EPSRC and Philips Research have announced a £6m agreement to fund research and training in biomedical technology. The research is aimed at the development of next generation diagnostic and monitoring technologies for medical devices. Prime application examples are likely to include health monitoring while travelling in an ambulance between a medical emergency and hospital, state-of-the-art biosensors for more general diagnostics and measurement purposes within healthcare facilities, and the r

Rapid identification of pathogens responsible for disease outbreaks critical for containment and implementation of public health measures

Researchers at the Greene Infectious Disease Laboratory at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health led by Thomas Briese, PhD, associate professor of Epidemiology, have developed a rapid, comprehensive diagnostic test for viral hemorrhagic fevers caused by the Ebola and Marburg viruses, as well as others. The new diagnostic t

A drug that is marketed to treat Alzheimer’s disease also improves cognitive function, mood and quality of life in brain tumor patients following radiation therapy, according to a research team at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

After the patients were treated for six months with donepezil (trade name: Aricept), there was a significant improvement in their symptoms, the researchers reported in the March 17 issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

“Eac

Most women with cancer in one breast who decide to have the unaffected breast removed along with the diseased breast don’t regret the decision and have a quality of life equal to patients who didn’t have a preventive mastectomy, according to a survey of breast cancer survivors.

“A large majority of women were satisfied with their decisions to have the preventive mastectomy in addition to their primary breast cancer treatment,” said Ann Geiger, Ph.D., lead author, fro

Healthcare decisions must remain in the hands of healthcare professionals for the sake of patients

A balance must be struck between physicians’ responsibility to treat chronic pain and the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) duty to combat drug abuse, according to a series of seven commentaries by national thoughtleaders published today in the February issue of Pain Medicine.

The commentaries explore the current state of the use of pain medicine from a v

The recipients of the second round of Science and Innovation Awards have been announced by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Funding has been awarded to build the UK’s research base in the areas of nanometrology, statistics, plasma physics and the Mathematics-Computer Science interface.

Science and Innovation Awards were introduced by EPSRC in 2005 to address the issue of giving support to strategic areas of research that are particu

In a groundbreaking new study, researchers from the University of Michigan and Harvard University use cutting-edge brain-scanning technology to explore how different regions of the brain are activated when we think about certain qualities of brands and products. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, is the first to use fMRI to assess consumer perceptions and has important implications for the use of metaphorical human-like traits in branding.

“[fMRI] allows one to gaug

At the right dose, vitamin D is important for bone development and may help protect against the development of several cancers, particularly colorectal cancer. However, large quantities designed to exploit the vitamin’s anticancer properties can lead to a toxic overdose of calcium in the blood. Now, research done at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center indicates that it may be possible to separate the anticancer properties of vitamin D from its other functions.

Specialists of one of laboratories at the Department of Chemistry, Astrakhan State University, are sometimes involved in a strange exercise. They take a decent piece of smoked fish or sausage, grind it in a mincing machine, add water, shake it up for about 20 minutes, then filter it and throw away the disagreeable mass, into which the appetizing product was turned into. The remaining solution is analyzed. Here it becomes clear that one should not grudge at all the product used for the analysis. O

Researchers studying strains of a lethal canine virus and a related human virus have determined why the canine virus was able to spread so quickly from cats to dogs, and then from sick dogs to healthy dogs. Their studies may lead to a new understanding of the critical molecular factors that permit viruses to jump from one species to another — information that could be helpful in assessing how much of a threat avian influenza is to humans.

In advance online publication of a paper in the A

A paper published in Nano Letters is first to show that bone cells will adhere to and grow on a carbon nanotube scaffold.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside have published findings that show, for the first time, that bone cells can grow and proliferate on a scaffold of carbon nanotubes.

The paper, titled Bone Cell Proliferation on Carbon Nanotubes, appears in the March 8 edition of Nano Letters, a journal of the American Chemical Society. Lead aut

New class of selective inhibitors paralyze essential plasmodium enzymes

The most dangerous variant of the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, infects up to 600 million people every year. The search for new effective therapies is thus an urgent area of research. An international team headed by François Diederich has now found a new point of attack: using a novel class of inhibitors, the researchers aim to block certain plasmodium enzymes known as plasmepsins, “starving ou

University at Buffalo chemists have for the first time identified at wastewater treatment plants the metabolites of two antibiotics and a medial imaging agent.

The data, which the UB scientists will present tomorrow at the Pittsburgh Conference on Analytical Chemistry and Applied Spectroscopy being held in Orlando, will allow wastewater treatment plants to begin monitoring for these byproducts.

The results also reinforce concerns about excreted pharmaceutical compoun

Whether depressed patients will respond to an antidepressant depends, in part, on which version of a gene they inherit, a study led by scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has discovered. Having two copies of one version of a gene that codes for a component of the brain’s mood-regulating system increased the odds of a favorable response to an antidepressant by up to 18 percent, compared to having two copies of the other, more common version.

Since the less common vers

Scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and colleagues have developed new research mice to help them better understand how the body makes and uses “good” cholesterol to protect against heart attacks and strokes. Their latest findings are reported in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

“Being able to develop drugs to raise levels of good cholesterol depends on knowing more about the how and where the particles are formed,” said John S. Park

Botulinum neurotoxin A can be either the greatest wrinkle remover or one of the world’s most potent biological weapons. To perform either job, however, the toxin must first find a way to enter cells.

But understanding how the toxin — one of seven neurotoxins produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum — enters nerve cells has proved elusive for scientists. Despite a decade-long search for the receptor by labs around the world, researchers had come up empty handed.