A child's chances of developing allergies or wheezing is related to how he or she grew at vital stages in the womb, according to scientists from the University of Southampton. The new research, funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the British Lung Foundation, and undertaken at Southampton General Hospital, reveals that fetuses which develop quickly in early pregnancy but falter later in pregnancy are likely to go on to develop allergies and asthma as children. Scientists believe this is due to changes in the development of their immune system and lungs. A ...

The field that these researchers are working in is known by its nickname, "anti-spoofing", and basically consists in trying to detect all of the possible attempts at fraud that a biometric system might suffer, especially with regard to an action in which the user presents the biometric proof to the system. "What we are trying to do is detect those attempts so that the system can then act accordingly", explains the head of UC3M's Grupo Universitario de Tecnologías de Identificación (GUTI)(University Identification Technology Group), Raúl Sánchez Reíllo, who is leading this ...

Flamingos apply natural make-up to their feathers to stand out and attract mates, according to a new study by Juan Amat, from the Estación Biológica de Doňana in Seville, Spain, and colleagues. Their research is the first to demonstrate that birds transfer the color pigments (carotenoids) from the secretions of their uropygial gland for cosmetic reasons. The uropygial or preen gland is found in the majority of birds and is situated near the base of the tail. The study is published online in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, a Springer journal. There is evidence ...

AUGUSTA, Ga. - A daily dose of whole body vibration may help reduce the usual bone density loss that occurs with age, Medical College of Georgia researchers report. Twelve weeks of daily, 30-minute sessions in 18-month old male mice – which equate to 55- to 65-year-old humans – appear to forestall the expected annual loss that can result in fractures, disability and death. Dr. Karl H. Wenger, biomedical engineer in the MCG Schools of Graduate Studies and Medicine, reported the findings with his colleagues in the journal Bone. Researchers found vibration improved density ...

A popular cancer drug could be produced cheaply and sustainably using stem cells derived from trees, a study suggests. Researchers have isolated and grown stem cells from a yew tree whose bark is a natural source of the anticancer compound paclitaxel. The development could enable the compound to be produced on a commercial scale at low cost, with no harmful by-products. Scientists and engineers behind the development say the drug treatment – currently used on lung, ovarian, breast, head and neck cancer – could become cheaper and more widely available. The study was ...

Patients with cancer found at the end of the large intestine called the rectum who receive one week of radiation therapy before surgery have a 50 percent reduction in chance that their cancer will return after 10 years, according to a large, randomized study presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). "We believe that this short course of radiation will open a new window of opportunities in the treatment of rectal cancer," Corrie Marijnen M.D., lead author of the study and a radiation ...

Men with prostate cancer who take anticoagulants like aspirin in addition to radiation therapy or surgery may be able to cut their risk of dying of the disease by more than half, according to a large study presented on November 3, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) in San Diego. The study involved more than 5,000 men with localized cancer whose disease had not spread beyond the prostate gland. "Evidence has shown that anticoagulants may interfere with cancer growth and spread," Kevin Choe, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of ...

Men treated for prostate cancer who were diagnosed after the start of routine screening had a significantly reduced risk of the disease spreading to other parts of the body (metastases) within 10 years of treatment, compared to men who were treated prior to the use of routine screening, according to the first study-of-its-kind presented November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). In 1993, routine prostate cancer screening became widely implemented through the use of a prostate specific antigen (PSA) test that was ...

Prostate cancer patients who are treated with a combination of hormone therapy and radiation have a substantially improved chance of survival compared to patients who do not receive radiation, according to interim results of the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). From 1995 to 2005, 1,205 men with high-risk prostate cancer in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada were randomly selected to receive hormone therapy alone or a ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 25, 2010 — Green gasoline is plants in your tank, motor vehicle fuel made from corn, cornstalks, sugarcane, and other crops. It also is gasoline made with recipes that reduce the need for harsh, potentially toxic ingredients like hydrofluoric acid or sulfuric acid that are used at about 210 oil refineries worldwide. Now scientists have found an answer to a half-century quest for a way to make gasoline in exactly that kind of greener, more environmentally-friendly way. That advance highlights the second episode of a new video series, Prized Science: ...

Men with prostate cancer treated with a specialized type of radiation called intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) have fewer gastrointestinal complications compared to patients treated with conventional three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (3D-CRT), according to a study presented November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). "With survivors living many years after treatment, it is very important to minimize gastrointestinal and urinary side effects to allow patients to live a full life after treatment," ...

A lower dose of radiation used to reduce side effects is not as effective as the regular dose when given with the standard chemotherapy in the treatment of Hodgkin's lymphoma patients with early, intermediate-stage disease, according to a first-of-its-kind randomized study presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). In addition, the trial showed that a more intensive chemotherapy (BEACOPP) is not more effective than the standard chemotherapy treatment (ABVD) for these patients. "This ...

BOSTON (October 25, 2010) — Researchers from Tufts University pooled data from five previous epidemiological studies to investigate the prevalence of asthma in children in the Boston neighborhoods of Chinatown and Dorchester. Among children born in the United States, low socioeconomic status (SES) and exposure to pests (mice and cockroaches) were both associated with having asthma. Neither association was present in children born outside of the United States. The study was published online in advance of print in the Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. "In earlier ...

