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.
Terrorism-induced smoking is a new explanatory factor that will keep public health academics from accepting that free choice happens - some people will do things that are bad for them.
A Weill Cornell Medical College public health study is stuck in pre-9/11 determinism too; the author concludes that the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks caused 1,000,000 former smokers to take up the noxious weed again - and maintain it.
The analysis in Contemporary Economic Policy is distinct in that it is the first to examine terrorism-induced smoking in the United States and come up with net societal costs they feel are directly linked to terrorism. All determined by phone surveys.
If you support less efficient agriculture, organic food or conventional food without science optimization, crop yields will not be enough to feed the population of 2050. It's the population bomb scare of the 1950s and '60s reborn a century later.
While American agriculture has dematerialized in the last few decades - we produce far more food on far less land - Europe and other countries have not kept pace. Due to that, crop yields worldwide won't increase quickly enough to support estimated global needs in 2050, according to the claims of a paper in PLoS ONE.
Our internal circadian clock regulates daily life processes and is synchronized by external cues, the Zeitgeber, with the main cue being the light-dark cycle.
But the light-dark cycle effect is largely reduced in extreme habitats such as in the Arctic during the polar summer. Using a radiotelemetry system a team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology have now found, in four bird species in Alaska, different daily activity patterns ranging from strictly rhythmic to completely arrhythmic. These differences are attributed to the species' mating systems and behaviors. Their study shows that activity patterns can change according to social and environmental factors, which suggests a remarkable plasticity in the avian circadian system.
Glycoproteins are sugar-protein hybrid molecules that the protective mucus that lines our lungs and stomach and are also part of the fluid that lubricates our joints, the synovial fluid, and cover all our cells, with the sugar parts, the glycans, sticking out like a tiny forest of antennae.
Researchers at ETH Zurich and Empa have also identified a surprising effect that glycans have on the water molecules that surround them.
Air pollution is related to forest decline and also appears to attack the protecting wax on tree leaves and needles, say scientists who have now discovered a responsible mechanism: particulate matter salt compounds that become deliquescent because of humidity and form a wick-like structure that removes water from leaves and promotes dehydration.
Wax helps to protect leaves and needles from water loss.
In the fall of 2012, the European Medicines Agency approved the modified adeno-associated virus AAV-LPL S447X as the first ever gene therapy for clinical use in the Western world.
AAV-LPL S447X was developed for the treatment of a rare inherited metabolic disease called lipoprotein lipase deficiency which affects approximately 1-2 out of 1,000,000 people. Though incredibly rare, the disease causes severe, life-threatening inflammations of the pancreas. Afflicted individuals carry a defect in the gene coding for the lipoprotein lipase enzyme which is necessary for breakdown of fatty acids. AAV-LPLS447X shall be used as a viral vector to deliver an intact gene copy to affected cells.
In August of 2011, astronomers witnessed the dazzling appearance of the closest and brightest Type Ia supernova since Type Ia's were established as the "standard candles" for measuring the expansion of the universe.
The visual of SN 2011fe was caught by the Palomar Transient Factory less than 12 hours after it exploded in the Pinwheel Galaxy in the Big Dipper. Because it was to see through binoculars, 2011fe was soon dubbed the Backyard Supernova. Major astronomical studies from the ground and from space followed close on its heels, recording its luminosity and colors as it rapidly brightened and then slowly faded away.
For the past the 1,000,000 years the global climate has cycled every 100,000 years, between long glacial periods (with great masses of ice covering the continents in the northern hemisphere) and shorter interglacial periods, lasting around 10,000 years. It has been 12,000 years since the last one so enjoy that while it lasts.
However, within the long periods there have been abrupt climate changes, sometimes happening in the space of just a few decades, with variations of up to 10º C in the average temperature in the polar regions caused by changes in the Atlantic ocean circulation. These changes affected rainfall in southern Africa.
While too much of anything can be bad at any time, a little drinking - 3 to 7 glasses of alcohol a week - does not seem to harm fetal neurodevelopment, according a large study published in the online only journal BMJ Open.
Good thing too, or entire generations of children would be mentally stunted - not drinking at all during pregnancy became the cultural norm a generation ago and it used the same kinds of longitudinal study that now says moderate drinking is okay.
And more affluent and better educated mums-to-be tend to drink more than women who are less well off, say the researchers, which means that kids from wealthier families should be neurodevelopmentally limited, but are not.
Goals need to be flexible, according to a new paper. People who set a goal of losing between 2 and 4 pounds will still lose an average of 3 lbs. while a person who targets 3 lbs. specifically has less chance of success.
Consumers often have a choice about the types of goals they want to set for themselves, and they may want to repeat various goals over time. For example, consumers often reengage goals such as losing weight, saving money, or improving their exercise or sports performance.
Long-term cigarette smoking impacts morbidity and mortality, no question about that, but there may be a good reason to stop smoking in the weeks before surgery even if you don't intend to quit overall.
In a review article, researchers from the University of California San Francisco and Yale University examined neurosurgical literature to characterize the impact of active smoking on neurosurgical outcomes. They found strong evidence for the association between smoking and perioperative complications throughout the surgical literature.
Scholars have linked higher IQ at early school age to weight gain and increased head size in the first month of a baby's life.
The results were determined - as apparently intelligence is - by analyzing data from more than 13,800 children who were born full-term.
The findings in Pediatrics were that babies who put on 40% of their birth weight in the first four weeks had an IQ 1.5 points higher by the time they were six years of age, compared with babies who only put on 15% of their birth weight. Those with the biggest growth in head circumference also had the highest IQs.
