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.
If you watch musicals from the 1950s or teen comedies from the 1990s, you find a lot of movies with different titles but the themes and plotlines barely change; two friends competing for a girl in the former or some teen wants to improve another teen, who becomes really popular, in the latter.
It's not that Hollywood lacks imagination, we are naturally drawn toward a specific set of universal narratives within cultural products, says a new paper. We have evolved to like stories about Superman saving strangers or Brad Pitt fighting zombies.
A new statistical estimate projects that the world population could reach nearly 11 billion by the end of the century, according to a United Nations report issued June 13 - about 8 percent more than their previous projection of 10.1 billion, issued in 2011.
In the past 11,00 years, there have been 22 large and megathrust earthquake shaking events along the Pacific coast of North America, an average recurrence interval of about 500 years, though the time between major shaking events can stretch up to about 1,000 years, according to a new paper.
X-ray experiments have found chemical traces of the original 'dinobird' Archaeopteryx and dilute traces of plumage pigments in a 150 million-year-old fossil.
Only 11 specimens of Archaeopteryx have been found, the first one consisting of a single feather. Until a few years ago, researchers thought minerals would have replaced all the bones and tissues of the original animal during fossilization, leaving no chemical traces behind, but two studies have turned up more information about this 'dinobird' and its plumage.
Paleontologists have presented the most extensive review yet available of toothed pterosaurs from the Cretaceous in England, featuring detailed taxonomic information, diagnoses and photographs of 30 species.
A trending "miracle" weight-loss product is green coffee bean dietary supplements. Some people swear by them and marketing claims are not modest about the effectiveness.
But do they actually work or is it placebo and/or other changes (exercise, diet) that concerned people adapt?
Science would never criticize coffee. It is rich in healthful, natural, plant-based polyphenol substances and evidence from past studies links coffee drinking to a lower risk of obesity, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and other disorders collectively termed the "metabolic syndrome." Chlorogenic acid (CGA), one coffee polyphenol, is the main ingredient in scores of dietary supplements promoted as weight-loss products.
Gout is a painful rheumatic condition. It occurs when uric acid, a bodily waste product, crystallizes in joints and soft tissues. Gout is often associated with the big toe, but that turns out to be unfair; patients at highest risk of further flare-ups are those whose gout first involved other joints, such as a knee or elbow, according to new research.
Researchers using magnetic imaging to assess memory have shown that soccer players who frequently head the ball have brain abnormalities resembling those found in patients with concussion (mild traumatic brain injury).
By outsourcing manufacturing to China - sending jobs Americans don't want, according to immigration experts - America is also outsourcing carbon dioxide emissions.
China is now doing the same thing, but to themselves. Coastal provinces are outsourcing emissions to poorer provinces in the interior, according to U.C. Irvine scholar Steve Davis and colleagues in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.
With nuclear power trapped in committee meetings and biofuels exposed as a bad idea, the search for another carbon-neutral alternative is ongoing.
While the sun gives us enough energy in an hour to meet all human needs for a year, solar technologies are an ideal solution that needs better technology - just like it has been for 50 years.
Conversion of solar energy into electrochemical energy on a massive-scale first needs to show proof-of-concept on the micro-scale. An artificial version of photosynthesis is regarded as one of the most promising of solar technologies because for two billion years nature has employed photosynthesis to oxidize water into molecular oxygen.
An experiment to probe brain circuits involved in compulsive behavior - where mice were bred missing a gene
suspected to be involved in compulsive behavior and obesity - resulted in offspring mice that were neither compulsive groomers nor obese.
Their Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) paper suggests that the brain circuits that control obsessive-compulsive behavior are intertwined with circuits that control food intake and body weight.
University of Iowa psychiatrists Michael Lutter, M.D., Ph.D. and Andrew Pieper, M.D., Ph.D., led the study, which included researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School.
Though the mechanism responsible for generating part of the skeletal support for the membrane in animal cells is not yet understood, researchers have found a well-defined layer beneath the cell outer membrane forms beyond a certain critical level of stress generated by motor proteins within the cellular system.
