The Cambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) is today launching a new initiative to unite biologists and medical researchers with physicists, engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians to work on an innovative approach to discovering the next generation of drugs.
CMI is funding a transatlantic Next-Generation Drug Discovery Community that will bring together researchers at Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with partners from the IT, pharmaceutical and biot
A possible link between cancer and toxins or poisons produced by bacteria has been suggested by King’s College London scientists, the Society for General Microbiology’s meeting in Bath will hear next week, Thursday 01 April 2004.
“As the molecular mechanisms of cancer are becoming better understood, the strong association between Helicobacter pylori and a stomach cancer, gastric adenocarcinoma, has shown that some cancers may start from bacterial infections”, says Professor Alistair Lax
Researchers have subjected volunteers to the sounds of cockerels, bells, babies crying and footsteps to find out how people perceive urgency and pleasantness.
The two-year EPSRC-funded project aims to find the most appropriate sounds – such as those of screeching tyres or car horns – to warn drivers of hazards on the road.
Researchers from the school of psychology are helping car manufacturers come up with the best ‘audible icons’ to convey alerts to drivers by discovering the appr
New research at the University of Leeds has overturned existing advice to farmers that has been maintaining the disease toxoplasma in the nation’s sheep flocks for years.
Toxoplasma is a disease humans catch from sheep and cats that causes human abortions and birth defects with greater frequency than rubella.
In a study of a pedigree Charolais flock and commercial flock, Dr Judith Smith (left) and her colleague Dr Geoff Hide from the University of Salford found that some sheep fami
Gardeners will soon have access to an environmentally-friendly garden mulch product developed at the University of Leeds, thanks to a £30,000 award won by its inventor.
The straw-based mulch – called Strulch – was developed by Dr Geoff Whiteley in the School of Biology. It will be marketed by Ingwermat, a company formed to use patents developed at Leeds, with the help of the Home Grown Cereals Authority Enterprise award.
The mulch is made from shredded straw treated with iron miner
Findings could lead to effective new treatments for the disease
Researchers at the University at Buffalo and the Mayo Clinic have shown that chronic sinusitis is an immune disorder caused by fungus, opening up a promising new avenue for treating this ubiquitous and debilitating condition, for which there is no FDA-approved therapy.
Results of their research suggest that common airborne fungi lodge in the mucus lining of the sinuses in most people, but initiate an immune respo
Two studies published in the March 24/31 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) look at the effect of medical treatment compared with hysterectomy on health-related quality of life for women with abnormal uterine bleeding.
According to background information in one of the articles, the Medicine or Surgery (Ms) randomized trial: “Hysterectomy [removal of the uterus] is the most common major surgical procedure performed in the United States for nonobstetric reasons. I
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered an interesting type of electronic behavior in a recently discovered class of superconductors known as cobalt oxides, or cobaltates. These materials operate quite differently from other oxide superconductors, namely the copper oxides (or cuprates), which are commonly referred to as high-temperature superconductors.
When traditional superconductors are cooled to nearly absolute zero (0 Kelvin or –452
An international team of physicists examining an extremely rare form of subatomic particle decay — a veritable golden needle in a micro-cosmic haystack of 7.8 trillion candidates — has discovered evidence for the highly sought process, which could be an indication of new forces beyond those incorporated in the Standard Model of particle physics. That long-standing theory of all particle physics precisely predicts the rate of such decays to be half that observed by the experimenters although it is s
Doctors are beginning the first test in the United States of a vaccine designed to protect people against one form of bird flu should an outbreak of the virus occur in humans. While the vaccine under study is not designed to protect against the precise bird-flu virus causing the current outbreak in poultry and in people, scientists will learn whether it protects against another strain of the virus that infects birds and people.
Physicians at the University of Rochester and Baylor College of
It’s a bitter irony of cancer therapy: treatments powerful enough to kill tumor cells also harm healthy ones, causing side effects that diminish the quality of the lives that are saved.
Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Center for Biologic Nanotechnology hope to prevent that problem by developing “smart” drug delivery devices that will knock out cancer cells with lethal doses, leaving normal cells unharmed, and even reporting back on their success. A graduate student inv
By examining trapped air bubbles in an ice core, researchers extend atmospheric record of methyl bromide over 300 years
Human activity in the Industrial Age – approximately the last 150 years – has significantly increased atmospheric levels of methyl bromide, a gas known for harming the ozone layer in the Earth’s stratosphere.
A research team led by UC Irvine scientist Eric Saltzman reached this conclusion after examining an ice core recovered from Antarctica. By studying air
Research in Agronomy Journal suggests producers reduce seeding rates when planting Roundup Ready varieties
Roundup Ready soybean acreage has drastically increased since their introduction in 1996. Approximately 84% of Wisconsin soybeans were planted to Roundup Ready in 2003 with similar trends cross the United States. While much research had been conducted with management of conventional soybeans, little had been conducted to see how Roundup Ready soybeans compare.
The study
In their first human studies of the feasibility of using brain signals to operate external devices, researchers at Duke University Medical Center report that arrays of electrodes can provide useable signals for controlling such devices. The research team is now working to develop prototype devices that may enable paralyzed people to operate “neuroprosthetic” and other external devices using only their brain signals.
While the new studies provide an initial proof of principle that human appl
A lactation program targeting mothers of very low birth weight babies (VLBWB) can be successful in raising the rate of breast-feeding among this group
Mother’s milk is well documented to be the optimal source of nutrition for newborn babies; however, mothers of very low birth weight (VLBW) babies (those who weigh less than 1500 grams — approximately 3.3 pounds) are among the least likely groups to initiate and sustain lactation.
Now, a study published in the Journal of
Dr. Tracey Sutton, a fish ecologist at the HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution in Ft. Pierce, Fla., has discovered a new species in a bizarre and elusive family of deep-sea predatory fish known collectively as dragonfish. The find, reported in the current issue of the journal Copeia, is the first new dragonfish species discovered in more than a decade.
The first specimen of the new species, dubbed Eustomias jimcraddocki, was large, compared to the average pencil-sized dragonfish at abou
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