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.
Females of all ages are less active than their male peers according to two studies presented today which reveal the gender difference in activity levels among school children and the over 70s. Both studies show males to be more physically active than females.At least in the United Kingdom. The two studies are being presented at the UK Society for Behavioural Medicine annual conference (incorporating the National Prevention Research Initiative conference) at the University of Exeter (UK).
Two new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in this type of object. A separate team will also release a dramatic three-dimensional visualization of the same remnant.Nearly ten years ago, Chandra's "First Light" image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A) revealed previously unseen structures and detail. Now, after eight years of observation, scientists have been able to construct a movie that tracks the remnant's expansion and changes over time.
If your mother smoked, you're more likely to be an aggressive kid, according to a new Canada-Netherlands study published in the journal Development and Psychopathology.And mothers who smoke, give birth under 21 and are poor should have caused North American to be overrun by the societal equivalent of Middle East dictators by now - so take what you want from that. While previous studies have shown that smoking during gestation causes low birth weight, this research claims mothers who light up during pregnancy predispose their offspring to an additional risk: violent behavior.
For a long time, we have been told that exercise is key to weight loss. If you don't have time to exercise, or can't, your excuse is built in. Not so, says a recent international study. It comes down to knowing how many calories your body needs and eating that or less. Exercise can simply increase the calories you may ingest without gaining weight. Oddly, we knew this in 1908 but it seems to have been lost somewhere.
A team of researchers at Princeton University and The Cancer Institute of New Jersey has identified a long-sought gene that is fatefully switched on in 30 to 40 percent of all breast cancer patients, spreading the disease, resisting traditional chemotherapies and eventually leading to death.The gene, called "Metadherin" or MTDH, is located in a small region of human chromosome 8 and appears to be crucial to cancer's spread or metastasis because it helps tumor cells stick tightly to blood vessels in distant organs. The gene also makes tumors more resistant to the powerful chemotherapeutic agents normally used to wipe out the deadly cells.
A new way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and tackle climate change had been unveiled by a group of economists. Or an old way, depending on how long you have been around. Under their proposals, companies would buy what are in effect permits to pollute, but the price of those permits would be controlled because the government would retain enough, at a fixed price, to stop the cost increasing above that level. Yes, it is price controls all over again. Welcome to 1972.
Let's face it, with all that talk about life on other planets and dark matter, we lose sight of the big picture. To start 2009 off right, the Milky Way, our galaxy, wants you to know she is not out of coolness yet. To wit, new measurements of the Milky Way say our home Galaxy is rotating about 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously thought.
Physicists at Indiana University have developed a promising new way to identify a possible abnormality in a fundamental building block of Einstein's theory of relativity known as "Lorentz invariance." If confirmed, the abnormality would disprove the basic tenet that the laws of physics remain the same for any two objects traveling at a constant speed or rotated relative to one another.IU distinguished physics professor Alan Kostelecky and graduate student Jay Tasson take on the long-held notion of the exact symmetry promulgated in Einstein's 1905 theory and show in a paper to be published in the Jan. 9 issue of Physical Review Letters that there may be unexpected violations of Lorentz invariance that can be detected in specialized experiments.
Women with bulimia nervosa appear to respond more impulsively during psychological testing than those without eating disorders, and brain scans show differences in areas responsible for regulating behavior, according to a report in the January issue of Archives of General Psychiatry.
Commonly used pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccines do not appear to be effective for preventing pneumonia, found a study by a team of researchers from Switzerland and the United Kingdom writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.In many industrialized countries, polysaccharide pneumococcal vaccines (PPVs) are currently recommended to help prevent pneumococcal disease in people aged 65 and over and for younger people with increased risk due to conditions like HIV. Studies have shown conflicting results regarding the efficacy of PPV.
Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets -- dead stars. Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead "white dwarf" stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This might sound pretty bleak, but it turns out the chewed-up asteroids are teaching astronomers about the building materials of planets around other stars. So far, the results suggest that the same materials that make up Earth and our solar system's other rocky bodies could be common in the universe. If the materials are common, then rocky planets could be, too.
Iowa State University's Martin Pohl is part of a research team that has developed the first complete map of the Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms.The map shows the inner part of the Milky Way has two prominent, symmetric spiral arms, which extend into the outer galaxy where they branch into four spiral arms."For the first time these arms are mapped over the entire Milky Way," said Pohl, an Iowa State associate professor of physics and astronomy. "The branching of two of the arms may explain why previous studies – using mainly the inner or mainly the outer galaxy – have found conflicting numbers of spiral arms."
