A new cancer vaccine platform works by enhancing the ability of the immune system to recognize cancer by leveraging anti-viral memories it already has - due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the worst outbreak of the last 70 years.
The origin of species may be almost as random as a throw of the dice, says Iosif Pinelis, a professor of mathematical sciences at Michigan Technological University, who claims to have worked out a mathematical solution to a biological puzzle: Why is the typical evolutionary tree so lopsided?In other words, the reason some descendants of a parent species evolve into hundreds of different species while others produce so few goes beyond natural selection and into math; simple probability yields a surprisingly elegant solution, Pinelis says.
A century-old drug that failed in its original intent to treat tuberculosis but has worked well as an anti-leprosy medicine now holds new promise as a potential therapy for multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases."We never expected that an old antibiotic would hit this target that has been implicated in multiple sclerosis, psoriasis and type 1 diabetes," says Johns Hopkins pharmacologist Jun O. Liu "People have been working for years and spending tens of millions of dollars on developing a drug to inhibit a specific molecular target involved in these diseases, and here, we have a safe, known drug that hits that target," known as the Kv1.3 potassium channel.
Desert locusts are harmless, solitary creatures until they get a certain chemical - and it isn't firewater, catnip or anything that comes from Colombia. It's serotonin, a common brain chemical, but in the right amount they turn into hordes of hungry ... well ... locusts. With desert locusts, the expression of this swarming characteristic generally means serious trouble for nearby farmer. Locusts are known to sometimes swarm by the billions, and they often devastate crop yields. Dr. Stephen Rogers from the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford in the UK says about 20 percent of the world is affected by desert locusts.
Researchers from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine appear to have reversed the neurological dysfunction of early-stage multiple sclerosis patients by transplanting their own immune stem cells into their bodies and thereby "resetting" their immune systems. The patients in the small phase I/II trial continued to improve for up to 24 months after the transplantation procedure and then stabilized. They experienced improvements in areas in which they had been affected by multiple sclerosis including walking, ataxia, limb strength, vision and incontinence. The study will be published online January 30 and in the March issue of The Lancet Neurology.
MS is the result of damage to myelin - the protective sheath surrounding nerve fibres of the central nervous system - which interferes with messages between the brain and the body. For some people, MS is characterised by periods of relapse and remission while for others it has a progressive pattern. Symptoms range from loss of sight and mobility, fatigue, depression and cognitive problems.
Scientists have known for more than 200 years that vision begins with a series of chemical reactions when light strikes the retina, but the specific chemical processes have largely been a mystery. A team of researchers from the United States and Switzerland say they have shed new light on this process by "capturing" this chemical communication for future study and say it may lead to the development of new treatments for some forms of blindness and vision disorders.
Researchers at the University of British Columbia have discovered a mimic of one of "nature's antibiotics" that can be used to coat medical devices to prevent infection and rejection. The study, released today in the journal Chemistry and Biology, found that a synthetic form, short tethered cationic antimicrobial peptides (cationic peptide), can protect surfaces, like those of medical devices, killing bacteria and fungi that come into contact with them. Peptides are small proteins.
A study of college freshmen in the United States and in China found that Chinese students know more science facts than their American counterparts but both groups are nearly identical when it comes to their ability to do scientific reasoning - unfortunately neither group was very good at it.The lesson is that educators must go beyond teaching science facts if we hope to produce voters, policy makers and scientists who can make reasoned choices.
The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters today announced the results of a study showing that the United States' share of scientific research has shrunk while Asia-Pacific's share of output has risen but the U.S. remains the leader globally in the relative impact of its research.
In its January/February issue of Science Watch, Thomson Reuters analyzes 12 year's worth of data from its National Science Indicators database to determine the U.S.'s global scientific influence based on the nation's research output and impact.
Investigators from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and a Bolzano colleague have written another chapter in a murder case over 5,000 years old. New investigations reconstructed the chronology of the injuries that Oetzi, the glacier man preserved as a frozen mummy, received in his last days.
In 2007 chocolate was all the rage, with Mars, Inc.-funded scientists even having their own panel at the AAAS meeting. In 2008, blueberries were the rage. In 2009, says Dr. Luis Cisneros, Texas A&M AgriLife Research food scientist, "Stone fruits are super fruits, with plums as emerging stars."
Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet. With that data, astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz were able to generate 'realistic' images of the planet by feeding the data into computer simulations of the planet's atmosphere. The researchers used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to obtain infrared measurements of the heat emanating from the planet as it whipped behind and close to its star. In just six hours, the planet's temperature rose from 800 to 1,500 Kelvin (980 to 2,240 degrees Fahrenheit).
