Rockville, MD – Researchers are investigating microneedles, nanoparticles and polymer carriers as potential new techniques to combat the leading cause of visual impairment and blindness in the United States, according to a report from the Third Annual ARVO/Pfizer Ophthalmics Research Institute Conference.
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WASHINGTON, DC -- Non-white medical students are more likely to embrace orthodox medicine and reject therapies traditionally associated with their cultures. That is one finding from an international study that measures the attitudes of medical students toward complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). While seemingly counter-intuitive, white students view CAM more favorably than their non-white counterparts, the study authors say.
Biologists at Washington University in St. Louis have made major headway in explaining a mechanism by which plant cells silence potentially harmful genes.
Differential gene expression profoundly influences the way in which organisms grow and develop. For instance, although every cell in the human body has the same genetic information, different subsets of the DNA get activated to make an eye different from a toe. RNA polymerases, the enzymes responsible for making RNA from DNA templates, are key players in determining which genes get switched on and which get left off.
Treating infectious diseases while meeting escalating costs to do so continues to pose worldwide challenges, with one of the main issues being the ability to provide an adequate supply of drugs to treat infectious diseases. While this may sound simple, ensuring a sufficient supply of effective drugs to each country that needs them remains a challenge until the demand for those drugs is accurately predicted and understood.
That photo of your smiling kids on the refrigerator door might do more than justmake you feel good; you might make healthier food choices after looking at it. Anew study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that positive moods canincrease our ability to understand the big picture.
"A positive mood enhances efforts to attain future well-being, encourages broaderand flexible thinking, and increases openness to information," write the study'sauthors Aparna A. Labroo (University of Chicago) and Vanessa M. Patrick(University of Georgia).
What does it take for marketers to reach customers who are already loyal to aparticular brand? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research examinesbrand loyalty and the way it affects perceptions of advertising.
Chemists can learn from some shellfish. Mussels, for example, produce an adhesive that sticks strongly to metal and stone, even under water. Chemists have reproduced the protein responsible for this in a synthetic material that contains the same adhesive elements. Irrespective of whether the adhesive is completely made up of these elements or whether they represent just a tenth of its make-up, adhesion is equally good. These findings were made by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.
SALT LAKE CITY – Nov. 17, 2008 – Researchers at the University of Utah are enrolling people in a new clinical trial that uses a patient's own stem cells to treat ischemic and non-ischemic heart failure.
The one-year Cardiac Repair Cell Treatment of Patients with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (IMPACT-DCM) study will look at the safety of injecting Cardiac Repair Cells (CRC) and their ability to improve heart function.
MAYWOOD – The temperature might not be the only thing plummeting this winter. Many people also will experience a decrease in their vitamin D levels, which can play a role in heart disease, according to a new review article in Circulation.
Vitamin D deficiency results in part from reduced exposure to sunlight, which is common during cold weather months when days are shorter and more time is spent indoors.
Why do so many of us give up on those New Year's resolutions to lose weight orcurb luxury spending? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says ithas to do with the way our goals intersect with our natures.
The pathbreaking study by authors Cait Poynor (University of Pittsburgh) andKelly L. Haws (Texas A&M University) is one of the first to try to understandwhy some people have more trouble than others regulating behaviors. It uncoverssome important differences in the way people categorize "necessities" and"luxuries."
WASHINGTON, D.C. - A team of international scientists has identified three genes associated with the body's processing of fats that may increase susceptibility to kidney cancer. The findings were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Canadian researchers are trying to answer why some smokers develop lung cancer while others remain disease free, despite similar lifestyle changes.
Results were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more people die from lung cancer than any other cancer type. In fact, according to 2004 data, more people died from lung cancer than breast, prostate and colon cancers combined.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - New data presented at the American Association for Cancer Research's Seventh Annual International Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research meeting outlines new data, which assesses breast cancer risk among women with a strong family history of breast cancer, but without a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. This may facilitate earlier detection and prevention among high-risk women.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Researchers who have been following the health of more than 120,000 residents of the Netherlands for more than two decades have found that smoking is associated with two forms of esophageal cancer as well as a form of stomach cancer, and that drinking alcohol is strongly linked to one form of esophageal cancer.
Men with a family history of prostate cancer and African-American men are particularly susceptible to the disease, with a twofold to sevenfold increased risk. Assessing risk in these populations has been difficult.
"There have been years of effort to try to identify genes and genetic mutations associated with prostate cancer as there are for breast cancer," said Veda N. Giri, M.D., director of the Prostate Cancer Risk Assessment Program (PRAP) at Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia. "Prostate cancer is a more genetically complex disease."