FRANKFURT. Birds have a light-dependent compass in their eyes. This compass gives them information about the direction of the Earth's magnetic field. Prof. Roswitha Wiltschko's research group at Goethe University Frankfurt, together with French colleagues, has elucidated how this compass works at the molecular level.
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People with type 2 diabetes could be helped by the discovery of a gene linked to leanness.
A drug that affects the activity of the gene has been shown to reduce the symptoms of type 2 diabetes in obese mice.
Researchers say an improved version of the medicine could be developed as a therapy for people with the condition.
The treatment improved sensitivity to insulin - a hormone that controls blood sugar levels - and could also help obese people reduce their risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
MPs have expressed an overwhelming willingness to use a proposed new service to swiftly link them with academics in relevant areas to help ensure policy is based on the latest evidence.
The government is pursuing a drive towards evidence-based policy, yet policy makers still struggle to incorporate evidence into their decisions. One reason for this is limited easy access to the latest research findings or to academic experts who can respond to questions about evidence quickly.
In these areas, the number of species can be accurately controlled; however species numbers tend to be relatively low and the food webs therefore not very complex. In a new study, researchers have now investigated to which extent the results from such experiments translate to real landscapes. To this end, they collected all of the leaves from an area of ground measuring one square metre in 80 forests in Germany and on Sumatra (Indonesia) in order to examine the animals living there: primarily insects, spiders and snails; a total of over 12,000 individuals from almost 1,200 species.
A small survey of residents of a Florida Keys neighborhood where officials hope to release genetically modified mosquitos to potentially reduce the threat of mosquito-borne illnesses such as Zika finds a lack of support for the control method, according to new research from former and current students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
For seven months, three-year-old Emil Abbasov underwent chemotherapy to fight the tangerine-sized, cancerous tumor growing in his abdomen. But each time, the tumor resisted harder. Each time, he felt more side effects.
Surgery helped remove some of the tumor, but not enough. So doctors at University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital took a new approach, combining the forces of immunotherapy and chemotherapy in a nonconventional way.
After 17 rounds of the combination treatment, Emil's tumor was completely gone.
For those worried about the burden of old age, a recent Harvard study has some good news.
PHILADELPHIA - Vaccines are usually medicine's best defense against the world's deadliest microbes. However, HIV is so mutable that it has so far effectively evaded both the human immune system and scientists' attempts to make an effective vaccine to protect against it. Now, researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have figured out how to make a much-improved research tool that they hope will open the door to new and better HIV vaccine designs. George M.
The RNA Molecular Biology Laboratory headed by Professor Denis Lafontaine at the Université libre de Bruxelles has just published a study in Nature Communications revealing essential aspects of the regulation of the anti-tumor protein p53.
A finding by a University of Central Florida researcher that unlocks a means of controlling materials at the nanoscale and opens the door to a new generation of manufacturing is featured online today in the journal Nature.
Using a pair of pliers in each hand and gradually pulling taut a piece of glass fiber coated in plastic, associate professor Ayman Abouraddy found that something unexpected and never before documented occurred -- the inner fiber fragmented in an orderly fashion.
PITTSBURGH, June 6, 2016 - Immunotherapy doubles overall survival and improves quality of life, with fewer side effects, in a treatment-resistant and rapidly progressing form of head and neck carcinoma, reports a large, randomized international trial co-led by investigators at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI). The new trial was considered so successful that it was stopped early to allow patients in the comparison group to receive the new drug.
The successful results of a University of Liverpool led drug trial aimed at developing new therapeutic approaches to cancer have been presented at two American medical conferences.
The drug trial (APR-246) aimed to test the effects of a novel compound on a specific protein, p53, found to be mutated in over 50% of all cancers.
The p53 gene is from a class of genes called tumour suppressors which are mutated in all cases of one form of ovarian cancer (high grade serous), but have proved difficult to target in the past.
The testing of nearly 5,000 forgotten and backlogged rape kits in and near Cleveland has led to investigations, indictments, prosecutions -- and, already more than 250 convictions.
But besides bringing justice to long-ignored victims and taking scores of violent offenders off the streets, the efforts of the Cuyahoga County Sexual Assault Kit Task Force are also helping to change how law enforcement agencies and the academic community view and prosecute rape.
MAYWOOD, IL - A study led by Loyola Medicine researchers may help reassure patients who worry the breast cancer drug tamoxifen could increase their risk of uterine cancer.
A paper published today in Nature Genetics describes the discovery of a new gene, TMEM230, associated with Parkinson's disease. At the cellular level, Parkinson's disease typically entails the loss of cells that produce dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in neuron-to-neuron communication. TMEM230 is the first gene associated with the disease that has been linked to the trafficking of vesicles that carry neurotransmitters between neurons and therefore illuminates a possible mechanism to explain the disease.