Another study demonstrates benefits of colon cancer screening in elderly populations
A new study of gender and risk factors for colorectal cancer reveals that while both tobacco and alcohol increase risk for colorectal cancer, women who smoke are at higher risk. Researcher Anna L. Zisman, M.D. of Evanston Northwestern Health Care presented these findings at the 70th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology. Another study presented at ACG of patients
Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have identified a second promising treatment target for glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most deadly types of brain tumors. The research results are reported in the October issue of Molecular Cancer Research.
“We’ve found that a particular protein may play a major role in the progression of these tumors, suggesting an attractive new treatment approach,” said Waldemar Debinski, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Brain T
A landmark discussion paper, published by the Agricultural Institute of Canada, proposes that the GST or some other levy be applied to groceries to help achieve sustainable agriculture and staunch a potentially disastrous collapse of smaller sized farms.
The paper (online at www.aic.ca/issues/AIC_discussion_paper_Final_ENG.pdf), commissioned by Canada’s foremost agricultural institute to help catalyze a national roadmap to sustainable agriculture, also calls for governments to us
A collaboration of researchers, led by Dr. Martine Roussel (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital), has developed a novel mouse model of medulloblastoma — the most prevalent malignant pediatric brain tumor — that the researchers hope will more accurately represent the genetic changes involved in human brain tumor development.
Their study will be published in the November 15th issue of Genes & Development, but will also be made available online ahead of print on 10/31.
Increasing the activity of two enzymes better known for their role in oxidative stress metabolism turns normally relaxed mice into “Nervous Nellies,” according to research conducted at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and reported in the early online edition of Nature.
Locally overexpressing either glyoxalase 1 or glutathione reductase 1 in mouse brains significantly increased anxiety in usually relaxed mice and made already jittery mice even more anxiety-ridden. Inhib
Early diagnosis and treatment of heart disease may lead to longer life in Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy patients, say experts at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston in a report that appeared online in the journal Circulation.
Cardiac disease, particularly dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure, is the major cause of mortality in patients with muscular dystrophy and is present in most boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy and a
Benjamin Franklin wrote in his 1750 Poor Richard’s Almanac that “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.” The problem of achieving accurate self-knowledge hasn’t gotten any easier in 250 years; and, as shown in a new research report, there are major real-world consequences to this very human attribute.
In “Flawed Self-Evaluation: Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace,” investigators David Dunning (Cornell), Chip Heath (Stanfo
Five principles guide decisions that improve patient safety and lower costs, say Group Health experts
With the cost of prescription drugs rising faster than any other part of health care, more insurers and health systems have begun adopting restrictive policies for coverage of newer drugs. How can consumers and health care organizations be sure that such policies don’t lean too far in either direction–either restricting necessary treatment or wasting consumers’ premiums
Copying the ideas of others is usually frowned upon, but when it comes to the work of Mother Nature, scientists are finding they can use nature as a template.
An interdisciplinary group of scientists and engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology recently formed the Center for Biologically Inspired Design (CBID) with the goal of capitalizing on the rich source of design solutions present in biological processes. The researchers believe nature can inspire design and en
For years biomedical researchers have known that high density lipoproteins, commonly called HDLs or “good cholesterol,” are responsible for protecting humans from certain parasites, but couldn’t explain how. Now MBL scientists have discovered that human HDLs work this bug-repelling magic by serving as a platform for the assembly and delivery of two naturally occurring proteins that combine to create a super-toxic antimicrobial.
The research, published in the September 30 issue of th
The risk of ischemic stroke – which results when a blood clot travels to the brain – increases with a rise in particulate air pollution, according to a study in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. Led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), the findings are described in the October 27, 2005 on-line rapid access issue of the journal.
The study, which examined the air quality on a total of 37,0
The brain is a “time machine,” assert Duke neuroscientists Catalin Buhusi and Warren Meck. And understanding how the brain tracks time is essential to understanding all its functions. The brain’s internal clocks coordinate a vast array of activities from communicating, to orchestrating movement, to getting food, they said.
In a review article in the October 2005 Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Buhusi and Meck discuss the current state of understanding of one of the brain&
From glaciers to caribou, rivers to roads, Arctic climate change is having a broad effect on almost every aspect of life in the North. That’s the conclusion University of Alaska Fairbanks researchers and others outline in a paper to be published in the October 2005 issue of the journal “Climatic Change.”
The paper is a result of decades of research by dozens of scientists in multiple disciplines, said Larry Hinzman, a research professor with UAF’s Water and Environmental Research
The discovery, by scientists at Monash University and the Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre in New York, of how communication between cancer cells is controlled has promised new treatment options for malignant tumours.
Senior research fellow Dr Martin Lackmann from Monash’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology is part of the team that has discovered the structure of the molecular switch that controls communication between tumour cells. The “switch” involves a cell-su
Picky female frogs in a tiny rainforest outpost of Australia have driven the evolution of a new species in 8,000 years or less, according to scientists from the University of Queensland, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.
“That’s lightning-fast,” said co-author Craig Moritz, professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley and director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. “To find a recently evolved species like this is excep
Pediatric researchers at Yale School of Medicine have identified a gene on human chromosome 6 called DCDC2, which is linked to dyslexia, a reading disability affecting millions of children and adults.
The researchers also found that a genetic alteration in DCDC2 leads to a disruption in the formation of brain circuits that make it possible to read. This genetic alteration is transmitted within families.
“These promising results now have the potential to lead to impro
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