HOUSTON -- (Nov. 11, 2010) – The brain works because 100 billion of its special nerve cells called neurons regulate trillions of connections that carry and process information. The behavior of each neuron is precisely determined by the proper function of many genes. In 1999, Baylor College of Medicine (www.bcm.edu) researcher Dr. Huda Zoghbi (http://www.bcm.edu/genetics/index.cfm?pmid=11053), and her colleagues identified mutations in one of these genes called MECP2 as the culprit in a devastating neurological disorder called Rett syndrome (http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/rett_syndrome.cfm). ...

A University of Colorado at Boulder-led study shows that specific types of stem cells transplanted into the leg muscles of mice prevented the loss of muscle function and mass that normally occurs with aging, a finding with potential uses in treating humans with chronic, degenerative muscle diseases. The experiments showed that when young host mice with limb muscle injuries were injected with muscle stem cells from young donor mice, the cells not only repaired the injury within days, they caused the treated muscle to double in mass and sustain itself through the lifetime ...

The computer game Tetris may have a special ability to reduce flashbacks after viewing traumatic images not shared by other types of computer game, Oxford University scientists have discovered in a series of experiments. In earlier laboratory work the Oxford team showed that playing Tetris after traumatic events could reduce memory flashbacks in healthy volunteers. These are a laboratory model of the types of intrusive memories associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In this new experimental study, the researchers compared the effectiveness of Tetris ...

Men taking androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) for prostate cancer may have an increased risk of colorectal cancer, according to a study published online November 10 in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Androgen deprivation therapy is a widely-prescribed treatment in men with prostate cancer, although its usage for low-risk disease remains controversial, given the adverse side effects, including osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity; the last two are risk factors for colorectal cancer. To determine whether prostate cancer patients taking ...

Think New York is an exceptional city? It's not. The Big Apple is just about average for a city of its size. However, San Francisco is exceptional. Its inhabitants are wealthier, more productive, more innovative, and subject to fewer crimes than you would expect, given its size. Turns out many of the cities we typically think of as great ones probably wouldn't show up near the top of most rankings, if Luis Bettencourt of the Santa Fe Institute has his way. He and his colleagues believe traditional per-capita measures are not very useful for determining what makes one ...

Obstetricians and midwives should wait a few minutes before clamping the umbilical cords of newborn infants so that babies are not harmed by the procedure, argues Dr David Hutchon in an article published on bmj.com today. Hutchon, a retired consultant obstetrician from the Memorial Hospital in Darlington, says it's time for the UK to follow guidance from the World Health Organisation and the International Federation of Gynaecology and Obstetrics and refrain from early cord clamping. Despite evidence for the benefit of delayed cord clamping, clinicians in the UK seem ...

AUDIO: Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have identified mutations in a single gene that are associated with a poor prognosis for patients with acute myeloid leukemia. The discovery suggests... Click here for more information. Decoding the DNA of a woman who died of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has led researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to a gene that they found to be commonly altered in many patients who died quickly of ...

Researchers have discovered mutations in a particular gene that affects the treatment prognosis for some patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive blood cancer that kills 9,000 Americans annually. The scientists report their results in the Nov. 11, 2010, on-line issue of The New England Journal of Medicine. The Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis team initially discovered a mutation by completely sequencing the genome of a single AML patient. They then used targeted DNA sequencing on nearly 300 additional AML patient samples to confirm ...

An Australian research team from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, the University of Melbourne and the University of Queensland has identified a new risk factor for developing breast cancer. This has been published online in the journal Cancer Prevention Research. The risk factor involves a modification (DNA methylation) to the BRCA1 gene. BRCA1 is known for its involvement in breast and ovarian cancer. Women with mutations in this gene, which inactivates its function, are predisposed to these diseases. The DNA methylation modification is known as an epimutation and ...

Variations in atmosphere carbon dioxide around 40 million years ago were tightly coupled to changes in global temperature, according to new findings published in the journal Science. The study was led by scientists at Utrecht University, working with colleagues at the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research and the University of Southampton. "Understanding the relationship between the Earth's climate and atmospheric carbon dioxide in the geological past can provide insight into the extent of future global warming expected to result from carbon dioxide emission ...

How well a person performs in a coalition is partly hereditary, according to a recent study. Researchers found that how successfully an individual operates in a group is as much down to having the right genetic make-up as it is to having common cultural ties with fellow group members. After assessing nearly 1000 pairs of adult twins, researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that strong genetic influences have a major influence on how loyal a person feels to their social group. It also has a significant impact on how flexibly they can adapt group membership. Family ...

Evidence suggesting that the risk of childhood asthma associated with prenatal paracetamol exposure may depend on antioxidant genes in the mother has been found by a team of UK scientists. The results of their study - which strengthens the argument for a causal link between paracetamol exposure in early life and later childhood asthma - are published online (10 November) in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Led by Seif Shaheen, Professor of Respiratory Epidemiology at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, the team examined data from the ...

New ultra-clean nanowires produced at the Nano-Science Center, University of Copenhagen will have a central role in the development of new high-efficiency solar cells and electronics on a nanometer scale. PhD student Peter Krogstrup, Niels Bohr Institute, in collaboration with a number of well-known researchers and the company SunFlake A/S, is behind the breakthrough. The new findings have recently been published in the prestigious journal Nano Letters. Nanowires are one-dimensional structures with unique electrical and optical properties – a kind of building blocks, ...

