Nano-sized silver particles open way to new breed of antimicrobial materials
Scientists can now incorporate silver particles into polypropylene to produce an anti-microbial material that could be used in anything from carpets, to napkins and surgical masks.
Silver has been medically proven to kill over 650 disease-causing organisms in the body and is also very safe. By combining silver and polypropylene to produce an organic-inorganic fibre, researchers have produced the first safe, ant
DNA repair enzymes do a much better job of repairing damaged genes if they are facing in one direction instead of the other. This and other details of how DNA repair is performed are reported in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at Washington State University and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
According to the new study, the repair enzymes “distinguish” between various positions and may be two to three
Scientists are working to understand what controls flowering time and maturity in soybean production
Scientists from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada are investigating the importance of flowering and how to control it. Early flowering and maturity reduces the risk of frost damage and this is an important variety trait for soybeans grown in areas with short growing seasons.
Flowering time in soybeans is controlled by day length. Soybean plants will flower early during short days a
Physicians at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital are using a new technology to treat patients with brain aneurysms. Matrix© coils provide better stabilization of the aneurysms and promote faster healing of the lesion. So far, two patients have received the Matrix© coil treatment at the MNI/H. The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital is one of three centres in Canada chosen to use the new Matrix© coil. The others are Toronto Western and Foothills Hospital in Calg
A collaboration of scientists mainly from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and at the University of Washington (Seattle) has made an important discovery linking the powerful cancer-causing oncogene, myc, with the gene behind the premature aging disease, Werner syndrome. Their finding reveals that the MYC oncoprotein turns-on Werner syndrome gene expression, and posits the Werner syndrome gene as a potentially important participant in MYC-induced tumorigenesis.
Werner syndrome is a rare gen
An emerging species of yeast, Candida parapsilosis is causing increasing numbers of infections because it spreads easily from medical devices into the blood stream of patients. Science Foundation Ireland has recently awarded almost €1 million to Dr. Geraldine Butler of the Conway Institute of Biomolecular and Biomedical Research, Dublin for her pioneering studies of this yeast.
As the yeast grows on the plastic surface of catheters, heart valves or intravenous lines, it forms a thin film ca
The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)
The outlook for patients with advanced rectal cancer is looking more promising with a new treatment approach developed by Professor Andres Cervantes’ team in Spain. The results of a trial of chemo-radiation followed by surgery were presented at the European Society of Medical Oncology’s conference in Edinburgh today (20 June), demonstrating how to prevent a recurrence of the cancer.
Rectal cancer is a very difficult c
The epidemic of HIV/AIDS in India is following the same pattern as that of sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, and it could become just as devastating unless preventive action is taken now, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, in a paper to be published Saturday (June 21) in the British Medical Journal.
“In hindsight, opportunities were missed to stem the explosive growth of AIDS in Africa,” says Dr. Malcolm Potts, professor of population and family planning at
An article published in the journal BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making describes the creation of the first comprehensive listing and classification of precancers, drawn from the medical literature. Using this classification, the precancers have been organized into groups that share similar biologic profiles and, hopefully, similar treatments.
Precancers precede invasive cancers. They are localized changes in tissue – lesions – identifiable by their morphologic structure. During car
Goran Ivanisevic’s offer to serve strawberries at this year’s Wimbledon may be a more useful job than he imagined. As well as delicious with cream, this symbol of the summer could help fight cancer according to scientists.
Research has shown that natural plant chemicals in strawberries can inhibit the growth of cancer cells. And now scientists at the Institute of Food Research have begun work to identify the compounds responsible.
“The modern strawberry is just one of hundreds of va
After seven years of work, researchers have succeeded in deducing the three-dimensional structure of an elusive and complex protein enzyme that is central to regulating the body’s largest family of receptors. These receptors, called G-protein-coupled receptors, nestle in the cell membrane and respond to external chemical signals such as hormones and neurotransmitters, to switch on cell machinery.
The thousands of such receptors throughout the body play a fundamental role in the mechan
Animal Models Offer Newborn Opportunity to Permanently Rescue Insulin-making Cells and Possibly Even Protect Against Future Onset
A common condition that leads to low birthweight babies may predispose the infants to obesity and diabetes later in life by denying cells in the pancreas access to the chemical signals they need to mature, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Moreover, the condition, which they have successfully modeled in rodents
In combating West Nile virus, information could be the ultimate repellant. In an effort to develop an early-warning system for potential West Nile virus outbreaks, Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center (NRCC) and the Department of Entomology will spend this summer collecting climate data in areas where disease-carrying mosquitoes are found.
The U.S. government-funded research, it is hoped, will result in the first Web-based, degree-day calculator that warns publ
NASA and university astronomers have found evidence the 11-year sunspot cycle is driven in part by a giant conveyor belt-like, circulating current within the Sun.
The astronomers, Dr. David Hathaway, Robert Wilson and Ed Reichmann of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and Dr. Dibyendu Nandy of Montana State University in Bozeman, reported their findings the week of June 16 at the annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Soci
First detection by infrared interferometry of an extragalactic object
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are one of the most energetic and mysterious phenomena in the universe. In some galaxies indeed, the core generates amounts of energy which surpass those of normal galaxies, such as the Milky Way, by many orders of magnitude.
The central engine of these power stations is thought to be a supermassive black hole. Indirect lines of evidence have suggested that these massive black
Discovery could lead to new drug therapy for some childhood cancers
Investigators at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital have discovered a previously unrecognized way that certain types of cancer cells can be forced to activate a self-destruction program called apoptosis.
The finding suggests that drugs designed to activate apoptosis might be effective anti-cancer therapies. This strategy would target specific molecules in the cancer cell rather than rely on chemothera
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