Researchers at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa have developed innovative techniques that could have profound effects on congenital cervical vertebrae malformation research. In the cover-featured research article of the November issue of Molecular Reproduction and Development, researchers looked into congenital cervical vertebrae malformation in humans that can cause neural problems and increase susceptibility to stillbirth in women. Research advancement on abnormal vertebrae development has been limited due to the lack of lab animals with taxonomic equivalency ...

Like the mute button on the TV remote control, our brains filter out unwanted noise so we can focus on what we're listening to. But when it comes to following our own speech, a new brain study from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that instead of one homogeneous mute button, we have a network of volume settings that can selectively silence and amplify the sounds we make and hear. Neuroscientists from UC Berkeley, UCSF and Johns Hopkins University tracked the electrical signals emitted from the brains of hospitalized epilepsy patients. They discovered that ...

SAN ANTONIO — Postmenopausal women who take aromatase inhibitors as a treatment for breast cancer may be at an increased risk for developing cardiovascular disease, according to the results of a meta-analysis. These data, presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, indicate that women presenting with breast cancer treatment who have risk factors for cardiovascular disease should be considered for a shorter duration of use of aromatase inhibitors. "It appears that aromatase inhibitors have a significant increase in cardiotoxic side effects, ...

SAN ANTONIO — Obesity was associated with worse overall and disease-free survival in women with operable breast cancer treated with adjuvant chemotherapy, but for the first time, researchers observed this finding in only a specific subset of patients – those with estrogen receptor (ER)-positive/HER2-negative disease. About one third of all adults in the United States are obese, posing a major public health problem because of obesity's association with an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease. This study indentified a new hazard associated with obesity. Results ...

SAN ANTONIO — Only half of eligible women in the United States are getting their annual mammograms, even if they have insurance to pay for the procedure, according to data presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. Last year the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of non-federal experts in prevention and evidence-based medicine, recommended that the age of first mammogram be lifted from 40 to 50 years of age, at which biennial mammography begins, and caused a public outcry. To date, no major insurance company or other ...

SAN ANTONIO — While endogenous estrogen (i.e., estrogen produced by ovaries and by other tissues) does have a well-known carcinogenic impact, hormone replacement therapy (HRT) utilizing estrogen alone (the exogenous estrogen) provides a protective effect in reducing breast cancer risk, according to study results presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held Dec. 8-12. "Our analysis suggests that, contrary to previous thinking, there is substantial value in bringing HRT with estrogen alone to the guidelines. The data show that for selected ...

SAN ANTONIO — The long-awaited results of the Adjuvant Treatment with Zoledronic Acid in Stage II/III Breast Cancer, the AZURE trial, will be presented at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, held here Dec. 8-12. "Adjuvant use of bisphosphonates like zoledronic acid is widespread among women with breast cancer, and the results of this trial will help answer many questions as well invite new ones," said Robert Coleman, M.D., professor of medical oncology at the University of Sheffield in England. Coleman will present the results of AZURE during ...

SAN ANTONIO — Exemestane, an aromatase inhibitor that blocks production of estrogen, may provide another post-surgery option for postmenopausal women with hormone-receptor positive, early-stage breast cancer. In the first head-to-head adjuvant clinical trial comparing two aromatase inhibitors, anastrozole and exemestane, the drugs resulted in similar survival rates and prevention of breast cancer recurrences. Some differences in the side effect profile were seen, including a potential difference in the risk of developing osteoporosis. Paul E. Goss, M.D., Ph.D., professor ...

Scientists have sequenced the genome of a major fungal disease that affects barley and other cereal crops, a breakthrough that could lead to significant advances in our understanding of how plant diseases evolve. The research, published today in the journal Science, suggests that parasites within the genome of the fungus help the disease to adapt and overcome the plant's defences. The study could help with the development of new agricultural techniques for protecting cereal crops from infection. Barley grains are the basis of many staple foods, and also central to the ...

New research reveals that the abundance of so-called highly siderophile, or metal-loving, elements like gold and platinum found in the mantles of Earth, the Moon and Mars were delivered by massive impactors during the final phase of planet formation over 4.5 billion years ago. The predicted sizes of the projectiles, which hit within tens of millions of years of the giant impact that produced our Moon, are consistent with current planet formation models as well as physical evidence such as the size distributions of asteroids and ancient Martian impact scars. They predict ...

Norwich scientists are on the trail of some of the most economically damaging organisms that infect crops worldwide. Their latest targets are the parasitic water fungus that causes powdery mildew and the water molds that cause late blight in potatoes and tomatoes and downy mildew in cruciferous vegetables and other crops. "We have been studying the late blight pathogen for a while," said Professor Sophien Kamoun, head of the Sainsbury Laboratory on the Norwich Research Park. "In separate research we are trialling plant genes that mediate blight resistance, while in this ...

A team of scientists led by Melissa Rolls, an assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State University, has peered inside neurons to discover an unexpected process that is required for regeneration after severe neuron injury. The process was discovered during Rolls's studies aimed at deciphering the inner workings of dendrites -- the part of the neuron that receives information from other cells and from the outside world. The research will be published in the print edition of the scientific journal Current Biology on 21 December 2010. "We already ...

