Any parent can tell you that raising a child is emotionally and intellectually draining. Despite their tales of professional sacrifice, financial hardship, and declines in marital satisfaction, many parents continue to insist that their children are an essential source of happiness and fulfillment in their lives. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggests that parents create rosy pictures of parental joy as a way to justify the huge investment that kids require.
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Men who take non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs three times a day for more than three months are 2.4 times more likely to have erectile dysfunction compared to men who do not take those drugs regularly, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published online in The Journal of Urology.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — A new University of Florida study of 45-million-year-old pollen from Pine Island west of Fort Myers has led to a new understanding of the state's geologic history, showing Florida could be 10 million to 15 million years older than previously believed.
The discovery of land in Florida during the early Eocene opens the possibility for researchers to explore the existence of land animals at that time, including their adaptation, evolution and dispersal until the present.
Nature study: Jefferson researchers unravel protein's elusive role in embryo and disease development
PHILADELPHIA—Reporting in Nature, scientists from Thomas Jefferson University have determined that a single protein called FADD controls multiple cell death pathways, a discovery that could lead to better, more targeted autoimmune disease and cancer drugs.
PHILADELPHIA - The gene for the protein p53 is the most frequently mutated in human cancer. It encodes a tumor suppressor, and traditionally researchers have assumed that it acts primarily as a regulator of how genes are made into proteins. Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine show that the protein has at least one other biochemical activity: controlling the metabolism of the sugar glucose, one of body's main sources of fuel. These new insights on a well-studied protein may be used to develop new cancer therapies.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — What makes a man? His clothes? His car? His choice of scotch? The real answer, says Brown University biologist Erica Larschan, is the newly understood activity of a protein complex that, like a genetic power tool, gives enzymes on the X-chromosome an extra boost to increase gene expression. The process is described in the March 3, 2011, issue of the journal Nature.
With the steep decline in populations of many animal species, from frogs and fish to tigers, some scientists have warned that Earth is on the brink of a mass extinction like those that occurred only five times before during the past 540 million years.
Each of these 'Big Five' saw three-quarters or more of all animal species go extinct.
(March 2, 2011—Toronto, ON and Helsinki, Finland) Dr. Andras Nagy's laboratory at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mount Sinai Hospital and Dr. Timo Otonkoski's laboratory at Biomedicum Stem Cell Center (University of Helsinki), as well as collaborators in Europe and Canada have identified genetic abnormalities associated with reprogramming adult cells to induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The findings give researchers new insights into the reprogramming process, and will help make future applications of stem cell creation and subsequent use safer.
Ordinary human cells reprogrammed as induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) may ultimately revolutionize personalized medicine by creating new and diverse therapies unique to individual patients. But important and unanswered questions have persisted about the safety of these cells, in particular whether their genetic material is altered during the reprogramming process.
Work led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists identified how cells flip a switch between cell survival and cell death that involves a protein called FLIP.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has published the final version of a special publication that can help organizations to more effectively integrate information security risk planning into their mission-critical functions and overall goals.
Pregnant women who are unaware that they have HIV miss the chance for drug treatment that can benefit not only their own health, but could also prevent them from transmitting the virus to their infants. When HIV is not diagnosed until women go into labor, their infants are usually treated soon after birth with the anti HIV drug zidovudine (ZDV), to prevent the infants from becoming infected with the virus.
TORONTO, March 2, 2011 – York University researchers have zeroed in on a genetic process that may allow ovarian cancer to resist chemotherapy.
Researchers in the university's Faculty of Science & Engineering studied a tiny strand of our genetic makeup known as a MicroRNA, involved in the regulation of gene expression. Cancer occurs when gene regulation goes haywire.
In a study that the authors describe as lending credence to the idiom, "by the skin of your teeth," scientists are reporting that the protective shield fluoride forms on teeth is up to 100 times thinner than previously believed. It raises questions about how this renowned cavity-fighter really works and could lead to better ways of protecting teeth from decay, the scientists suggest. Their study appears in ACS's journal Langmuir.
Real-life scientists, whose work has overtones of Indiana Jones as they search for plants in remote areas of the world that could become the source of life-saving new medicines, are currently trying to figure out how a new international agreement on biodiversity will affect their work. That's the topic of an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS's weekly newsmagazine.