Body

A building designed to recapture the past may bring nostalgia, but the end product may not capture current realities of a place, says Kingston Heath, a professor of historic preservation at the University of Oregon.

"It is a humanistic inquiry that recognizes that buildings and settings, alone, do not make place," he said in a talk Dec. 13 at the annual meeting of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments in Oxford, UK. "People, in their interaction with the natural and built environment, make place."

SAN ANTONIO - Having dense breasts - areas that show up light on a mammogram - is strongly associated with increased breast cancer risk, but "why" remains to be answered. Now, by examining dense and non-dense tissue taken from the breasts of healthy volunteers, researchers from Mayo Clinic have found several potential links.

Scientists funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) have identified a potential new avenue for altering lung development in the embryo which may help to improve the outcome for very premature babies. The researchers at Cardiff University, in collaboration with those at the Saban Research Institute at Los Angeles Children's Hospital, have discovered a key player in early lung development which is a potential drug target for treating very premature babies with small, immature lungs.

SAN ANTONIO - Breast cancer is a multifaceted disease requiring creative solutions for diagnosis, quality of life management and adjuvant therapies. Data presented at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium explore these areas.

Hormone Supplements Reduce Death from Breast CancerAbstract #65, Sarah Marshall, M.A.

MANHATTAN -- A Kansas State University graduate student has found a correlation between childhood obesity and asthma.

Sara Rosenkranz, doctoral student in human nutrition, Manhattan, conducted research that found that healthy children with higher levels of body fat and lower levels of physical activity had greater amounts of airway narrowing after exercise.

BETHESDA, Md. -- A new survey of approximately 4,000 American adults reveals that fewer than one-third (29.6 percent) have been vaccinated against the flu this season. The survey is the first of its kind to measure self-reported influenza vaccination rates during a current flu season.

A new report from the Institute of Medicine, THE U.S. COMMITMENT TO GLOBAL HEALTH: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE NEW ADMINISTRATION, examines why a commitment to global health is an important investment for the United States, even in light of the current economic situation. The report describes areas that require the most attention, emphasizes key goals the incoming administration should strive to meet, and makes specific recommendations regarding funding and coordination of U.S. global health activities.

CLEVELAND: Research out of the Ireland Cancer Center of University Hospitals Case Medical Center has found that the vast majority of triple negative breast cancers express the MUC-1 target. This first-of-its-kind finding, presented today at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, has paved the way for an upcoming vaccine trial for patients with early stage triple negative breast cancer that could potentially prevent recurrence of this aggressive type of breast cancer.

You'd think that if scientists were to discover a new species, it would be in some remote, uncharted tropical forest, not a laboratory in New York. But a team from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History has done the unexpected. Looking at the genes of the African dwarf crocodile, researchers found that the group—genetically speaking—comprises three distinct species rather than one.

SAN ANTONIO - As cancer researchers move away from the general use of chemotherapy and into more targeted approaches, scientists are working to discover effective ways to measure response and risk. Data presented at the CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium illustrate the cutting edge of biomarker discovery and development.

Reductions in Breast Density Predict Potential Benefit of Tamoxifen Abstract #61, Jack Cuzick, Ph.D.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS - Early-stage breast cancer patients with HER2 positive tumors one centimeter or smaller are at significant risk of recurrence of their disease, compared to those with early-stage disease who do not express the aggressive protein, according to a study led by researchers at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

There are hurdles to clear before malaria elimination can be achieved. A supplement published in Malaria Journal features a series of articles reviewing the many aspects of the research agenda for global malaria elimination.

The conditioning Works of Sierra Nevada's ski runs have destroyed a great amount of vegetable species. The researchers of the University of Granada (Spain) have already managed to grow in the laboratory two native bushy species in order to suggest new mechanisms for vegetable cover restoration. They will try to use them to preserve the biodiversity in the National Park of Sierra Nevada.

A novel x-ray technique allowing the observation of molecular motion on a time scale never reached before has been developed by a team of researchers from EPFL and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland. Results of the research led by Professor Majed Chergui, head of EPFL's laboratory of Ultrafast Spectroscopy in collaboration with the FEMTO group at PSI appear online December 11 in the journal Science.

King of Prussia, PA - December 10, 2008 – Parkinson’s disease affects 6.3 million people worldwide. While the disease is recognized for its profound effects on movement, up to 40 percent of Parkinson’s disease patients also develop changes in thought, behavior and judgment.