RTA

Genes In The Interferon System Important In Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Two genes with very strong associations withthe disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have been identified bya team of scientists headed by researchers at the Department of MedicalSciences at Uppsala University. The findings are being published todayon the Web page of the highly prestigious American Journal of HumanGenetics. "These findings are probably the first genetic pieces of ahug...

Development of portable infectious disease detector

A portable device similar to today's homepregnancy tests that can quickly detect the presence of infectiousdiseases, including HIV-AIDS and measles, as well as biological agentssuch as ricin and anthrax, is the object of a new jointuniversity/industry research project.Vanderbilt University's Institute for Integrative Biosystems Researchand Education (VIIBRE) and Pria Diagnostics LLC, a priv...

New SARS Protein Linked To Important Cell Doorway

As public health officials in China brace for a potential resurgence in SARS (Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in connection with Chinese New Year on February 9, researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have published insights into a new protein that could be an important contributor to the SARS virus' ability to cause disease and death. When the SARS virus first jumped from it...

Estrogen-like Component of Plastic Stimulates Growth of Certain Prostate Cancer Cells

An estrogen-like chemicalcommonly used to synthesize plastic food containers has been shown toencourage the growth of a specific category of prostate cancer cell,potentially affecting the treatment efficacy for a subset of prostatecancers.According to a study published in the January 1 issue of CancerResearch, such prostate cancer cells proved to be vulnerable toexposure to the chemical BP...

New online portal merges vast data on Gulf of Maine ecosystem

A new online portal consolidates decades of rich marine data, much of it available for the first time, enabling resource managers and scientific researchers to combine and analyze information in unprecedented ways, creating new insights into the Gulf of Maine's ecology. Launched today by the Gulf of Maine Area program of the Census of Marine Life, the Dynamic Atlas of the Gulf of Maine, on...

Important discovery about second most fatal cancer

An international team of medical scientists has made an important advance in our understanding of the second most fatal form of cancer in the industrialized world. Professor Jeremy R. Jass, who holds a Canada Research Chair in Gastrointestinal Pathology at McGill University in Montreal, and colleagues in Australia and Japan have shown that in some cases colorectal cancer can be inherited. The new...

Nature provides inspiration for important new adhesive

Researchers from the College of Forestry at Oregon State University have developed a new group of adhesives that may revolutionize a large portion of the wood products industry, and have important environmental and economic benefits. The discovery has already resulted in three pending patents and should lead to a wide range of new products. But it was originally based on the aroused curios...

Newly discovered protein an important tool for sleeping sickness research

Sixty million people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are threatened daily by a deadly parasitic disease known as African sleeping sickness. The disease is caused by organisms called trypanosomes, which are spread by the tsetse fly. African sleeping sickness affects approximately 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa, a quarter of whom will die this year. Because the trypanosome has an except...

Certain fish have a special mating preference

A biologist at Washington University in St. Louis has shown that for some fish species, females prefer males with larger sexual organs, and actually choose them for mating. That does not exclude males with an average-sized sex organ, called a gonopodium. These fish out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with large...

Modified collagen could yield important medical applications

Altered protein could help deliver drugs and shape the growth of engineered tissueCollagen often pops up in beauty products and supermodel lips. But by mating collagen with a molecular hitchhiker, materials scientists at Johns Hopkins hope to create some important medical advances. The researchers have found a simple new way to modify collagen, paving the way for better infection-fighting bandage...

Understanding biases in epidemic models important when making public health predictions

Mathematical models have become invaluable decision-making tools for public health officials. As demonstrated during the United Kingdom's foot-and-mouth epidemic of 2001, models can be useful in two ways: they can reveal the underlying characteristics of an infection and they can allow the comparison of alternative control measures. Often, however, such models make implicit assumptions that may s...

Bad aftertaste? New sensory on/off switch may 'cure' bane of artificial sweetener search

Chemistry and biology researchers at Virginia Tech have enhanced the abilities of the molecules they are creating to deliver killing blows to cancer cells. The man-made molecular complexes enter cancer cells and, when signaled, deliver killing medicine or cause the cell to change. The new supermolecules have more units that will absorb light - providing more control over the range of light freque...

Stem Cells to Solve the Blood Shortage Problem?

Accounts of the tsunami that killed over a quarter of a million people in Southeast Asia on the 26th of December, 2004, slowly disappear from the media, but the event is nevertheless heavily burned into the memories of those who are directly involved. In the aftermath of the disaster, academics and politicians alike are trying to investigate how the number of casualties could have been reduced an...

