Astronomers from Cardiff University, in Wales, and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Scotland, believe they have solved one of the long-standing mysteries of the Universe – the origins of cosmic dust. They explain how they have found that some supernovae, or exploding stars, belch out huge quantities of this dust – a discovery which suggests that supernovae were responsible for producing the first solid particles in the Universe.
Dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa may modify clouds and rainfall both in Africa and across the tropical North Atlantic as far away as Barbados, according to a study that uses data from NASA satellites, ground measurements, and computer models. Natalie Mahowald, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and University of California, Santa Barbara, and Lisa Kiehl, a graduate student at UCSB, published their findings in a recent issue of Geophysical Research Letters.
In the fishbowl of life, when hordes of well-fed predators drive their prey to the brink of extinction, sometimes evolution takes the fast track to help the hunted survive — and then thrive to outnumber their predators. This rapid evolution, predicted by Cornell University biologists in computer models and demonstrated with Pac-Man-like creatures and their algae food in laboratory habitats called chemostats, could play an important role in the ecological dynamics of many predator-prey systems.
A Yale researcher has identified an area of the brain he calls the brain temperature tunnel, which transmits brain temperature to an area of skin and has the potential to prevent death from heat stroke and hypothermia, and detect infectious diseases such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The researcher found that a small area of skin near the eyes and the nose is the point of entry for the brain temperature tunnel. His research shows that this area is connected to a thermal storage center in the brain, and the area has the thinnest skin and the highest amount of light energy.
Imagine being able to quickly detect and diagnose blood vessel growth in cancerous tumors, and even predict how fast the tumors might metastasize or spread. Researchers at the University of Virginia Health System are doing just that in animal models using millions of tiny microbubbles injected into the bloodstream, coupled with contrast-enhanced ultrasound, an inexpensive and widely-used technique using sound waves to “see” inside the body.
The best way to treat hospitalized elderly patients who become delirious defies conventional wisdom and common practice, according to new research from Saint Louis University published in the July issue of Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. Delirium, a common problem among the hospitalized elderly, causes patients to be confused, unclear in their thinking and incoherent. Their behavior may be disturbed – agitated, lethargic or a combination of the two. Those delirious patients who are sleepy and lethargic often are undiagnosed because they don’t make a ruckus.
The beloved southern magnolia, state flower of Louisiana and Mississippi, could provide more to cancer patients than shade and pretty flowers. A team of scientists at Emory University School of Medicine has discovered that seed cones from magnolia trees contain substances that inhibit the growth of new blood vessels. The active ingredient in the magnolia cones inhibited the growth of blood vessel endothelial cells in the laboratory and cut tumor growth in half in experiments in mice.
Researchers at Stanford University Medical Center and the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System have found that pilots who take nicotine or an Alzheimer’s disease drug called donepezil fly better than those in a control group, while those who have consumed alcohol are impaired when flying.
An electrical engineer has devised a theory that sets the limits for the amount of data that can be hidden in a system and then provides guidelines for how to store data and decode it. Contrarily, the theory also provides guidelines for how an adversary would disrupt the hidden information.
A St. Louis researcher has found extensive genetic differentiation among populations of numerous Anolis lizard species inhabiting single Caribbean islands. While to the naked eye the lizards appear to be uniform, these lizards from the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and Jamaica all show a surprising amount of genetic diversity. Glor goes to the islands and collects lizard samples to study morphology, or body features, and color patterns and then sequences DNA from the different species.
For the first time scientists have shown that brain stem cells are immune privileged, which means that they are invisible to a transplant recipient’s immune system and do not trigger the immune system to reject them. These results, published in the July issue of Stem Cells, indicate that using central nervous system stem cells in transplants for diseases of the eye (which is part of the brain), brain, and spinal cord, may eliminate the need for tissue typing before, and immunosuppressive drugs after, transplantation. Ultimately these findings promise to improve the success of retinal transplantation to regenerate vision for millions with macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa and diabetic retinopathy and brain transplants to restore functioning for patients with disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.
Telomere shortening may be one of the earliest and most prevalent changes on a cell’s path to cancer, according to two new studies. Telomeres, the ubiquitous safety caps on the ends of chromosomes, help to maintain genomic integrity. As cells divide and age, telomere DNA is lost and telomeres get shorter and shorter. The new study suggests that telomere dysfunction from the shortening may play a causal role in human intraepithelial neoplasia (IEN) found in precancers.
Researchers at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center are reporting how a 15-year-old drug could have a promising new role in the treatment of rectal cancer. The drug is oxaliplatin, and when administered in combination with fluorouracil (5-FU) plus leucovorin–standard therapy for patients with advanced/metastatic colorectal cancer–it makes the radiation therapy more effective. Oxaliplatin is one in a family of platinum-based drugs, which contain small molecules that interact with DNA and disrupt the replication process. Some cancers, however, have developed resistance to other platinum-based drugs.
The next-generation anthrax vaccine, based on a decade of work at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is now moving into not one, but four clinical trials. The group at the institute did the legwork for the current vaccine candidates by singling out which protein in Bacillus anthracis – the bacterium that causes anthrax – signals the body to produce immunity to the disease.