US National Academy of Sciences member and Stanford Professor Winslow R. Briggs will speak at the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) annual meeting July 24, 2004 in Orlando, Florida about findings in his studies of how plants sense the direction of light.

Most casual observers have likely noticed that seedlings on a windowsill will grow toward the light. This phenomenon, known as phototropism, is a manifestation of a sensitive system plants have for detecting light. This light sens

At his presentation at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) here July 24, 2004, Arizona State University Professor Charles J. Arntzen explained the newest advances in his research on plant-producing vaccines.

The development and introduction of new vaccines to improve global public health faces many challenges, Arntzen noted. The vaccines must address the need for lower costs, oral-administration (needle-free), heat stability, and they must include c

The gene therapy was able to perform in all muscles in the mouse, and would not necessarily have to carry the dystrophy gene

Researchers have found a delivery method for gene therapy that reaches all the voluntary muscles of a mouse – including heart, diaphragm and limbs – and reverses the process of muscle-wasting found in muscular dystrophy.

“We have a clear ’proof of principle’ that it is possible to deliver new genes body-wide to all the striated muscles of an

Studies have shown that overweight and obese mothers are significantly more likely to quit breast-feeding their infants sooner than do healthy-weight mothers. An important reason why is the weaker biological response that heavier women have to their babies’ suckling, according to a study conducted by researchers at Cornell University and Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“We found that overweight and obese women have a lower prolactin response to suckling,” says Kathleen Rasmussen,

Finding cancer in a tiny drop of body fluid containing relatively few cells now may be possible with a new method of analyzing multiple genes in small samples of DNA, the cellular building blocks of our genetic code. The molecular test may be especially helpful in detecting cancer cells in breast fluid.

Preliminary tests of the new method, which can detect cancer in a sample with as few as 50 cells, were conducted on a small number of breast tissue samples and are reported in the July 1 issu

Take off the gloves, salad eaters, in your fight against fat – you actually need the stuff if you want the greens’ cancer-fighting carotenoids to kick in.

A recent study conducted by Wendy White, associate professor of food science and nutrition at Iowa State University, shows that eating salad vegetables with some added fat promotes the absorption of lycopene, alpha- and beta-carotenes, all of which aid in the fight against cancer and heart disease.

On the flip side, ea

New research from Purdue University shows that even when people who stutter are not speaking, their brains process language differently.

“Traditionally, stuttering is thought of as a problem with how someone speaks, and little attention has been given to the complex interactions between neurological systems that underlie speaking,” says Christine Weber-Fox, an assistant professor of speech sciences who is interested in the brain’s involvement in language processing.

“We hav

A light-sensitive probe is being developed to help doctors spot breast cancer in some of the 70,000 American women each year whose malignancies fail to show up in needle biopsies.

The technology also holds the potential of minimizing the trauma associated with the procedure, in which a hollow needle the width of a pencil is used to collect small tissue samples for testing.

Doctors now rely on X-rays or ultrasound images to guide the needle to the area in question. They may

Despite a backdrop of declining rates, a new study concludes cervical cancer continues to be a more serious threat to women with low incomes and educational levels.

The study, published July 26, 2004 in the online edition of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds incidence and death rates for cervical cancer increased with increasing poverty and decreasing education levels.

While previous studies have linked socioeconomic status (SES) to the progno

Physical symptoms that impact quality of life, such as nausea and shortness of breath, may predict shorter survival for patients with terminal cancer.

A new study published July 26, 2004 in the online edition of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, finds a patient’s symptoms and results of quality of life assessments may provide important clues to an individual patient’s prognosis. Psychosocial factors, such as anxiety or spiritual distress, did

The Pamplona-based psychologist, Margarita Aguinaga Aguinaga, has recently defended her PhD at the Public University of Navarre on her research work into eating behaviour disorders – such as anorexia and bulimia – and drug consumption.

This descriptive and analytical study was in fact based on the requests for assistance for eating behaviour disorders registered in a centre in Pamplona between 2000 and 2002. 90 women patients were studied of which 46.7% were diagnosed anorexic, 43.4% with

To date epilepsy research has mainly concentrated on the transmission of the nerve cell signals to what are known as the synapses. However, recent observations by medical researchers from the US, France and the University of Bonn support the idea that in ’falling sickness’ the signal processing in the nerve cells (neurons) is altered: normally specific ion channels absorb the neuronal activity. In rats suffering from epilepsy, however, this signals brake seems impaired: they have far fewer functioni

The director of the Nanobioengineering Laboratory of the CREBEC and sub-director of the Parc Científic de Barcelona (PCB, Barcelona Science Park), Josep Samitier, will coordinate the research lines on the application of nanobiotechnologies for the differentiation of stem cells in the European project entitled CellPROM, the most funded project in the first call of the VI Framework Programme. Josep Samitier will preside the CellPROM Scientific Committee on Nanotechnologies and will join its Management

Competing theories about why brain cells die in Huntington’s disease may not be competitors after all, according to a report published July 23, 2004, in the online edition of the Annals of Neurology.

Researchers report finding minor molecular abnormalities of the sort proposed by these different theories in cells throughout the brain and even in the skin. Yet only select groups of cells in a few movement centers of the brain are so vulnerable to these disruptions that they degenerate a

A new gene mutation identified by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in Houston is part of the constellation of genes associated with susceptibility to developing type 1 diabetes. It could also play a role in the devastating complications of diabetes such as kidney failure.

The gene called SUMO-4 contributes a portion of the risk of getting this form of diabetes, which typically strikes youngsters, said Drs. David Owerbach, Kurt Bohren and Kenneth Gabbay. Owerbach and Bo

A protein characterized by researchers at Baylor College of Medicine plays an important role in communication between neurons. This protein is overactive (up-regulated) in children with Down’s Syndrome.

Identifying this protein – Dap160 — and its function is an important step in understanding how neurons communicate with one another, said Dr. Hugo Bellen, BCM professor of molecular and human genetics, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, and director of the program