Benign in Biological News

As rates rise, researchers find better way to identify melanoma

... objective way to distinguish melanoma from some benign moles that look like melanoma but are not ... neoplasms, a diverse group that includes benign moles; Spitz nevi, a type of mole seen in younger ... an important tool for pathologists. None of the benign moles or ...

Monkey malaria widespread in humans and potentially fatal

... malaria is being commonly misdiagnosed as a more benign form of the disease, thereby putting lives at ... stages are indistinguishable from the more benign P. malariae. Misdiagnosis as P. falciparum is ... same treatment. However, misdiagnosis as the more benign slower growing parasite P. malariae is a problem. ...

Newly discovered gene fusion may lead to improved prostate cancer diagnosis

... prostate cancer, because many men may have an elevated PSA level, but have benign conditions such as inflammation of the prostate." It is important to distinguish harmful cancer from non-lethal diseases, such as benign prostatic hyperplasia, or enlarged prostate disease that exhibits similar ...

New MRI technique could mean fewer breast biopsies in high-risk women

... and the contrast agent flows in and "leaks" out quickly. Conversely, benign lesions show more gradual in and out flow. "The tricky ones are the ... its shape. For example, breaks or interruptions in a lesion can indicate a benign fibroadenoma. Lumps with smooth edges often are benign, while those with ...

Tiny samples could yield big predictive markers for pancreatic cancer

... cystic lesions of the pancreas. "Many of these cysts are completely benign and have little or no risk of becoming cancerous. However, a subset of ... cysts at its earliest stages. "What we need are methods to identify benign cysts that do not have significant cancer risk, so that we can concentrate ...

Where optics meets medicine

... help physicians distinguish between cancerous tissue transformations and benign changes in tissues due to different diseases, such as pancreatitis. Doing ... critical, unmet need of accurately differentiating malignant masses from benign pancreatitis. Such improved diagnostic accuracy could also appropriately ...

Old before their time? Aging in flies under natural vs. laboratory conditions

... typically utilize small, short-lived animals (insects, worms, mice) under benign conditions constant temperature and humidity, no parasites, superabundant ... can age much faster in their stressful natural environments than in the benign conditions of the laboratory. Their results suggest that laboratory ...

Gaining ground on sickle cell disease

... to take severely affected patients and make them more like those with more benign symptoms," adds Vijay Sankaran, co-first author on the paper with Lettre ... groups of sickle cell patients with very high levels of HbF and relatively benign forms of the disease, and additional epidemiologic studies led by Orah ...

Too much technology may be killing beneficial bacteria

... Missouri researcher has found that silver nanoparticles also may destroy benign bacteria that are used to remove ammonia from wastewater treatment ... silver nanoparticles are extremely toxic. The nanoparticles destroy the benign species of bacteria that are used for wastewater treatment. It basically ...

DOE-funded research projects win 46 R&D 100 Awards for 2009

... camera, rather than conventional ultrasound imaging, because the camera can more easily detect the small cancerous tissues and distinguish between benign and cancerous tumors. The new technology also combines the best aspects of conventional nuclear imaging detectors while minimizing their weaknesses, ...

Scientists discover gene mutation responsible for hereditary neuroendocrine tumor

... study will be published in the journal Science , to be released online in Science Express on July 23, 2009. Paragangliomas are rare, generally benign tumors that arise from cells called glomus cells, which are located along blood vessels and play a role in regulating blood pressure and blood flow. ...

University of Leicester researchers discover new fluorescent silicon nanoparticles

... Leicester could be a key step towards the production of a variety of biomedical sensors that could help track the uptake of drugs by cells." The benign nature of silicon also makes the nanoparticles useful as fluorescent markers for tagging biologically sensitive materials. The light from a single ...

