Scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute have been studying distant galaxies, which are among the most active star-forming galaxies in the Universe. They form around 1,000 new stars a year – a 1,000 times more than our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The findings have been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "The galaxies are located in the far distant Universe – when the universe was 3 billion years old (equivalent to only 20 percent of its current age). It is a period of the Universe when the galaxies were very active, almost teenager-like and ...

Using a combination of high-powered computers and advanced experimental magnetic resonance data, a Florida State University biophysical chemist has developed techniques that improve the way scientists can study and predict the structure and dynamics of proteins found in the human body. His innovations could ultimately shorten the time it takes researchers to develop new, more effective drugs and better understand biomedical processes that underlie a variety of health conditions. The new techniques "allow us to more accurately understand protein behavior and function at ...

DALLAS – Oct. 11, 2010 – The use of estrogen therapy by postmenopausal women might increase the risk of developing kidney stones, according to findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers. In a study available online and in today's issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, investigators found that estrogen therapy after menopause increased a woman's chances of developing kidney stones by approximately 20 percent. This discovery calls into question the long-held belief that estrogen might actually protect women from the disease, and clinicians need to keep ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – A study published in Journal of Women's Health shows a rapid increase in the number of hospitalizations due to diabetes for young adults – particularly young women. Diabetes hospitalizations were up by 66 percent for all ages and sexes, but the number of diabetes hospitalizations among younger adults, ages 30-39, more than doubled from 1993 to 2006. This pattern of hospitalizations echoes the dramatic increase in rates of obesity across the United States in the last 30 years, according to the study by the University of Michigan Health System. Young ...

Contrary to some previous, highly publicized, reports, ocean acidification is not likely to worsen the hearing of whales and other animals, according to a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientist who studies sound propagation in the ocean. Tim Duda, of WHOI's Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering Department, undertook a study in response to warnings that as the ocean becomes more acidic—due to elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2)--noise from ships will be able to travel farther and possibly interfere with whales and other animals that rely on ...

Scientists have shed light on how malaria is able to resist treatment with a leading drug. Researchers have identified a gene that enables the parasite that causes the infection to resist treatment with the plant-based remedy artemisinin. In many countries where the parasite has developed resistance to previously effective common treatments such as chloroquine, artemisinin remains the only effective treatment against the infection. However, malarial resistance to artemisinin appears to be developing, potentially creating problems in controlling malaria. Identification ...

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Despite an international effort to raise awareness about epilepsy in resource-poor nations, a recently published study found nearly 50 percent of pharmacies in Zambia do not carry antiepileptic drugs, seriously hampering efforts to tackle one of the most cost-effective chronic conditions to treat. The study, recently published in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, was led by Gretchen Birbeck, an associate professor of neurology and ophthalmology and director for the International Neurologic & Psychiatric Epidemiology Program in ...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.— It may seem obvious that dunking relatively spherical objects in a sauce — blueberries in melted chocolate, say — will result in an array of completely encapsulated berries. Relying on that concept, fabricators of spherical nanoparticles have similarly dunked their wares in protective coatings in the belief such encapsulations would prevent clumping and unwanted chemical interactions with solvents. Unfortunately, reactions in the nanoworld are not logical extensions of the macroworld, Sandia National Laboratories researchers Matthew Lane and Gary ...

Many young people with mental health problems are at risk of falling through a huge gap in provision when they move from adolescent to adult care services, according to new research from the University of Warwick. A team led by Professor Swaran Singh at Warwick Medical School looked at the transition from child mental health services to adult mental health services and found for the vast majority of users the move was "poorly planned, poorly executed and poorly experienced". In a study published in The British Journal of Psychiatry, the research team looked at 154 service ...

Donor kidneys can be successfully transplanted even if there is strong tissue incompatibility between donor and recipient. An interdisciplinary working group headed by Dr. Christian Morath, senior consultant at the Department of Nephrology at Heidelberg University Hospital (Medical Director: Professor Dr. Martin Zeier) and Professor Dr. Caner Süsal, head of antibody laboratory in the Department of Transplantation Immunology, showed in a study of 34 sensitized high-risk patients that the success rate in these patients was not different from the success rate of patients with ...

MADISON — The mathematical skills of boys and girls, as well as men and women, are substantially equal, according to a new examination of existing studies in the current online edition of journal Psychological Bulletin. One portion of the new study looked systematically at 242 articles that assessed the math skills of 1,286,350 people, says chief author Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These studies, all published in English between 1990 and 2007, looked at people from grade school to college and beyond. ...

(CHICAGO)–In a study to determine the durability and long-term effects of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), psychiatric researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found the non-invasive, non-drug therapy to be an effective, long-term treatment for major depression. Results of the study were published in the October 2010 issue of Brain Stimulation, a journal published by Elsevier. TMS therapy is a non-invasive technique that delivers highly focused magnetic field pulses to a specific portion of the brain, the left prefrontal cortex, in order to stimulate ...

