Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
Researchers have developed a new concept for a microscope that would use neutrons, subatomic particles with no electrical charge,
to create high-resolution images
instead of the more traditional beams of light or electrons.
Among other benefits, neutron-based instruments have the ability to probe inside metal objects, such as fuel cells, batteries, and engines, even when in use, and learn details of their internal structure. Neutron instruments are also uniquely sensitive to magnetic properties and lighter elements that are important in biological materials.
Consumer confidence in the safety of foods and beverages sold in the U.S. has dropped over the past five years according to survey results conducted in May/June of 2013.Among a national sample of 2,100 adults, only one in six express a "great deal" of confidence in food safety. By comparison, in 2008 approximately 25% of adults expressed a "great deal" of confidence. The safety of imported foods is now the most pressing concern, followed by concerns about:
New therapeutic targets and drugs may someday benefit people with certain types of leukemia or blood cancer.
Pre-clinical and pharmacological models found that cancer cells with a mutation in the KIT receptor -- an oncogenic/cancerous form of the receptor -- in mast cell leukemia and acute myeloid leukemia can be stopped.
A new paper details how methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) regulates the critical crosslinking of its cell wall in the face of beta-lactam antibiotics, the mechanistic basis for how the MRSA bacterium became such a difficult pathogen over the previous 50 years, in which time it spread rapidly across the world.
MRSA has been a difficult hospital pathogen to control and has emerged in the broader community in the past several years, especially in such places as prisons, locker rooms and nurseries. In the United States alone, the disease infects about 100,000 people and claims the lives of nearly 20,000 people annually.
The mystery of why life on Earth evolved has gotten more complicated, not less.
Scientists in a new paper say they have ruled out a theory as to why the planet was warm enough to sustain the planet's earliest life forms when the Sun's energy was roughly three-quarters the strength it is today.
Life evolved on Earth during the Archean, between 3.8 and 2.4 billion years ago, but the weak Sun should have meant the planet was too cold for life to take hold at this time; scientists have therefore been trying to find an explanation for this conundrum, what is dubbed the 'faint, young Sun paradox'.
Doctors who abuse prescription drugs often "self-medicate" for physical or emotional pain or stress relief, according to a new paper.
Based on focus groups with physicians in treatment for substance abuse, the findings lend insight into the reasons why doctors abuse prescription medications—as well as important implications for prevention and recognition. The lead author was Lisa J. Merlo, PhD, MPE, of the University of Florida, Gainesville.
The Moon landing in 1969 was the culmination of a decade of event-driven technology and it lent momentum to a generation of belief in the promise of a space-faring future. By 1975, the premise of the television show "Space:1999" had a believable manned base on Luna - and why not, if we had gone to the Moon after 10 years of trying, why wouldn't we have a permanent station there 30 years after the first landing and subsequent technological improvement? "Lost In Space" a decade earlier had been clearly fiction, "Space:1999" was the future.
The left and right hemispheres of Albert Einstein's brain were unusually well connected to each other, according to a paper, which then determines that may have contributed to his brilliance.
The study says it is the first to detail Einstein's corpus callosum, the brain's largest bundle of fibers that connects the two cerebral hemispheres and facilitates interhemispheric communication. Lead author Weiwei Men of East China Normal University's Department of Physics measured and color-coded the varying thicknesses of subdivisions of the corpus callosum along its length, where nerves cross from one side of the brain to the other, using high-resolution photographs (from 2012) of the inside surfaces of the two halves of Einstein's brain.
The nearby star system Fomalhaut has been discovered to be not just a double star, as astronomers had thought, but a really wide triple star - a previously known smaller star in its vicinity is also part of the Fomalhaut system.
There's little quantifiable value to arts and literature but they hold a great deal more prestige in culture than science does. If you attend a Manhattan dinner party and are unfamiliar with some obscure performance artist, they will be horrified - but they won't know anything at all about adaptive radiation.
A new social psychology paper attempt to change that quantifiability; it says that highbrow literature enhances a set of skills and thought processes fundamental to complex social relationships—and functional societies. Sorry, Fifty Shades of Grey readers, that didn't help you read minds at all.
The biggest threat to vaccine acceptance is not distrust of science, misinformation campaigns or deficit thinking among the public, but rather the failure of government and institutions to use evidence-based strategies, says a new paper.
If you want to enjoy your food, stop taking pictures of it and putting them on the Internet, say marketing scholars.
They mean you, foodies on Instagram and Pinterest. It could be ruining your appetite by making you feel like you've already experienced eating that food.
Marketing experts at Brigham Young and University of Minnesota have concluded that what happens is the over-exposure to food imagery increases people's satiation. Satiation is defined as the drop in enjoyment with repeated consumption. Or, in other words, the fifth bite of cake or the fourth hour of playing a video game are both less enjoyable than the first.
