Scientists are keeping their eye on a new discovery published in the November 2011 print issue of the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that explains what causes some genes to go out of control. Scientists have identified a "cellular switch," called eye transformer, that controls the flow of information from chemical signals outside of the cell to genes in the cell nucleus. This study demonstrates that when eye transformer is turned off, the information pathway it controls (the "JAK/STAT pathway") hyper-activates. Because this pathway exists in humans and is involved ...

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (http://www.cdc.gov/) rank mortality related to chronic liver disease and cirrhosis as the 12th most common cause of death in adults in the U.S. Using a modified definition that includes diseases such as viral hepatitis, liver cancer (http://www.mayoclinic.org/liver-cancer/) and obesity-related fatty liver disease (liver diseases)(http://www.mayoclinic.org/liver-disease/), Mayo Clinic-led researchers have found that liver-related mortality is as high as fourth for some age groups, and ...

Tampa, Fla. (Nov. 01, 2010) – When researchers tested three different labeling agents on three different stem cell populations to determine what effect the labeling agents had on stem cell phenotype, biological behavior and migration abilities, they found changes in stem cell proliferation depending on the type of contrast agent used. The team of researchers from Belgium and Spain tested USPIO (ultra small superparamagnetic iron oxide) contrast agents Resovist ®, Endorem ® and Sinerem ® on mouse embryonic stem cells (mESC), rat multipotent adult progenitor cells (rMAPC) ...

While wind energy has shown strong potential as a large-scale, emission-free energy source, bat and bird collisions at wind turbines result in thousands of fatalities annually. Migratory bats, such as the hoary bat, are especially at risk for collision with wind turbines as they fly their routes in the forested ridges of the eastern U.S. This loss not only impacts the immediate area, but is also detrimental to ecosystem health nationwide—that is, bats help with pest management, pollination and the dispersal of numerous plant seeds. Since turbine towers and non-spinning ...

With a lifelong interest in politics, University of Cincinnati researcher Muer Yang spent the last two years developing a quantitative method for allocating voting machines that could significantly reduce the average wait time of voters. During the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, some voters waited in lines for more than 10 hours to cast their ballots, and in Ohio, the last vote was cast at 4 a.m., noted Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner in a public report. Ohio lines in the '06 and '08 elections were still so lengthy that they essentially "disenfranchised" voters ...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Nov. 1, 2010 -- Race may not be as important as previously thought in determining who befriends whom, suggests a new study of American college students' habits on Facebook. The findings, by a pair of sociologists from Harvard University and UCLA, appear in the current issue of the American Journal of Sociology. The strongest attraction, the researchers found, turned out to be old-fashioned social pressure. For the average student, the tendency to reciprocate a friendly overture is seven times stronger than the attraction of a shared racial background. "We ...

Invasions of voracious predatory crabs due to global warming could threaten the unique continental-shelf ecosystems of Antarctica, according to newly published findings. "King crabs are ecologically important predators and form the basis of economically significant commercial fisheries," said Dr Sven Thatje, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of Southampton's School of Ocean and Earth Science (SOES), which is based at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Thatje and graduate student Sally Hall studied how water temperature influences the distributions ...

THE HAGUE (2 November 2010)—A unique acacia known as a "fertilizer tree" has typically led to a doubling or tripling of maize yields in smallholder agriculture in Zambia and Malawi, according to evidence presented at a conference in the Hague today. The findings were central to the arguments of agroforestry experts at the conference, who urged decision makers to spread this technology more widely throughout the African nations most vulnerable to climate change and food shortages, and to think differently about more practical ways to solve the problems that are most pressing ...

CHAMPAIGN, lll.— Ignoring topography, efficiency, expense and even their own surveyors' recommendations, regional railroad officials in the mid-19th century diverted a new rail line around New Philadelphia, Ill., "the first town in the United States planned, platted and legally registered by an African American," a University of Illinois researcher reports. The bypass pushed what would have been a fairly straight, even run of railroad tracks from Griggsville, Ill. to Hannibal, Mo., in a wide, hilly arc around New Philadelphia. The findings, reported in Historical Archaeology, ...

While simple falls, such as slipping while walking off a curb, may seem relatively harmless, they can actually lead to severe injury and death in elderly individuals, according to a new study published in The Journal of Trauma: Injury, Infection, and Critical Care. As the population continues to age, it is important for physicians and caregivers to be aware of and prepared to deal with this issue, which could significantly impact the overall health and wellbeing of older adults. In contrast to falls from greater heights, ground-level falls – essentially falls from a ...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1, 2010 — Generations of Moms and Grandmas have preached the virtues of not wasting food. Now scientists are reporting a compelling new reason to follow this advice: It could save enormous amounts of energy, according to the latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS) award-winning podcast series, "Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions." They say that the United States could immediately save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year — without spending a penny or putting a ding in the quality of life: Just stop wasting ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a new method to speed the production rate of nanoparticles by 500 times, an advance that could play an important role in making nanotechnology products more commercially practical. The approach uses an arrayed microchannel reactor and a "laminated architecture" in which many sheets, each with thousands of microchannels in them, are stacked in parallel to provide a high volume of production and excellent control of the processes involved. Applications could be possible in improved sensors, medical ...

CHICAGO (November 1, 2010) – According to a report published in the October issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, a grant-funded program tailored to provide advanced minimally invasive surgery skills to young, underrepresented minority surgeons, is helping address shortages of minority faculty members at US medical institutions. The report states that the Diverse Surgeons Initiative (DSI) has helped 86 percent of graduates in the program acquire fellowship training. These outcomes surpassed the 2005 national percentage of fifth-year residents in academic ...

