St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital discovery of genetic links to multi-drug resistance gives clinicians new insight into the cause of treatment failure and suggests targets for novel anti-leukemic drugs
The discovery of a specific pattern of gene expression linked to multiple-drug resistance of leukemic cells is giving researchers crucial information into why standard therapies fail to cure some children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). This finding, from investi
Tom Cowan’s team cultivating new laser technology for more precise cancer treatments
Tom Cowan’s team is thinking smaller, but with big impact. Particle accelerators are a key research tool in a high energy physicist’s arsenal, but they take up a lot of space – miles and miles of it. But at the University of Nevada, Reno, smaller is better.
Cowan, director of the Nevada Terawatt Facility at the University, and his research partners have produced a proton
A fundamental number that affects the color of light emitted by atoms as well as all chemical interactions has not changed in more than 7 billion years, according to observations by a team of astronomers charting the evolution of galaxies and the universe.
The results are being reported today (Monday, April 18) at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) by astronomer Jeffrey Newman, a Hubble Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory representing DEEP2, a
Reporters looking for fresh environmental research angles for Earth Day (April 22) – or for environmental coverage throughout the year – can find scores of newsworthy projects at UW-Madison related to water resources, from groundwater to the Great Lakes. The following tipsheet describes ten current water research projects that may be of interest to media, including:
– The Wisconsin Buffer Initiative
– ’Rain gardens’ as a way to restore urban ground water
About 450,000 children spread among 2,700 public school districts in 25 states all have something in common: They’ve used educational Fast ForWord software products developed from research that began in the lab of Rutgers-Newark professor of neuroscience Paula Tallal.
Working at Rutgers-Newark’s Center for Molecular and Biological Neuroscience, she has brought a neuroscientist’s perspective to the concept of learning, convinced that developing brains are much more plastic than has
The body treats implanted medical devices – including everything from titanium hip replacements and blood vessel grafts – as invaders.
Cells surround and attack foreign material, resulting in an inflammatory response. This unfriendly reaction prevents implants from integrating into the body and functioning as well as they could.
While implanted biomaterials can be designed with different surface chemistries and roughness to influence inflammatory responses, the pr
Rare plant species are six times more likely than abundant species to be lost due to nitrogen fertilization of soil, UC Irvine biologist Katharine Suding and colleagues have found through experiments conducted across nine ecosystems in North America. While nitrogen increases the production of plants, an excess amount of it, the researchers conclude, creates a competition among plants for space that drives rare plants – plants that are uncommon and not abundant – out of existence, causing a loss
Scientists drill into sediments of one of the world’s oldest, deepest lakes to improve understanding of global climate change
Four University of Rhode Island oceanographers and colleagues from four other universities recently probed the ancient sediments beneath Lake Malawi in East Africa and recovered sediment samples that provide up to 1.5 million years of information about how climate in Africa has changed – the longest continuous record of such data ever collected from that
Diesel particle pollution inside urban school buses may be worse than levels found in the surrounding roadway air, according to a study by scientists at the University of California. The report appears in the April 15 issue of the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. ACS is the world’s largest scientific society.
It has generally been assumed that other vehicles on the road are the source of elevated particle levels. But a study of schoo
The northernmost part of the Baltic Sea, between Finland and Sweden, recently provided an ideal location for scientists to successfully address critical issues relating to sea ice validation before CryoSat is launched in September.
Unlike last year’s CryoSat Validation Experiments (CryoVEx 2004), which focussed on land ice and took place in Greenland and the Canadian Arctic, the recent validation activities in the Baltic scrutinised issues relating to sea ice. The experiment
Babies who gain weight rapidly during their very first week of life may be more likely to be overweight as young adults, according to a new study. The research suggests that the first week may be a critical period for setting lifelong patterns of body weight.
Researchers from The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Iowa studied 653 adults, ranging in age from 20 to 32. The subjects, all of whom were white, had been measure
A study comparing, for the first time, breast cancers from Nigeria, Senegal and North America has found that women of African ancestry are more likely to be diagnosed with a more virulent form of the disease than women of European ancestry.
Researchers from the University of Chicago, working with colleagues at the University of Calabar in Nigeria and the University of North Carolina, found that breast cancers in African women produce a different pattern of gene expression. Tumor
Researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia say looking for genes that have been turned off by cancer cells may become a reliable and noninvasive way to detect and monitor cancer in the kidney. The data were presented today at the 96th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Anaheim, Calif.
Tumor-suppressor genes are part of the body’s natural defense against cancer. When inactivated–or “silenced”–they can no longer do their job, allowi
Scientists have identified good bacteria already living in some humans that target and trap HIV and may protect against infection. They report their findings today at the 2005 American Society for Microbiology Beneficial Microbes Conference.
“I believe every life form has its natural enemy, and HIV should not be the exception,” says Dr. Lin Tao, Associate Professor of the Department of Oral Biology, College of Dentistry, University of Illinois at Chicago. “If we can find its
Virus-host interactions at sea: The third age of phage
Cyanobacteria exert a disproportionate influence on their planet for their size. The Prochlorococcus group of cyanobacteria account for a large fraction of global photosynthesis by virtue of their ubiquitous presence in nutrient-depleted ocean waters. Even tinier agents – the viruses that infect these bacteria, called cyanophages – appear capable of wielding surprising influence on global cycles by affecting the populatio
An exceptionally large study of patients with glioblastoma multiforme has found an association between a genetic variation and a doubling of survival rate – the strongest link ever established between genetic variation and outcome in this deadliest form of brain cancer, according to researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The study, presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Cancer Research, found the differences in a common varian
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