Body

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scientists may have a way to double the efficacy and reduce the side effects of radiation therapy.

Georgia Health Sciences University scientists have devised a way to reduce lung cancer cells' ability to repair the lethal double-strand DNA breaks caused by radiation therapy.

The gross domestic product of the United States -- that oft-cited measure of economic health -- has been ticking upward for the last two years.

But what would you see if you could see a graph of gross domestic happiness?

A team of scientists from the University of Vermont have made such a graph -- and the trend is down.

In the world of insects, high risk of attack has led to the development of camouflage as a means for survival, especially in the larval stage. One caterpillar may look like a stick, while another disguises itself as bird droppings. Though crypsis may have its advantages, University of Florida researchers uncovered some of the most extensive evidence of caterpillars using another strategy previously best-known in adult butterflies: mimicry.

Whether the task is flying a plane, fighting a battle, or caring for a patient, good teamwork is crucial to getting it done right. That's why team-building and training courses are big business in the U.S., and have been for decades. But lately something has changed: "There's a demand for evaluations—an emphasis on showing that team training makes a difference in safety, decision-making, communication, clinical outcomes—you name the ultimate criteria the industry has," says Eduardo Salas, an organizational psychologist at the University of Central Florida.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – In reaction to what midwives view as the overly medicalized way hospitals deliver babies, they have created birthing rituals to send the message that women's bodies know best.

The midwife experience uses these rituals to send the message that home birth is about female empowerment, strengthening relationships between family and friends, and facilitating participatory experiences that put mothers in control, with the ultimate goal of safe and healthy deliveries less focused on technological intervention.

With support from the National Science Foundation, researchers from the Broad Institute and Harvard University recently developed a tool that can uncover patterns in large data sets in a way that no other software program can.

Statistical databases (SDBs) are collections of data that are used to gather and analyze information from a variety of sources. The data may be derived from sales transactions, customer files, voter registrations, medical records, employee rosters, product inventories, or other compilations of facts and figures.

Statins, traditionally known as cholesterol-lowering drugs, may reduce mortality among patients hospitalized with influenza, according to a new study released online by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

It is the first published observational study to evaluate the relationship between statin use and mortality in hospitalized patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection, according to Vanderbilt's William Schaffner, M.D., professor and chair of Preventive Medicine.

Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. – Cancer researchers at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) have carried out the first comprehensive study of the changes seen in the DNA of a patient with mast cell leukemia (MCL), an extremely aggressive subtype of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with a very poor prognosis.

Their genomic survey has helped identify two previously unknown mutations that could directly influence patient response to currently available therapeutic drugs.

Researchers from Harvard University and the Broad Institute have developed a tool that can tackle large data sets in a way that no other software program can. Part of a suite of statistical tools called MINE, it can tease out multiple patterns hidden in health information from around the globe, statistics amassed from a season of major league baseball, data on the changing bacterial landscape of the gut, and much more. The researchers report their findings in a paper appearing in the December 16 issue of the journal Science.

Adenoviruses can cause respiratory, eye, and intestinal tract infections, and, like other viruses, must hijack the cellular machinery of infected organisms in order to produce proteins and their own viral spawn. Now an international research team made up of scientists from Chinese and Australian universities has found a way to disrupt the hijacking process by using plasma to damage the viruses in the laboratory environment, before they come into contact with host cells.

Microscopic-scale medical robots represent a promising new type of therapeutic technology. As envisioned, the microbots, which are less than one millimeter in size, might someday be able to travel throughout the human bloodstream to deliver drugs to specific targets or seek out and destroy tumors, blood clots, and infections that can't be easily accessed in other ways.

Any multicellular animal, from a blue whale to a human being, poses a special challenge for evolution.

Most of the cells in its body will die without reproducing; only a privileged few will pass their genes to the next generation.

How could the extreme degree of cooperation required by multicellular existence actually evolve? Why aren't all creatures unicellular individualists determined to pass on their own genes?

Shenzhen, China – BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, started the trail operation of "BGI-BOX", its first cloud computing terminal server, in China Agricultural University on December 8. BGI-BOX is designed for users without bioinformatics background and it allows users to access bioinformatics analysis and genomic data in their own laboratories with the advantages of easy to use, high flexibility and user-friendly interface.

MicroRNAs or miRNAs are tiny RNA molecules that have only about 20 nucleotides and do not code for proteins. They regulate many important processes in cells by binding to target messenger RNAs – the instructions for protein production –, thus blocking production of the respective protein. In cancer, the production of some miRNAs is often reduced or amplified. This particularly affects miRNAs that regulate the activity of cancer-promoting genes.