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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...

Use of Insecticides Linked to Lasting Neurological Problems for Farmers

New research shows that farmers who used agricultural insecticides experienced increased neurological symptoms, even when they were no longer using the products. Data from 18,782 North Carolina and Iowa farmers linked use of insecticides, including organophosphates and organochlorines, to reports of reoccurring headaches, fatigue, insomnia, dizziness, nausea, hand tremors, numbness and other neur...

Chromosome Deletion Predicts Aggressive Neuroblastoma

When genes are deleted on a particular section of chromosome 11, the result is an aggressive form of the childhood cancer neuroblastoma. A new study suggests that detecting this genetic deletion during the initial evaluation of children with neuroblastoma may indicate to physicians that they should recommend a more aggressive regimen of chemotherapy to fight the cancer. Edward F. Attiyeh,...

At long last, scientists figure out how plants grow

It has been one of the great mysteries in plant science. In this week's Nature, Indiana University Bloomington biologists Mark Estelle, Nihal Dharmasiri and Sunethra Dharmasi...

Compounds in plastic packaging act as environmental estrogens altering breast genes

Compounds found in plastic products used to wrap or contain food and beverages have aroused concerns as possible cancer-causing agents because they can sometimes leach out of the plastic and migrate into the food, especially after heating or when the plastic is old or scratched. In two studies funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Cente...

Brain May Be Less Plastic Than Hoped

The visual cortex of the adult primate brain displays less flexibility in response to retinal injury than previously thought, according to a new study published in the May 19, 2005, issue of the journal Nature. This may have implications for other regions of the brain, and the approach the investigators used may be a key to developing successful neurological interventions for stroke patients in t...

Distributed Basic Local Alignment Search Toolkit (W.ND-BLAST)

The current goal to reduce sickness and death from infections that patients acquire in hospitals has created a renewed focus on identifying ways to reduce the problem at its source. Hospital water for drinking, bathing, showering, to make ice cubes or to rinse medical equipment is increasingly being recognized as a significant source of microbes that may contribute to many of these life-threateni...

Engineers improve plastic's potential for use in implants by linking it to biological material

Engineers at The University of Texas at Austin have found a way to modify a plastic to anchor molecules that promote nerve regeneration, blood vessel growth or other biological processes. In the study led by Dr. Christine Schmidt, the researchers identified a piece of protein from among a billion candidates that could perform the unusual feat of attaching to polypyrrole, a synthetic polym...

Bacteria are key to 'green' plastics, drugs

Engineered bug makes key chemical precursor from grain sorghum Finding "gree...

Purdue researchers find key to rice blast fungus

Efforts to halt a fungus that deprives about 60 million people a year of food have led Purdue University scientists to discover the molecular machinery that enables the pathogen to blast its way into rice plants. The fungus, Magnaporthe grisea, which is known as rice blast fungus, is the most deadly of the pathogens that attack rice, reducing yields by as much as 75 percent in infected ar...

Hunger in America rises by 43 percent over last five years

Hunger in American households has risen by 43 percent over the last five years, according to an analysis of US Department of Agriculture (USDA) data released today. The analysis, completed by the Center on Hunger and Poverty at Brandeis University, shows that more than 7 million people have joined the ranks of the hungry since 1999. The USDA report, Household Food Security in the United...

Prenatal exposure to marine toxin causes lasting damage

Duke University Medical Center researchers have found that the naturally occurring marine toxin domoic acid can cause subtle but lasting cognitive damage in rats exposed to the chemical before birth. Humans can become poisoned by the potentially lethal, algal toxin after eating contaminated shellfish. The researchers saw behavioral effects of the toxin in animals after prenatal exposure t...

A new window into structural plasticity in the adult visual cortex

Neuroscientists have known for decades that the adult brain can reorganize neural pathways in response to new experiences, for example, by changing the firing pattern and responses of neurons. But it has remained an open question whether structural changes accompany this functional plasticity. In a new study published in the open-access journal PLoS Biology, Wei-Chung Allen Lee and colleagues rep...

Microbes convert 'Styrofoam? into biodegradable plastic

Bacteria could help transform a key component of disposable cups, plates and utensils into a useful eco-friendly plastic, significantly reducing the environmental impact of this ubiquitous, but difficult-to-recycle waste stream, according to a study scheduled to appear in the April 1 issue of the American Chemical Society journal, The microb...

Scientist warns of threat to last stronghold of endangered turtle

A major conservation effort, led by Dr Brendan Godley of the University of Exeter, has just got underway to help protect endangered leatherback turtles which nest in Gabon, West Africa. The region is thought to be the animals' last global stronghold, as pacific populations dwindle precariously. It's hoped the project, to tag and track the animals, will uncover their migratory secrets and p...

Plastic surgeons countdown first full facial transplantation

Even after news of the first partial facial transplantation performed in France spread around the world, plastic surgeons have continued to research how to make the first full facial transplantation a reality. In the first peer-reviewed, scientific studies of their kind, U.S. plastic surgeons demonstrated how to successfully complete a full facial tissue transplantation from one human body...

New approach to vaccine development provides potent, long-lasting immunity

By training a group of human subjects to operate a robot-controlled joystick, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the slower the brain "learns" to control certain muscle movements, the more likely it is to remember the lesson over the long haul. The results, the investigators say, could alter rehabilitation approaches for people who have lost motor abilities to brain injuries like strokes....

