BOSTON – Researchers from Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center (DF/CHCC) have found that as many as 50 percent of young girls treated for germ-cell ovarian tumors might safely be spared chemotherapy using a "watch and wait" strategy to determine if the follow-up treatment is needed. In contrast to the current practice of administering chemotherapy to all patients following removal of these rare tumors, researchers said the study demonstrated that treatment could safely be delayed and given only if the cancer recurred. Data from the trial involving 25 young ...

Amid ongoing concern about plastic waste accumulating in municipal landfills, and reliance on imported oil to make plastics, scientists are reporting development of a new ultra-light biodegradable foam plastic material made from two unlikely ingredients: The protein in milk and ordinary clay. The new substance could be used in furniture cushions, insulation, packaging, and other products, they report in the ACS' Biomacromolecules, a monthly journal. David Schiraldi and colleagues explain that 80 percent of the protein in cow milk is a substance called casein, which already ...

Scientists are reporting evidence that black rice — a little-known variety of the grain that is the staple food for one-third of the world population — may help soothe the inflammation involved in allergies, asthma, and other diseases. Their study appears in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Mendel Friedman and colleagues point out that their previous research showed several potential health benefits of eating black rice bran. Bran is the outer husk of the grain, which is removed during the processing of brown rice to produce the familiar white ...

Driving a car increases global temperatures in the long run more than making the same long-distance journey by air according to a new study. However, in the short run travelling by air has a larger adverse climate impact because airplanes strongly affect short-lived warming processes at high altitudes. The study appears in ACS' Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-weekly journal. In the study, Jens Borken-Kleefeld and colleagues compare the impacts on global warming of different means of transport. The researchers use, for the first time, a suite of climate chemistry ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- For some women, the effects of breast cancer, the most common cancer affecting women, do not end when they leave the hospital. Now, researchers in the University of Missouri School of Health Professions have studied the lives of breast cancer patients following chemotherapy and found that their environments and available support systems help determine the quality of their lives. "A lot of times people get mentally and emotionally ready to deal with chemotherapy and they receive a lot of support during that time," said Stephanie Reid-Arndt, an assistant ...

Long-awaited advances in reducing the cost of certain catalysts — substances that kick-start chemical reactions — have quietly led to production of super-strong forms of the world's most widely used plastics, according to the cover story of the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine. These upgraded forms of polyethylene have led to availability of stronger, more durable consumer products ranging from garbage bags to camping cookware. C&EN Senior Editor Alexander Tullo notes that the catalysts, called "metallocenes," engendered excitement ...

Our cells live ever on the verge of suicide, requiring the close attention of a team of molecules to prevent the cells from pulling the trigger. This self-destructive tendency can be a very good thing, as when dangerous precancerous cells are permitted to kill themselves, but it can also go horribly wrong, destroying brain cells that store memories, for instance. Rockefeller University scientists are parsing this perilous arrangement in ever finer detail in hopes that understanding the basic mechanisms of programmed cell death, or apoptosis, will enable them eventually ...

A common infection in children, strep throat can lead to problems with a child's heart, joints or brain if left untreated. And when the brain is involved, motor and mental functioning may be compromised, leading to syndromes such as attention deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). While scientists have speculated on a link between OCD and childhood infections like strep for more than two decades, Prof. Daphna Joel and her team of researchers at Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology have now scientifically demonstrated that strep can lead to ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Some people may excel at riding a bike, tying a tie, or playing the piano, but those same people may find it difficult to explain or teach those skills to someone else. These motor skills are learned in one part of the brain, whereas classroom instruction and information read in a book are acquired in another area of the brain, explained F. Gregory Ashby, professor and chair of UC Santa Barbara's Department of Psychology. This second area of learning is the frontal cortex –– the area immediately behind the forehead –– where executive function ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – To reduce the toxicity of cigarette smoke, tobacco companies have introduced "harm reduction cigarettes," often marketed as safer than conventional brands. But stem cell scientists at the University of California, Riverside have found that even sidestream smoke (which burns off the tip of a cigarette) from harm reduction cigarettes impairs growth of human embryonic stem cells more than sidestream smoke from a conventional brand. "Harm reduction products are not necessarily safer than their conventional counterparts," said Prue Talbot, the director ...

Washington, DC – A common virus that can cause coughing and mild diarrhea appears to have a major redemptive quality: the ability to kill cancer. Harnessing that power, researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of Georgetown University Medical Center, are conducting a clinical trial to see if the virus can target and kill certain tumor types. By the age of five, most people have been exposed to the virus, called reovirus. For some, it can trigger brief episodes of coughing or diarrhea while many other don't develop any symptoms. The body ...

Aurora, Colo. (Oct. 19, 2010)— Estrogen therapy used by menopausal women causes a type of ovarian cancer to grow five times faster, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado Cancer Center. Menopausal estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) also significantly increases the likelihood of the cancer metastasizing to the lymph nodes, according to the study, which will be published in the Nov. 1 issue of Cancer Research. The study was released online Oct. 19, 2010. Cancer Research, published by the American Association for Cancer Research, is the world's ...

