Monitoring and managing asthma important for healthy mother and baby
The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) is issuing the first new guidelines in more than a decade for managing asthma during pregnancy. The report reflects new medications that have emerged and updates treatment recommendations for pregnant women with asthma based on a systematic review of data on the safety of asthma medications during pregnancy. An executive summary (“Quick Reference”)
Astronomers have discovered how ominous black holes can create life in the form of new stars, proving that jet-induced star formation may have played an important role in the formation of galaxies in the early universe.
This false-color image incorporates infrared data (invisible to the human eye). The blue regions (essentially the whole of Minkowski’s Object) show enhanced star formation. The red background galaxy and two red foreground stars appear in sharp contrast. The red over
A new discovery by a team of Queen’s University scientists suggests that ancient earth was much colder than previously thought – a discovery that has broad implications for those studying the earth’s climate.
Queen’s researchers have discovered the mineral ikaite in 700-million-year-old marine sedimentary rocks in the Mackenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories and eastern Yukon. This discovery proves that the ancient ocean was much colder than previously believed, says Noel Ja
Based on successful animal studies, a novel vaccine that uses immune cells as factories to produce Her2/neu protein may offer a way to treat some human breast cancers, say researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
Their study, published in the online journal, Breast Cancer Research, on Nov. 29, 2004, showed that the vaccine protected 86 percent of experimental mice against HER2/neu-associated breast cancer, even though the tumors were implanted directly
20-year study at Columbia University Medical Center is first to highlight increased risk of depression across three generations
Nearly 60 percent of children whose parents and grandparents suffered from depression have a psychiatric disorder before they reach their early teens, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) and the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI). This is more than double the number of children (approx. 28 p
Chunying Du, Ph.D., Assistant Investigator at the Stowers Institute, has published findings that reveal a previously unknown pathway of Bruce, the gene encoding a protein that inhibits apoptosis, or programmed cell death.
The findings are available online at www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0408744102v1 and will be published in the Jan. 18 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Bruce has long been recognized as an inhibitor of apoptosis, but until now,
The percentage of Earth’s land area stricken by serious drought more than doubled from the 1970s to the early 2000s, according to a new analysis by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Widespread drying occurred over much of Europe and Asia, Canada, western and southern Africa, and eastern Australia. Rising global temperatures appear to be a major factor, says NCAR’s Aiguo Dai, lead author of the study.
Dai will present the new findings on
Treatment for spinal cord injury leading to paralysis continues to stymie physicians but a clinical trial at the Indiana University School of Medicine reported in the January issue of the Journal of Neurosurgery – Spine may point researchers in a positive direction.
Ten patients with complete motor and sensory spinal cord injury were implanted with an experimental device designed to regenerate nerve fibers, promoting some degree of functional recovery. The device, an oscillating
Lack of sleep could make you fat. In an editorial published in the Jan. 10 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine, two Northwestern University researchers stress the need to better understand the growing epidemic of obesity in the United States by studying how loss of sleep alters the complex metabolic pathways that control appetite, food intake and energy expenditure.
Commenting on two obesity studies also published this week in the journal, Joseph Bass, M.D., assistant professor of m
A new study from the University of Alberta suggests it may be better to enroll your child in the first grade later than sooner.
The study says that students who entered Grade 1 at an older age relative to their classmates scored significantly better years later on tests that measure self-esteem. This is important, the study’s authors say, because there is much evidence linking higher self-esteem in childhood to happier, healthier, and more successful lives as adults.
Convers
There are a lot of terrible things that people do to one another. A husband kills his pregnant wife and unborn child. A woman kills another woman she met on the Internet and kidnaps an 8-month fetus she cut from its mother’s womb.
At the same time, there are a lot of minor moral and legal violations that people engage in as well — violations such as speeding, cheating on tests, etc. But what factors influence a person’s willingness to engage in various minor moral and
A new family of genes called Novel Structure Proteins (NSP) discovered by researchers in the Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine in Temple University’s College of Science and Technology could have the potential for predicting the possibility of tumor growth in a patient.
The study was done by Nianli Sang, Ph.D., then a doctoral student at the University and now an assistant professor at Thomas Jefferson University and the Cardeza Foundation. It wa
Breakout data suggests a wake-promoting agent promotes cocaine abstinence
Cocaine dependence is a major public health problem affecting thousands of people around the globe. Despite years of active research there are still no approved medications for the treatment of this life-shattering addiction. Researchers are now hopeful that may soon change based on the results of a controlled study done at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. The study’s findings can be foun
Ghent – The development of cancer is a complex process with a number of different causes. The root problem is loss of control in the cell division process. A fundamental biological process, cell division can be studied in many organisms. Researchers from the Flanders Interuniversity Institute for Biotechnology (VIB) connected with Ghent University are studying cell division in plants and thereby uncovering general principles. They are now revealing the importance of the DEL1 protein in the control
New ultraviolet observations indicate a Milky Way star is spinning nearly 200 times faster than Earth’s sun, the probable result of a merger between two sun-like stars whose binary orbit recently collapsed, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder astronomer.
The yellow giant, known as FK Comae Berenices, or FK Com, is 10 times larger than the sun and is emitting spectacular amounts of X-rays, ultraviolet light and radio waves as it rotates furiously, said Senior Resea
A swarm of 10,000 or more black holes may be orbiting the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, according to new results from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This would represent the highest concentration of black holes anywhere in the Galaxy.
These relatively small, stellar-mass black holes, along with neutron stars, appear to have migrated into the Galactic Center over the course of several billion years. Such a dense stellar graveyard has been predicted for years,
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