News Articles

Circular RNA were discovered a few years ago, but their role in our bodies is poorly understood. Our genetic information is stored in DNA, tiny strands of nucleic acid that contain instructions for the functioning of our bodies. To express this genetic data, our DNA is copied into RNA molecules, which then translate the instructions into proteins that perform tasks in our cells. Several years ago, scientists discovered a new type of RNA molecule. Unlike all other known RNAs, this molecule is circular, and was labeled circular RNA.

Referrals for genetic testing more than doubled across the UK after actress Angelina Jolie announced in May that she proactively underwent a double mastectomy due to testing positive for a BRCA1 gene mutation.
The rise in referrals continued through to October, long after the announcement was made, according to findings in Breast Cancer Research.

The wage gap between government employees and the private sector is already large and growing. Now there will be a gap in benefits due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare) also.
Employees working for Fortune 500 companies can expect to pay higher employee contributions for their health insurance, according to a survey of chief human resource officer.
Patrick Wright, a professor in strategic human resource management at the University of South Carolina, directs the annual the HR@Moore Survey of Chief HR Officers. The survey is distributed to more than 560 CHROs of Fortune 500 companies and members of HR Policy Association, a professional organization. 

A new study uses tree rings to document arroyo evolution along the lower Rio Puerco and Chaco Wash in northern New Mexico.

Five years ago, it was good luck finding a hotel anywhere near the rural areas where natural gas extraction - fracking - was taking place.
The boom in natural gas meant a boom in employment and a boom in hotel rooms to keep workers. The wealth boosted Pennsylvania and other energy-dense states while most of the country remains mired in economic malaise. But over time people buy homes rather than rent hotel rooms and now there may be too many, says hospitality management scholars at Penn State.
"Demand is still high in many of the counties in the Marcellus Shale region, but the occupancy rate is starting to come down," says associate professor Daniel Mount. "The case could be made that this is a sign that hotels were overbuilt."

Miranda is a small, icy moon of Uranus and one of the most visually striking and enigmatic bodies in the solar system.
Despite its relatively small size, Miranda appears to have experienced an episode of intense resurfacing that resulted in the formation of at least three remarkable and unique surface features -- polygonal-shaped regions called coronae. 
These coronae are visible in Miranda's southern hemisphere, and each one is at least 200 km across. Arden corona, the largest, has ridges and troughs with up to 2 km of relief. Elsinore corona has an outer belt that is approx. 80 km wide, relatively smooth, and elevated above the surrounding terrain by approx. 100 m. Inverness corona has a trapezoidal shape with a large, bright chevron at its center.

Researchers at Harvard School of Medicine and the University at Buffalo have discovered a sleep-promoting circuit located deep in the primitive brainstem, only the second "sleep node" identified in the mammalian brain whose activity appears to be both necessary and sufficient to produce deep sleep. 
Writing in Nature Neuroscience, the study demonstrates that fully half of all of the brain's sleep-promoting activity originates from the parafacial zone (PZ) in the brainstem. The brainstem is a primordial part of the brain that regulates basic functions necessary for survival, such as breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature.

A new paper believes it can measure the precision with which people make decisions - by pupil size before they are presented with any information.
Spontaneous, moment-to-moment fluctuations in pupil size predicted how a selection of participants varied in their successful decision making. A larger pupil size indicated poorer upcoming task performance, due to more variability in the decisions made once the relevant information was presented. The authors also found that certain individuals who had the largest pupils overall also tended to be the least consistent in their decisions.

Investigators have announced discovery of a new molecule, the first of its kind, which allows for the multiplication of stem cells in a unit of cord blood. Umbilical cord blood contains adult stem cells used for transplants aimed at curing a number of blood-related diseases, including leukemia, myeloma and lymphoma.
For many patients this therapy comprises a treatment of last resort. 

Even a single dose of  the commonly prescribed antidepressant SSRI (serotonin reuptake inhibitor) is enough to produce dramatic changes in the functional architecture of the human brain. Brain scans taken of people before and after an acute dose of SSRI reveal changes in connectivity within three hours, according to results in Current Biology.

To fight leukemia, we have to fight on its terms, and that means understanding the nature of the fight for superiority between mutated genes and normal genes, according to a paper that investigated Acute Myeloid Leukemia to understand why leukemic cells are not able to develop normally into mature blood cells.
Stem cells in the bone marrow generate billions of different blood cells each day. The process resembles a production line with genes acting as regulators to control each step of the blood formation. Leukemia arises when the DNA encoding regulators in the stem cells is changed by a mutation. When a mutation occurs in the relevant regulator genes, the finely balanced order of the production line is disrupted with drastic consequences. 

Tropical rabbitfish have devastated algal forests in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and pose a major threat to the entire Mediterranean basin if their distribution continues to expand as the climate warms, according to a new study
in the Journal of Ecology.
The members of the team surveyed more than 1000 kilometers of coastline in Turkey and Greece, where two species of rabbitfish have become dominant since they moved into the region via the Suez Canal.