PITTSBURGH—If you're looking to lose weight, it's okay to think about eating your favorite candy bar. In fact, go ahead and imagine devouring every last bite — all in the name of your diet. A new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, published in Science, shows that when you imagine eating a certain food, it reduces your actual consumption of that food. This landmark discovery changes the decades-old assumption that thinking about something desirable increases cravings for it and its consumption. Drawing on research that shows that perception and mental ...

An international team of scientists, which includes researchers from Virginia Tech, has cracked the genetic code of a plant pathogen that causes downy mildew disease. Downy mildews are a widespread class of destructive diseases that cause major losses to crops as diverse as maize, grapes, and lettuce. The paper describing the genome sequence of the downy mildew pathogen Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis, which attacks the widely studied model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, is the cover story of this week's edition of the journal Science. In the paper, the sequence of H. arabidopsidis ...

Doctors often ask kidney disease patients on dialysis to limit the amount of phosphate they consume in their diets, but this does not help prolong their lives, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results even suggest that prescribing low phosphate diets may increase dialysis patients' risk of premature death. Blood phosphate levels are often high in patients with kidney disease, and dialysis treatments cannot effectively remove all of the dietary phosphate that a person normally consumes. ...

Researchers have long known that the devastating disease called Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is caused by a single mutation in a gene called dystrophin. The protein encoded by that gene is critical for the integrity of muscle; without it, they are easily damaged. But new findings in mice reported online in the journal Cell on December 9th by researchers at Stanford suggest that disease symptoms, including progressive muscle weakening leading to respiratory failure, only set in when skeletal muscle stem cells can no longer keep up with the needed repairs. "This is ...

STANFORD, Calif. — For years, scientists have tried to understand why children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy experience severe muscle wasting and eventual death. After all, laboratory mice with the same mutation that causes the disease in humans display only a slight weakness. Now research by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and a new animal model of the disease they developed, points a finger squarely at the inability of human muscle stem cells to keep up with the ongoing damage caused by the disorder. "Patients with muscular dystrophy experience ...

ROME (10 December 2010)—The Global Crop Diversity Trust today announced a major global search to systematically find, gather, catalogue, use, and save the wild relatives of wheat, rice, beans, potato, barley, lentils, chickpea, and other essential food crops, in order to help protect global food supplies against the imminent threat of climate change, and strengthen future food security. The initiative, led by the Global Crop Diversity Trust, working in partnership with national agricultural research institutes, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Consultative Group ...

San Antonio, Tex. -- A drug that shows promise for preventing breast cancer in postmenopausal women with an increased risk of developing the disease, appears to reduce mammographic breast density in the same group of women. Having dense breast tissue on mammogram is believed to be one of the strongest predictors of breast cancer. The preliminary analysis from the small, phase II study was presented today at the 33rd Annual CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas. The ongoing study at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for Cancer ...

RICHLAND, Wash. -- New high resolution images of electrode wires made from materials used in rechargeable lithium ion batteries shows them contorting as they become charged with electricity. The thin, nano-sized wires writhe and fatten as lithium ions flow in during charging, according to a paper in this week's issue of the journal Science. The work suggests how rechargeable batteries eventually give out and might offer insights for building better batteries. Battery developers know that recharging and using lithium batteries over and over damages the electrode materials, ...

Spearheaded by the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory and funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, the e-MERLIN telescope will allow astronomers to address key questions relating to the origin and evolution of galaxies, stars and planets. To demonstrate its capabilities, University of Manchester astronomers turned the new telescope array toward the "Double Quasar". This enigmatic object, first discovered by Jodrell Bank, is a famous example of Einstein's theory of gravity in action. The new image shows how the light from a quasar billions ...

BOSTON, Mass. (December 9, 2010)—A team of researchers from Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Massachusetts General Hospital, with others from the United States and Haiti, has determined that the strain of cholera erupting in Haiti matches bacterial samples from South Asia and not those from Latin America. The scientists conclude that the cholera bacterial strain introduced into Haiti probably came from an infected human, contaminated food or other item from outside of Latin America. It is highly unlikely, they say, that the outbreak was triggered ...

The technique, which they describe in the journal Science, involves rearranging the holes left by missing atoms to tune the properties of dopants – the chemical impurities that give the semiconductors in computer chips their special properties. Though the technique is currently limited to the laboratory, it could prove valuable to industry in the future, as the continued miniaturization of cell phone and computer chips makes the performance of individual atoms in a semiconductor more important. "The effect we discovered is probably already going on inside the devices ...

VIDEO: Neurologists finally have an answer to one of the most important questions about Alzheimer's disease: In a study published in Science Express, researchers show that rising brain levels of a... Click here for more information. Neurologists finally have an answer to one of the most important questions about Alzheimer's disease: Do rising brain levels of a plaque-forming substance mean patients are making more of it or that they can no longer clear it from their brains ...

In Alzheimer's disease, a protein fragment called beta-amyloid accumulates at abnormally high levels in the brain. Now researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health have found that in the most common, late-onset form of Alzheimer's disease, beta-amyloid is produced in the brain at a normal rate but is not cleared, or removed from the brain, efficiently. In addition to improving the understanding of what pathways are most important in development of Alzheimer's pathology, these findings may one day lead to improved biomarker measures for early diagnosis as well ...