objective

W.M. Keck Foundation funds study of friendly microbes

... on this previously mysterious interior world. Our objective is to understand how the human body functions as a carefully woven fabric of interacting species. Ultimately, such understanding promises to provide new ways of fortifying health and preventing or treating a variety of diseases both inside and outsid...

Key Trigger Of Opioid Withdrawal Symptoms Found

...om mice that had been treated with morphine. Their objective was to understand what happens to a particular region of the midbrain--called the periaqueductal gray (PAG)--known to be involved in such withdrawal symptoms. Opiate addiction inhibits neuron activity in this region, which alters the neuronal machine...

Implanted Devices Detect High-Risk Heart Failure Patients

.... Secondly, the devices provide cardiologists with objective information about the health status of their patie... ?look at how the patient is truly doing. It is an objective finding that you can look at and easily understand." Gilliam pointed out that the cardiologists are...

The evolutionary triumph of flower power

...ability of flowers to induce positive emotion. The objective was to demonstrate the immediate, long-term and powerful effects of flowers on emotional reactions, mood, social behaviors and even memory in both men and women. The results of these three studies were so positive that the researchers went on to deve...

What's really making you sick? Plant pathologists offer the science behind Sick Building Syndrome

...SBS. This makes SBS a complex problem and requires objective inspections for possible causes to detect and manage SBS. Skaria cites a need for more plant pathologists and mycologists to study building-related mold growth and development and SBS syndrome in real-world conditions. More on this topic will be pre...

Researchers use 3-D imaging system to unveil swimming behavior of microscopic plankton

...s that produce zooplankton patchiness is a central objective in biological oceanography." Countless numbers of the minute, nearly transparent zooplankton are found under the surface of each square meter of the world's oceans. These animals play a key role in the marine food web as a crucial link between prima...

Investigating 'brain shrinkage' in alcoholics

...ffects of alcohol on the brain," said Harper. "Our objective was to better understand the mechanisms underlying alcohol's damage, with the ultimate goal of identifying how to prevent and/or reverse these effects." Key presentation highlights were: - A number of toxic, metabolic, and nutritional factors inter...

Neurologix announces positive results of gene therapy clinical trial in Parkinson's disease

... Kaplitt and During commented: "While the primary objective of any Phase I trial is to demonstrate safety, the FDA's requirement of unilateral infusion of AAV-GAD allowed us the unique opportunity to compare treated and untreated sides of the brain. In essence, the untreated side acted as a control. The com...

Columbia scientists develop cancer terminator viruses

...nces (PNAS), bring us significantly closer to this objective and the start of clinical trials with these viral-based therapies in cancer patients. Both papers were led by Paul B. Fisher, M.Ph., Ph.D., professor of clinical pathology and the Michael and Stella Chernow Urological Cancer Research Scientist at Co...

Results of world's first gene therapy trial for arthritis show approach safe, feasible

...on in their patients. "At the outset, our primary objective was proving the safety of gene therapy, especially for a clinical application to a nonlethal disease, such as arthritis. Once we learned of the adverse events in the X-SCID trial, we decided it was best to extend follow-up of our patients to five yea...

Israeli scientists successfully transplant frozen-thawed ovaries in sheep

...follicles as the fresh control ovaries. The next objective was to see if they could remove, freeze and thaw the right ovary from eight sheep, including the vascular pedicles (the attachment that contains the main blood vessels), and replace the ovary up to a fortnight later, either at the original site or by...

NHGRI expands effort to revolutionize sequencing technologies

...3 years) "Electronic Sequencing in Nanopores" The objective of this project is to develop a general utility instrument to provide inexpensive sequencing that can also be used for projects to recognize genome variation. The group will design novel nanopores articulated with probes to sequentially, and directly...

New technology shows our ancestors ate…everything!

...tute and elsewhere has developed a faster and more objective way to examine the surfaces of fossilized teeth, a practice used to figure out the diets of our early ancestors. By comparing teeth from two species of early humans, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, the researchers confirm previ...

Getting close to nature is good for you

...ssessments of wildlife projects to determine their objective therapeutic value, say the authors. English Nature has advocated a national strategy to encourage people to reconnect with nature and benefit from proximity to wildlife. Partnerships between healthcare providers and nature organisations to share an...

Marine conservation organizations team up to conduct Indonesia coral reefs assessment

...e the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation's objective of conserving living oceans through the practice of Science Without Borders?," Capt. Renaud added. The survey outcomes will be incorporated into the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network's (GCRMN) "Post-Tsunami Status of Coral Reefs Report" ? a speci...

Looking for the genes that affect a person's level of response to alcohol

..., which is the scale used, and the other one is an objective behavioral measure, which is body sway. We know that as people get intoxicated, their ability to stand still is impaired, so that they actually do move back and forth." In addition, all of the participants supplied blood samples that were used to l...

Health of coral reefs detected from orbit

...ult to distinguish from live coral. Repetitive, objective and broad-scale satellite coverage is the alternative. At this week's MERIS/AATSR Workshop in Frascati, Italy, the CSIRO team presented initial results using Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS). MERIS acquires images in 15 differ...

