HOUSTON - Between 2010 and 2020, the demand for radiation therapy will exceed the number of radiation oncologists practicing in the U.S. tenfold, which could profoundly affect the ability to provide patients with sufficient access to treatment, according to new research from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. The study, published in the October 18, 2010 issue of The Journal of Clinical Oncology, estimates that over the next decade, the number of cancer patients requiring radiation therapy will increase by 22 percent, while the number of full-time equivalent ...

There is an association between type 2 diabetes mellitus and colorectal cancer (CRC) among men, but not women, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute. In 2000, the prevalence of type 2 diabetes was approximately 171 million worldwide, and 366 million people are projected to have the disease by 2030. Obesity, western-style diet and lack of physical activity are established risk factors for CRC. Hyperglycemia and hyperinsulinemia, which are especially pronounced during the early ...

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Just as we visually map a room by spatially identifying the objects in it, we map our aural world based on the frequencies of sounds. The neurons within the brain's "hearing center"—the auditory cortex—are organized into modules that each respond to sounds within a specific frequency band. But how responses actually emanate from this complex network of neurons is still a mystery. A team of scientists led by Anthony Zador, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Neuroscience program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has come a step closer ...

Fatalism may prevent women from Latin American descent – Latinas - from using cancer screening services, according to Karla Espinosa de los Monteros and Dr. Linda Gallo from San Diego State University in the US. Their review (1) shows that women who are pessimistic about preventive health practices and disease outcomes are less likely to have been screened for cervical, breast and colorectal cancer. The research is published online in Springer's International Journal of Behavioral Medicine. Latinas have some of the lowest cancer screening rates in the United States. They ...

Mount Sinai researchers have discovered how cocaine corrupts the brain and becomes addictive. These findings—the first to connect activation of specific neurons to alterations in cocaine reward—were published in Science on October 15. The results may help researchers in developing new ways of treating those addicted to the drug. Led by Mary Kay Lobo, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and first author of the study, researchers found that the two main neurons (D1 and D2) in the nucleus accumbens region of the brain, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Having an egg allergy is not a reason to avoid getting the 2010-2011 flu vaccination. According to new recommendations by the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology website, anyone with a history of suspected egg allergy should first be evaluated by an allergist or immunologist for appropriate testing and diagnosis but can probably receive the vaccination. Matthew J. Greenhawt, M.D., M.B.A., clinical lecturer at the University of Michigan Health System and James T. Li, M.D., Ph.D., chair of the Division of Allergic Diseases in the Department ...

An enzyme that keeps intestinal bacteria out of the bloodstream may also play an important role in maintaining the normal microbial population of the gastrointestinal system. Since the loss of beneficial bacteria that usually results from antibiotic therapy can sometimes lead to serious health problems, a treatment that maintains microbial levels could have significant benefits. "Our mouse studies confirmed that giving this enzyme by mouth keeps the gut healthy, in terms of the microbes that usually live there," says Richard Hodin, MD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital ...

Information on proteins is critical for understanding how cells function in health and disease. But while regular proteins are easy to extract and study, it is far more difficult to gather information about membrane proteins, which are responsible for exchanging elements essential to our health, like copper, between a cell and its surrounding tissues. Now Prof. Nir Ben-Tal and his graduate students Maya Schushan and Yariv Barkan of Tel Aviv University's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology have investigated how a type of membrane protein transfers essential ...

URBANA – As consumer demand for naturally raised beef continues to increase, researchers at the University of Illinois have discovered that naturally raised beef can be produced effectively for this niche market as long as a substantial premium is offered to cover additional production and transportation costs. Naturally raised beef is produced without hormones or antibiotics, whereas traditional systems take advantage of technologies the industry offers such as ionophores like Rumensin® to improve feed efficiency and implants to improve gain and efficiency. "Producers ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – A popular view among geophysicists is that large amounts of water are carried from the oceans to the deep mantle in "subduction zones," which are boundaries where the Earth's crustal plates converge, with one plate riding over the other. But now geophysicists led by the University of California, Riverside's Harry Green, a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics, present results that contradict this view. They compare seismic and experimental evidence to argue that subducting slabs do not carry water deeper than about 400 kilometers. "The ...

Much of medicine is based on what is considered the strongest possible evidence: The placebo-controlled trial. A paper published in the October 19 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine – entitled "What's In Placebos: Who Knows?" calls into question this foundation upon which much of medicine rests, by showing that there is no standard behind the standard – no standard for the placebo. The thinking behind relying on placebo-controlled trials is this: to be sure a treatment itself is effective, one needs to compare people whose only difference is whether or not they are ...

WHAT: Scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have determined the complete genetic blueprints for 13 different strains of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause Lyme disease. The achievement should lead to a better understanding of how genetic variations among strains may result in different courses of illness in people with Lyme disease, the most common tickborne disease in North America. The wealth of new genetic data will also help scientists develop improved ways to diagnose, treat and prevent Lyme disease. The first genome of a strain ...

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) – Researchers at the UC Riverside Bourns College of Engineering have built and successfully tested an amplifier made from graphene that could lead to more efficient circuits in electronic chips, such as those used in Bluetooth headsets and toll collection devices in cars. Graphene, a single-atom thick carbon crystal, was first isolated in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who won the Nobel Prize in physics this month for that work. Graphene has many extraordinary properties, including superior electrical and heat conductivity, ...