Neandertal femur suggests competition with hyenas and a shift in landscape use

Analysis of approximately 41,000-year-old human remains found in France suggests that Neandertals may have become regionally mobile earlier than scientists once thought. Cédric Beauval and colleagues from Université Bordeaux 1 in France, Max Planck Institute in Germany, and Washington University in St. Louis, conclude that the human femur fragment found in 2002 in the cave of the Rochers-...

Most important actors in the growth process of neurons identified

Defects in the growth process of our neurons often underlie brain or nerve diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis. Scientists from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected to the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, led by Bassem Hassan, have achieved a major step in unraveling the growth process of axons, the offshoots of neurons. They have identif...

Green diesel: New process makes liquid transportation fuel from plants

University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering researchers have discovered a new way to make a diesel-like liquid fuel from carbohydrates commonly found in plants. Reporting in the June 3 issue of the Journal Science, Steenbock Professor James Dumesic and colleagues detail a four-phase catalytic reactor in which corn and other biomass-derived carbohydrates can be converted to sulfu...

Nanotechnology to provide portable genetic risk detection

Currently being developed by the IST project OPTONANOGEN, a prototype of the system will initially be used to detect mutations of the BRCA1 gene that are responsible for between 2.5 and 5 per cent of the incidence of breast cancer in women. The final system, however, could be used to detect virtually any genetic anomaly as well as proteins linked to viruses, chemical contamination in food or wate...

HIV mortality in India drops with introduction of generic antiretroviral therapy

The survival rate of HIV-infected patients in India has risen in response to a 20-fold drop in the price of antiretroviral therapy (ART), according to an article in the Nov. 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online. The introduction of generic drugs into the country has encouraged people to seek HIV treatment because of the cheaper cost, the article states. Many of th...

Oil spills and climate change double the mortality rate of British seabirds

New research from the University of Sheffield has shown that major oil spills and a changing climate have had a far greater impact on populations of British sea birds than was previously thought. A team led by Professor Tim Birkhead from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, shows for the first time that major oil spills double the mortality rate of a...

Genetic testing still smart choice, despite uncertainties

Screening embryos for genetic diseases during in vitro fertilization offers couples the best chance for a healthy child, but a genetic glitch could potentially cause doctors to misdiagnose a small fraction of them, University of Florida researchers say. Citing concerns about the accuracy of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the method many practitioners use to pick the healthiest embryos...

Bugs expose underground carbon traffic system 10 times more important than fossil fuel burning

The flow of carbon through soil is ten times greater than the amount of carbon moved around by the burning of fossil fuel but until now how this happens was at best poorly understood. Soil was almost literally a black box to scientists interested in carbon. Now researchers at the University of Warwick have been able to shed light in that black box by getting a particular class of insects to expos...

Bacteria that cause tooth decay able to survive without important biochemical pathway

Leave it to the bacteria that cause tooth decay to be able to live without something all cells were thought to require. Scientists have long believed a certain biochemical pathway involved in the folding and delivery of proteins to cell membranes is essential for survival. Now University of Florida researchers have discovered that Streptococcus mutans, the decay-causing organism that thri...

Portable cocaine sensor developed at UC Santa Barbara

A real-time sensor for detecting cocaine –?made with inexpensive, off-the-shelf electronics –?has been developed by a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Two local high school students and a Nobel laureate participated in the discovery. The potential applications of the sensor are far-reaching and include bioterrorism detection and important medical uses. Th...

Sweetgum tree could help lessen shortage of bird flu drug

The sweetgum tree grows widely throughout the country and is known for its mace-like green fruit, which are sometimes called "gumballs." Now, this spiny fruit may become an important source of a chemical needed to make a lifesaving drug against bird flu ?a drug that is currently in short supply worldwide, researchers say. Chemists have found that the seeds of the sweetgum fruit contain sig...

Scientists a step closer to protecting world's most important crop

Fighting the fungus that wipes out rice - scientists a step closer to protecting world's most important crop Rice is the globe's most important crop but its production is constantly threatened by disease.Now scientists at the University of Exeter have shown for the first time, in a paper in the prestigious journal Nature, how the world's most destructive rice-killer hijacks its plant prey....

Pittsburgh researchers discover that certain chemicals in the blood may indicate brain injury

Researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh have found that increased levels of certain proteins in the blood or spinal fluid may signal brain injury in infants with vomiting, fussiness and several other common symptoms. Infants with shaken baby syndrome (SBS) ?the most common cause of severe traumatic brain injuries in young children ?are often misdiagnosed because doctors rarely re...