Do the Europeans turn ill sitting up so late?

...ersity of Helsinki, Institute of Biomedicine. The objective of this sleep restriction research is to character... the trainees with a versatile education. The main objective of the training is that the trainees acquire a wide international knowledge as well in basic resear...

Johns Hopkins flu expert calls for mandatory vaccination of health care workers

... and, ideally, at Hopkins and other hospitals, our objective would be to consistently have more than 90 percent of staff vaccinated each year." According to Perl, numerous staff surveys from other hospitals have shown that the most common reason cited for not getting a vaccination is a lack of time (47 percen...

Children overprescribed antibiotics for sore throat

...espiratory tract infections, clinicians have good, objective criteria in the form of GABHS testing to guide the antibiotic treatment of children with sore throat. Limiting antibiotic prescribing to children with a positive GABHS test result is a feasible goal for primary care physicians and an important step t...

Technique offers new view of dynamic biological landscape

...ects. "It gives you a less hypothesis-biased, more objective way of looking at the structure of biological systems," Weissman said. In future studies, Weissman and his colleagues plan to develop better quantitative measures of the effects of epistatic interactions and to extend their technique to other organ...

Screening blood for West Nile virus

...upply safety, there has been a real need for good, objective economic studies to determine what type and what degree of screening should be performed. " ...

New cellular flaw found in some virulent breast cancers

...n the most recent experiments, the research team's objective was to determine precisely which of cyclin D1's several different functions was responsible for causing breast cancer. By creating laboratory mice with different combinations of genes present or missing, the researchers were able to isolate the v...

Weizmann Institute suggests that immune cells help to maintain cognition and brain cell renewal

...jected T cells into immune-deficient mice with the objective of replenishing their immune systems. The results: cell renewal in the injected mice was partially restored ?a finding that supported their theory. In another set of experiments, they found that mice possessing the relevant CNS-specific T cells per...

Multi-million pound UK Biobank underway

...ne medical and other health-related records. The objective of the initial phase of recruitment is to make sure all of the planned procedures go smoothly before the study gets underway nationwide later in the year, when around eight to 10 assessment centres will be running at any one time around the UK. Sir ...

Nearly half of people who need cholesterol treatment don't get it

...an, N.Y., and St. Paul, Minn.). The study's main objective is to determine the characteristics of early cardiovascular disease ?before symptoms develop ?and how it progresses. The goal of the current analysis was to learn more about the challenge of implementing cholesterol treatment guidelines issued by the...

Faults in newly discovered breast stem cells may lead to tumours

...arch in the area for years to come. The ultimate objective is to create a drug that will, in effect, switch off breast cancer cells. To do this, the exact makeup of genes expressed by normal and rogue stem cells will need to be determined. Then a drug will be designed to engage with and neutralize the faulty...

All placebos not created alike

... of pain and the severity of their condition. More objective measures of grip strength showed no difference in improvements between the two placebos. The results also provided evidence that what doctors tell patients about side effects directly influences their experience of them. Prior to participating in th...

VCU Massey Cancer Center researchers identify a new class of anti-cancer drugs based on platinum

... each drug. "In platinum antitumor chemistry our objective is to design and develop complexes acting by new mechanisms of action," said Nicholas Farrell, Ph.D., professor and chair in the Department of Chemistry at VCU, and lead author of the study. "Resistance to current drugs is due to poor cellular absorp...

Obese people are more sensitive to pain, suggests study

.... "This kind of evaluation is in some ways a more objective way of measuring the body's response to pain, as o.... "Our findings show the importance of looking at objective as well as subjective measurements of how the body responds to pain stimuli," Emery said. Emery con...

Honey helps problem wounds

...t the experience gained in a large-scale study, as objective data on the curative properties of honey are thin on the ground. The fact that honey can help wounds to heal is something that was known to the Ancient Egyptians several thousand years ago. And in the last two world wars poultices with honey were us...

Radioactive scorpion venom for fighting cancer

...ally and safely," Jackson says. "Obviously, a key objective is to bring these patients home and to ensure that their loved ones and the environment are properly protected." In the trials, one group of patients received the therapy three times over three weeks, while the other group received the therapy 6 ...

Federal testing for mad cow disease a failure, law review editor says

...ements, and promulgate an application process with objective criteria for private producers. A standard testing regime would enable private producers such as Creekstone to market their beef as 'tested for BSE.'" Berlowitz cited news reports that the cost of such testing would add only6 to 10 cents to a pound ...

Mapping the protein world

...olutionary therapeutic strategies." To meet this objective the scientists intend to study crystals of proteins bound to diverse drug candidates or containing different types of large molecules. "ARP/wARP needs to meet a two fold challenge: firstly, it needs to be able to work with structural information at...

Hope I die before I get old?

...they age, they become happier -- even though their objective circumstances, such as their health, decline." Lacey adds, "It's not that people overestimate their happiness, but rather that they learn how to value life from adversities like being sick. What the sick learn from being sick, the rest of us come to...

Altered perception of reward in human cocaine addiction

...h they said they were engaged in the task) and the objective measures of motivation (how fast and accurately they performed on the task). "These behavioral data implicate a disruption in the ability to perceive inner motivational drives in cocaine addiction," Goldstein said. The fMRI results also revealed t...

