News Articles

Cancer cells that can break out of a tumor and invade other organs are more aggressive and nimble than nonmalignant cells. Such cells exert greater force on their environment and can more easily maneuver small spaces, researchers write, due to a systematic comparison of metastatic breast-cancer cells to healthy breast cells which revealed dramatic differences between the two cell lines in their mechanics, migration, oxygen response, protein production and ability to stick to surfaces.

“Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” is the beginning to one of the world's most popular hymns, yet while millions of people can oddly identify Nicki Minaj, almost no one knows the name of Charles Wesley or his Hymns and Sacred Poems. “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” became regarded as one of the Great Four Anglican Hymns and was published as number 403 in "The Church Hymn Book". It has been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to the kids on "Charlie Brown"(1) and now the private letters of the composer have been edited by Dr. Gareth Lloyd of The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library and Professor Kenneth Newport of Liverpool Hope University and published by Oxford University Press. They provide a rare glimpse into both the man and the birth of Methodism.

Betelgeuse is visible to nighttime viewers as the bright, red star on the shoulder of Orion the Hunter. The star itself is huge, 1,000 times larger than our Sun, but from 650 light years away it is a tiny dot in the sky even though it is one of the nearest red supergiants to Earth. 
Getting into the details of the star and the region around it requires a combination of different telescopes and astronomers have released a new image of the outer atmosphere of Betelgeuse 
taken by the e-MERLIN radio telescope array operated from the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire
 and it reveals the detailed structure of the matter being thrown off the star.

The climate just got a little more complex. 
Researchers have found that sunlit snow is a major source of atmospheric bromine in the Arctic and that the surface snowpack above Arctic sea ice plays a previously unknown role in the bromine cycle. Bromine is key to chemical reactions that purge pollutants and destroy ozone.
This means, concludes researchers, that loss of sea ice, which been occurring more rapidly in recent years, has previously unknown and extremely disruptive effects in the balance of atmospheric chemistry in high latitudes. The team's findings suggest the rapidly changing Arctic climate, where surface temperatures are rising three times faster than the global average, could dramatically change its atmospheric chemistry.

A first-ever vaccine for gut bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism symptoms, according to a new paper in Vaccine.
Autism diagnoses have increased almost sixfold over the past 20 years, and it is unclear why. Some point to environmental factors while others have focused on the human gut. Some researchers believe toxins and/or metabolites produced by gut bacteria, including C. bolteae, may be associated with symptoms and severity of autism, especially regressive autism.

The common perception is that cancer develops because of gradual mutations over time, finally overwhelming the ability of a cell to control growth.  A look at genomes in prostate cancer found instead that genetic mutations occur in abrupt, periodic bursts, causing complex, large scale reshuffling of DNA driving the development of prostate cancer. 
The researchers dub this process "punctuated cancer evolution," akin to the theory of human evolution that states changes in a species occur in abrupt intervals. After discovering how DNA abnormalities arise in a highly interdependent manner, the researchers named these periodic disruptions in cancer cells that lead to complex genome restructuring "chromoplexy."

School violence has always been an important social issue world-wide because it poses a significant threat to the health, achievement, and well-being of students.

 Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is now considered a highly curable disease, thanks to the emergence of powerful, targeted CML therapies known as tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that allow patients to manage their disease with few symptoms by taking a well-tolerated pill.
Since the introduction of TKI therapy more than a decade ago, the annual mortality of patients with this disease has declined from 10 to 20 percent in the early 2000s to just 2 percent today and the estimated 10-year survival of CML patients has increased from 20 percent to more than 80 percent.

A paper in Journal of Affective Disorders
found that belief in God was correlated to improved outcomes for those receiving short-term treatment for psychiatric illness.
Dr. David H. Rosmarin, McLean Hospital clinician and instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, examined individuals at the Behavioral Health Partial Hospital program at McLean in an effort to investigate the relationship between patients' level of belief in God, expectations for treatment and actual treatment outcomes.

The segment of society that puts an anti-corporate mentality hand-in-hand with being anti-science is not just on the left; a whole lot of people are now cynical about the goals of the $29 billion organic food industry, especially after their well-publicized effort in California to label GMOs but exempt organic food, alcohol and restaurants. It was regarded as cynical opportunism, a way to get the government to grant their business an opportunity the free market did not.Surveys show people care more (or less) about the environment based on the economy; if that hierarchy of needs is not being met, people are not worried about who is flying off to global warming conferences, they care about jobs.

Army physician William Beaumont was stationed at Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island in Michigan in the early 1820s, when it existed to protect the interests of the American Fur Company. The fort became the refuge for a wounded 19-year-old French-Canadian fur trader named Alexis St. Martin when a shotgun went off by accident in the American Fur Company store and duck shot tore into his abdomen at close range June 6th, 1822. 
That accident is key to much of our early knowledge about the workings of the digestive system, say speakers at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting.

Mymaridae, commonly known as fairyflies, are one of about 18 families of chalcid wasps. Fairyflies are everywhere except Antarctica and include the world's smallest known insect - Kikiki huna, the body length of which is only 0.13 millimeters.
Fairyflies are among the most common chalcid wasps but seldom noticed by humans because of their minute size. Their apparent invisibility and delicate wings with long fringes invoke imagery of mythical fairies and earned them their common name.