Researchers from Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh and Louisiana State University report findings in Journal of Clinical Investigation
The development of effective vaccines for people with compromised immune systems may be feasible after all, according to a team of researchers, who demonstrated their approach could protect against pneumocystis pneumonia in mice lacking the same population of immune cells that HIV destroys in humans. The vaccine platform dev
With national attention focused on the avian flu threat, other infections that could be transmitted from animals to people are also coming under scrutiny. People with work exposure to pigs, such as farmers, veterinarians and meat processing workers, are at heightened risk of contracting swine influenza, according to a study in the Jan. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, now available online.
Pigs’ physical makeup allows them to contract—and to spread—influenza viruses to and fr
The Max Planck Society and the Technical University in Munich inaugurate a unique neutron spectrometer at the research neutron source (FRM-II)
N-REX+ (Neutron Reflectometry & X-Rays) is one of two neutron spectrometers that are unique worldwide; the other one is TRISP (Triple Axis Resonance Spin echo Spectrometer), already in service at the research neutron source. Both were designed and built at the high flux neutron source by Max Planck researchers over the past five years. The
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies discovered that cells co-opted the machinery that usually repairs broken strands of DNA to protect the integrity of chromosomes. This finding solves for the first time an important question that has long puzzled scientists.
The natural ends of chromosomes look just like broken strands of DNA that a cell’s repair machinery is designed to fix. But mending chromosome ends, or telomeres, would set the stage for the developmen
Treating lupus patients suffering from kidney inflammation with a medicine known as mycophenolate mofetil may be more effective in inducing remission than treating them with the standard regimen of intravenous cyclophosphamide (Cytoxan), a new clinical trial indicates.
The study, published in Thursday’s issue (Nov. 24) of the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed that mycophenolate mofetil produced fewer complications, researchers found.
Such results could be an im
Genetic clues guide customized treatment for neuroblastoma
A new study reports that a loss of genes on chromosome 1 or chromosome 11 raises the risk of death from the children’s cancer neuroblastoma, even when other indicators seem to point to a lower-risk form of the disease. This research finding will help guide physicians to the most appropriate treatment for the cancer, which strikes the peripheral nervous system. The approach used may also be applied to customizing care
People will soon be able to find out how vulnerable their own local area is to global warming, thanks to new techniques developed by scientists.
The STARDEX project’s seven European research teams, led by the University of East Anglia, narrowed down evidence of changing weather patterns to predict the occurrence of floods, heat waves and drought on even smaller regions across the UK and Europe.
And the new method of analysis could help governments prepare for or
“You can eat your relatives but not your friends,” could be the off-kilter credo of a tiny marine invertebrate called a sea squirt that can physically merge with, and parasitize, its own kin. The trigger for this unseemly behavior has now been traced to a single gene, isolated by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine. That gene also points to a common origin with the vertebrate immune system, far back in animal evolution, potentially shedding light on the development of our o
Researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the German Cancer Research Institute have shown how protein synthesis is targeted to certain regions of a cell–a process crucial for the cellular motility that governs nerve growth, wound healing and cancer metastasis. Their study appears in the November 24 issue of the journal Nature.
Led by Drs. Robert Singer and Dr Stefan Huettelmaier, the research team focused on migrating fibroblast cells important in wound healin
Using Petri dishes full of genetically engineered E. coli instead of photo paper, students at The University of Texas at Austin and UCSF successfully created the first-ever bacterial photographs.
Their work is published in this week’s issue of Nature (Nov. 24, 2005), which is devoted entirely to the emerging field of synthetic biology.
The students produced the innovative bacterial images and a bacterial camera as part of MIT’s intercollegiate Genetically Eng
Researchers at the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) have developed a new machine that can reveal how electrons behave inside a single nano-object. The results from initial tests on pyramidal gallium-arsenide quantum dots are presented in an article in the November 24 issue of Nature.
Hiding in the lab behind a dramatic black curtain, the hardware setup is not particularly imposing. It doesn’t look expensive. Nonetheless, this machine in EPFL’s Laboratory of quantu
Scientists achieve first measurements of selectivity mechanism
Even if you could get more RAM for your brain, the extra storage probably wouldn’t make it easier for you to find where you left your car keys.
What may help, according to a discovery published Nov. 24 in the journal Nature, is a better bouncer – as in the type of bouncer who manages crowd control for nightclubs. The study by Edward Vogel, an assistant professor of cognitive neuroscience at the Universi
Saint Louis University influenza researcher comments in Nov. 24 issue
An article by Robert Belshe, M.D., of Saint Louis University School of Medicine in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine reviews recent “spectacular achievements of contemporary molecular biology” that hold great importance as the world prepares for a possible flu pandemic.
These achievements, including a recent genetic sequencing and recreation of the virus from the 1918 flu pandemic, “m
Childhood infection with Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is often asymptomatic, while the same infection in adolescents and adults causes infectious mononucleosis (IM). Liisa Selin and colleagues from the University of Massachusetts Medical School now show how, in a strange twist of immunological karma, T cells specific to a previously encountered virus (such as the flu) may come back to haunt you, by overzealously responding to a subsequent, unrelated viral infection like EBV, thereby increasing the
Latex film formation through evaporation deposition: Monte Carlo Study
In the formation of high performance coatings, it is known that the process whereby a film forms from a colloidal dispersion is a key step. Conversely, how the solvent evaporation process affects the structure of the film during this stage is not well understood. The irreversible nature of the evaporation process necessitates the use of non-standard theoretical methods and even simple models can be important too
Regions’ GDP equivalent to globe’s second largest economy
Even though the United States does not participate in the Kyoto protocol, about one-quarter of the population lives in states, counties or cities that have adopted climate change policies similar to those of the global initiative, according to a Brief Communication published in the November 17 issue of Nature.
Including regions classified as ’probable’ and ’possible’ adopters, which hav
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