New macular degeneration link found
Scientists at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center have come a step closer to understanding the genetics of macular degeneration, a disease of the retina that affects 13 million Americans, and causes the loss of central vision.
Research scientist Radha Ayyagari, Ph.D., has found that a gene associated with one retinal disease, retinitis pigmentosa, also causes a form of macular degeneration. In the August issue of Genomics, Ayyaga
Researchers in this week’s issue of The Lancet have developed a new method that can accurately predict how tumours will behave by the genes they express.
Dr Kathy Pritchard-Jones and her colleagues, from the Institute of Cancer Research, UK, studied children who had the commonest form of Wilms’ tumour with favourable histology. Overall, these children have a good chance of survival, but little is know about the genetic alterations that determine their outcome.
The group used a new metho
Children could be protected from a potentially lethal parasitic disease if dogs were fitted with insecticide-impregnated collars, suggest authors of a study in THE LANCET this week.
Zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis is caused by transmission of a parasite, Leishmania infantum, from animals (mostly domestic dogs) by blood-sucking sandflies. In people, clinical symptoms of the disease, which is often fatal if left untreated, include fever, swollen liver and spleen, and anaemia.
Clive Da
The long-term use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) does not increase the risk of endometrial cancer and may even protect the endometrium (the lining of the uterus) from the disease, concludes a study in this week’s BMJ.
In one of the largest long-term studies of its kind researchers from across the UK collected data from 534 postmenopausal women. Before the study began, 364 of the women had taken oestrogen and progestogen hormone replacement therapy in which the two hormones were given s
When physicists sandwiched together different types of semiconductor to create the first transistor in 1947, they made bulky vacuum valves obsolete and so revolutionised the electronics industry. Since then researchers have been pushing the boundaries of semiconductor technology hoping for another revolution. At the 26th International Conference on the Physics of Semiconductors in Edinburgh from 29 July to 2 August, progress towards ultra-high density magnetic recording, and a new branch of nanotech
Panama City, Panama-Today the world’s tropical forests are not only being cleared at an extraordinary rate, they are also increasingly being divided into fragments that can rapidly lose their original rich biodiversity. At the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, this conservation crisis was addressed in a symposium bringing together concerned investigators from throughout the tropics.
Organized by
More Internet information means more disinformation,warns a Dartmouth engineering professor
Why is the stock market fluctuating wildly these days? Is it poor earnings reports? Is it questionable accounting practices or CEO inefficiency? Or do investors trade frantically after they’ve read something on the Internet? If an investor reads a seemingly authoritative report about a company’s performance, he or she might be influenced to buy or sell stock.
Sometimes what
First Ground-Based Mid-Infrared Observations of Brown Dwarfs [1]
A team of European astronomers [2] have observed eight Brown Dwarfs, i.e., small and faint objects also known as “failed stars”, with the TIMMI2 infrared sensitive instrument at the ESO 3.6-m telescope on La Silla.
From two of these, mid-infrared radiation is detected – for the first time ever from such objects with a ground-based telescope. While the younger Brown Dwarf, aged a few million years, is found
R&D strongest in companies that hire CEO’s who are young, have background in marketing, science, R&D, says O.R. study
Research and Development spending to generate innovative new products is strongest at corporations whose CEO’s are younger, invest heavily in their own firms’ stock, and have experience in marketing, engineering, or R&D, according to a study in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).
In contras
A gene thought to keep a single X chromosome turned on in mice plays no such role in humans, Johns Hopkins researchers report in the August issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The finding is likely to relegate the disproven gene to relative obscurity, at least in humans, says Barbara Migeon, M.D., of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, whose laboratory found the human version of the gene in 2001. It also moves the search for the gene from the X chromosome to the
Although they have persisted for tens of millions of years, neotropical lowland forests have changed greatly in extent and composition due to climatic variation and to human impacts. In a symposium at the 2002 meetings of the Association for Tropical Biology, hosted by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), Panama, scientists presented the latest results of research on neotropical forests and their transformations up to the time of Columbus.
Bruce MacFadden, of the University o
Researchers from the State University of New York Upstate Medical University in Syracuse and the University of California, San Francisco, have found evidence that methadone treatment programs are effective platforms for providing tuberculosis (TB) preventive therapy to substance abusers. In the study, methadone treatment combined with directly observed TB preventive therapy improved adherence to and completion of TB preventive therapy by injection drug abusers.
Previous research has shown t
A new gene shown to be essential for pollen production in flowering plants has been discovered by scientists at Penn State University. A paper describing the team’s discovery of the gene, whose activity they found is necessary for the formation of cells required for pollen production, will be published in the 1 August 2002 issue of the journal Genes and Development.
“This research is the first indication that a specific kind of protein known as a receptor-linked protein kinase, which resul
A crucial piece of the puzzle into how the eye becomes wired to the brain has been revealed by scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., and UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.
In findings published in today’s edition of Neuron, the researchers report that a certain class of Eph receptors and ephrin ligands – proteins that cause cells to either repel or attract each other – control how nerve connections from the developing eye form maps that pre
Rockefeller researchers discover unexpected trigger
Often in science a novel set of experiments comes along that forces researchers to abandon old models in exchange for new ones that better fit their observations. This is the case in a new Nature report by Rockefeller University researchers, which finds that past models of cellular division in the simple yeast organism were focused on the wrong protein.
Until now, scientists thought that yeast cells began dividing into two
While extreme obesity has been associated with heart failure, until now, data have been limited regarding the influence of overweight and lesser degrees of obesity on the risk of this disease. According to a new study supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), excess body weight is strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of heart failure. This risk, which increases continuously with increasing degrees of body weight, is 34 percent higher for overweight in
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