One of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang contain so much dust. The leading hypothesis is that supernovae, stars that explode at the end of their lives, contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — In three new studies — including one appearing online today in the Public Library of Science - Biology (PLoS - Biology) — UC Davis researchers provide compelling evidence of how low levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) alter the way brain cells develop.
The findings could explain at last — some 30 years after the toxic chemicals were banned in the United States — the associations between exposure of the developing nervous system to PCBs and behavioral deficits in children.
In research published in PLoS Medicine, Cally Roper of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and colleagues use genetic analyses to trace the emergence and dispersal of drug-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Africa.
San Diego, CA, April 14, 2009 – Frequent Mental Distress (FMD), defined as having 14 or more days in the previous month when stress, depression and emotional problems were not good , is not evenly distributed across the United States. In fact, certain geographic areas have consistently high or consistently low FMD incidence, as shown in a study published in the June 2009 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
A team of education, economics and public policy scholars has built a new tool that can quickly assess how a particular school finance reform proposal might impact individual California school districts.
The tool can be used to assess any formula that consolidates so-called "categorical" or restricted, special-purpose state and federal funds. It will be discussed at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in San Diego on Tuesday, April 14.
DALLAS – April 14, 2009 – A procedure used in conjunction with a vaginal ultrasound might make it easier to visualize and diagnose diseases in the lining of the uterus, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.
Physicians evaluated the endometrium, a cavity that lines the inside of the uterus, in women who were in the midst of or had gone through menopause and who complained of abnormal bleeding. Abnormal bleeding can indicate certain diseases of the endometrium that may or may not be malignant.
The current standard of care is to blindly biopsy the endometrium; however, the biopsy might not always sample the part of the cavity that is diseased.
Patients with heart disease who are subsequently diagnosed with depression are at greater risk for heart failure (HF), a condition in which the heart can't pump enough blood throughout the body, according to a new study published in the April 21, 2009, issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This study—the first to investigate the influence of depression after heart disease on the likelihood of developing HF—also found that taking antidepressant medications to ease depressive symptoms did not appear to mitigate this risk.
Widespread die-off of piñon pine across the southwestern United States during future droughts will occur at least five times faster if climate warms by 4 degrees Celsius, even if future droughts are no worse than droughts of the past century, scientists have discovered in experiments conducted at the University of Arizona's Biosphere 2.
Their study is the first to isolate the impact of just temperature on tree mortality during drought. The temperature effect is usually confounded by varying weather and bark beetle and other pest attacks. Quantitative information on how sensitive drought-stressed trees are to hotter temperatures is critical for predicting drastic, sudden and widespread die-offs, the scientists said.
SALT LAKE CITY, April 13, 2009 – Two weeks after the rains begin, an elephant family named "the Royals" usually switches to a grass diet to bulk up for pregnancy and birth. But when they wandered off their African reserve one rainy season, cattle grazed the grass so short that elephants couldn't eat it, according to a University of Utah study.
The research – which suggests how climate change and human encroachment may affect endangered elephants – was led by Thure Cerling, a distinguished professor of geology and geophysics, and biology. He used Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking collars and analyzed carbon and other isotopes in tail hair to monitor the elephants' movements and diet from early 2000 to early 2006.
Individuals with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) are first treated with a drug known as imatinib mesylate. Although very effective, as the disease progresses it often becomes resistant to the drug. However, a team of researchers, at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, has identified a class of drugs that might enhance the therapeutic effects of imatinib mesylate and other drugs that target the same molecule.
EDITOR'S PICK: Enhancing the effects of the drug used to treat chronic myeloid leukemia
Individuals with chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) are first treated with a drug known as imatinib mesylate. Although very effective, as the disease progresses it often becomes resistant to the drug. However, a team of researchers, at the University of Leicester, United Kingdom, and Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, has identified a class of drugs that might enhance the therapeutic effects of imatinib mesylate and other drugs that target the same molecule.
Emotions linked to our moral sense awaken slowly in the mind, according to a new study from a neuroscience group led by corresponding author Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California.
The finding, contained in one of the first brain studies of inspirational emotions in a field dominated by a focus on fear and pain, suggests that digital media culture may be better suited to some mental processes than others.
"For some kinds of thought, especially moral decision-making about other people's social and psychological situations, we need to allow for adequate time and reflection," said first author Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.
New therapeutic approaches in Alzheimer's disease are urgently needed. Work led by Professor Mark Pepys FRS over more than 20 years has identified a protein known as serum amyloid P component (SAP) as a possible therapeutic target in Alzheimer's disease. In collaboration with Roche he developed a new small molecule drug, CPHPC, which specifically targets SAP and removes it from the blood. In the exciting new work reported now in the PNAS, the Pepys team together with Professor Martin Rossor and colleagues from the Dementia Research Centre of UCL's Institute of Neurology, have shown that the drug also removes SAP from the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
