A paper published in the January issue of the journal Nanomedicine could provide the foundation for a new ovarian cancer treatment option – one that would use an outside-the-body filtration device to remove a large portion of the free-floating cancer cells that often create secondary tumors. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have formed a startup company and are working with a medical device firm to design a prototype treatment system that would use magnetic nanoparticles engineered to capture cancer cells. Added to fluids removed from a patient's abdomen, ...

BATON ROUGE – The word "orangutan" is derived from a Malay phrase meaning "man of the forest," which is a perfectly apt description of these tree-dwelling primates. Genetically the most distant great ape from humans, these critically endangered creatures inhabit the jungles of Borneo and Sumatra. As an arboreal species, they are incredibly sensitive to deforestation, which has decimated census populations in recent years. Mark Batzer, LSU System Boyd Professor and Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences, and an international consortium of ...

Boston, MA -- Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers and colleagues from Research Institute for a Tobacco Free Society have found that a reduction in secondhand smoking in American homes was associated with fewer cases of otitis media, the scientific name for middle ear infection. The study appears on January 26, 2011, as an online first article on the website of the journal Tobacco Control. "Our study is the first to demonstrate the public health benefits to children of the increase in smoke-free homes across the nation. It also is the first study to quantify ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Older patients with diabetes who are not dealing well with the disease are likely to have symptoms of depression, and spouses of older patients also suffer distress related to diabetes and its management, according to research from Purdue University. "Responsibilities and anxieties can differ for patients with diabetes and their spouses, but each may experience stress, frustration and sadness at times related to the demands of living with this disease," said Melissa M. Franks, an assistant professor of child development and family studies. "We know ...

An investigation has found that celiac disease and Crohn's disease, both inflammatory diseases of the gastrointestinal tract, share at least four genetic risk loci. Together, researchers from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands; the Broad Institute, USA; the Université de Montréal and Montreal Heart Institute in Canada performed a combined meta-analysis of genome-wide data for celiac disease and Crohn's disease. This meta-analysis, published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January 27, has identified two new shared risk loci and two shared risk loci ...

Scientists at the Institut Pasteur and the University of Maryland have revealed how bacterial and archaea microbes successfully evolve their gene repertoires to face new challenges, predominantly by acquiring genes from other individuals. The study, published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January 27, was instigated to clarify the role of gene duplication, an important source of novelty in multicellular organisms, in bacteria. Microbes live and thrive in incredibly diverse and harsh conditions, from boiling or freezing water to the human immune system. This ...

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – In a new study, scientists at the University of Maryland and the Institut Pasteur show that bacteria evolve new abilities, such as antibiotic resistance, predominantly by acquiring genes from other bacteria. The researchers new insights into the evolution of bacteria partly contradict the widely accepted theory that new biological functions in bacteria and other microbes arise primarily through the process of gene duplication within the same organism. Their just released study will be published in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics on January ...

Artifacts unearthed in the United Arab Emirates date back 100,000 years and imply that modern humans first left Africa much earlier than researchers had expected, a new study reports. In light of their excavation, an international team of researchers led by Hans-Peter Uerpmann from Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, Germany suggests that humans could have arrived on the Arabian Peninsula as early as 125,000 years ago — directly from Africa rather than via the Nile Valley or the Near East, as researchers have suggested in the past. The timing and dispersal of modern ...

VIDEO: The DOE Joint Genome Institute is characterizing plants, microbes and communities of microbes to improve the production of next generation biofuels. Click here for more information. WALNUT CREEK, Calif.—Cows eat grass—this has been observed for eons. From this fibrous diet consisting mainly of the tough to degrade plant cell wall materials cellulose and hemicellulose, substances of no nutritional value to most animals, ruminants manage to extract all they need ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Psychologists at Harvard University have found that infants less than one year old understand social dominance and use relative size to predict who will prevail when two individuals' goals conflict. The finding is presented this week in the journal Science. Lead author Lotte Thomsen says the work suggests we may be born with -- or develop at a very early age -- some understanding of social dominance and how it relates to relative size, a correlation ubiquitous across human cultures and the animal kingdom. This knowledge may help infants face the formidable ...

New research provides the first detailed genetic picture of an evolutionary war between Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria and the vaccines and antibiotics used against it over recent decades. Large-scale genome sequencing reveals patterns of adaptation and the spread of a drug-resistant lineage of the S. pneumoniae bacteria. The study unmasks the genetic events by which bacteria such as S. pneumoniae respond rapidly to new antibiotics and vaccines. The team suggest that knowing the enemy better could improve infection control measures. S. pneumoniae is responsible ...

Significant disparities exist between the race of kidney disease patients and that of the physicians who will care for them, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that efforts are needed to increase minority recruitment into kidney specialty programs to more closely balance the racial background of physicians and patients. Kidney disease disproportionately affects African Americans: 32% of dialysis patients are African Americans, who make up only 13% of the US population. ...

The majority of public high school biology teachers are not strong classroom advocates of evolutionary biology, despite 40 years of court cases that have ruled teaching creationism or intelligent design violates the Constitution, according to Penn State political scientists. A mandatory undergraduate course in evolutionary biology for prospective teachers, and frequent refresher courses for current teachers, may be part of the solution, they say. "Considerable research suggests that supporters of evolution, scientific methods, and reason itself are losing battles in America's ...

