Body

ANN ARBOR—The discovery of a gene mutation that causes a rare premature aging disease could lead to the development of drugs that block the rapid, unstoppable cell division that makes cancer so deadly.

Scientists at the University of Michigan and the U-M Health System recently discovered a protein mutation that causes the devastating disease dyskeratosis congenita, in which precious hematopoietic stem cells can't regenerate and make new blood. People with DC age prematurely and are prone to cancer and bone marrow failure.

WASHINGTON (Sept.

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 30, 2014 — Research by UC Irvine immunologists reveals new information about how our immune system functions, shedding light on a vital process that determines how the body's ability to fight infection develops.

In the online version of Nature Immunology, neurology professor Dr. Michael Demetriou, postdoctoral scholar Raymond Zhou and other Institute for Immunology colleagues describe a critical mechanism underlying how T cells are created, selected and released into the bloodstream.

AMHERST, Mass. – Using a bio-mimicking analog of one of nature's most efficient light-harvesting structures, blades of grass, an international research team led by Alejandro Briseno of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has taken a major step in developing long-sought polymer architecture to boost power-conversion efficiency of light to electricity for use in electronic devices.

September 30, 2014—(BRONX, NY)—Medications are the leading cause of allergy-related sudden deaths in the U.S., according to an analysis of death certificates from 1999 to 2010, conducted by researchers at Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

The U.S. Department of Defense has made progress in reducing the stigma associated with seeking help for mental illnesses such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, but more improvement is still needed, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have devised a way to rapidly test hundreds of different drug-delivery vehicles in living animals, making it easier to discover promising new ways to deliver a class of drugs called biologics, which includes antibodies, peptides, RNA, and DNA, to human patients.

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2014--Sea monkeys have captured the popular attention of both children and aquarium hobbyists because of their easily observable life cycle -- sold as dehydrated eggs, these tiny brine shrimp readily hatch, develop and mate given little more than a tank of salt water.

Physicists, though, are interested in a shorter-term pattern: Like other zooplankton, brine shrimp vertically migrate in large groups in response to changing light conditions, coming closer to the surface at night and retreating deeper during the day.

• Every ten seconds a human being dies from pneumococcus infection making it the leading cause of serious illness across the globe
• Research discovers six unique states of pneumococcus
• Knowledge of these six characteristics can help in development of tailored vaccines

Every ten seconds a human being dies from Streptococcus pneumoniae infection, also known as pneumococcus, making it a leading global killer.

A new research report published in the October 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal may make the early detection of cancer as easy as a simple blood test. This test, called the "lymphocyte genome sensitivity" (LGS) test, could not only detect some cancers earlier than ever before, but it may eliminate the need for some types of biopsies, as well as identify those more likely to develop cancer in the future.

Many people recognize "the bubble boy" as an unusual character from a "Seinfeld" episode or a John Travolta movie.

But in reality, a genetic disease called SCID, short for severe combined immunodeficiency, forces patients to breathe filtered air and avoid human contact because their bodies' natural defenses are too weak to fight germs.

Although it affects fewer than 2,000 new births each year worldwide, SCID is a cousin to acquired immune deficiency syndrome triggered by a human immunodeficiency virus — HIV/AIDS.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that some stickleback fish fathers can have long-term effects on the behavior of their offspring: The most attentive fish dads cause their offspring to behave in a way that makes them less susceptible to predators. These behavioral changes are accompanied by changes in gene expression, the researchers report.

The findings appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Colonoscopies are a very valuable procedure by which to screen for the presence of colorectal cancer. However, it seems that healthy Americans who do undergo this sometimes uncomfortable examination often have repeat screenings long before they actually should. Gina Kruse of Massachusetts General Hospital in the US and colleagues advise that endoscopists stick to the national guidelines more closely. Their findings appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, published by Springer.

Screening families of patients with bowel cancer for a genetic condition would cut their risk of developing bowel, womb, and ovarian cancers, new research has found.

In a major study, Dr Ian Frayling from Cardiff University's School of Medicine and researchers from the University of Exeter's Medical School assessed the effectiveness of introducing a UK-wide screening programme for a genetic condition known as Lynch Syndrome.

Fish can live in almost any aquatic environment on Earth, but when the climate changes and temperatures go up many species are pushed to the limit. The amount of time needed to adjust to new conditions could prove critical for how different species cope in the future, reveals a new study from researchers at the University of Gothenburg, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.