Teenager moves video icons just by imagination

...down from the top to the bottom of the screen. The objective is to prevent any one of the aliens from landing on the bottom of the screen, which ends the game. The player has an unlimited ammunition supply. The aliens can shoot back at the player, who has to evade, moving left and right. There are lots of l...

Computer scientists unravel 'language of surgery'

...ssue. The team's long-term goal is to develop an objective way of evaluating a surgeon's work and to help doctors improve their operating room skills. Ultimately, the research also could enable robotic surgical tools to perform with greater precision. The project, supported by a three-year National Scienc...

Global malaria map key weapon in fight against malaria, scientists say

...driven by perceptions and politics, rather than an objective assessment of need," say two prominent malaria researchers in PLoS Medicine. Simon Hay and Robert Snow (Kenya Medical Research Institute and University of Oxford), say that it has been almost 40 years since the last global map of malaria endemicity ...

Heavy smoking cuts women's chance of pregnancy -- even with donated oocytes

...onated oocytes ?the situation that allows the most objective assessment of the role of the uterus in the outcome of IVF. The researchers studied all the first cycles of oocyte-donated IVF treatments carried out at the IVI-Valencia Foundation between the start of 2002 and June 2005 ?741 in non-heavy smokers...

Edible coatings will be the packaging of the future

...solate or WPI), mesquite gum and starch - with the objective of evaluating their possible food applications. The PhD, entitled "Development, characterisation and applications for foodstuffs of edible coatings based on milk serum proteins, starch and mesquite gum". Mesquite gum, an efficacious and cheap so...

Protein averts cell suicide but might contribute to cancer

... the cell to eventually become cancerous. "The objective of this enzyme is to allow replication to continue, not to repair the damage," says Fiala. The damage will persist, and cells might try to repair it later. But as long as DNA replication can continue, the cell survives." Currently, Suo's laborato...

Groundbreaking Canadian asthma study

... and the patient returns home the same day. The objective of the Asthma Intervention Research (AIR) Trial, led by Drs. Cox and Miller, as part of a global clinical trial, was to examine the effectiveness and safety of bronchial thermoplasty as a treatment for patients with moderate or severe asthma. The ran...

Computer imaging assists with facial reconstructive surgery

...r facial disharmony requires artistic judgment and objective evaluation,?the authors conclude. “For surgeons who use computer imaging software, analysis of profile photographs is the most valuable tool. Even when preoperative and postoperative photographs are of different sizes, relative distance comparisons...

Eating less salt could prevent cardiovascular disease

... This research provides some of the strongest objective evidence to date that lowering the amount of salt in the diet reduces the long term risk of future cardiovascular disease, say the authors of the report. Researchers followed up participants from two trials completed in the nineties which had been...

Cellulosic ethanol: Fuel of the future?

...rn production. One way to reach the president's objective is offered by Chris Somerville, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology. Somerville advocates increasing the production of cellulosic ethanol, which is distilled f...

Custom-made cancer cell attacks

...rn production. One way to reach the president's objective is offered by Chris Somerville, professor of biological sciences at Stanford University and director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Plant Biology. Somerville advocates increasing the production of cellulosic ethanol, which is distilled f...

Indicators for risk of heart disease are higher in passive smokers

... study to relate the levels of these markers to an objective measure of second-hand smoke exposure, rather than self-reported exposure, which can be biased." Dr Venn and co-author Professor John Britton checked to see if people exposed to second-hand smoke had increased levels of fibrinogen, homocysteine an...

Fighting influenza & co. with 40,000 blood samples

... examining tens of thousands of blood samples. The objective is also to develop new medicines which largely inactivate the viruses and enable the immune system to deal with the small amount of residual viruses. Spanish flu took the lives of at least 25 million people between 1918 and 1920. But the disease was...

Scientists learn the origin of rogue B cells

...-directed cells are coming from is a big one. "Our objective is to understand the ins and outs of this process," says Casellas. ...

Biodiesel study targets cleaner air, cleaner engines

...ortant role in helping us achieve the government's objective of five percent renewable content in transportation fuels by 2010. This is another example of how we can create new economic opportunities for farmers and the agricultural sector while also taking care of our environment." Natural Resources Canada ...

Research shows cord blood comparable to matched bone marrow

...all cord blood donors were mismatched. The main objective of the research was to compare the results after cord blood and marrow transplantation and provide guidelines to transplant physicians on the selection of the best donor for children with leukemia. Remarkably, mismatched cord blood performed as well...

The insect vector always bites twice

...xt of seasonal transmission of the disease. The objective of the work conducted on human African trypanosomiasis was to analyse the antibody response to identify exactly, in total saliva extract of Glossinia flies, the immunogenic proteins responsible for synthesis of these specific antibodies (2). The diff...

Research identifies protein that signals flowering in squash plants

...periodic control of flowering time is an important objective in crop breeding and development programs, because it can aid in optimizing crop yields and other traits for local environmental conditions. Experimental evidence indicates that a flowering-inducing substance, known as florigen, is produced in the...