To find life in the universe, it helps to know what it might look like. If there are organisms on other planets that do not rely wholly on photosynthesis — as some on Earth do not — how might those worlds appear from light-years away?
New findings may help ease concerns for women with lupus who are interested in having a child. A new study concludes that most women with lupus whose disease is not very active will have a safe pregnancy. The results are to publish online June 22 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
For severely obese people, bariatric surgery may have a benefit besides dramatic weight loss: it can also substantially reduce urinary incontinence.
The discovery was made during an analysis of a species of mistletoe whose apparent ability to survive without key genes involved in energy production could make it one of the most unusual plants on Earth.
Mild elevations in blood pressure considered to be in the upper range of normal during young adulthood can lead to subclinical heart damage by middle age — a condition that sets the stage for full-blown heart failure, according to findings of a federally funded study led by scientists at Johns Hopkins
Patients with atrial fibrillation who stopped taking blood thinners before they had elective surgery had no higher risk of developing blood clots and less risk of major bleeding compared to patients who were given a “bridge” therapy, according to research led by Duke Medicine.
Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey researchers Bing Xia, PhD, and Eileen P. White, PhD, have been awarded a $2.4 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute to explore the relationship between the cellular-survival mechanism of autophagy and tumor suppression function in hereditary breast cancers.
Dr. Jonathan Bricker, a behavioral scientist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington, has received a $3.1 million, five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute to conduct a randomized, controlled clinical trial of SmartQuit, a smoking-cessation smartphone app.
An amino acid whose role in the body has been all but a mystery appears to act as a potent seizure inhibitor in mice, according to a study by researchers at Johns Hopkins.
Scientists at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered how an immune system protein, called AIM2 (Absent in Melanoma 2), plays a role in determining the aggressiveness of colon cancer. They found that AIM2 deficiency causes uncontrolled proliferation of intestinal cells.
Children living in low-income households who endure family instability and emotionally distant caregivers are at risk of having impaired cognitive abilities according to new research from the University of Rochester.
Investigators at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are providing new hope for babies with short bowel syndrome (SBS) by developing a novel model of SBS in zebrafish, described in a paper published online on June 18 by the American Journal of Physiology-Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology.
Using switchgrass to produce biofuel is one way to decrease the United States’ dependence on oil, but growing it and making it profitable can be complicated. It lacks qualities, such as high biomass yield, needed to maximize biofuel production. To combat this issue, and breed switchgrass that has the optimal combination of these traits, the researchers tried evaluating plants using the Smith-Hazel Selection Index. This index allowed the researchers to estimate and combine information on multiple traits. It also looked at the economic value of each trait, which further maximizes the rating.
Brain surgery is famously difficult for good reason: When removing a tumor, for example, neurosurgeons walk a tightrope as they try to take out as much of the cancer as possible while keeping crucial brain tissue intact — and visually distinguishing the two is often impossible. Now Johns Hopkins researchers report they have developed an imaging technology that could provide surgeons with a color-coded map of a patient’s brain showing which areas are and are not cancer.
Now research conducted in fruit flies, rats and monkeys by scientists at Johns Hopkins, UC San Diego, and other institutions reveals that levels of a protein called vinculin increase with age to alter the shape and performance of cardiac muscle cells — a healthy adaptive change that helps sustain heart muscle vitality over many decades.
Network scientists at Indiana University have developed a new computational method that can leverage any body of knowledge to aid in the complex human task of fact-checking.
Infants and children who are given prescription acid-reducing medications face a substantially higher risk of developing Clostridium difficile infection, a potentially severe colonic disorder.
An NIBIB-funded researcher has developed a new technique that creates digital pictures of a tissue’s chemical composition using light and a computer. The technique replaces the need for dyes or stains, which can be costly and require significant time and effort to apply.
Despite the intense activity and high hopes that surround the use of stem cells to reverse heart disease, scientists still face multiple roadblocks before the treatment will be ready for clinical prime time. Researchers are now finding ways to maximize the healing potential of stem cells by helping them overcome the inhospitable conditions of a damaged heart – bringing the promise of stem cell therapy for heart disease one step closer to reality.
New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has provided a major boost for the prostate cancer field by uncovering an unprecedented mechanism for developing cancer.
Aging can cause many changes to the body, including obesity and a loss of lean mass. Now, a group of University of Florida Health researchers has discovered that an existing drug reduces body fat and appetite in older rats, which has intriguing implications for aging humans.
A remarkably detailed picture of the climate and ecology during the Triassic Period explains why dinosaurs failed to establish dominance near the equator for 30 million years.
A decade of work at Johns Hopkins has yielded a computer formula that predicts which mutations are likely to have the largest effect on the activity of "genetic dimmer switches," suggesting new targets for diagnosis and treatment of many complex diseases.
Short boys are three times more likely than short girls to receive recombinant human growth hormone treatment for idiopathic short stature (ISS), even though in a general pediatric population, equal proportions of both genders had ISS.
Time may heal all wounds, but in the case of stroke survivors, the key to better recovery is to spend more time in an intensive physical therapy program, according to a University of Florida Health study.
New, ultra-high-field magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the brain by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago provide the most detailed images to date to show that while the brain shrinks with age, brain cell density remains constant.
Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that the drug triciribine may reverse or halt the progression of pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension, two respiratory diseases that are almost invariably fatal. They published their findings in the British Journal of Pharmacology.
A "look back" study of Medicare fee-for-service claims for more than 1.2 million patients over age 65 has directly affirmed and quantified a long-suspected link between lower rates of coordinated health care services and higher rates of unnecessary medical tests and procedures.
In a study published in Science June 12, Case Western Reserve and University of Texas-Southwestern researchers detail how a new drug repaired damage to the colon, liver and bone marrow in animal models — even saving mice who otherwise would have died in a bone marrow transplantation model.
In preliminary experiments with mice and lab-grown cells, Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center scientists have found that a protein-signaling process accelerates the work of the gene most frequently mutated in a common form of adult leukemia and is likely necessary to bring about the full-blown disease.
Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have been awarded $2.1 million from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study a protein that has been closely linked in animal models to Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
Brain inflammation caused by chronic nerve pain alters activity in regions that regulate mood and motivation, suggesting for the first time that a direct biophysical link exists between long-term pain and the depression, anxiety and substance abuse seen in more than half of these patients, UC Irvine and UCLA researchers report.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a team of UCLA researchers has shown for the first time that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who are overly sensitive to sensory stimuli have brains that react differently than those with the disorder who don’t respond so severely to noises, visual stimulation and physical contact.
In a small clinical trial, scientists at Johns Hopkins’ Kimmel Cancer Center and James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute found that men with advanced prostate cancer and detection of androgen receptor splice variant-7 (AR-V7) respond to chemotherapy just as well as men who lack the variant.
How most babies are protected from acquiring HIV from their infected mothers has been a matter of scientific controversy. Now researchers at Duke Medicine provide new data identifying an antibody response that had long been discounted as inadequate to confer protection.
Planets with volcanic activity are considered better candidates for life than worlds without such heated internal goings-on. University of Washington graduate students have found a way to detect volcanic activity in the atmospheres of exoplanets, or those outside our solar system, when they transit, or pass in front of their host stars.
Vanderbilt biologist Laurence Zwiebel has received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant to create a wrist-band device that vaporizes a super-repellant thousands of times more powerful than DEET to create a personal no-fly zone" that protects people from mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects.
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science recently announced its selection of 50 scientists from across the nation to receive its Early Career Research Program award. Eranda Nikolla, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemical engineering in Wayne State University’s College of Engineering, was selected out of 620 submissions to receive a five-year, $750,000 award for her proposal, Nanostructured, Targeted Layered Metal Oxides as Active and Selective Heterogeneous Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution.
Having a stroke ages a person’s brain function by almost eight years, new research finds – robbing them of memory and thinking speed as measured on cognitive tests.
A daily sugar-sweetened beverage habit may increase the risk for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), researchers from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University report in the Journal of Hepatology.
As an economic and political force, researchers say that older adults hold a tremendous amount of social power. A new West Virginia University study is examining what factors contribute to older adults’ decisions.
Rev-erbα is a transcription factor that regulates a cell's internal clock and a new study describes how it regulates the clock in most cells in the body and metabolic genes in the liver in distinct ways.
Eating less late at night may help curb the concentration and alertness deficits that accompany sleep deprivation, according to results of a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania that will be presented at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.
Leveraging a novel system designed to examine the double-strand DNA breaks that occur as a consequence of gene amplification during DNA replication, Whitehead Institute scientists are bringing new clarity to the causes of such genomic damage. Moreover, because errors arising during DNA replication and gene amplification result in chromosomal abnormalities often found in malignant cells, these new findings may bolster our understandings of certain drivers of cancer progression.
A new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that death rates among people over 65 are higher in zip codes with more fine particulate air pollution (PM2.5) than in those with lower levels of PM2.5.
Physical activities, such as walking, as well as aerobics/calisthenics, biking, gardening, golfing, running, weight-lifting, and yoga/Pilates are associated with better sleep habits, compared to no activity, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In contrast, the study shows that other types of physical activity – such as household and childcare -- work are associated with increased cases of poor sleep habits. The full results of the study (Abstract #0246) will be presented during the poster session on Monday, June 8, at SLEEP 2015, the 29th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC, June 6-10, in Seattle, WA.
At times during the past 10,000 years, cottontails and hares reproduced like rabbits and their numbers surged when the El Niño weather pattern drenched the Pacific Coast with rain, according to a University of Utah analysis of 3,463 bunny bones.
Day in and day out, millions of people with diabetes test their blood sugar levels. And many may wonder if all the careful eating, exercise and medication it takes to keep those levels under control is really worth it. A major new study should encourage them to keep going -- and prompt them to work with their doctors on reducing their cardiovascular risk.
When the T cells of your immune system are forced to deal over time with cancer or a chronic infection they become exhausted - less effective at attacking and destroying invaders. While the PD-1 protein pathway has long been implicated as a primary player in T cell exhaustion, a major question has been whether PD-1 actually directly causes exhaustion. A new paper seems to, at least partially, let PD-1 off the hook.
Scientists at Duke Medicine have produced a 3-D map of the human brain stem at an unprecedented level of detail using MRI technology. In a study to be published June 3 in Human Brain Mapping, the researchers unveil an ultra high-resolution brain stem model that could better guide brain surgeons treating conditions such as tremors and Parkinson’s disease with deep brain stimulation (DBS).
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