Depression is the most prevalent psychiatric disease. The number of new cases rises and the disease manifests itself at an earlier age.
Depression is lower in populations with higher fish consumption. This leads to the question whether there might be something in fish that prevents depression or more general that is required for proper functioning of the brain.
Fats are major structural components of brain tissue. These fats are special in that they contain DHA. DHA is a fatt
The permafrost in the mires of subarctic Sweden is undergoing dramatic changes. The part of the soils that thaws in the summer, the so-called active layer, has become deeper since 1970 and the permafrost has disappeared altogether in some locations. This has lead to significant changes in the vegetation composition and subsequent increase in emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane. Methane is 25 times more potent compared to carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas.
Behind these new findin
Content and software vendors wary of online piracy will be heartened by technology from PAIDFAIR that protects and measures IP usage for e-commerce.
The focus of the 18 month IST programme-funded project was to hold demonstrations aimed at giving trust and confidence to software and IP content vendors and users, to ultimately create an European or even worldwide standard for accounting of software and IP content use.
Project manager Oliver Winzenried says most of the project
Using next generation Internet technologies, MOICANE has created and tested an IP-QoS pilot that offers a virtual lab environment of ’networked collaboratories’, where research institutes, universities, manufacturers and service providers can collaborate, and remotely share applications, knowledge, infrastructure and devices.
Testing the IP-QoS pilot
According to project coordinator Pietro Polese of Alcatel Italia, the IP-QoS pilot “worked very well. The scope of t
Researchers in obstetrics and gynecology and reproductive endocrinology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and the University of Alabama at Birmingham suggest that specialists should consider the routine use of laparoscopic evaluation when women are unable to become pregnant after four cycles of the “fertility pill” clomiphene citrate. They made their recommendation after reviewing 92 patient cases over an eight-year period. Some physicians have in the past few years forgone laparoscopy
Scientists report that a protein made in excess in the majority of human tumors plays a significant role in the ability of cancer cells to resist traditional treatments. The research study, published in the February issue of Cancer Cell, provides new insight into the biology of cancer cells and may have a significant impact in the design of future, more effective cancer treatments.
Tumor formation results when cells divide in an unregulated fashion and many chemotherapeutic agents are thoug
A recent finding may lead to new treatments for multiple myeloma, an incurable cancer of immune cells called plasma cells that are present in the blood and bone marrow. The research, published in the February issue of Cancer Cell, reveals a frequent and common abnormal cellular event that occurs in about half of all myeloma cases and identifies an attractive target for therapeutic intervention.
A research team led by Dr. Louis M. Staudt from the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryla
Short-Term Hormone Replacement Therapy Safe Following Removal of Ovaries
Two studies from the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania appearing online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) have important implications for women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. The first study shows that bilateral prophylactic mastectomy can reduce breast cancer risk by more than 90% in women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, and may be even more effective when performed concurrently w
Scientists at Jefferson Medical College and Jefferson’s Kimmel Cancer Center have discovered one part of the mechanism behind a popular anti-cholesterol drug.
Steven Farber, Ph.D., assistant professor of microbiology and immunology at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, Eric Smart, Ph.D., at the University of Kentucky and their co-workers have found that treating hypercholesterolemic mice with the drug ezetimibe (Zetia) disrupts a complex of two pro
Better drugs, improved industrial applications and even cleaner laundry may be possible with a new computer method to predict which hybrid enzymes are likely to have high activity, according to a team of Penn State chemists and chemical engineers.
“FamClash is quite successful at qualitatively predicting the pattern of the specific activity of the hybrids,” the researchers report in this week’s online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “By identifying incompat
Patients who develop diabetes shortly after kidney transplantation have poorer short-term outcomes than those who had the disease before transplant, according to a Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center study.
“Because patients with diabetes often pose many medical challenges due to the complications of the disease, it was surprising to see that these patients who’d been dealing with diabetes for years, ended up better off than the patients who only developed diabetes after their t
Transgenic mouse shows other intriguing physiological changes
A transgenic mouse designed to grow more hair than other mice has provided University of Southern California researchers with some surprising results-and insight into the development and regulation of growth in epithelial organs that extend beyond skin and hair.
In an upcoming paper in the American Journal of Pathology—now available online—Cheng-Ming Chuong, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology at the Keck School o
A new study by researchers at San Francisco VA Medical Center (SFVAMC) moves in on the physiological basis for the bone density loss experienced by people subjected to prolonged periods of bed rest and by astronauts who fly lengthy missions under the weightless conditions of space.
The work, conducted in rats, is an important step toward developing therapies to prevent such bone loss, says senior author Daniel Bikle, MD, co-director of the Special Diagnostic and Treatment Unit at SFVAMC and
Women who were sexually abused as children are much more likely to be current smokers than women who weren’t abused as children. That’s a key finding of a preliminary study on possible connections between sexual abuse and smoking — a topic that has been largely overlooked in medical research.
The study is published in the February issue of the journal Addictive Behaviors.
“We found childhood sexual abuse is a strong predictor of smoking for women,” says Colmar De Von Figueroa-Mo
The genetic modifications that improve animals for human consumption also could doom populations if released into the wild, according to a Purdue University research team.
Biologist Rick Howard and his colleagues have discovered a paradox that crops up when new genes are deliberately inserted into a fish’s chromosomes to make the animal grow larger. While the genetically modified fish will be bigger and have more success at attracting mates, they may also produce offspring that are less like
Physicians may not need to prescribe antibiotics when treating a common skin infection in children, according to researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
The findings, which appear in the February issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, show draining a skin or soft-tissue abscess – a pus-filled boil – and packing the wound with gauze is adequate therapy for simple skin abscesses. Patients still need to seek medical attention for these boils even though they may no
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