Body

(BOSTON) - A research team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University leveraged its organ-on-a-chip technology to develop a model of the human small airway in which lung inflammatory diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the third leading cause of mortality worldwide, and asthma can be studied outside the human body. As reported advanced online on December 21 in Nature Methods, the platform allows researchers to gain new insights into the disease mechanisms, identify novel biomarkers and test new drug candidates.

Understanding how tiny molecular motors called myosins use energy to fuel biological tasks like contracting muscles could lead to therapies for muscle diseases and cancers, says a team of researchers led by Penn State College of Medicine scientists.

Myosins are proteins that use high-energy adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, to accomplish mechanical work such as muscle contractions, cell motility and cell division.

Engineers at MIT have devised a new technique for trapping hard-to-detect molecules, using forests of carbon nanotubes.

The team modified a simple microfluidic channel with an array of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes -- rolled lattices of carbon atoms that resemble tiny tubes of chicken wire. The researchers had previously devised a method for standing carbon nanotubes on their ends, like trees in a forest. With this method, they created a three-dimensional array of permeable carbon nanotubes within a microfluidic device, through which fluid can flow.

Athens, Ga. - Studies have shown that obese children tend to have more muscle, but recent University of Georgia research on the muscle and bone relationship shows that excess body fat may compromise other functions in their bodies, such as bone growth.

In a literature review, lead author Joseph Kindler studied how muscle can influence different characteristics of bone geometry and strength in children. The review was published in the journal Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes and Obesity.

Rail services to and from the South West of England could be disrupted for more than 10 per cent of each year by 2040 and almost a third by 2100, a new study suggests.

The cost of maintaining tracks and sea defences could also soar as predicted sea level rises, coupled with coastal storms and floods, pose major challenges for rail operators and governments.

Pharmaceutical research can be difficult and frustrating. Often, one happens to synthesize a molecule without knowing exactly what kind of therapeutic effect it will have (if it ever will have any). "It is rare for someone to develop a new active drug already knowing what mechanism it will trigger in the body", explains Alessandra Magistrato, CNR-IOM/SISSA research scientist. "This also applies to the most widespread chemotherapeutic drugs, like cisplatin, or novel ones based on ruthenium".

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A new study is the first to provide real-world evidence of the effectiveness of smoking warning labels that include graphic photos of the damage caused by regular tobacco use.

Small price differences at the point of purchase can be highly effective in shifting consumer demand from high calorie to healthier low calorie alternatives, according to a study in the Articles in Advance section of Marketing Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

BEER-SHEVA, Israel...December 21, 2015 - "Look both ways before you cross the street" may be sage advice, but it is also apparently necessary for children as old as 13, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, who have pinpointed many of the behaviors that lead to child pedestrians being hit by cars.

Traffic accidents are one of the most common sources of injuries and fatalities for children on foot around the world. In Israel, automobiles cause 20 percent of child deaths.

As far as healthy foods go, berries make the top of the list. They contain potent antioxidants, which decrease or reverse the effects of free radicals - natural byproducts of energy production that can play havoc on the body and that are closely linked with heart disease, cancer, arthritis, stroke or respiratory diseases.

Scientists at TGAC have been putting Oxford Nanopore's MinION sequencer through its paces with an open-source, sequence alignment-based genome analysis tool called 'NanoOK'.

NanoOK is the first open-source tool that provides comprehensive alignment-based quality control and error profile analysis for the MinION platform. NanoOK's main output is a detailed PDF report featuring graphs and tables of sample analysis data. Individual graphs are also available to include in publications and presentations and the raw data is available for users to perform additional custom analysis.

A fifty year study of the charismatic seabird, the southern giant petrel, on the Antarctic island of Signy shows its population has halved and its breeding success has declined in the last 10-20 years. The results by scientists at British Antarctic Survey (BAS) are published this month in the journal Polar Biology online.

Many people in Russia know about the Dima Rogachev Centre - particularly those who have faced the challenge of child cancer. The centre is Europe's largest pediatric cancer care facility and is named after a boy with advanced cancer who wrote a letter to President Putin inviting him to visit; the invitation was accepted, and after the visit, the decision was made to build a state-of-the-art Centre for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology, based in the Research Institute of Pediatric Hematology.

SINGAPORE/LUGANO - Patients with EGFR-activating mutations in advanced lung cancer seem to benefit more from afatinib than gefitinib as first-line treatment, researchers report at the first ESMO Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore.

SINGAPORE/LUGANO - More patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) could benefit from pembrolizumab, says Professor Roy Herbst, Chief of Medical Oncology, Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven, presenting promising results from the pivotal phase 2/3 KEYNOTE-010 trial at the first ESMO Asia Congress in Singapore (1)), in conjunction with a publication in The Lancet (2).