Body

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new field study confirms that an invasive weed called medusahead has growth advantages over most other grass species, suggesting it will continue to spread across much of the West, disrupt native ecosystems and make millions of acres of grazing land almost worthless.

The research, by scientists from Oregon State University and the Agricultural Research Service, was one of the most comprehensive studies ever done that compared the "relative growth rate" of this invasive annual grass to that of other competing species in natural field conditions.

Using induced pluripotent stem cells from patients with Rett syndrome, scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have created functional neurons that provide the first human cellular model for studying the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and could be used as a tool for drug screening, diagnosis and personalized treatment.

Boston, Mass. - While it has become clear in recent years that susceptibility to pain has a strong inherited component, very little is known about actual "pain genes" and how they work. In the November 12th issue of Cell, researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and their collaborators report on a novel human pain gene. People with minor variations in this gene showed clear differences in susceptibility to acute heat pain and chronic back pain. Corroborating mouse studies give some clues as to how the gene controls pain sensitivity.

"The biggest surprise to me was that we could rescue the autistic phenotype [in the human cells] to something close to normal," said Alysson Muotri of the University of California San Diego.

The researchers made the discovery by first transforming adult cells taken from patients with Rett Syndrome into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells) using an established cocktail. iPS cells look and act very much like embryonic stem cells.

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 – Arsenic, a toxic compound with a reputation as a good tool for committing homicide, has a significant positive effect on the survival of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), when administered after standard initial treatment, according to a new, multi-center study led by a researcher at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

INDIANAPOLIS – Researchers report that a drug commonly used to treat diabetes may also retard the growth of fluid-filled cysts of the most common genetic disorder, polycystic kidney disease. PKD does not discriminate by gender or race and affects one in 1,000 adults worldwide.

Montreal, November 11, 2010 – People affected by anxiety and depression should receive an additional cardiac test when undergoing diagnosis for potential heart problems, according to a new study from Concordia University, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Montreal Heart Institute.

JUPITER, FL, November 9, 2010 – For Immediate Release – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified for the first time a novel mechanism that regulates circadian rhythm, the master clock that controls the body's natural 24-hour physiological cycle. These new findings could provide a new target not only for jet lag, shift work, and sleep disturbances, but also for disorders that result from circadian rhythm disruption, including diabetes and obesity as well as some types of cancer.

PHILADELPHIA — Women planning on taking hormone therapy for the treatment of menopausal symptoms should be aware of a possible increased risk for ovarian cancer, according to data presented at the Ninth Annual AACR Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research Conference, held here Nov. 7-10, 2010.

"This study is consistent with previous recommendations that say if women are going to take hormones they should only take them in the short term," said Konstantinos Tsilidis, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford.

Both the bully and the victim's individual characteristics, rather than the wider social environment, explain why bullying occurs, according to Swedish teenagers. The new study, by Dr. Robert Thornberg and Sven Knutsen from Linköping University in Sweden, also shows that 42 percent of teenagers blamed the victim for the bullying. The study is published online in Springer's journal, Child & Youth Care Forum.

After four years of conducting intensive calculations in the supercomputer MareNostrum at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, scientists headed by Modesto Orozco at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona) have presented the world's largest data base on protein motions. Called MoDEL, this new database holds more than 1,700 proteins and is partially accessible through Internet to researchers worldwide. MoDEL has been developed to study the basic biology of proteins and to accelerate and facilitate the design of new pharmaceutical agents.

Millions will escape hunger and poverty in a widening campaign to achieve global food security and deliver major environmental gains within 25 years

Can a heart implanted micro robot operate permanently? Can cell phones and tiny robots implanted in the heart operate permanently without having their batteries charged?

It might sound like science fiction, but these things seem to be possible in the near future.

Decoding the DNA of a woman who died of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) has led researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis to a gene that they found to be commonly altered in many patients who died quickly of the disease.