Toxic molecule may help birds 'see' north and south

... at so-called zero spin. They suggested that molecular oxygen is that partner," Schulten said. "We propose that the reaction partner is not the benign oxygen molecule that we all breathe, but its close cousin, superoxide, a negatively charged oxygen molecule." When Solov'yov showed that ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly Presspac -- June 17, 2009

... chemistry share such common goals as generating less waste and emissions, minimizing material and energy use and operating more safely under more benign conditions. Overall, the fact that chemists are paying closer attention to their choices of reagents and solvents is making process development even ...

Carnegie Mellon's Kris Matyjaszewski recieves EPA's Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award

... ATRP contained high levels of copper. In 2006, Matyjaszewski and colleagues introduced a green approach to ATRP that incorporates environmentally benign reducing agents, like vitamin C and sugars, to regenerate the active form of the catalyst. The reducing agents chemically lessen the amount of copper ...

Plant microbe shares features with drug-resistant pathogen

... microbes' ability to form sticky, infection-fostering biofilms, or point the way to closely related non-pathogenic strains that could be useful and benign for biotech applications. On the other hand, these findings raise the question of whether plants in hospital settings may serve as a reservoir for ...

Ethanol production could jeopardize soil productivity

... available source of material since more than 50% of crop production is residues. However, crop residues should not be considered simply a waste or benign material. They possess a critical role in sustaining soil organic matter. Consequently, extensive removal of crop residues for ethanol productionor ...

Proteomics: Finding the key ingredients of disease

... has a key secret ingredient, which is hard to identify. Similarly, many diseases have crucial proteins, which change the dynamics of cells from benign to deadly. New findings from an international collaboration, involving McGill University, the Research Institute of the McGill University Health ...

Rabbits on the back foot -- but naturally they're fighting back

... Strive from CSIRO Entomology and the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre has found that some rabbits in cool, high rainfall areas carry a benign virus that gives them immunity to RHD. "We knew that RHD was not as effective in these areas and we suspected from anti-body responses that there ...

Study finds blood cells can be reprogrammed to act as embryonic stem cells

... characteristics by injecting the newly reprogrammed cells into immunodeficient mice. The cells successfully generated well-differentiated teratomas, benign masses containing all three embryonic germ layers, including respiratory, bone, and neural tissue. "Not only has this work identified a new ...

Ancient diatoms lead to new technology for solar energy

... that several forms will ultimately all find uses, depending on the situation." Dye-sensitized technology, for instance, uses environmentally benign materials and works well in lower light conditions. And the new findings offer advances in manufacturing simplicity and efficiency. ...

When intestinal bacteria go surfing

... E.coli bacteria. During the course of an infection they infest the intestinal mucosa, causing injury in the process, in contrast to benign bacteria. The EHECs adhere to the surface of the mucosal cells and alter them internally: a part of the cellular supportive skeleton - the actin ...

Metastatic bone disease patients can walk in Lazarus' footsteps

... stay ambulatory," said Anselmetti. He noted that osteoplasty provided effective pain regression for individuals with both painful bone metastases and benign lytic lesions that didn't respond to conventional analgesic treatment. Bones are the third most common location where cancer cells spread and ...

Fowl soil additive breaks down crude oil

... instance, become pollutants themselves and can persist in the environment long after any remediation exercise is complete. A more environmentally benign approach is to bioremediation, which uses natural or engineered microbes that can metabolize the organic components of crude oil. Stimulating such ...

MIT student develops new innovations to selectively kill cancer cells

... ability to find tumors, von Maltzahn invented a series of ways for nanoparticles to 'talk' to one another in the body. One method involves benign 'scout' particles initially locating the tumor and, once inside, sending powerful signals to recruit secondary, 'assassin' particles that contain the ...

U of T technique put to use to test clean up of contaminated groundwater

... "The most common method to clean-up groundwater is biodegradation using microbes to consume the contaminants and break them down into more benign end products that are not harmful to the environment," says U of T geochemist Barbara Sherwood Lollar, the scientist who initiated the concept and ...

New insights into a leading poultry disease and its risks to human health

... implications for understanding the strategies that bacteria use to trade genetic material. Plasmids are able to acquire more virulence genes or turn benign bacteria into harmful pathogens by their ability to transfer from their own host bacteria into new recipient bacteria. By analyzing the DNA sequence ...