European researchers have proven for the first time that targeting the epidermal growth factor receptor can provide substantial clinical benefit for women with hard-to-treat triple-negative breast cancer. At the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy, the researchers presented results from a Phase-II randomized trial showing that adding the anti-EGFR antibody cetuximab to cisplatin chemotherapy doubled the response rate and time to progression when compared to cisplatin chemotherapy given alone in a study of 173 heavily pre-treated ...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – University of Michigan scientists have identified events inside insulin-producing pancreatic cells that set the stage for a neonatal form of non-autoimmune type 1 diabetes, and may play a role in type 2 diabetes as well. The results point to a potential target for drugs to protect normally functioning proteins essential for producing insulin. A study published online today in the journal PLoS One shows that certain insulin gene mutations involved in neonatal diabetes cause a portion of the proinsulin proteins in the pancreas' beta cells to misfold. ...

October 10, 2010─(BRONX, NY) ─Two major international studies looking at data from a quarter of a million people around the globe have found a new set of genes associated with body fat distribution and obesity. Researchers at 280 institutions worldwide, including Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University, conducted the studies. The research, published in the October 10 online edition of Nature Genetics, sheds light on the biological processes involved in body fat distribution, possibly leading to new ways of treating obesity. "These studies ...

Los Angeles, CA (October 11, 2010) NFL players with concussions now stay away from the game significantly longer than they did in the late 1990s and early 2000s, according to research in Sports Health (owned by American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine and published by SAGE). The mean days lost with concussion increased from 1.92 days during 1996-2001 to 4.73 days during 2002-2007. In an effort to discover whether concussion injury occurrence and treatment had changed, researchers compared those two consecutive six-year periods to determine the circumstances of ...

Patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who have progressed after chemotherapy live significantly longer if treated with the drug abiraterone acetate compared to placebo, the results of a large Phase-III clinical trial confirm. "This is a major step forward in prostate cancer therapeutics," said Dr Johann de Bono from The Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust in London, who presented the study results at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy. "Patients in this Phase-III ...

Many cancer survivors experience changes in sexual function that leave them feeling guilty and a longing for intimacy, Australian researchers told at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy. The researchers say that these sexuality and fertility concerns are often not adequately addressed by doctors. Professor Bogda Koczwara from Flinders Medical Centre in Adelaide said that fertility concerns among cancer survivors was a growing problem, due to a combination of improved cancer treatment outcomes in young cancer survivors ...

In life, we're told, we must take the good with the bad, and how we view these life events determines our well-being and ability to adjust. But according to Prof. Dov Shmotkin of Tel Aviv University's Department of Psychology, you need more than the right attitude to successfully negotiate the vicissitudes of life. As recently reported in Aging and Mental Health, Prof. Shmotkin's research reveals that people's well-being and their adaptation can be ascertained by their "time trajectory" ― their concept of how they have evolved through their remembered past, currently ...

New drugs that target specific molecular mechanisms of cancer have improved the treatment of cancer patients in recent years, but those benefits may come with a cost to the patient's sex life, researchers have found. At the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy, French researchers reported on one of the few studies to investigate the impact of cancer therapy on the sexual functioning of patients. Dr Yohann Loriot and Dr Thomas Bessede from Institut Gustave Roussy in Villejuif, France and colleagues found that patients taking ...

Lung cancer patients who have already been treated with the EGFR inhibitors erlotinib or gefitinib seem to gain further benefits in terms of progression-free survival and tumor shrinkage when treated with the new drug afatinib, the results of a Phase IIb/III trial show. At the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy, Dr Vincent Miller from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, USA, reported findings from the LUX-Lung 1 trial of afatinib in 585 patients with lung adenocarcinoma whose cancer had progressed after chemotherapy ...

A new-generation lung cancer drug has shown an impressive ability to prevent disease progression when administered as a first-line treatment in patients with advanced disease, investigators reported at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO). Preliminary results from an ongoing Phase-II trial of the drug PF299804 (PF-299) showed that close to 85% of patients whose cancers harbor mutated forms of the EGFR gene have remained progression-free for at least nine months, reported Dr Tony Mok from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. While some ...

An ongoing Phase-II trial investigating a new, targeted therapy for metastatic urothelial cancer has generated promising early results, Italian researchers reported at the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Milan, Italy. Urothelial cancers affect the tissue lining the inner surfaces of the bladder and other parts of the urinary system. In cases of metastatic disease, median survival is approximately 12-15 months and there is a 10-15% chance of prolonging it by the use of standard chemotherapy regimens, particularly in otherwise healthy ...

The results of a large Phase-III clinical trial have shown that the drug everolimus delays tumor progression in patients with a hard-to-treat group of rare cancers that affect particular hormone-producing cells. At the 35th Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), Dr Marianne Pavel from Charité University in Berlin, Germany reported that everolimus improved progression-free survival by 5.1 months in patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors. Neuroendocrine tumors are slow-growing malignancies that originate from cells of the body's neuroendocrine ...

A new class of compounds identified by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine could be developed into drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia. The compounds enhance signaling by molecules in the brain called NMDA receptors, which scientists believe are functioning at low levels in people with schizophrenia. Led by Stephen Traynelis, PhD, professor of pharmacology, a team of Emory researchers sifted through thousands of chemicals and found one, called CIQ, which could selectively enhance the function of certain NMDA receptors without affecting others. The ...