News Articles

New research suggests that the identification and examination of key cell signaling events required for initiation and progression of cancer might be best accomplished at the single cell level. The research in Cancer Cell may lead to better diagnosis and treatment of some complex cancers.
Recent advances in flow cytometry, a technique that allows detailed examination of individual cells, have enabled simultaneous measurement of cell type and signaling pathways. Lead study authors Dr. Garry P. Nolan from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Dr. Mignon L. Loh from the UCSF Children's Hospital and the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center were interested in determining whether examination of cellular signaling abnormalities caused by genetic mutations associated with cancer could provide a precise correlation between aberrant signaling events and disease physiology.

A gene contained in laboratory yeast has helped an international team of researchers uncover new findings about the process by which protein molecules bind to control sequences in genes in order to initiate gene expression, says a new study.
Previously thought to be inert carriers of the genetic instructions from DNA, so-called non-coding RNAs turn out to reveal a novel mechanism for creating access to DNA required by transcriptional activation proteins for successful gene expression, according to Boston College Biology Professor Charles Hoffman, a co-author of the study in Nature with researchers from two Japanese universities.

Researchers in Greece report design of a new material that almost meets the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2010 goals for hydrogen storage and could help eliminate a key roadblock to practical hydrogen-powered vehicles. Their study on a way of safely storing hydrogen, an explosive gas, is scheduled for the Oct. 8 issue of ACS' Nano Letters.
Georgios K. Dimitrakakis, Emmanuel Tylianakis, and George E. Froudakis note that researchers long have sought ways of using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to store hydrogen in fuel cell vehicles. CNTs are minute cylinders of carbon about 50,000 times thinner than the width of a human hair. Scientists hope to use CNTs as miniature storage tanks for hydrogen in the coming generation of fuel cell vehicles.

White people, even children as young as 10, avoid talking about race because any opinion may appear prejudiced, according to new research, but that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view that approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.
These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology(1) and the September issue of Developmental Psychology(2).
“Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings,” said the studies’ lead author, Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University. “One way that whites try to appear unbiased is to avoid talking about race altogether, a tendency we refer to as strategic colorblindness.”

Efforts to make furniture less flammable have given residents of California higher blood levels of potentially toxic flame retardants called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) - nearly twice the national average, scientists from Massachusetts and California are reporting. Their study, the first to examine regional variations in PBDE levels in household dust and blood within the U.S., is published in Environmental Science & Technology.
In the new study, Ami Zota and colleagues note that PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are widely used as flame retardants in upholstered furniture and electronics. The materials are released into the environment as dust particles, where they can accumulate in homes as well as human blood and tissue. Although their exact effects in humans are unclear, studies in animals suggest that PBDEs may cause thyroid, developmental, and reproductive problems. Since California has among the most stringent furniture flammability standards, the researchers suspected that state residents may have higher levels of PBDE dust exposure than others in the United States.

Researchers in Iran are publishing what they describe as the first study on a fungus that can remove sulfur, a major source of air pollution, from crude oil more effectively than conventional refining methods. The finding could help reduce air pollution and acid rain caused by the release of sulfur components in gasoline and may help oil companies meet tougher emission standards for fuel, the scientists say. Their study is scheduled for the Oct. 1 issue of Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research.
Jalal Shayegan and colleagues point out that existing processes for refining so-called "heavy," or high-sulfur, crude oil convert sulfur to hydrogen sulfide gas at high temperatures and pressures. However, they leave behind some kinds of sulfur-based compounds, which wind up in gasoline and other fuels. Scientists long have known that certain microbes can remove sulfur from oil. But nobody had tried using these microbes in so-called biodesulfurization of heavy crude oil until now, they indicate.

After several years of research and development on the promising idea of an intelligent writing tool for correcting and enhancing a user's text, WhiteSmoke 2009 says thet can deliver it. Featuring a grammar checking engine that detects a wider range of errors than any other commercial grammar checker, and a range of other tools to create an all-in-one writing solution, WhiteSmoke 2009 says it is the ideal software application for writers, copy editors and at-home Internet users who are concerned with creating error-free texts.
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The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for 2008 with one half to Harald zur Hausen for his discovery of "human papilloma viruses causing cervical cancer" and the other half jointly to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for their discovery of "human immunodeficiency virus."
Harald zur Hausen went against current dogma and postulated that oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) caused cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. He realized that HPV-DNA could exist in a non-productive state in the tumours, and should be detectable by specific searches for viral DNA. He found HPV to be a heterogeneous family of viruses. Only some HPV types cause cancer. His discovery has led to characterization of the natural history of HPV infection, an understanding of mechanisms of HPV-induced carcinogenesis and the development of prophylactic vaccines against HPV acquisition. 

Afraid to fly? It may not be rational, since airplanes are quite safe, but to people who have that phobia, it defies rationality. Researchers from the Center for Obesity Research and Education and the department of kinesiology at Temple University say the same psychological barrier may inhibit some obese women from exercising.
Much like a crippling worry that arachnophobes have about spiders, the research presented at the Obesity Society's Annual Meeting on October 5th says some obese women face a barrier when it comes to exercise that normal weight women do not.

Chemicals used in the environment to kill bacteria could be making them stronger, according to a paper published in Microbiology. Low levels of these chemicals, called biocides, can make the potentially lethal bacterium Staphylococcus aureus remove toxic chemicals from the cell even more efficiently, potentially making it resistant to being killed by some antibiotics.
Biocides are used in disinfectants and antiseptics to kill microbes. They are commonly used in cleaning hospitals and home environments, sterilizing medical equipment and decontaminating skin before surgery. At the correct strength, biocides kill bacteria and other microbes. However, if lower levels are used the bacteria can survive and become resistant to treatment.

The fossilized trail of an aquatic creature suggests that animals walked using legs at least 30 million years earlier than had been thought. The tracks, two parallel rows of small dots, each about 2 millimeters in diameter, date back some 570 million years, to the Ediacaran period.
The Ediacaran preceded the Cambrian period, the time when most major groups of animals first evolved.
Scientists once thought that it was primarily microbes and simple multicellular animals that existed prior to the Cambrian, but that notion is changing, explained Loren Babcock, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University.
"We keep talking about the possibility of more complex animals in the Ediacaran -- soft corals, some arthropods, and flatworms -- but the evidence has not been totally convincing," he said. "But if you find evidence, like we did, of an animal with legs -- an animal walking around -- then that makes the possibility much more likely."

Scientists of the Soil Science and Geopharmacy Research Group of the University of Granada (Spain), directed by Rafael Delgado, have discovered and characterized a new type of atmospheric aerosols named ‘iberulites’, which could be useful for the study of relevant atmospheric reactions from Earth.
Researchers José Luis Díaz Hernández, of the Andalusian Research and Farming, Fishing, Food, and Ecological Production Training Institute and Jesús Párraga Martínez, of the Department of Edaphology and Farming Chemistry of the University of Granada, have insisted that such iberulites form in the troposphere from mineral small grains emitted from desert soils and bordering regions, burst into the atmosphere in a chaotic way, collect water vapour which becomes condensed and make up little rain drops.
"As we all know, the Sahara is a powerful emitter of atmospheric dust, which travels to the Amazon and Caribbean regions, including Florida, also reaching the North of Europe, Israel and even the Himalayas. Such mineral grains, which contain iron, calcium, sulphur and sometimes phosphorus, fertilize the soil, forests and plankton of the oceans, lakes and seas they go through," they write.