The temperatures of North Atlantic Ocean water flowing north into the Arctic Ocean adjacent to Greenland -- the warmest water in at least 2,000 years -- are likely related to the amplification of global warming in the Arctic, says a new international study involving the University of Colorado Boulder. Led by Robert Spielhagen of the Academy of Sciences, Humanities and Literature in Mainz, Germany, the study showed that water from the Fram Strait that runs between Greenland and Svalbard -- an archipelago constituting the northernmost part of Norway -- has warmed roughly ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — What happens when two proteins join together? In this case, they become like a power couple, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. API2 and MALT1 are two proteins that become fused together in a subset of lymphomas. The API2 part of the fusion connects with an enzyme called NIK. When it does, MALT1 comes in for the kill, splitting NIK in two, a process called cleavage. The result? NIK is stronger than ever. It sheds its "conscience" by removing a regulatory region of the enzyme that forces NIK to behave and self-destruct. Consequently, ...

England's health secretary Andrew Lansley has said that his reforms for the NHS are needed because the country's health outcomes are among the poorest in Europe. But in an article published on bmj.com today, John Appleby, Chief Economist at the King's Fund, reviews the data and finds the UK in better health than Lansley suggests. It has been claimed that despite spending the same on health care, we suffer twice the rate of deaths from heart disease than France, says Appleby. The latter is true, but what this claim doesn't show is that the UK has actually had the largest ...

The 'smug marrieds' may have good reason to feel pleased with themselves as experts today confirm that long-term committed relationships are good for mental and physical health and this benefit increases over time. In an editorial published by student BMJ, David and John Gallacher from Cardiff University say that on average married people live longer. They say that women in committed relationships have better mental health, while men in committed relationships have better physical health, and they conclude that "on balance it probably is worth making the effort." Men's ...

AUSTIN, Texas—Men are more than twice as likely to continue dating a girlfriend who has cheated on them with another woman than one who has cheated with another man, according to new research from a University of Texas at Austin psychologist. Women show the opposite pattern. They are more likely to continue dating a man who has had a heterosexual affair than one who has had a homosexual affair. The study, published last month in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, provides new insight into the psychological adaptations behind men's desire for a variety ...

In the quest to develop flexible plastic electronics, one of the stumbling blocks has been creating transistors with enough stability for them to function in a variety of environments while still maintaining the current needed to power the devices. Online in the journal Advanced Materials, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology describe a new method of combining top-gate organic field-effect transistors with a bilayer gate insulator. This allows the transistor to perform with incredible stability while exhibiting good current performance. In addition, the ...

PASADENA, Calif.—About 450 million years ago, Earth suffered the second-largest mass extinction in its history—the Late Ordovician mass extinction, during which more than 75 percent of marine species died. Exactly what caused this tremendous loss in biodiversity remains a mystery, but now a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has discovered new details supporting the idea that the mass extinction was linked to a cooling climate. "While it's been known for a long time that the mass extinction is intimately tied to climate change, ...

BEER SHEVA, ISRAEL – January 27, 2011 -- A new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers indicates that physicians who give second opinions may be influenced by the first opinion and other external factors. In the study, the researchers presented hypothetical scenarios with no clear cut clinical answers to a national sample of orthopedic surgeons and neurologists. Some were told that the patients had previously received treatment recommendations, but were not told what they were, while others were told the first opinion. One group was informed that ...

Viewing TV coverage of terrorist events causes deterioration of psychological resources, such as commitment and a sense of success, and to feeling threatened, which in turn can also lead to loss of resources and other negative affects. This has been found in a new study at the University of Haifa. "Mass media plays a central role in reporting on terrorism and political violence. The present study shows that watching this type of coverage on television has negative effects, even for someone who was not at all involved in an event being viewed," said Prof. Moshe Zeidner, ...

Researchers in China have demonstrated interferon-alpha (IFN-a) is associated with increased risk of atherosclerosis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). For the first time, IFN-a priming was shown to promote lipid uptake and foam cell formation—a crucial step in plaque build-up. This activation of the IFN signaling pathway may be linked to the premature atherosclerosis risk in SLE. Full findings of this novel study are available in the February issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology. ...

Philadelphia, Pa, 27 January 2010 - The growing numbers of new cases of substance abuse disorders are perplexing. After all, the course of drug addiction so often ends badly. The negative consequences of drug abuse appear regularly on TV, from stories of celebrities behaving in socially inappropriate and self-destructive ways while intoxicated to dramatization of the rigors of drug withdrawal on "Intervention" and other reality shows. Schools now educate students about the risks of addiction. While having a keen awareness of the negative long-term repercussions of substance ...

Who eats organic food when they are pregnant? Is it just certain groups? What kind of organic foods are most popular? A recent study from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health provides some answers. The study includes nearly 65,000 women in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study. "We know little about the consumption of organic food during pregnancy, and the goal of this study was to find out what is consumed and the characteristics of women who choose organic food," said PhD student Hanne Torjusen. Questions were asked about six different food groups: milk ...