ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A study led by researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center showed in animal studies that new cancer drug compounds they developed shrank tumors, with few side effects.
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At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), researchers of the DFG Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) succeeded in specifically cultivating cells on three-dimensional structures. The fascinating thing is that the cells are offered small "holds" in the micrometer range on the scaffold, to which they can adhere. Adhesion is possible to these holds only, not to the remaining structure. For the first time, cell adhesion and, hence, cell shape are influenced precisely in three dimensions.
Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed a gold plated window as the transparent electrode for organic solar cells. Contrary to what one might expect, these electrodes have the potential to be relatively cheap since the thickness of gold used is only 8 billionths of a metre. This ultra-low thickness means that even at the current high gold price the cost of the gold needed to fabricate one square metre of this electrode is only around £4.5.
The huge tsunami triggered by the 9.0 Tohoku Earthquake destroyed coastal towns near Sendai in Japan, washing such things as houses and cars into the ocean. Projections of where this debris might head have been made by Nikolai Maximenko and Jan Hafner at the International Pacific Research Center, University of Hawaii at Manoa. Maximenko has developed a model based on the behavior of drifting buoys deployed over years in the ocean for scientific purposes. What this model predicts about the tsunami debris can be seen in Figure 1.
PHILADELPHIA (April 6, 2011) – Following years of futile attempts, new research from the Monell Center demonstrates that living human taste cells can be maintained in culture for at least seven months. The findings provide scientists with a valuable tool to learn about the human sense of taste and how it functions in health and disease.
This advance ultimately will assist efforts to prevent and treat taste loss or impairment due to infection, radiation, chemotherapy and chemical exposures.
Excess fat around the hips and belly may not really be compatible with current beauty ideals, but, to a certain degree, it is a normal, even vital energy store of our body. However, it is a different matter if the organism stores fat in organs such as the liver, pancreas or muscles. This is a clear sign of a metabolic disorder.
BINGHAMTON, NY -- Two of the biggest influences on children — parents and schools — may unintentionally contribute to childhood obesity. That's the observation of Susan Terwilliger, clinical associate professor in the Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University, who studies the problem.
"As a pediatric nurse practitioner I've taken care of children and their families for about 30 years, and I saw this huge increase [in childhood obesity] from 5 to 30 percent over about a 10-year period when I was in the school-based health centers," she says.
Two genes in which variation affects intake of caffeine, the most widely consumed stimulant in the world, have been discovered. A team of investigators from the National Cancer Institute, Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill examined genetic variation across the entire genome of more than 47,000 individuals from the U.S., as described in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
Orlando, Fla. − Smoke from cigarettes can affect nearly every organ in the body by promoting cell damage and causing inflammation, but no one has understood which smoker is or is not susceptible to disease development.
At the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, however, researchers from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, a part of Georgetown University Medical Center, demonstrate how cigarette smoke produces different "metabolites" or active biological compounds, in individual smokers, compared to non-smokers.
ORLANDO, Fla. — Freeze-dried strawberries may be an alternative to drugs for the prevention of esophageal cancer, according to research presented at the AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, held here April 2-6.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Eating strawberries may be a way to help people at risk of esophageal cancer protect themselves from the disease, according to a new study by researchers at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) and researchers in China.
Experts from The Cancer Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center presented new research findings at the American Association for Cancer Research 102nd Annual Meeting 2011 held April 2-6, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. NYU Cancer Institute researchers discussed various breakthroughs such as a novel test for early-stage asbestos-related pulmonary cancer, a promising treatment strategy for glioblastomas, genome-wide mapping of nickel-related cancer and greater understanding of melanoma and bladder cancer.
Orlando, Fla. – How do certain multiple myeloma treatment drugs cause complications? How does the immune system become dysfunctional due to cancer? How safe is a vaccine that could prevent development of precancerous colon polyps? Those are among the many questions that will be answered by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine during the American Association for Cancer Research 102nd Annual Meeting 2011, April 2 to 6, in Orlando, Fla.
Sex or nice weather. That's the agonizing choice some birds face, according to a new University of Guelph study.
A team led by Guelph researchers discovered that for some male birds traveling to areas with lighter rainfall comes at the cost of attracting a female when they return home.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new study louses up a popular theory of animal evolution and opens up the possibility that dinosaurs were early – perhaps even the first – animal hosts of lice.
The study, in Biology Letters, uses fossils and molecular data to track the evolution of lice and their hosts. It offers strong evidence, the researchers said, that the ancestors of lice that today feed on birds and mammals began to diversify before a mass extinction event killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.