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High childhood mortality in malaria regions likely explained by chronic inflammation of blood vessels
Date: Sep-20-2013Recurrent episodes of malaria cause chronic inflammation in blood vessels that might predispose to future infections and may increase susceptibility to cardiovascular disease, a Wellcome Trust study in Malawian children finds. The findings could explain the indirect burden of malaria on childhood deaths in areas where the disease is highly prevalent and children experience multiple clinical episodes of malaria in a year. Malaria is caused by infection with a parasite that starts by infecting the liver and then moves into red blood cells...
Focus on neurodegenerative pathway offers hope for patients with Huntington's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease
Date: Sep-20-2013University of Adelaide researchers have identified a likely molecular pathway that causes a group of untreatable neurodegenerative diseases, including Huntington's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease. The group of about 20 diseases, which show overlapping symptoms that typically include nerve cell death, share a similar genetic mutation mechanism - but how this form of mutation causes these diseases has remained a mystery...
Shared mechanisms in fragile X syndrome, autism and schizophrenia
Date: Sep-20-2013Several psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia, autism and intellectual disabilities share the same brain cell abnormalities: the contacts (synapses) between brain cells are poorly developed and not functional. Claudia Bagni and her group associated with the VIB, KU Leuven, and Tor Vergata University in Italy, in collaboration with leading laboratories in the Netherlands, France, USA and UK have unraveled how a single protein (CYFIP1) orchestrates two biological processes to form proper contacts between brain cells...
For the first time nanoscale neuronal activity can be measured
Date: Sep-20-2013A new technique that allows scientists to measure the electrical activity in the communication junctions of the nervous systems has been developed by a researcher at Queen Mary University of London. The junctions in the central nervous systems that enable the information to flow between neurons, known as synapses, are around 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair (one micrometer and less) and as such are difficult to target let alone measure...
Breast conserving treatment with radiotherapy reduces risk of local recurrence
Date: Sep-20-2013Results of EORTC trial 10853 appearing in the Journal of Clinical Oncology show that breast conserving treatment combined with radiotherapy reduces the risk of local recurrence in women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). The incidence of DCIS has been increasing in the past decades, and this has been attributed to increased detection through breast cancer screening using mammograms. In the EORTC study, adjuvant radiotherapy after local excision reduced the incidence of both in situ and invasive local recurrences by a factor of two and resulted in an overall lower risk of mastectomy...
New technology presented at OSA's Frontiers in Optics meeting will help fight cancer
Date: Sep-20-2013Scientists seeking new ways to fight cancer often try to understand the subtle, often invisible, changes to DNA, proteins, cells, and tissue that alter the body's normal biology and cause disease. Now, to aid in that fight, a team of researchers has developed a sophisticated new optical imaging tool that enables scientists to look deep within tumors and uncover their inner workings...
Computer-mediated steering could save lives
Date: Sep-20-2013It can take up to two and a half turns to steer a modern vehicle. While turning, the driver must release the wheel in the necessary hand-over-hand movement, which is unsafe. In his upcoming HFES 2013 Annual Meeting* paper, Rene Guerster, who has been concerned with steering improvement since he was a child, proposes an alternative steering device that could help to prevent hazards such as rear-end collisions and rollovers caused by panic oversteering. He will present his work on October 4 at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront Hotel...
Battlefield outcomes may be affected by emotional attachment to robots
Date: Sep-20-2013Too busy to vacuum your living room? Let Roomba the robot do it. Don't want to risk a soldier's life to disable an explosive? Let a robot do it. It's becoming more common to have robots sub in for humans to do dirty or sometimes dangerous work. But researchers are finding that in some cases, people have started to treat robots like pets, friends, or even as an extension of themselves...
Trade-offs for fair skin
Date: Sep-20-2013The proclivity of Spaniards to bask in regions like the Costa del Sol while their northern European counterparts must stay under cover to protect their paler skin or risk skin cancer is due in large part to the pigment producing qualities of the MC1R gene locus. The MC1R gene, expressed in skin and hair follicle cells, is more diverse in Eurasian populations compared to African populations. Now, a team of researchers led by Santos Alonso, et. al...
The mind's perception of sweetness altered by carbonation
Date: Sep-20-2013Carbonation, an essential component of popular soft drinks, alters the brain's perception of sweetness and makes it difficult for the brain to determine the difference between sugar and artificial sweeteners, according to a new article in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association...
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