In the 1980s, scientists captured the precise mechanics of a protein machine. It looked strange, to researchers its tall thin structure with stubby legs invoked the enchanted broomstick that stole the show in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" segment of Disney's 1940 Fantasia film.
The Roman empire stretched over three continents, had 70 million people, and had a logistics and infrastructure system that kept them going for centuries.
They had smart agricultural practices and an extensive grain-trade network that enabled them to thrive even where water was scarce - but they knew their limits according to a paper in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.
Parkinson's disease sufferers have a different microbiota in their intestines than healthy counterparts, they have less Prevotellaceae bacteria, according to a study conducted at the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki University Central Hospital (HUCH).
The drive for energy efficient homes is increasing asthma risk, finds a team at the University of Exeter Medical School. People are so concerned about energy savings they end up with homes that are not properly heated or ventilated, which could lead to more people developing asthma.
Working with a UK social housing provider, Coastline Housing, the research team assessed data from the residents of 700 properties in Cornwall. They found that people living in more energy efficient homes had a greater risk of asthma, and that the presence of mold doubled this risk.
If you are buying herbal dietary supplements like Ginkgo biloba (G. biloba)
to boost cognitive capacity, the first thing you should do is stop spending money on herbal dietary supplements like Ginkgo biloba and the next thing you should do is wonder how, in a completely unregulated market, you can even know if it is real.
It might not be. Even the olive oil industry thinks supplement makers need to be more honest. A new study in Genome used DNA barcoding to test the authenticity of Ginkgo biloba (G. biloba) found that almost 20 percent of samples didn't even have any.
When a broken bone protrudes through the skin, causing a puncture wound, it is called an open break. It is understandably traumatizing for kids and perhaps even more so for parents but there may be good news for those daunted by the prospect of surgery on top of all that - it may not be necessary.
Many children who sustain open bone fractures in the forearm or lower leg heal safely without surgery, according to the results of a small study in the Journal of Children's Orthopaedics, if the wound is small -- less than a half-inch in diameter -- and the surrounding tissue is free of visible contamination with dirt or debris.
A new estimate says that microplastic and macroplastic pollution could consist of as much as 269,000 tons floating in the world's oceans.
Though there has been no sufficient data to truly estimate the amount of plastic in the oceans, there has been no limit to guessing and speculation so Marcus Eriksen, from Five Gyres Institute, and colleagues set out to build a better model.
For their paper in PLOS ONE, they gathered data from 24 expeditions collected over a six-year period (2007-2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, coastal Australia, Bay of Bengal, and the Mediterranean Sea.
Two compounds appear to block the cardiac damage caused by the chemotherapy drug doxorubicin, according to a report in Science Translational Medicine which indicates that inhibiting the action of the enzyme MDH2, which is key to the generation of cellular energy in mitochondria, could prevent doxorubicin-induced damage to cardiac cells without reducing the drug's anti-tumor effects.
Reductions in government healthcare spending in the European Union (EU) increase maternal mortality rates, suggests a new paper in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (BJOG).
Maternal mortality is defined as the death of a woman during pregnancy, childbirth, or within 42 days of delivery from direct obstetric causes. The new analysis looked at the association between reductions in government healthcare spending and maternal mortality across the European Union (EU) over a 30 year period, from 1981 to 2010, based on data from the World Health Organization (WHO) database. Data were available for 24 EU countries, a population of 419 million people (2010).
The discovery of the mechanism that enables the enzyme Lecithin: retinol acyltransferase (LRAT) to store vitamin A, a process that is indispensable for vision, may provide a boost for designing small molecule therapies for degenerative eye diseases.
The same enzymatic activity of LRAT that allows specific cells to absorb vitamin A can be used to transport small molecule drugs to the eye. These drugs would accumulate in eye tissue, lowering the effective dose and reducing risk of systemic side effects.
It's no secret that a happy worker is a productive worker and a new analysis by scholars at The University of Texas at Dallas finds that family-friendly policies are beneficial for increasing productivity of employees. Yet the benefit for employers is unclear, since that may be offset by the same turnover rates.
A multi-center, non-randomized phase-Ib clinical trial designed to evaluate the safety, tolerability and antitumor activity of bi-weekly infusions of pembrolizumab (MK-3475, marketed as Keytruda®) found that infusion of pembrolizumab produced durable responses in almost one out of five patients.
Patients with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer--a disease with no approved targeted therapies.
In a presentation at the 2014 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium., the researchers discussed the study of 27 patients, aged 29 to 72 years, who had metastatic triple-negative breast cancer that either relapsed after treatment for early stage disease or progressed on therapy for advanced disease.
Malaria is one of the most serious health problems worldwide, registering 200 million clinical cases and more than 600,000 attributable deaths per year, according to information from the World Health Organization in 2013.
Given the emerging resistance to the standard treatment most widely used throughout the world, which is based on artemisinin and its analogs, there is a need for new antimalarial compounds.