Cold Spring Harbor, NY -- A team co-led by neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) has shed light -- literally -- on circuitry underlying the olfactory system in mammals, giving us a new view of how that system may pull off some of its most amazing feats. It has long been known from behavioral experiments that rodents, for instance, can tell the difference between two quite similar odors in a single sniff. But in such instances, what precisely happens in the "wiring" leading from sensory neurons in the nose to specialized cells in the olfactory bulb ...

When the storm winds blow, wind turbines have to show what they can stand up to. The wind blows hard against mills with the force of tons as the tips of the blades plow through the air at more than 200 kilometers per hour. But natural forces not only tear at wind turbines; machine components made of plastic or airplane wings must with stand substantial loads as well. These days, we normally use sensors to measure whether these components are strained beyond capacity, and it requires a lot of effort to install them into the component parts or glue them onto their surface. ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Pediatric health care work force planning efforts are increasingly incorporating the roles of nurse practitioners and physician assistants, especially in plans to alleviate the perceived shortage of pediatric subspecialists. However, results from four new studies of pediatric nurse practitioners, family nurse practitioners, neonatal nurse practitioners, and pediatric physician assistants published online today in the journal Pediatrics do not seem to support that idea. The work was conducted by the University of Michigan's Child Health Evaluation and ...

PHILADELPHIA – Finding a drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier is the bane of drug development for Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders of the brain. A new Penn study, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found and tested in an animal model of Alzheimer's disease a class of drug that is able to enter the brain, where it stabilizes degenerating neurons and improves memory and learning. In the normal brain, the protein tau plays an important role in stabilizing structures called microtubules in nerve cells, which serve as tracks ...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Oct. 18, 2010 -- Theoretical work done at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory has provided a key to understanding an unexpected magnetism between two dissimilar materials. The results, published in Nature Communications, have special significance for the design of future electronic devices for computations and telecommunications, according to co-author Satoshi Okamoto of ORNL's Materials Science and Technology Division. The work was performed at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, synchrotron radiation facilities in France and Japan, ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Scientists at the University of Michigan Heath System and their collaborators have found four new DNA "hotspots" that may one day help guide new treatments for psoriasis, one of the most common autoimmune diseases in the country. Using cutting-edge methods to peer into the hidden genetic underpinnings of the disabling and disfiguring disease, the research, published in Nature Genetics, further maps the as-yet unknown territories of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis. The findings could lead to new drug targets and tailored treatments for the skin ...

Tampa, Fla. (October 18, 2010) –Two research teams from the Okayama University Graduate School of Medicine (Okayama, Japan) have reported breakthrough studies in liver cell transplantation. One team found that the technical breakthrough in creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from mouse somatic cells (nonsex cells) in vitro had "implications for overcoming immunological rejection." Whereas a second team using liver cell xenotransplantation - transplanting cells of one species into another (in this case transplanting pig liver cells into mice) - found that transplanted ...

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Vitamin D deficiency is associated with a significant increase in lung transplant rejection, according to research conducted at Loyola University Health System (LUHS). These data were presented Monday at The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research 2010 annual meeting in Toronto, Ontario. "Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent among lung transplant recipients," said Pauline Camacho, MD, study investigator and director of the Loyola University Osteoporosis and Metabolic Bone Disease Center. "This study shed greater light on the serious impact that this ...

The next time you feel your willpower slipping as you pass that mouth-watering dessert case, tighten your muscles. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says firming muscles can shore up self-control. Authors Iris W. Hung (National University of Singapore) and Aparna A. Labroo (University of Chicago) put study participants through a range of self-control dilemmas that involved accepting immediate pain for long-term gain. In one study, participants submerged their hands in an ice bucket to demonstrate pain resistance. In another, participants consumed a healthy ...

Argonne, ILL—For the first time scientists have been able to watch nanoparticles grow from the earliest stages of their formation. Nanoparticles are the foundation of nanotechnology and their performance depends on their structure, composition, and size. Researchers will now be able to develop ways to control conditions under which they are grown. The breakthrough will affect a wide range of applications including solar-cell technology and chemical and biological sensors. The research is published in NANOLetters. As coauthor Wenge Yang of the Carnegie Institution's ...

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that ads featuring beauty products actually lower female consumers' self-esteem. "One of the signature strengths of the advertising industry lies in its ability to transform seemingly mundane objects into highly desirable products," write authors Debra Trampe (University of Groningen, the Netherlands), Diederik A. Stapel (Tilburg University), and Frans W. Siero (University of Groningen). In an advertisement, a lipstick situated next to a stiletto heel represents glamour and a teddy bear in an ad for fabric softener ...

PHILADELPHIA - Taking a cue from the world of business-performance experts and baseball talent scouts, Penn Medicine translational medicine researchers are among the first to find a way to measure the productivity of collaborations in a young, emerging institute. They published their findings the most recent issue of Science Translational Medicine. While metrics exist to measure the contributions of individual scientists, judging the effectiveness of team science has been more challenging. Reasoning that team science produces papers and grants, first author postdoctoral ...