ALEPPO, SYRIA (20 April 2011): Researchers meeting at a scientific conference in Aleppo this week reported that aggressive new strains of wheat rust diseases – called stem rust and stripe rust – have decimated up to 40% of farmers' wheat fields in recent harvests. Areas affected are North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucuses, including Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Morocco, Ethiopia, and Kenya.
Body
New York, NY, April 20, 2011 - A 20-member blue-ribbon panel, the Study Group on Corporate Boards, co-sponsored by Columbia Business School and the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, today released "Bridging Board Gaps," a report designed to improve board performance and effectiveness by offering a series of recommendations in critical areas of governance.
The costly, often-frustrating quest for new ways of preventing and treating diseases that strike vegetables, fruits, and other food crops bears striking similarity to the better-known saga of the pharmaceutical industry's pricey search for new drugs for humans. That's the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.
DURHAM, N.C. – A major discovery about an enzyme's structure has opened a window on understanding DNA repair. Scientists at Duke University Medical Center have determined the structure of a nuclease that will help scientists to understand several DNA repair pathways, a welcome development for cancer research.
DNA repair pathways are very important in the context of cancer biology and aging, but the tools the cell uses to do those repairs are not well understood.
FAIRFAX, Va.—The Society of Interventional Radiology has a long-term commitment to radiation safety, taking a leading role in measuring and assessing radiation dosage; developing educational programs on radiation safety, radiation protection and reduction of skin dosage; and promoting the safety of patients and health care professionals.
Researchers of Apoptosis and Cancer Group of the Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBELL) have found that a small molecule, Nutlin-3a, an antagonist of MDM2 protein, stimulates the signalling pathway of another protein, p53. By this way, it induces cell death and senescence (loss of proliferative capacity) in brain cancer, a fact that slows its growth. These results open the door for MDM2 agonists as new treatments for glioblastomas. The study has been published at the journal PLoS ONE.
In a multicellular organism, different cells fulfill a range of diversified functions. Often such specialization depends on the delivery of molecular goods to distinct places within a cell. It ensures that particular functions only occur at defined cellular sites. This establishment of intracellular asymmetry in the otherwise fluid environment of the cell cytoplasm requires active transport processes. Messenger RNAs (mRNA) represent an especially important type of freight. They are copies of genetic information stored in the nucleus.
ACE inhibitors, commonly used to control high blood pressure and heart failure in women, may be associated with an increased risk of recurrence in women who have had breast cancer, according to a study by researchers at UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Research from Perth's Telethon Institute for Child Health Research has found a link between the number of stressful events experienced during pregnancy and increased risk of behavioural problems in children.
The study has just been published online in the latest edition of the top international journal Development and Psychopathology.
Common stressful events included financial and relationship problems, difficult pregnancy, job loss and issues with other children and major life stressors were events such as a death in the family.
Local extinction rates of American pikas have increased nearly five-fold in the last 10 years, and the rate at which the climate-sensitive species is moving up mountain slopes has increased 11-fold, since the 20th century, according to a study soon to be published in Global Change Biology. The research strongly suggests that the American pika's distribution throughout the Great Basin is changing at an increasingly rapid rate.
The first research to actively analyze adult male sea turtles (Caretta caretta) using satellite tracking to link geography with pollutants has revealed the potential risks posed to this threatened species by manmade chemicals. The research, published today in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, examines the different levels of chemicals in the blood of both migratory and residential turtles.
Patients admitted to hospital with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) face a sixfold greater risk of death if they become infected with Clostridium difficile, a new study has found. The researchers say IBD patients should be screened on admission to protect them from serious illness.
IBD, consisting of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, affects around 240,000 people in the UK and its symptoms include abdominal pain and diarrhoea. When sufferers experience a bout of severe symptoms, they often need to be admitted to hospital.
Experts today challenge the view that popular drugs to prevent disease - like statins and antihypertensives to prevent heart disease and stroke, or bisphosphonates to prevent fractures – represent value for money.
In a paper published on bmj.com today, Teppo Järvinen and colleagues argue that the benefits seen when these drugs are tested in clinical trials may not apply in the real world.
In this week's PLoS Medicine, Stephan Harbarth from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and colleagues argue that the International Health Regulations (IHR) should be applied to the global health threat of antimicrobial resistance. They say that certain events marking the emergence and spread of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, especially those involving new pan-resistant strains for which there are no suitable treatments, may constitute a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and are notifiable to WHO under the IHR notification requirement.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala - The international team of the ENCODE, or Encyclopedia Of DNA Elements project, has created an overview of its ongoing large-scale efforts to interpret the human genome sequence.