A new Reference Report published today by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) lists 79 reference methods for GMO analysis which have been validated according to international standards. This Compendium, developed jointly by the European Union Reference Laboratory for Genetically Modified Food and Feed (EU-RL GMFF) and the European Network of GMO Laboratories (ENGL), presents the technical state of the art in GMO detection methods. Each method is described in a user-friendly way, facilitating the implementation of GMO legislation by official control bodies. Presenting ...

Adults born deaf react more quickly to objects at the edge of their visual field than hearing people, according to groundbreaking new research by the University of Sheffield. The study, which was funded by the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), has, for the first time ever, seen scientists test how peripheral vision develops in deaf people from childhood to adulthood. Dr Charlotte Codina, from the University's Academic Unit of Ophthalmology and Orthoptics, led the research and found that children born deaf are slower to react to objects in their peripheral ...

New research from North Carolina State University shows that most online news stories about cancer contain language that likely contributes to public uncertainty about the disease – a significant finding, given that at least one-third of Americans seek health information online. "Previous studies show that more than 100 million Americans seek health information online, and that their findings affect their health decisions," says Dr. Kami Kosenko, an assistant professor of communication at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the study. "But, while people facing ...

UPTON, NY - Stop-and-go driving can wear on your nerves, but it really does a number on the precious platinum that drives reactions in automotive fuel cells. Before large fleets of fuel-cell-powered vehicles can hit the road, scientists will have to find a way to protect the platinum, the most expensive component of fuel-cell technology, and to reduce the amount needed to make catalytically active electrodes. Now, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new electrocatalyst that uses a single layer of platinum ...

ANTWERP – An international team of scientists calls for protecting complementary food for infants in developing countries – especially those where corn is a staple food – against fumonisin, a toxin produced by fungi. Until now, physicians thought the growth retardation of children in those regions was to be blamed on the poor nutritional value of the complementary maize porridge they receive when breast milk is no longer sufficient. But toxins indeed are involved, the scientists report in the journal Molecular Nutrition and Food Research. The call is made by scientists ...

The road to exascale computing is a long one, but the Georgia Institute of Technology, a new leader in high-performance computing research and education, continues to win new awards and attract new talent to drive technology innovation. From algorithms to architectures and applications, Georgia Tech's researchers are collaborating with top companies, national labs and defense organizations to solve the complex challenges of tomorrow's supercomputing systems. Ongoing projects and new research initiatives spanning several Georgia Tech disciplines directly addressing core ...

A Finnish study confirms the hypothesis that infant feeding plays a role in the initiation of the disease process leading to type 1 diabetes in children carrying increased genetic disease risk. The study population comprised 230 newborn infants with at least one family member affected by type 1 diabetes and a predisposing genotype based on screening cord blood at birth. The participants were randomized into two groups; the infants in the intervention group were weaned to a highly hydrolyzed casein-based formula (Nutramigen, Mead Johnson Nutrition), while those in the ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — In a major breakthrough that comes after decades of research and nearly half a billion treatments in humans, scientists have finally unlocked how a key anti-parasitic drug kills the worms brought on by the filarial diseases river blindness and elephantitis. Understanding how the drug ivermectin works has the potential to lead to new treatments for the diseases, in which the body is infected with parasitic worms, said Charles Mackenzie, a professor of veterinary pathology in the College of Veterinary Medicine and researcher on the project. The diseases ...

New hemlock hybrids that are tolerant to the invasive insect known as hemlock woolly adelgid have been created by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists. Geneticist Richard Olsen and horticulturist Sue Bentz of USDA's Agricultural Research Service (ARS) teamed up with Forest Service entomologist Mike Montgomery to breed and select these tolerant hybrids. Olsen and Bentz work in the U.S. National Arboretum's Floral and Nursery Plants Research Unit in Beltsville, Md. The arboretum is located in Washington, D.C., and is operated by ARS, the principal intramural ...

Gone are the days when a doctor's only way of helping patients is by treating the disease after symptoms have started. Instead, a new approach to medicine, called "Desktop Medicine" is emerging, in which the emphasis shifts from diagnosing diseases and treating symptoms to identifying risk-factors for medical conditions such as hypertension and osteoporosis, and intervening before they develop. The commentary appears in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Desktop medicine," a model defined by Jason Karlawish, MD, Associate Professor ...

By the end of this year, colonoscopy screening will have prevented bowel cancer in approximately 99 000 people since it was introduced in Germany. This is the result obtained by Hermann Brenner of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and his co-authors in their interim assessment conducted eight years after the procedure was added to the German cancer screening program. The authors present their projection and initial results of colonoscopy screening in Germany in the current edition of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010: 107(43): 753 ...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have released an updated version of a computer system testing tool that can cut costs by more efficiently finding flaws. A tutorial on using the tool accompanies the new release. Catching software "bugs" before a program is released enhances computer security because hackers often exploit these flaws to introduce malware, including viruses, to disrupt or take control of computer systems. But it's difficult. A widely cited 2002 study prepared for NIST* reported that even though 50 percent of software ...