Need

A much-needed shot in the arm for HIV vaccine development

International efforts towards developing avaccine against HIV infection have been given a much-needed boost bythe publication today of the Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise'sscientific strategic plan, published online in the freely available,open-access global health journal PLoS Medicine.The Global HIV/AIDS Vaccine Enterprise is an international alliance ofindependent agencies and organiz...

Needling Chromosomes Reveals Cell Division Secret

By impaling individual chromosomes with glassneedles one thousandth the diameter of a human hair, a Duke Universitygraduate student has tested their "stickiness" to one another duringcell division. Her uncanny surgical skills have added a piece to thelarge and intricate puzzle of how one cell divides into two -- aprocess fundamental to all organisms.In the Dec. 14, 2004, issue of Current Bi...

New therapy for HIV/AIDS eliminates needles and excessive toxicity

A team led by Johns Hopkins scientists hasfound the first clear evidence that the process behind the human immunesystem's remarkable ability to recognize and respond to a milliondifferent proteins might have originated from a family of genes whoseonly apparent function is to jump around in genetic material. essentially cut...

Institute for Systems Biology Symposium Addresses Need for Better Computational Tools

The Institute for Systems Biology announced today at its 2005 international symposium on Computational Challenges in Systems Biology that ISB's Human Proteome Folding Project launched on IBM's World Community Grid in November 2004 has already predicted 50,000 protein structures. "This project showcases the enormous power of collaborations," stated Dr. Richard Bonneau, senior scientist at t...

Chemicals in tattoo inks need closer scrutiny

As tattoos have grown in popularity, so have complaints of adverse side effects associated with both their application and removal. A new study, done by chemistry students at Northern Arizona University, looked at the chemical composition of a variety of tattoo inks to better understand their potential health risks. The findings, presented today at the 229th national meeting of the Americ...

Fragile US vaccine system needs improvement despite dramatic gains in health over past century

A comprehensive system of vaccine development in the U.S. resulted in a reduction of 87 to more than 99 percent in illness from ten vaccine-preventable diseases during the twentieth century. These dramatic successes should not be taken for granted, however, as the vaccine system now faces numerous challenges in manufacturing and development, according to a review article in the May/June issue of...

Rehydrate -- your RNA needs it

Water, that molecule-of-all-trades, is famous for its roles in shaping the Earth, sustaining living creatures and serving as a universal solvent. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan and the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic have uncovered two previously unknown roles for water in RNA enzymes, molecules which themselves play critical roles in living cells and show promi...

AIDS expert says global strategy needed to combat feminization of HIV/AIDS

Thomas C. Quinn, M.D., a Johns Hopkins physician and scientist, who has spent the best part of the last 25 years leading major efforts to combat HIV and AIDS throughout the world, is calling for global strategies and resources to confront the rapid "feminization" of the AIDS pandemic. Quinn, a professor of infectious diseases at Hopkins and a senior investigator at the National Institute o...

Leading scientists rank endangered dolphins, porpoises most in need of immediate action

Leading marine scientists for the first time have assessed dolphin and porpoise populations around the world which are severely threatened by entanglement in fishing gear and recommended nine urgent priorities for action in a report commissioned by the World Wildlife Fund. These nine projects highlight species threatened by bycatch that will most likely benefit from immediate action and will cont...

Clear rules needed to govern deep sea bioprospecting: UNU

Vast genetic resources ?"blue gold" on the international deep sea floor ?need protection from unfettered commercial exploitation, warns a new report from the Japan-based United Nations University Institute for Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS). Increasingly recognized as important to humankind for their potential medical and other uses, deep sea resources are now more accessible and vulnerable th...

MRSA study demonstrates need for frequent hand washing and environmental disinfection in health care settings

A major cause of hospital-acquired infections can persist for days and even weeks on environmental surfaces found in healthcare settings, including bed linens, computer keyboard covers and acrylic fingernails, according to research presented today at the 105th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is a major cause of ho...

High carbon dioxide levels spur Southern pines to grow more needles

A Duke University study has found that maturing stands of pines exposed to the higher levels of carbon dioxide expected by mid-century produce more needles than those absorbing today's levels of the gas, even under drought conditions. However, the study also found that lack of soil nutrients may impose limitations in many forests. Duke graduate student Heather McCarthy will describe result...