Patients taking inhaled corticosteroids are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and more so with higher doses, say researchers at the Jewish General Hospital's Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research (LDI) In Montreal. The risk is of special concern for patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), and much less significant for asthmatics. "These medications are very effective in asthma, so the benefits clearly outweigh the risk for asthmatics," said Dr. Samy Suissa, Director of the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology at the LDI, and ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Helicobacter pylori, a common stomach bacterium, reduced the severity of inflammation of the colon caused by Salmonella in mice, according to research from U-M Medical School scientists. More than half the people in the world are infected with H. pylori, although it is very unusual to find it in the United States. But this research shows there may be an inflammation control benefit to hosting the H. pylori infection, says Peter Higgins, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., lead author of the study published last week in the journal Inflammatory Bowel Diseases. "If ...

Honesty pays off, according to a new study of job seekers. When job applicants were warned that a pre-employment test could detect fake responses, they gave more honest answers -- a result that could improve their chances of being hired. Results were published in the human resources journal Applied HRM Research. "People may be tempted to make themselves look as attractive as possible to employers, but honesty is always the best policy, since many pre-employment tests have ways to spot fakers," said Chris Wright, associate professor of psychology at San Francisco State ...

Between alerting us to danger and allowing us to spot prey, vision keeps many animals, including humans, alive. But exactly how does this important sense work, and why is it easier for us to spot movement of small objects in our field of vision, than to notice other things? The complexity of the neural network that supports vision has long baffled scientists. Now, with a new technology and support from the National Science Foundation, Claire Wyart in Ehud Isacoff's lab at the University of California at Berkeley and Filo Del Bene at Herwig Baier's lab at the University ...

Boston, MA, October 30, 2010 – Vertex Pharmaceuticals Incorporated (Nasdaq: VRTX) today announced new data from its Phase 3 studies of people with genotype 1 chronic hepatitis C who have not been treated previously. In these studies, the majority of people achieved superior sustained viral response (SVR or viral cure) rates with a telaprevir-based combination regimen, compared to current therapies, regardless of race/ethnicity or stage of liver fibrosis (factors known to limit response to current hepatitis C treatments). Patients in the ADVANCE and ILLUMINATE studies were ...

A team of scientists has, for the first time, completely characterized an important chemical reaction that is critical to the formation of ground-level ozone in urban areas. The team's results indicate that computer models may be underestimating ozone levels in urban areas during episodes of poor air quality (smoggy days) by as much as five to 10 percent. Ground level ozone poses significant health hazards to people, animals and plants; is the primary ingredient of smog; and gives polluted air its characteristic odor. It is known that even small increases in ozone concentrations ...

A recent scientific discovery made by researchers at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM) led by Dr. Javier Marcelo Di Noia, Director of the Mechanisms and Genetic Diversity research unit, was published online today by The Journal of Experimental Medicine. The team identified a mechanism regulating activation-induced deaminase (AID), which could be important for the therapy of some types of lymphoma and leukemia. AID is a B-lymphocyte enzyme that creates deliberate mutations in the DNA encoding antibodies, which helps produce an appropriate immune ...

Because primary lung adenocarcinoma is exceedingly rare in the pediatric population, it is difficult to properly classify certain lung tumors in children and adolescents. While anecdotal reports of pediatric patients with lung cancer lesions exist, little research has been conducted to link the disease in children to similar pulmonary malignancies in adults. Through an assessment of clinical, tissue-based and molecular data for pediatric lung cancer, research published in the November edition of the Journal of Thoracic Oncology determined that pulmonary lesions found in ...

Tracy Collier, an employee at Home Technologies in Newport News, Virginia, was walking her employer's Westie around the Center's manmade lake on Thursday when she saw a large, mysterious blob floating in the water. Co-worker Charlie Schmuck says "The lake is behind our office. Tracy was walking by the lake, saw the object, and asked everyone else to come out and take a look." Tracy thought it was "a huge dead snake." Charlie thought it "looked like some weird underwater fungus, like the ones that explode when you poke them." Perhaps because it was just a few days ...

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently released a study, The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health. The report calls for new and expanded roles for nurses in a redesigned health care system. It recommends improving education for all nurses and allowing nurses to practice to the full extent of their license and ability. It advocates overhauling state scope of practice acts and suggests that advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) -- certified registered nurse anesthetists, certified nurse-midwives, clinical nurse specialists, and certified nurse practitioners ...

Boston – November 1, 2010 – The Autism Consortium, an innovative Boston area collaboration of researchers, clinicians, funders and families dedicated to catalyzing research and enhancing clinical care for autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), announced that it will begin a new initiative on Translational Medicine and Autism Therapeutics. The new focus was introduced at the Consortium's fifth annual symposium held October 26th, 2010, at Harvard Medical School in Boston. "As scientists are starting to connect genetics to brain function and behavior, we believe it is time ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Money may not grow on trees, but energy could grow in grass. Researchers at the University of Illinois have completed the first extensive geographic yield and economic analysis of potential bioenergy grass crops in the Midwestern United States. Demand for biofuels is increasing as Americans seek to expand renewable energy sources and mitigate the effects of fluctuating energy prices. Corn ethanol is the main biofuel on the market, but demand for ethanol competes with corn's availability as a food, and rising ethanol consumption could lead to higher food ...