Palo Alto— Photosynthetic organisms need to cope with a wide range of light intensities, which can change over timescales of seconds to minutes. Too much light can damage the photosynthetic machinery and cause cell death. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution were part of a team that found that specific proteins in algae can act as a safety valve to dissipate excess absorbed light energy before it can wreak havoc in cells.
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HOUSTON - Two signaling pathways essential to normal human development - the Wnt/Wingless (Wnt) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathways - interact in ways that can promote tumor cell invasion and metastasis, researchers from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center report in the Nov. 25 issue of Molecular Cell.
The first genetic historical map of the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic population in the world, as they migrated from south to north over evolutionary time. was published online today by the American Journal of Human Genetics by scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS).
Athens, Ga. – Bacteria don't have easy lives. In addition to mammalian immune systems that besiege the bugs, they have natural enemies called bacteriophages, viruses that kill half the bacteria on Earth every two days.
Still, bacteria and another class of microorganisms called archaea (first discovered in extreme environments such as deep-sea volcanic vents) manage just fine, thank you, in part because they have a built-in defense system that helps protect them from many viruses and other invaders.
DALLAS – Nov. 25, 2009 – Physicians at UT Southwestern Medical Center soon will begin implanting a new device designed to improve breathing in patients with upper spinal-cord injuries or other diseases that keep them from breathing independently.
UT Southwestern University Hospital – St. Paul is only one of only two sites in Texas and one of 25 in the country currently equipped to implant the device, called the NeuRx Diaphragm Pacing System.
Over the course of a lifetime, the heart pumps some 250 million liters of blood through the body. In the order to do this, the muscle fibers of the heart have to be extremely durable. The research group headed by Dr. Wolfgang Rottbauer, vice chair of the Department of Medicine III at Heidelberg University Hospital (Chairman: Prof. Dr. H. A. Katus), has discovered a protein that is responsible for the stability of the smallest muscular unit, the sarcomere.
Previous studies have indicated that the heparanase (HPA) is correlated with histopathological parameters and poor prognosis of gastric cancers. Although their efficiencies in inhibiting the expression of HPA, the traditional HPA inhibitors may produce nonspecific and undesirable effects. In recent years, genetic approaches targeting HPA have been regarded as a promising alternative. Antisense oligonucleotides, ribozyme, and small RNA interference (siRNA) have been developed to decrease the HPA expression.
The gastric cardiac adenocarcinoma (GCA) is a very rare disease. In recent decades, however, the incidence of the GCA has increased dramatically in many Western countries. An increasing trend in GCA is also observed in municipal regions but not in rural regions of China. Another striking feature is the strong male predominance among patients with GCA. Some of the reasons above are still unclear and require further epidemiological investigations.
Dentists can help to identify patients who are in danger of dying of a heart attack or stroke, reveals a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy. Thanks to the study, six men who thought they were completely healthy were able to start preventive treatment in time.
"Dentists are really proud of their profession and feel no need to encroach upon doctors' territory," says senior dental officer and professor Mats Jontell at the Sahlgrenska Academy. "However, we wanted to find out if we as a profession could identify patients at risk of cardiovascular disease."
LA JOLLA, CA—When you eat may be just as vital to your health as what you eat, found researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. Their experiments in mice revealed that the daily waxing and waning of thousands of genes in the liver—the body's metabolic clearinghouse—is mostly controlled by food intake and not by the body's circadian clock as conventional wisdom had it.
FINDINGS:Researchers from UCLA's Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research surveyed 600 Hispanics recruited from Los Angeles County sexually transmitted disease clinics, community-based organizations and needle-exchange programs. They found that those with low levels of acculturation — meaning adaptation to American culture — had fewer HIV tests and no hepatitis C tests, were more likely to test positive for HIV, and had low levels of access to health care.
Senior doctors from across the globe have come together to form the International Climate and Health Council. Their aim is to mobilise health professionals across the world to help tackle the health effects of climate change.
The Council will be officially launched on Wednesday 25 November 2009 to coincide with a series of papers being published by the Lancet on the public health impact of strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
A recent study shows that 95 percent of radiation oncologists use advanced imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (FDG-PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and 4-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) for target delineation (to locate the tumor and other areas at risk for having cancer), according to an article in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, (JACR, www.jacr.org).
On-call radiology residents generally provide accurate preliminary interpretation of emergency neuroradiology CT scans after hours when attending neuroradiologist unavailable, according to results of a large study performed at a level I trauma center published in the December issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology (JACR).
Eating high amounts of salt is linked to a significantly higher risk of strokes and cardiovascular disease, states a paper published today in the British Medical Journal.
The research was carried out jointly by the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Nutrition, based at the University of Warwick and University Hospital in Coventry, UK, and the European Society of Hypertension Excellence Centre in Hypertension based at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Federico II University Medical School in Naples, Italy.