Quick identification needed to save Florida's citrus industry from devastating disease

The recent discovery of citrus greening (huanglongbing) in samples collected from trees in South Florida poses a definite threat to Florida's $9 billion commercial citrus industry. Proper identification and eradication methods are needed to reduce the amount of crop loss caused by this disease, say plant pathologists with The American Phytopathological Society (APS). Citrus greening is a bacteria...

Lethal needle blight epidemic may be related to climate change

Increased summer precipitation apparently helping to spread spores of pathogen Biologists studying a lethal blight of lodgepole pines in northwestern British Columbia present strong evidence in the September issue of BioScience that climate change is to blame for the outbreak. The blight, caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, causes trees to lose their needles and, in the case of...

Womb needed for proper brain development

The brains of babies born very prematurely do not develop as well as those who are carried to full-term, according to new research presented today at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C. Dr. Sandra Witelson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University and chief investigator on...

Molecular research suggest shift needed in how some drugs are created

The first close-up look at a pro-inflammatory signaling molecule involved in immune response in mammals suggests that researchers "should rethink what they are doing" in creating drugs based on a fruit-fly model, scientists say. Reporting in the Oct. 1 issue of the Journal of Immunology, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign unveiled the crystal structure of mouse i...

Many needles, many haystacks

Most of what happens in cells is the work of machines that contain dozens of molecules, chiefly proteins. With the completion of human and other genomes, researchers now have a nearly complete "parts list" of such machines; what's lacking now is the manual telling where all the pieces go. A new study by scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) promises to answer this questio...

Needle-free immunizations

Samir Mitragotri, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says the myriad shortcomings of injections have led to active research and development of needle-free methods of immunization. While most people prefer to avoid injections, the stakes are enormously higher than just helping people avoid a disagreeable prick of a needle. In third world cou...

Parents need to be educated about HPV vaccinations for daughters

London, UK: Parents of young girls may soon be offered the opportunity to have their daughters immunised against a sexually transmitted virus that is the major cause of cervical cancer, the 4th International Conference on Teenage and Young Adult Cancer Medicine heard today (Thursday 30 March). Professor Henry Kitchener told the conference, organised by the Teenage Cancer Trust charity, tha...

Gene needed for butterfly transformation also key for insects like grasshoppers

It is a marvel of nature that a creature such as a caterpillar changes into something quite different, a butterfly. Contrast that with a grasshopper, which looks largely the same from the time it hatches through its adult stage. New University of Washington research shows that a regulatory gene named broad, known to be necessary for development of insects that undergo complete metamorphos...

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

Even though treatment for cholesterol disorders can reduce the risk of heart and blood vessel disease by about 30 percent over five years, many at-risk people aren't getting adequate treatment, according to researchers from Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues reporting in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "Under-treatment of cholesterol disorders...

Biofuels can replace about 30 percent of fuel needs with significant research and policy effort

With world oil demand growing, supplies dwindling and the potential for weather- and conflict-related supply interruptions, other types of fuels and technologies are needed to help pick up the slack. A group of experts in science, engineering and public policy from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Imperial College London and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory recommend a comprehensi...

Cancer virus protein needed for successful infection

New research shows that a protein made by a cancer-causing virus that was thought to be unimportant for its replication is in fact critically needed by the virus to initiate an infection and to reproduce. The study examined the human T lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) and a protein it makes called p13. The protein is one of the virus' so-called accessory proteins, proteins that earlier...

Epidemic of unneeded amputations

Non-traumatic amputations ?those caused by arterial blockages related to diabetes, smoking, obesity and vascular system complications ?are occurring at an alarming rate. Yet physicians may be too quick to amputate as 85 percent of them may be preventable, according to the International Diabetes Foundation. Amputations are not only disfiguring and life-threatening, but are more dangerous an...

Adult stem cells are touchy-feely, need environmental clues

A certain type of adult stem cell can turn into bone, muscle, neurons or other types of tissue depending on the "feel" of its physical environment, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania. The researchers discovered that mesenchymal stem cells, which regularly reside in the bone marrow as part of the body's natural regenerative mechanism, depend on physical clues from...

Bird flu study highlights need to vaccinate flocks effectively

Incomplete vaccination of poultry flocks could make the spread of deadly strains of avian flu such as H5N1 worse, scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Warwick have found. The research shows that even though the available vaccines are effective on individual birds, the disease is likely to spread unless almost all of a flock has been protected. The study, published in Nature journal, is...