Long-term changes in experience cause neurons to sprout new long-lasting connections

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers have discovered that neurons in the brains of mice sprout robust new connections when the animals are adjusting to new experiences. The new connections alter the circuitry of the brain by changing communication between neurons. The researchers said their findings aid understanding of how procedural learning induces long-term rewiring of the brain...

Potato blight pathogenicity explained by genome plasticity

A team of researchers from Wageningen University report in this month's issue of that they have identified a unique genetic fingerprint in the pathogen responsible for potato blight. Some strains of the pathogen possess multiple copies of a specific gene, while other strains possess only a single copy. Certain potato plants do not recognize strains of the pathogen with on...

Iowa State researchers improving plastics made from corn and soy proteins

David Grewell picked up the little plastic model of a molecule he keeps in his office. He scrunched the model's folding pieces into a ball. That's about the shape of a soy or corn protein, said Grewell, an Iowa State University assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering. Then he unfolded the model into a long, straight loop. That's what happens when researchers add some glycer...

Incidence of stroke decreases over last 50 years

The incidence of stroke in the U.S. over the past 50 years has declined, although the severity of stroke has not, according to a study in the December 27 issue of JAMA. Stroke continues to be a major public health concern, with more than 750,000 new strokes occurring each year in the United States. It is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer and the leading neuro...

Elasticity imaging identifies cancers and reduces breast biopsies

A new ultrasound technique allows radiologists to accurately distinguish benign from malignant breast lesions. Using elasticity imaging, researchers correctly identified both cancerous and harmless lesions in nearly all of the cases studied. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). “In our work, elasticity imaging has been...

Novel EGFR ectodomain mutations in glioblastoma

The Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor (EGFR), a so-called kinase protein, is often abnormally active in cancer. A new class of anticancer drugs inhibiting the activated EGFR kinase have shown to be effective against such cancers, especially lung cancer. In a new study in PLoS Medicine, researchers have catalogued and characterized the mutations in the EGFR gene that occur in glioblastoma, a deadly...

What's next for gene therapy? Plastic

Gene therapy depends upon foreign DNA, even viruses, to deliver genes, therapeutic proteins, or medicine to cells within the body. Many scientists are looking for better chaperones across the cell membrane. Virginia Tech researchers think polymer molecules can be created to do the job. The research will be presented at the 232nd national meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Fr...

Carnegie Mellon scientists use 'green' approach to transform plastics manufacturing

Using environmentally safe compounds like sugars and vitamin C, scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have vastly improved a popular technology used to generate a diverse range of industrial plastics for applications ranging from targeted drug delivery systems to resilient paint coatings. The revolutionary improvement in atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) now enables large-scal...

Lungs try to repair damaged elastic fibers

The lungs of patients suffering chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) attempt to repair damaged elastic fibers, a new finding that contradicts the conventional wisdom on the capabilities of the adult lung. The study "Evidence for attempted regional elastic fiber repair in severe emphysema," was done by Jason Woods, Kristin Castillo, Alexander Patterson and Richard Pierce of Washingt...

Plastic that degrades in seawater could be boon for cruise industry and others

The costs due to complications from preterm birth are staggering. In Canada, outlays for specialized care of surviving preterm infants are estimated to be almost $2 billion per year. In a 5-year, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study, researchers found that giving nitroglycerin to mothers who had entered premature labor led to significant improvement in their baby’s health. The results of...

Morphine makes lasting -- and surprising -- change in the brain

Morphine, as little as a single dose, blocks the brain’s ability to strengthen connections at inhibitory synapses, according to new Brown University research published in Nature. The findings, uncovered in the laboratory of Brown scientist Julie Kauer, may help explain the origins of addiction in the brain. The research also supports a provocative new theory of addiction as a disease of le...

Prenatal cocaine's lasting cellular effects

Although the "crack baby" hysteria of the 1980s was greatly exaggerated, cocaine use during pregnancy can cause subtle but disabling cognitive impairments -- attention deficits, learning disabilities and emotional problems. A recent study by investigators at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development may help explain the long-term behavioral and neurological problems...

Smell may outlast other senses

About 1000 Australian males and females of all ages were tested for their ability to detect or identify a range of different odours at different concentrations, and then given an overall score for their sense of smell, or olfactory function. The results showed that olfactory function deteriorates relatively slowly with age in those who do not smoke, take medications or have a history of...

Study examines risk of soft tissue sarcomas in hereditary retinoblastoma survivors

A study in the January 3 issue of the quantifies the risk of hereditary retinoblastoma survivors developing specific subtypes of soft tissue sarcomas and finds that this risk persists for decades after the original retinoblastoma diagnosis. The findings emphasize the importance of regular medical surveillance for these patients, the authors say. </p...

Discovery of 'master switch' for the communication process between chloroplast and nuclei of plants

Scientists have puzzled for years in understanding how plants pass signals of stress due to lack of water or salinity from chloroplast to nucleus. They know that chloroplasts ?the cellular organelles that give plants their green color ?have at least three different signals that can indicate a plant is under stress. Given the challenges the environment will be facing over the coming decades...

Revealing the machinery underlying the 'plastic' juvenile brain

Among the central mysteries of neurobiology is what properties of the young brain enable it to so adeptly wire itself to adapt to experience—a quality known as plasticity. The extraordinary plasticity of the young brain occurs only during a narrow window of time known as the critical period. For example, children deprived of normal visual stimulation during an early critical period of the first f...

Plastic that grows on trees

It has been an elusive goal for the legion of chemists trying to pull it off: Replace crude oil as the root s...