werkheiser, USGS Associate Director for Water. "Findings show the pervasiveness of stream flow alteration resulting from land and water management, the significant impact of altered stream ...

Photosynthesis is arguably the most impressive feat of nature, where plants harvest light energy and convert it into the building blocks of life at fantastically high efficiency. Indeed modern civilization became possible only with the cultivation of plants for food, shelter and clothing. While scientists have been able to discover details of the fascinating process by which plants store solar energy as chemical energy, how developing plants build and regulate their solar reactors is still poorly understood. How many genes are involved, and which are the most important? ...

Bands of strong thunderstorms are wrapping around the center of Tropical Storm Anggrek in the Southern Indian Ocean, according to satellite imagery. NASA's Aqua satellite captured an infrared look at those strong thunderstorms today. NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Anggrek on Nov. 3 at 07:05 UTC (3:05 a.m. EDT) and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument onboard captured an infrared image of the cold thunderstorms within the system. The image showed that strong, high thunderstorm cloud tops tightly circled the storm's center. There was also strong convection ...

NASA infrared satellite data from this morning revealed that Tropical Storm Tomas has weakened into a tropical depression. Tomas is in the central Caribbean Sea headed for Haiti this weekend, and forecasters are calling for a re-intensification before it makes landfall. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Fla. reported at 5 a.m. EDT on Nov. 3 that hurricane hunter aircraft found an "ill-defined and elongated circulation with no tropical storm-force winds at the flight level or the surface." Thus, the status of Tomas was changed from a tropical storm to a ...

Scientists have long known that large volcanic explosions can affect the weather by spewing particles that block solar energy and cool the air. Some suspect that extended "volcanic winters" from gigantic blowups helped kill off dinosaurs and Neanderthals. In the summer following Indonesia's 1815 Tambora eruption, frost wrecked crops as far off as New England, and the 1991 blowout of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo lowered average global temperatures by 0.7 degrees F—enough to mask the effects of manmade greenhouse gases for a year or so. Now, scientists have shown ...

TORONTO, Ont., Nov. 3, 2010 – Existing headgear and mouth guards have limited or no benefit in reducing concussions in rugby players, according to Dr. Michael Cusimano, a neurosurgeon at St. Michael's Hospital. However, educational injury prevention programs that promote proper playing techniques and enforcement of the rules do result in a significant reduction in concussions and head, neck and spinal injuries, Cusimano concluded after a review of existing studies on the topic. Cusimano still recommends rugby players wear mouth guards and protective headgear ...