As Earth's climate warms, species are expected to shift their geographical ranges away from the equator or to higher elevations. While scientists have documented such shifts for many plants and animals, the ranges of others seem stable. When species respond in different ways to the same amount of warming, it becomes more difficult for ecologists to predict future biological effects of climate change--and to plan for these effects. In a study published this week in the journal Nature, University of Wyoming ecologist Daniel Doak and Duke University ecologist William ...

Researchers at the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal have identified a new mechanism controlling the transmission of an abnormal signal at the origin of several cancers. In an article published in the journal Cell, Marc Therrien's team explains the recent discovery of a protein complex that controls the RAS/MAPK signalling pathway, responsible for some of the deadliest cancers, including pancreatic, colon and lung cancers, and melanomas. This regulating mechanism could prove to be a promising therapeutic target for the ...

Three NASA satellites are keeping tabs on Typhoon Megi and noticed that it was strengthening in the South China Sea today, but increasing wind shear may again weaken the system over the next couple of days. NASA's TRMM, CloudSat and Aqua satellite captured images of Megi's clouds, rainfall and eye as they passed over the storm and saw clouds higher than 9 miles filled with ice, creating heavy rainfall. The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Typhoon Megi from its vantage point in space on October 18 at 2321 UTC (7:31 p.m. EDT) and saw that ...

The GOES-13 satellite keeps a continuous eye over the eastern U.S., the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, and noticed that System 99L is much better organized today, October 20, hinting that it could become a tropical depression later today. At 8 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, October 20, System 99L, a low pressure system about 150 miles southwest of Grand Cayman appears to be getting organized as it drifts eastward in the Caribbean Sea. System 99L is showing more organization than it did yesterday, despite strong upper-level winds that are currently inhibiting ...

Princeton computer scientists have developed a new way of tracing the origins and spread of ideas, a technique that could make it easier to gauge the influence of notable scholarly papers, buzz-generating news stories and other information sources. The method relies on computer algorithms to analyze how language morphs over time within a group of documents -- whether they are research papers on quantum physics or blog posts about politics -- and to determine which documents were the most influential. "The point is being able to manage the explosion of information made ...

Magicians rely on misdirection—drawing attention to one place while they're carrying out their tricky business somewhere else. It seems like people with autism should be less susceptible to such social manipulation. But a new study in the U.K. finds that people with autism spectrum disorder are actually more likely to be taken in by the vanishing ball trick, where a magician pretends to throw a ball in the air but actually hides it in his hand. In the vanishing-ball illusion, a magician throws a ball in the air a few times. On the last throw, he merely pretends to throw ...

Conventional wisdom has long been negative on Africa. Historically, it has been seen as a failing continent, plagued by deep-rooted problems — poverty, corruption, war, and disease. But after four decades of relative stagnation, Africa has been growing rapidly. Since the 1990s, many African countries have seen economic and political improvements, more transparent elections, increased democracy and freedom of press. But these successes are not well understood. In 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the leading nonprofit economics research organization ...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20 -- Scientists and engineers from around the world will gather on the shores of Lake Ontario in Rochester, N.Y. next week to discuss some of the latest breakthroughs in lasers and optics and their applications to cutting-edge science, the development of new materials, and medicine. Journalists are invited to Frontiers in Optics (FiO) 2010/Laser Science XXVI -- the 94th annual meeting of the Optical Society (OSA), which is being held together with the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Laser Science at the Rochester Riverside ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Severe burn injuries in children have been shown to rapidly deplete the levels of vitamin E in their body's adipose, or fat tissues, a new clinical study has found. Stored levels of this important antioxidant were reduced more in a few weeks than might normally be possible in years. An analysis of eight children with third-degree burns over much of their body found they lost almost half of their stored vitamin E in three weeks, even though they were being given about 150 percent of the recommended daily allowance of vitamin E and other nutrients in ...

Researchers at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), an organized research unit in the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology have made a remarkable new discovery. When most people envision coral, they typically think of shallow-water reef-building corals found along beaches and tropical nearshore habitats. These "typical" corals are dependent upon photosynthetic algae (also known as Symbiodinium or zooxanthellae) found in their tissues to obtain nutrients to live off of. In deeper less known waters, closely related ...

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — A study of the options for reducing cancer incidence and mortality among women who have been treated for precancerous cervical lesions found that an annual conventional Pap smear is a cost effective strategy. Joy Melnikow, professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and colleagues tested several follow-up screening strategies for the 500,000 American women diagnosed and treated for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN), abnormal cervical cell growth that can lead to cervical cancer. The first comprehensive study of its kind, ...

A University of Washington Medical Center patient on Thursday, Oct. 21, will be the world's first recipient of a device that aims to quell the disabling vertigo associated with Meniere's disease. The UW Medicine clinicians who developed the implantable device hope that success in a 10-person surgical trial of Meniere's patients will lead to exploration of its usefulness against other common balance disorders that torment millions of people worldwide. The device being tested – a cochlear implant and processor with re-engineered software and electrode arrays – represents ...

Providing computed tomography colonography (CTC) — otherwise known as virtual colonoscopy — as an alternative to conventional colonoscopy could improve colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates, according to a study in the November issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). CRC is the second leading cause of cancer in the U.S. "While colonoscopy is currently the preferred test for CRC screening, the invasive and time-consuming characteristics of the test are often cited as reasons for noncompliance with screening," said Fouad J. Moawad, lead author ...