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Warming in the Tasman Sea a global warming hot spot

Oceanographers have identified a series of ocean hotspots around the world generated by strengthening wind systems that have driven oceanic currents, including the East Australian Current, polewards beyond their known boundaries.

The hotspots have formed alongside ocean currents that wash the east coast of the major continents and their warming proceeds at a rate far exceeding the average rate of ocean surface warming, according to an international science team whose work is published in the journal Nature Climate Change today.

Ultrasound male contraceptive, overlooked for decades, confirmed to work

Imagine a contraceptive that could, with one or two painless 15-minute non-surgical treatments, provide months of protection from pregnancy. And imagine that the equipment needed were already in physical therapists' offices around the world.

UCSB researchers discover the processes leading to acute myeloid leukemia

Santa Barbara, Calif. –– Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered a molecular pathway that may explain how a particularly deadly form of cancer develops. The discovery may lead to new cancer therapies that reprogram cells instead of killing them. The findings are published in a recent paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Jak of all trades? Not of leukaemia therapy!

About one in five or six cases of adult leukaemia in Western populations relates to so-called chronic myeloid leukaemia, or CML. Treatment of CML usually relies on inhibitors of the abnormal protein that causes the condition but some patients do not respond to treatment and efforts are underway to develop a supplementary approach, targeting the so-called JAK2 kinase.

Genetic breakthrough for brain cancer in children

Harnessing the predictive power of virtual communities

Scientists have created a new algorithm to detect virtual communities, designed to match the needs of real-life social, biological or information networks detection better than with current attempts. The results of this study by Lovro Šubelj and his colleague Marko Bajec from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia have just been published in EPJ B¹.

Improving medical treatment requires risk-based approach to regulate clinical trials

Strasbourg/Brussels -- Current EU legislation represents a major hurdle to improving medical treatment due to the straight-jacket of EU legislation that the 2001 Clinical Trials Directive imposes, a group of leading European medical scientists charged today in a position paper1 issued in Brussels and Strasbourg.

MS drug prevented fatal heart condition in lab study

A drug used to treat multiple sclerosis may also be effective at preventing and reversing the leading cause of heart attack, a new study has found.

Scientists found that Gilenya, a drug recently approved in the US for treating MS, was effective at reversing the symptoms of ventricular hypertrophy in mice.

Development of the chimpanzee determined by the X factor

One of the most important questions for evolution researchers is how a species develops and adapts during the course of time. An analysis of the genes of twelve chimpanzees has now demonstrated that the chimpanzee X chromosome plays a very special role in the animal's development. The analysis was carried out by researchers at the Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, the Section of Bioinformatics, University of Copenhagen, the Copenhagen Zoo and the sequencing centre at the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), China.

Filling R&D gaps key to succeeding in NTD control and elimination goals by 2020

Geneva & London – On the occasion of today's high-level event in London, 'Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases,' organized in support of the new World Health Organization (WHO) Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) 2020 Roadmap, the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) welcomes the commitments from various partners and emphasizes that filling the major gaps in research and development (R&D) for new treatment and diagnostic tools is key to effectively support elimination or control of targeted NTDs by 2020.

U-M study urges parents to enforce booster seat use when carpooling

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Most parents report that they typically require their child to use a life-saving booster seat, but more than 30 percent said they do not enforce this rule when their child is riding with another driver.

The study, conducted by child health experts at University of Michigan's C.S. Mott Children's Hospital, also revealed that 45 percent of parents do not require their kids to use a booster when driving other children who do not have one.

Lumbar disc degeneration more likely in overweight and obese adults

One of the largest studies to investigate lumbar spine disc degeneration found that adults who are overweight or obese were significantly more likely to have disc degeneration than those with a normal body mass index (BMI). Assessments using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) show elevated BMI is associated with an increased number of levels of degenerated disks and greater severity of disc degeneration, including narrowing of the disc space.

What do killer whales eat in the Arctic?

Killer whales (Orcinus orca) are the top marine predator, wherever they are found, and seem to eat everything from schools of small fish to large baleen whales, over twice their own size. The increase in hunting territories available to killer whales in the Arctic due to climate change and melting sea ice could seriously affect the marine ecosystem balance.

Sonicating sperm -- the future of male contraception

The ideal male contraceptive would be inexpensive, reliable, and reversible. It would need to be long acting but have few side effects. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology used commercially available therapeutic ultrasound equipment to reduce sperm counts of male rats to levels which would result in infertility in humans.

2-arm blood pressure check indicator for risk from heart disease or death

A systematic review and meta-analysis carried out by researchers at the University of Exeter Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD) has found that differences in systolic blood pressure between arms could be a useful indicator of the likelihood of vascular risk and death.

The findings add support to the calls for both-arm blood pressure checks to be performed as standard.