CSHL scientists discover new way in which ubiquitin modifies transcriptional machinery

... however, was later found, in other contexts, to modify proteins in non-destructive ways, too. This suggested to Tansey the existence of a more benign link between transcription and ubiquitylation. Working with yeast cells, Tansey's team has now identified this link: a protein called Asr1. ...

Modified gene targets cancer cells a thousand times more often than healthy cells

... immunology at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, to design a way to incorporate the new gene with its toxic cargo into a benign virus. If successful, the team will attempt to treat cancer in mice by injecting their tumors with a solution of the virus, and allow the virus to ...

Montana State University researchers find gene that regulates mold's resistance to drugs

... immune system, especially organ transplant patients, are particularly at risk. "The incidence of potentially lethal infections caused by normally benign molds has increased tremendously over the last two decades," the researchers wrote. The scientists discovered the value of srbA after creating a ...

LSUHSC awarded patent for compound inhibiting cancer and other diseases

... with abnormal blood vessel formation include Crohn's disease, diabetic retinopathy, macular degeneration, obesity, corneal neovascularization, benign tumors, hemangioma, arterial/venous malformations, sickle cell anemia, sarcoidosis, syphilis, pseudoxanthoma elasticum, Pagets disease, vein ...

For insulin sensitive overweight patients, 1 session of exercise improves metabolic health

... the muscle affect insulin resistance. To avoid the build up of fat by-products, fat must either be oxidized (burned, as in exercise) or stored (as benign fat) in muscle. A team of researchers has examined the effect of exercise on fat accumulation in a new study involving five obese women. In one ...

Rare genetic disorder gives clues to autism, epilepsy, mental retardation

... researchers. Their findings, accompanied by commentary, were the cover article of the September 15 issue of Genes & Development . TSC causes benign tumor-like lesions, which can affect every organ in the body and are called tubers when they occur in the brain. In the study, Sahin, He, lead author ...

UCLA, partners establish new center on environmental effects of nanotechnology

... of California Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN), which will help researchers design safer and more environmentally benign nanomaterials. The center, to be housed at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) on the UCLA campus, will explore the impact of ...

Duke to lead new NSF, EPA center to study the environmental implications of nanotechnology

... professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. "Identifying which nanomaterial properties are most environmentally benign enables the development of nanotechnologies with those desirable properties.'' CEINT will also collaborate with the newly formed International ...

Wolves would rather eat salmon

... The authors explain that the wolves' taste for fishy fare is likely based on safety, nutrition and energetics. Darimont said, "Selecting benign prey such as salmon makes sense from a safety point of view. While hunting deer, wolves commonly incur serious and often fatal injuries. In addition ...

Senescence in liver cells is found by CSHL scientists to help limit acute tissue damage

... By this he means senescent cells are typically ones that no longer actively divide. Senescence is therefore a highly stable state, as exemplified by benign moles in which senescent cells can persist without dividing over the course of an entire human lifetime. Dr. Lowe, a CSHL Professor and Howard ...

Monash researchers uncover cancer survival secrets

... A team of Monash University researchers has uncovered the role of a family of enzymes in the mutation of benign or less aggressive tumours into more aggressive, potentially fatal, cancers in the human body. The discovery, published today in the ...

'Small' research at MSU leads to advances in energy, electronics

... of many advanced electronic and energy devices," Drzal said. "It can do so because it's a nanoparticle with a unique shape made from environmentally benign carbon, and it can be made at a very reasonable cost." The key to the new material's capabilities is a fast and inexpensive process for separating ...

Ante-partum bed rest moms get active in Case Western Reserve University study

... that recovery during a pilot study at Case Western Reserve University's Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing. "Putting people in bed is not a benign kind of thing," says Judith Maloni, a professor of nursing at the Bolton School. She has been studying the effects of bed rest for nearly two ...