Scientists have reported that an experimental vaccine targeting one of the most common genetic drivers of pancreatic cancer, called mutant KRAS, is safe and generated a durable immune responses aimed at preventing the cancer.
Prion proteins are "misfolded"and cause a group of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, including spongiform encephalopathies (for example, mad cow diseases) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Prions are unique infective agents. Unlike viruses, bacteria, fungi and other parasites, prions do not contain either DNA or RNA. Despite their seemingly simple structure, they can propagate their pathological effects like wildfire, by "infecting" normal proteins.
PrPSc (the pathological form of the prion protein) can induce normal prion proteins (PrPC) to acquire the wrong conformation and convert into further disease-causing agents.
A project to develop fast-blinking LED systems for underwater optical communications has led to discovering that an artificial metamaterial can increase the light intensity and "blink speed" of a fluorescent light-emitting dye molecule.
The nanopatterned layers of silver and silicon in the new material sped up the molecule's blink rate to 76 times faster than normal, while producing an 80-fold increase in its brightness.
In the late 19th century, classification of humans was in vogue and a lot of it was done based on languages and physical characteristics. Physical anthropology and ethno-linguistics created the Aryan classification among Caucasians, meaning people of Europe and western Asia whose language descended from a common root and who shared physical/biological characteristics also.
The universe of cancer mutations just got a whole lot bigger.
By analyzing the genomes of thousands of patients' tumors, a research team has discovered many new cancer genes, expanding the list of known genes tied to these cancers by 25 percent. Moreover, the study shows that many key cancer genes still remain to be discovered. The team says that creating a comprehensive catalog of cancer genes for scores of cancer types is feasible with as few as 100,000 patient samples.
If you ever watched/read the advocacy cartoon/book/Darwinian morality play "FernGully: The Last Rainforest" you might think that ruining the rainforests is a modern phenomenon brought on by McDonald's hamburgers or guitar makers or whoever and ancient man lived in harmony with nature.
It's a great mythology but just that - nature does not live in harmony with anything. Since almost the moment the last Ice Age ended, prehistoric man has kept fighting nature, including rainforests in Borneo, Sumatra, Java, Thailand and Vietnam, which had been termed 'untouched by humans.'
With the cost of American health care set to increase substantially, the search is on to start forcing people to curb preventable diseases, like those related to obesity.
But it may not be a choice, according to some psychologists. The same way that people can be addicted to drugs and alcohol, they can have an unhealthy relationship with food.
More than one-third of U.S. adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, putting them at greater risk for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer. The estimated annual medical cost of obesity could have been as high as $147 billion in 2008 U.S. dollars, and obese people pay an average of $1,429 more in medical expenses than those of normal weight.
10 years of Opportunity and Spirit on Mars have given us some interesting insights, like that the oldest minerals show that around four billion years ago Mars had liquid water so fresh it could have supported life.
Everyone with a sense of adventure wants to go to 'the final frontier' and explore strange new worlds.
But bring your medication. It might not be good for your immune system.
It's so surprise that spaceflight affects immune responses but the new paper clarifies that a bit and says that being born in and growing up on the Space Shuttle weakened a key arm of the immune system in Drosophila flies, while being in a centrifuge under hypergravity conditions improved resistance.
A group of researchers say they have established a new biomarker for how stressed polar bears are about climate change.
Last year, a team reported that fluctuations in climate and ice cover are closely related to stress among polar bears in East Greenland as indicated by levels of the stress hormone cortisol in hair samples. The team is hopeful this type of analysis will be beneficial once others learn that it can now be done with much greater reliability.
Obesity has risen and everyone wants to assign blame. New York City blamed trans fats before they blamed sodas, San Francisco blamed McDonald's marketing.But outside government policy makers, most people consider obesity a choice. And the data is on their side. Every study throughout history has found that people who burn more calories than they consume lose weight, and that goes for weight gain also.A new survey by two food economists confirmed that even obese people don't blame restaurants, grocery stores, farmers, or government policies for obesity, which means that creating and enforcing public policies to reduce obesity or encourage/mandate healthier food is probably not going to be effective.
Western humans are rare in that we drink milk after weaning. Milk is the staple food for infants and contains the sugar lactose but most mammals lose the ability to digest lactose, and thus milk, as they get older.
The ability to digest the sugar is governed by the production of the enzyme lactase in the small intestine. As children get older, the lactase gene is gradually disabled, which means that no lactase is formed and the lactose enters the colon undigested, where it is typically converted into acids and hydrogen gas and, in many people, causes the painful symptoms of lactose intolerance.
Currently in the UK, when health care workers are "unequivocally guilty of willful or reckless neglect or mistreatment of patients" that is not criminal behavior but Dr. Jo Bibby, Director of Strategy at the Health Foundation, writing in BMJ, says the proposal, made in response to the Francis inquiry, will close a gap in the law and is one of many important steps to improving patient care, though won't prevent any deaths.
