Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and NASA suggest that materials on the nanoscale may sometimes be subject to the same physical rules as their macro-world counterparts. The findings provide an exception to the conventional scientific notion that objects small enough to be measured in nanometers (one-billionth of a meter) behave according to different rules than larger objects.
A team led by Lawrence Bottomley in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Jona
Using an animal model, Penn researchers identify receptor in endothelial cells that is crucial for cardiovascular development
Congenital heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of mortality in children worldwide. According to the American Heart Association, Congenital cardiovascular defects are present in about one percent of live births and are the most common malformations in newborns. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have recently identified new
The best approach for averting the deadly spread of smallpox following release of the virus by terrorists may rest with the establishment of a major collaborative research effort to develop new antiviral drugs that would involve the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, universities and government agencies, according to a new report from the National Academies.
The report delivers the recommendations of a distinguished panel of researchers who participated in a two-day workshop at t
People say size doesn’t matter, and that may be true for tiny plankton, those free-floating ocean plants that make up the bottom of the marine food-chain. Little plankton may be able to change the weather, and longer term climate, in ways that serve them better.
It’s almost hard to believe, but new NASA-funded research confirms an old theory that plankton can indirectly create clouds that block some of the Sun’s harmful rays. The study was conducted by Dierdre Toole of the Woods Hole Oce
Eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus) have upset the apple cart of assumptions on glacier-driven population migrations. Based on a mitochondrial DNA analysis of 244 chipmunks, it seems the majority of them living in Illinois and Wisconsin today descend from ancestors who survived the last North American ice age in what researchers believe were isolated pockets of forestland amid the cold tundra. The findings – reported online this week ahead of regular publication by the Proceedings of the Nati
A new study suggests household residents don’t always agree on the extent of smoking restrictions in their home, and disagreement is more likely to happen if at least one of the residents is a smoker.
Residents provided conflicting accounts of strict home smoking bans in 12 percent of the households surveyed, according to Elizabeth Mumford, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation.
The report in the August issue of the American Journal of Preventive
People who often chew aspirin over a prolonged period could severely damage their teeth, according to a case study in this month’s issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA).
“Aspirin can cause severe damage to both the hard and soft tissues of the mouth,” said researchers from the University of Maryland Dental School, Baltimore. “Dentists should counsel and educate patients and other health care practitioners about the dangers to both hard and soft oral tissues from che
More than 20 percent of preschool children lack required immunizations, placing them and their classmates at risk for illness, according to a new study based on the federal National Immunization Survey.
Whether the children were in day care made no difference in immunization rates, say Carol A. Stanwyck, Ph.D., and two colleagues from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their work appears in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“School entry legislation in the
Human antibodies that thwart the SARS virus in mice can be mass-produced quickly using a new laboratory technique developed by an international research team collaborating with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health. The new technique could become an important tool for developing a cocktail of SARS-specific antibodies that might help protect people recently exposed to the SARS virus or at high risk of exposure. The technique could
Scientists studying mice have identified a possible strategy for slowing a rare, fatal childhood neurodegenerative disease known as Niemann-Pick type C, in which brain cells accumulate fat and die. The finding could also have implications for treating other neurodegenerative disease, they say.
In their study, published in the July issue of Nature Medicine, the team discovered that the synthesis of neurosteroid hormones in the brain — a process known as neurosteroidogenesis — is severely d
Study describes new approach to treating AIDS-associated syndrome
Increasing the body’s production of growth hormone may be an effective treatment for HIV lipodystrophy, a syndrome involving the redistribution of fat and other metabolic changes in those receiving combination drug therapy for HIV infection. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) report that administration of growth-hormone-releasing hormone to a group of men with HIV lipodystrophy significantly improve
A natural mutation of a gene that helps regulate the reactivity of the immune system is a major contributor to type 1 diabetes, Medical College of Georgia researchers have found.
The newly discovered gene, SUMO-4, controls the activity of NFêB, a molecule that in turn controls the activity of cytokines, proteins that regulate the intensity and duration of the immune response, according to research that will be published in the August print issue of Nature Genetics and online July 11.
News tip from the 2004, XV International Conference on AIDS, July 11-16, Bangkok, Thailand
Researchers at Johns Hopkins and the Perinatal HIV Research Unit, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, have determined that the actual average cost for providing primary care to an HIV-infected patient is $30 USD per visit.
“Health care providers and government policy makers can use the information to plan and prepare budgets for aid programs in South and sub-Saharan Africa, w
A new study finds increasing evidence a virus may play a role in breast cancer. The study, published July 12, 2004 in the online edition of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds nearly three-quarters of a small sample of Tunisian breast cancer patients showed evidence of a virus similar to one known to cause breast cancer in mice, twice the rate seen in women in the United States. A free abstract of the study will be available via Wiley InterScience.
Viruses
Technology opens door for study of cause, treatment of Alzheimer’s
UCLA neuroscientists using a new MRI analysis technique to examine myelin sheaths that insulate the brain’s wiring report that as people age, neural connections that develop last degenerate first. The computer-based analysis method is unique in its ability to examine specific brain structures in living people at millimeter resolution.
Published online by the Neurobiology of Aging earlier this year and sch
UCSF researchers have found that some HIV patients treated with antiretroviral therapy early after infection do test negative, at some point, for the virus. Study findings showed this result in six of 87 patients.
“First, these patients are not cured. When these patients went off therapy, HIV virus levels rebounded. These results do show that with effective early treatment that reduces the virus to very low levels, the immune system may have less antibody response to HIV,” said the study&#
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