Researchers develop portable 'vein finder' for faster, more accurate injections

When medics are treating trauma patients, every second counts. Yet bruises, burns, and other physical conditions often make it difficult to locate veins and administer lifesaving drugs or solutions. "Depth a...

Medieval diaries aid scientists ascertain increase in hot spots due to global warming

The temperature of the northern hemisphere has increased over a larger area in the last century than at any time in the past millennium a report published in Science reveals this week. The study finds that the number of 'hot spots' has increased dramatically in the Northern Hemisphere in the last century compared to the past 1200 years - adding to the growing evidence of wide-scale global...

Protein found to control tumor growth in certain breast cancers

This protein was previously thought to play a role solely in the innate immune system's response to bacterial infection. In the new study, which will be published on-line by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on January 23, researchers showed for the first time that the protein, which is present in epithelial cells of the intestinal tract and lungs...

The critical importance of mangroves to ocean life

Mangroves, the backbone of the tropical ocean coastlines, are far more important to the global ocean's biosphere than previously thought. And while the foul-smelling muddy forests may not have the scientific allure of tropical reefs or rain forests, a team of researchers has noted that the woody coastline-dwelling plants provide more than 10 percent of essential dissolved organic carbon that is s...

Stanford snake venom study shows that certain cells may eliminate poison

Death by snakebite is horrible. The immediate pain of the bite is followed by swelling, bruising and weakness, then sweating or chills, with numbness, nausea, blurred vision and possibly convulsions before it's all over. Such misery is produced by a veritable witches' brew of toxins in snake venom. It's long been thought that the body's own immune system, rather than reducing the symptoms...

New method confirms importance of fungi in Arctic nitrogen cycle

A new method to calculate the transfer of nitrogen from Arctic mushrooms to plants is shedding light on how fungi living symbiotically on plant roots transfer vital nutrients to their hosts. The analytical technique, developed by John E. Hobbie, MBL Distinguished Scientist and co-director of the laboratory's Ecosystems Center and his son, Erik A. Hobbie of the University of New Hampshire, may be...

US infant mortality rate fails to improve

Nearly 28,000 babies died before their first birthday, according to new infant mortality statistics for 2003 released by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). In 2003, the infant mortality rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births, which wa...

Important gene controlling tree growth and development found

Scientists at the Umeå Plant Science Centre (UPSC) and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) report today about a breakthrough in our understanding of how the growth and development of forest trees is controlled. In an article published in the international journal Science, they show that the FT gene that was previously shown to control the flowering time of annual plants, also co...

Zinc plays important role in brain circuitry

To the multitude of substances that regulate neuronal signaling in the brain and spinal cord add a new key player: zinc. By engineering a mouse with a mutation affecting a neuronal zinc target, researchers have demonstrated a central role for zinc in modulating signaling among the neurons. Significantly, they found the mutant mouse shows the same exaggerated response to noise as children with the...

Quality not quantity important for immune response to HIV

When it comes to an immune response against HIV, research funded by the Wellcome Trust in the UK and the National Institutes of Health in the US has found that bigger is not necessarily better, contrary to conventional medical wisdom. The research may have a profound impact on the development of a vaccine against the disease. "Conventional medical wisdom tells us that the bigger the immune...

MIT designs portable 'lab on a chip'

Testing soldiers to see if they have been exposed to biological or chemical weapons could soon be much faster and easier, thanks to MIT researchers who are helping to develop a tiny diagnostic device that could be carried into battle. By tweaking the design of a tiny pump, researchers affiliated with MIT's Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies have taken a major step towards making an exi...

Malaria treatment efficacy compromised in certain HIV-positive patients

A weakened immune response resulting from HIV infection can lead to trouble when it comes to treating malaria, according to a new study appearing in the Oct. 1 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, now available online. "Our study demonstrates that HIV-1 infected patients with suppressed immunity represent, next to children and pregnant women, an additional vulnerable group for mala...

Firefighters face increased risk for certain cancers

University of Cincinnati (UC) environmental health researchers have determined that firefighters are significantly more likely to develop four different types of cancer than workers in other fields. Their findings suggest that the protective equipment firefighters have used in the past didn't do a good job in protecting them against cancer-causing agents they encounter in their profession,...

New research identifies gene important for nicotine's effects on the brain

New research identifies an important gene that influences several aspects of nicotine-induced behaviors in the brain. The study, funded by National Institutes of Drug Abuse, was presented today at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology's Annual Meeting. Investigator Marina Picciotto, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and her colleagues at Yale University, found that nicotin...