Life and death in the hippocampus: what young neurons need to survive

Whether newborn nerve cells in adult brains live or die depends on whether they can muscle their way into networks occupied by mature neurons. Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies pin-pointed the molecular survival gear required for a young neuron to successfully jump into the fray and hook up with other cells. In a study published in a forthcoming issue of Nature...

Study supports 'urgent' need for worldwide ban on lead-based paint

Environmental and occupational health experts at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have found that major countries--including India, China and Malaysia -- still produce and sell consumer paints with dangerously high lead levels. The researchers say that this l...

UN review shows need to halt destructive fishing practice

A long-awaited report by the United Nations shows the need for an international moratorium on bottom-trawling and other destructive fishing practices that damage deep sea life, Conservation International (CI) said. The U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and Law of the Sea (DOALOS) reviewed measures to protect the vulnerable deep oceans of the high seas ?the 64 percent of ocean that lies beyo...

First-ever genomic test predicts which lung cancer patients need chemotherapy to live

Duke University Medical Center scientists have developed the first-ever genomic test to predict which patients with early-stage lung cancer will need chemotherapy to live and which patients can avoid the toxic regimen of drugs. The test has the potential to save thousands of lives each year by recommending chemotherapy for patients who are currently advised against it, said the test's de...

Pesticides need sunscreen to beat the heat

A pesticide with a new in-built sunscreen will help farmers beat the heat in crop protection. This means that the bug sprays last longer, as they are protected from the strong rays of sunshine, reports Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI. This is becoming increasingly important as temperatures rise, with the Met Office announcing that several heat records were broken in the UK this...

Wild tigers need cat food

A landmark study by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says tigers living in one of India’s best-run national parks lose nearly a quarter of their population each year from poaching and natural mortality, yet their numbers remain stable due to a combination of high reproductive rates and abundant prey. The study, which appears in the journal Ecology, under...

Researchers discover that sheep need retroviruses for reproduction

A team of scientists from Texas A&M University and The University of Glasgow Veterinary School in Scotland has discovered that naturally occurring endogenous retroviruses are required for pregnancy in sheep. In particular, a class of endogenous retroviruses, known as endogenous retroviruses related to Jaagsiekte sheep retrovirus or enJSRVs, are critical during the early phase of preg...

Need to pull an all-nighter?

People who must stay awake for long shifts ?soldiers, pilots, truckers, students, doctors, parents of newborns ?may take comfort from new research showing that preventing the gas nitric oxide from building up in the brain may ward off the sleep urge. The research, conducted by investigators from Children's Hospital Boston and the University of Helsinki (Helsinki, Finland), ties together p...

Mechanical 'artificial hearts' can remove need for heart transplant by returning heart to normal

Mechanical 'artificial hearts' can be used to return severely failing hearts to their normal function, potentially removing the need for heart transplantation, according to new research. The mechanical devices, known as Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), are currently used in patients with very severe heart failure whilst they await transplantation. The new study, published in the Ne...

Faster, low cost sequencing technologies needed to drive era of personalized medicine

DNA testing is transforming health care and medicine, but current technologies only give a snapshot of an individual's genetic makeup. Any patient wanting a complete picture of their inherited DNA, or genome, would drop their jaw at the sight of the bill -- to the current tune of $10 million or more charged for every human or mammalian-sized genome sequenced. Now, with a grant award from t...

New biofuels process promises to meet all US transportation needs

Purdue University chemical engineers have proposed a new environmentally friendly process for producing liquid fuels from plant matter - or biomass - potentially available from agricultural and forest waste, providing all of the fuel needed for "the entire U.S. transportation sector." The new approach modifies conventional methods for producing liquid fuels from biomass by adding hydrogen...

Need oxygen? Cells know how to spend and save

Researchers at Johns Hopkins have discovered how cells fine-tune their oxygen use to make do with whatever amount is available at the moment. Too little oxygen threatens life by compromising mitochondria that power it, so when oxygen is scarce, cells appear to adjust by replacing one protein with an energy-efficient substitute that "is specialized to keep the motor running smoothly even as...

Treating HIV in war zones -- Public health emergencies need rapid advice from WHO

Heather Culbert and colleagues report their results of three years’ experience of providing HIV care, including antiretroviral therapy...