A strain of E. coli that causes severe, sometimes deadly, intestinal problems relies on signals from beneficial human bacteria and a stress hormone to infect human cells, a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas has discovered.
The finding, which will appear online today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could lead to the development of beta blockers as a therapy to impede this cellular signaling system, causing the harmful bacteria to pass blindly through t
Injections of a stimulant agent into rat brains expanded blood vessels and improved blood flow, a finding that may lead to a new, non-invasive way to prevent stroke, researchers reported in today’s rapid access issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Rats treated with the growth-promoting substance granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) had almost twice as much arteriogenesis, the expansion of a brain artery, after one week compared to rats given s
The human brain combines motion and shape information to recognize faces and facial expressions, a new study suggests.
That new finding, part of an engineer’s quest to design computers that “see” faces the way humans do, provides more evidence concerning a controversy in cognitive psychology.
Were computers to become adept at recognizing faces and moods, they would be more user-friendly, said Aleix Martinez, assistant professor of electrical engineering at Ohio State University. T
An X-ray movie of the Vela pulsar, made from a series of observations by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, reveals a spectacularly erratic jet that varies in a way never seen before. The jet of high-energy particles whips about like an untended firehose at about half the speed of light. This behavior gives scientists new insight into the nature of jets from pulsars and black holes.
Chandra observed the Vela pulsar, a rotating neutron star, 13 times between January 2000 and August 2002. The
USC researchers have moved one step closer to understanding how the body fights harmful antigens – foreign molecules that trigger an immune response.
The team successfully simulated a mutation process that diversifies the proteins, or antibodies, responsible for immunity – a phenomenon known as somatic hypermutation. This process enables the body to fight off a wide range of diseases.
Their findings are detailed in the July 3 issue of the journal Nature.
“When performin
A research study under way at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is trying to find out if the popular anti-inflammatory drug Celebrex might do more than ease arthritis pain. Researchers at Northwestern Memorial are enrolling patients with early stage head and neck cancers or non-small cell lung cancers in a research study to see if Celebrex reduces the return of old tumors or the chance of getting a new cancer when taken after surgery or radiation treatments.
The double-blind, randomized study
Research News in the Journal of Pathology
Doctors working near to the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) Guangdong, China, have just published the first histopathological description of the effects of this viral infection in the Journal of Pathology.
Basing their findings on autopsies of three people who died of SARS, Dr Yanqing Ding and his colleagues showed the virus causes extensive disruption throughout the body.
The main pathological cha
When staff at the Reptile House in London Zoo thought they had an unidentified species of cobra on their hands, they turned to an expert in snake species identification- Dr Wolfgang Wüster of the University of Wales, Bangor’s School of Biological Sciences for assistance.
Dr Wüster, who has been involved in the identification of three other new snake species, agreed with keepers at the Zoo that this spitting cobra species was different to the red spitting cobra which it was originally thought
Research by Austrian geneticists has raised the possibility that stem cells[1] could be isolated from amniotic fluid – the protective ’bath water’ that surrounds the unborn baby.
Geneticist Professor Markus Hengstschläger and his team at the University of Vienna have isolated a subgroup of cells from amniotic fluid that express a protein called Oct-4 – known to be a key marker for human pluripotent stem cells.
Reporting the findings today (Monday 30 June) in Europe’
Stop smoking and leave your car at home. Encouraging people in cities to make simple lifestyle changes, such as using alternative forms of transport to the car, can significantly reduce their exposure to harmful air pollutants. The findings of the first in a series of Europe-wide air quality studies was announced today in Brussels by European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin and Didier Gosuin, Environment Minister of the Brussels-Capital Region. The first phase of the “Population Exposure to Ai
Pelvic floor exercises for men have been found to be highly effective in restoring erectile function according to recently published research. Research at the Faculty of Health and Social Care at the University of the West of England, Bristol, shows that pelvic floor exercises result in the same overall improvement rate seen in a large trial of men taking Viagra.
Fifty-five men with an average age of 59 years who had experienced erectile dysfunction for 6 months or more took part in the tri
In the current issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins researchers report that injection of human stem cells into the fluid around the spinal cord of each of 15 paralyzed rats clearly improved the animals’ ability to control their hind limbs — but not at all in the way the scientists had expected.
“Our first hypothesis was that functional recovery came from human cells reconstituting the nerve circuits destroyed by the paralysis-inducing virus we gave the rats,” says first
High-Tech Device Allows Quadriplegic Man to Take Medication Without a Nurse’s Help
Four Johns Hopkins undergraduates have a designed and constructed a computer-guided pill dispensing machine that will enable a quadriplegic man to lead a more independent life. Using a mouth stick, Robert Arthur Williams will be able to order one of up to 12 different medications stored inside the machine. Then, when Williams taps a “slam switch” (he has limited mobility in his right arm), the mac
This innovative instrument is aimed to hunt the elusive gravitational waves using extremely sophisticated technological solutions.
On July 23rd in Cascina, near Pisa (Italy), the new Virgo interferometer will be inaugurated. The innovative Virgo gravitational-wave-detector is the outcome of more than ten years of collaborative research and development between the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn, Italy) and the National Scientific Research Centre (Cnrs, France). Letizia Mor
Police should hand out more traffic tickets. While Robert Tibshirani, PhD, won’t win any popularity contests with that sentiment, the Stanford School of Medicine researcher and his colleagues at the University of Toronto report in a paper being published in the June 28 issue of The Lancet that vigilant traffic law enforcement may reduce fatal car crashes.
The team examined the records of drivers in Ontario, Canada, and found that receiving a traffic ticket reduces a driver’s risk of dying i
About 200 genes identified
Tracing all the genetic changes that flow from a single mutation, UCSF scientists have identified the kinds of genes and systems in the body that ultimately allow a doubling of lifespan in the roundworm, C. elegans. Humans share many of these genes, and the researchers think the new findings offer clues to increasing human youthfulness and longevity as well.
Using DNA microarray technology, the researchers found that the single life-extending mutat
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