St. Jude/Johns Hopkins discovery suggests that manipulating levels of Lag-3 protein on T regulatory cells might prevent autoimmune diseases or amplify immune system attacks on cancer cells
The discovery that the Lag-3 gene acts as a brake to prevent immune system responses from running out of control solves a mystery that has puzzled researchers since the gene was discovered 14 years ago. A report on this discovery, from investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital a
Forest fire particles come to town
Researchers at the University of Toronto have detected migratory pollutants from a forest fire in Quebec and even particles from a sandstorm in the Sahara in Toronto air, findings that could someday give regulatory agencies an idea of who is contributing to the pollutants found in urban air.
“It’s a bit of detective work,” says Greg Evans, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. “We happened
New studies by an international team of scientists led by Joslin Diabetes Center have found variations in a gene that help explain why people with type 2 diabetes are at much greater risk for coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death for this group.
“We now have potential gene markers to help identify diabetes patients at increased risk for heart disease,” said Alessandro Doria, M.D., Ph.D., Investigator in Joslin’s Genetics and Epidemiology research section, Director of Josli
Dolphin Quest enlists University of Pittsburgh specialist to develop custom ’scaffold’ for tissue’s repair; ’Liko is one lucky dolphin’
An expert team of marine mammal veterinarians, medical researchers, cosmetic surgeons and dolphin trainers recently joined forces to apply the latest advances in human regenerative medicine in an attempt to restore a bottlenose dolphin’s damaged dorsal fin.
The procedure on Liko, a three-year-old male dolphin
Exactly what governs the motions of falling paper?
While college students suspect the answer is known to lazy professors — the ones who allegedly grade essays by throwing them down stairwells to see which sails the farthest — the so-called falling paper problem has long intrigued scientists.
Now an enterprising professor and her graduate student at Cornell University have solved the falling paper problem — in part by calculating the motions of a scientific journal p
Diabetics could face a higher risk of both pancreatic and liver cancer, according to a Université de Montréal researcher who will be presenting her team’s findings at the Frontiers in Cancer Research Prevention Meeting. While the association between diabetes and both pancreatic and liver cancer has been previously documented, the researchers accounted for many factors unavailable in previous studies, making this the most accurate association ever found between diabetes and the incidence of live
The Internet protocol private branch exchange (IP PBX) market offers a ray of hope in the otherwise depressed European telecommunications industry. Encouraging developments in this market have seen enterprises beginning to replace their time division multiplexing (TDM) voice networks with IP enabled/converged voice data networks.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.telecom. frost.com) reveals that the total enterprise IP PBX market (including IP enabled PBX) demonstrat
Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS introduces its novel Spatial Audio Coding technology, which enables 5.1 Surround Sound for Digital Audio Broadcasting DAB. The Bayerische Rundfunk (BR) and Bayern Digital Radio (BDR) broadcast the first 5.1 program over DAB live on “Bayern 4 Klassik” during the Medientage event in Munich. A DAB surround receiver prototype was developed and integrated in a passenger car by the Panasonic Automotive Systems Europe GmbH.
Spatial Audio C
The passage of ships in and out of ports could be safer if only pilots and masters had online access to vessel traffic service (VTS) information. The IPPA system fulfils this need and received a warm approval from ships’ pilots and harbourmasters alike.
The objective of the IST programme-funded IPPA project was to tap into the VTS information and make it available to pilots and ships’ masters in a user-friendly graphical format.
On trial at three ports
The increase in cultivation of herbicide-resistant GM Canola (also known as rapeseed) in Canada has led to a significant decrease in herbicide use, says research published in the journal Pest Management Science. This has led to a decrease in the environmental impact of weed control and could have similar effects elsewhere in the world.
Between 1995 and 2000, the amount of GM Canola grown increased from 10% to 80% of the total Canola area, causing herbicide use to decrease by ov
For the first time Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany, presents a combination of MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding (AVC/H.264) and MPEG-4 High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) for high quality, real time movie playback on ARM®-based Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).
MPEG-4 AVC and MPEG-4 HE-AAC are the most advanced video and audio codecs within the MPEG-4 multimedia standard. At ARM Developers Conference, Fraunhofer IIS now introduces a c
Scientists from the University of Dundee and the University of York hope to improve the long term sustainability of certain ecosystems after being awarded a £359,422 grant from the Natural Environment Research Council to investigate unusual bacteria that live in the roots of trees and shrubs in the fragile and threatened savannah ecosystem of Central Brazil known as the “Cerrado”.
Dr Euan James, Dr Alan Prescott and Dr Sam Swift in the School of Life Sciences and Emeritus Profess
By knocking out a single gene in mice, immunologists at Duke University Medical Center have mimicked a little-understood autoimmune disorder in humans. In the puzzling disorder, called Sjögren’s syndrome, the person’s tear and salivary glands are affected, causing dry eyes and mouth, as they are damaged by an attack of the person’s own immune cells.
According to researchers, the achievement not only offers insight into Sjögren’s syndrome, but into the genera
New research shows that the plant estrogens in soy don’t impair fertility in monkeys. The study was designed to test a theory that high-soy diets can compromise fertility in women.
The results, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and Emory University School of Medicine, were reported today at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia, Pa. “Our results suggest that a high-soy diet probably won’t compromise fertil
A leading stroke researcher says the aging of the American population means that more people are at risk for stroke, and unless new approaches are developed to reduce stroke incidence, it will surpass heart attacks and cancer as the major cause of long-term disability and premature death.
“…The heart will no longer be the cause of most sudden deaths, leaving behind an ever-growing population of the elderly disabled by stroke and vascular dementia …,” writes James F. Toole, M.D., a
Toremifene study finds significant reduction in the incidence of prostate cancer for men with high grade PIN
Toremifene, a drug currently used to treat breast cancer in women, was found to reduce the incidence of prostate cancer for men at high risk for the disease. In a study presented today at the American Association for Cancer Research Third Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, scientists found that patients at all dose levels for toremi
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