Adding chemotherapy to radiation therapy for muscle invasive bladder cancer allows 67 percent of people to be free of disease in their bladders two years after treatment. This compares to 54 percent of people who receive radiation alone, according to the largest randomized study of its kind presented at the plenary session, November 1, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). "The trial shows that this treatment offers improved control of cancer within the bladder with acceptable long-term side effects and is therefore a ...

Stereotactic radiation is an effective, long-term treatment for trigeminal neuralgia: a painful condition that occurs with increased frequency in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). Radiation is noninvasive and has less negative side effects than other treatments, according to the longest follow-up in a study of its kind presented October 31, 2010, at the 52nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). Multiple sclerosis is a progressive neurological disease affecting about 300,000 Americans where the body's immune system attacks its own ...

Laxenburg, Austria – 26th October 2010 -- A new assessment of future scenarios that limit the extent of global warming cautions that unless current imbalances in R&D portfolios for the development of new, efficient, and clean energy technologies are redressed, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets are unlikely to be met, or met only at considerable costs. The study identifies energy efficiency as the single most important option for achieving significant and long-term reductions in GHG emissions, accounting for up to 50 percent of the reduction potential across ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – The human hand is an amazing machine that can pick up, move and place objects easily, but for a robot, this "gripping" mechanism is a vexing challenge. Opting for simple elegance, researchers from Cornell University, University of Chicago and iRobot have bypassed traditional designs based around the human hand and fingers, and created a versatile gripper using everyday ground coffee and a latex party balloon. They call it a universal gripper, as it conforms to the object it's grabbing rather than being designed for particular objects, said Hod Lipson, ...

In scientific publishing, how much reuse of text is too much? Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech and collaborators have shown that a computer-based text-searching tool is capable of unearthing questionable publication practices from thousands of full-text papers in the biomedical literature. The first step in the process is to find out what is restated before zeroing in on who may have crossed an ethically unacceptable threshold. The findings, published in PLoS ONE, offer hope for curbing unethical scientific publication practice, ...

VIDEO: This video contains more on the pediatric bone cancer preclinical study. Click here for more information. BOSTON - Researchers have identified an important signaling pathway that, when blocked, significantly decreases the spread of pediatric bone cancer. In their study, researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Children's Cancer Hospital in Houston found that blocking the Notch pathway in mice decreased metastases in the lungs 15-fold. The results of ...

DURHAM, N.C. – The most detailed magnetic resonance images ever obtained of a mammalian brain are now available to researchers in a free, online atlas of an ultra-high-resolution mouse brain, thanks to work at the Duke Center for In Vivo Microscopy. In a typical clinical MRI scan, each pixel in the image represents a cube of tissue, called a voxel, which is typically 1x1x3 millimeters. "The atlas images, however, are more than 300,000 times higher resolution than an MRI scan, with voxels that are 20 micrometers on a side," said G. Allan Johnson, Ph.D., who heads the ...

PHILADELPHIA - When most genes are transcribed, the nascent RNAs they produce are not quite ready to be translated into proteins - they have to be processed first. One of those processes is called splicing, a mechanism by which non-coding gene sequences are removed and the remaining protein-coding sequences are joined together to form a final, mature messenger RNA (mRNA), which contains the recipe for making a protein. For years, researchers have understood the roles played by the molecular machines that carry out the splicing process. But, as it turns out, one of those ...

Even if a woman is perfectly clear in expressing sexual interest or rejection, young men vary in their ability to remember the cues, a new University of Iowa study shows. Overall, college-age men were quite good at recalling whether their female peers – in this case, represented through photos – showed interest. Their memories were especially sharp if the model happened to be good looking, dressed more provocatively, and conveyed interest through an inviting expression or posture. But as researchers examined variations in sexual-cue recall, they found two noteworthy ...

VIDEO: Boston College DeLuca Professor of Biology Marc A.T. Muskavitch discusses his latest malaria research, published in the journal Science. Muskavitch and an international team of researchers developed the first high-resolution... Click here for more information. CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. (10/25/2010) – The development and first use of a high-density SNP array for the malaria vector mosquito have established 400,000 genetic markers capable of revealing new insights into how ...

Thanks to a microwave oven, the fundamental nanotechnology process of self assembly may soon replace the lithographic processing use to make the ubiquitous semi-conductor chips. By using microwaves, researchers at Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and the University of Alberta have dramatically decreased the cooking time for a specific molecular self-assembly process used to assemble block copolymers, and have now made it a viable alternative to the conventional lithography process for use in patterning semi-conductors. When the team of chemists and ...

Turning up the heat might be the best thing for athletes competing in cool weather, according to a new study by human physiology researchers at the University of Oregon. Published in the October issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, the paper examined the impact of heat acclimation to improve athletic performance in hot and cool environments. Researchers conducted exercise tests on 12 highly trained cyclists -- 10 males and two females -- before and after a 10-day heat acclimation program. Participants underwent physiological and performance tests under both ...