Body

Winning sounds on slot machines make gambling more exciting, according to a new study by Mike Dixon and colleagues from the University of Waterloo in Canada. Moreover, their work shows that sounds also cause players to overestimate the number of times they won while playing on slot machines. The study is published online in Springer's Journal of Gambling Studies.

BOSTON – July 1, 2013 -- Joslin scientists report that salsalate, a drug used to treat arthritis, lowers blood glucose and improves glycemic control in type 2 diabetes. These findings, which were published today by the Annals of Internal Medicine, provide additional evidence that salsalate may be an effective drug to treat type 2 diabetes.

Scientists at A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics (MPIMG) in Berlin (Germany) have discovered a molecular network in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) that integrates cell communication signals to keep the cell in its stem cell state. These findings were reported in the June 2013 issue of Molecular Cell.

To convert a gene into a protein, a cell first crafts a blueprint out of RNA. One of the main players in this process has been identified by researchers led by Dr. Jessica Jacobs at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. The team "fished" a large complex of proteins and RNA, which is involved in the so-called splicing, from the chloroplasts of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. This cuts non-coding regions out of the messenger RNA, which contains the protein blueprint.

As the outermost layer of skin, epidermis is crucial in forming a permeability barrier and protection against various environmental agents. Thus, investigating the biology of its most important cell type, the keratinocyte, is key to understanding the effects of solar ultraviolet radiation in skin, and helps design effective means of protection against excessive exposure. It has already previously been shown with both cell culture and in vivo animal models that UV irradiation increases the expression of hyaluronan, which is an important carbohydrate of the extracellular matrix.

A study by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery has provided the first evidence that the shape of a person's knee could be a factor in the decision of whether a patient should undergo anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction after an ACL tear. The study is published online ahead of print in the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineering.

Abiraterone acetate (abiraterone for short, trade name: Zytiga) has been approved in Germany since December 2012 for men with metastatic prostate cancer that is not responsive to hormone blockade, who only have mild symptoms or so far none at all, and in whom chemotherapy is not yet indicated. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the "Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products" (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether abiraterone offers an added benefit compared with the present standard therapy.

New research results from Uppsala University, Sweden, show that the key to treating neurodegenerative prion diseases such as mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may lie in the ribosome, the protein synthesis machinery of the cell. The results were recently published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Prion diseases are fatal neurodegenerative diseases caused by misfolding of prion proteins. Examples of prion diseases are scrapie in sheep, mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in human.

New research by academics at The University of Nottingham has shown that exposure to a neonicotinoid insecticide causes changes to the genes of the honeybee.

The study, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, supports the recent decision taken by the European Commission to temporarily ban three neonicotinoids amid concerns that they could be linked to bee deaths.

Stanford, CA—Transport proteins are responsible for moving materials such as nutrients and metabolic products through a cell's outer membrane, which seals and protects all living cells, to the cell's interior. These transported molecules include sugars, which can be used to fuel growth or to respond to chemical signals of activity or stress outside of the cell.

Children from low-income families tend to do worse at school than their better-off peers. Now a new study of a large ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of children from across the United States has identified poor planning skills as one reason for the income-achievement gap, which can emerge as early as kindergarten and continue through high school.

The study, by researchers at Cornell University, appears in the journal Child Development.

The strain of cholera that has sickened thousands in Haiti came from a single source and was not repeatedly introduced to the island over the past three years as some have thought, according to a new study published in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's could be better understood thanks to insight into proteins linked to such conditions, a study suggests.

Scientists studying thread-like chains of protein – called amyloid fibres – have found that low levels of these proteins may cause more harm to health than high levels.

These rarely formed protein chains, which have been linked with dozens of diseases, are produced as a result of a genetic flaw or changes in body chemistry brought about by ageing.

Previously misunderstood multi-sensory organs in the skin of crocodylians are sensitive to touch, heat, cold, and the chemicals in their environment, finds research in BioMed Central's open access journal EvoDevo. These sensors have no equivalent in any other vertebrate.

Shift work has been suggested as a risk factor for breast cancer, but there has been some doubt about the strength of the findings, largely because of issues around the assessment of exposure and the failure to capture the diversity of shift work patterns. Several previous studies have also been confined to nurses rather than the general population.