Body

A research team led by physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has proven a method that makes it possible to find the atomic structure of proteins in action by producing "snapshots" of them with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution.

What made it possible were the ultra-short X-ray pulses of a Free Electron Laser (XFEL).

Physics professor Marius Schmidt and doctoral student Jason Tenboer recently completed the experiment with the XFEL at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California.

LOS ANGELES (Dec. 4, 2014) - Genetics may play a larger role in causing Lou Gehrig's disease than previously believed, potentially accounting for more than one-third of all cases, according to one of the most comprehensive genetic studies to date of patients who suffer from the condition also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

A study of more than 9,000 men with fertility problems has revealed a correlation between the number of different defects in a man's semen and the likelihood that the man has other health problems.

The study, conducted by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine, also links poor semen quality to a higher chance of having various specific health conditions, such as hypertension, and more generally to skin and endocrine disorders.

A team of scientists that included researchers from UCLA has discovered a novel mechanism of RNA regulation in embryonic stem cells. The findings are strong evidence that a specific chemical modification, or "tag," on RNA plays a key role in determining the ability of embryonic stem cells to adopt different cellular identities.

The team also included scientists from Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital and Stanford University.

Friday, December 5, 2014 - London, UK - The Biogerontology Research Foundation (BGRF), a UK-based charity founded to support ageing research and address the challenges of a rapidly ageing population, will present new economic longevity research at the second Big Data Science in Medicine congress in Oxford on December 8.

A group of UCL researchers (Louvain Drug Research Institute) identified an unsuspected mechanism impacting the development of obesity and diabetes type 2 after following a diet with a high dose of fat nutrition. The team of Professor Patrice D. Cani - in direct collaboration with two French teams, a Swedish expert as well as other UCL-researchers (LDRI and Ludwig Institute) - made an important discovery related to the essential role of the intestinal immune system regarding the control of the energy metabolism.

Vienna, Austria - 05 December 2014: Austrian researchers have shown that a new technique which wraps chemotherapy drugs in a fatty cover (called a liposome) reduces heart damage, in a study presented today at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014 by Professor Jutta Bergler-Klein and Professor Mariann Gyöngyösi from the Medical University of Vienna, Austria.

EuroEcho-Imaging is the annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), and is held 3-6 December in Vienna.

The pros of giving healthy women regular low dose aspirin to stave off serious illness, such as cancer and heart disease, are outweighed by the cons, suggests a large study published online in the journal Heart.

But the balance begins to shift with increasing age, and limiting this form of primary prevention to women aged 65 and above, was better than not taking aspirin at all, or treating women from the age of 45 onwards, say the researchers.

The savings would come from reducing the incidence of common childhood diseases and curbing the subsequent risk of breast cancer in the mums, all of which have been linked to low rates of breastfeeding, say the researchers.

The numbers add up to a strong economic case to invest in services to support mums to carry on breastfeeding, they conclude.

The NHS could save more than £40 million a year by increasing the length of time that mothers breastfeed, according to research carried out at Brunel University London.

In the first study of its kind in the UK, researchers have shown that the savings would come from a reduction in both common childhood diseases and the risk of maternal breast cancer, which are linked to low rates of breastfeeding.

Highlights

(BOSTON) -- Stem cells offer great potential in biomedical engineering due to their pluripotency, which is the ability to multiply indefinitely and also to differentiate and develop into any kind of the hundreds of different cells and bodily tissues. But the precise complexity of how stem cell development is regulated throughout states of cellular change has been difficult to pinpoint until now.

Is the human immune system similar to the weather, a seemingly random yet dynamical system that can be modeled based on past conditions to predict future states?

Petaluma, CA - Just like us, grasslands need rest to improve their health. A study just published by Point Blue Conservation Science in the journal Ecological Restoration shows a 72 percent increase in where native perennial grasses were found on a coastal California ranch when cattle grazing was changed to give the land more time to rest.

Over the last 300 years, nonnative annual grasses have invaded California's grasslands. These exotic grasses complete their lifecycle in one year and out-compete the native perennial grasses (grasses that live for multiple years).

Coordinated care by specialists for children with complex respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders helped lower hospital charges by reducing clinic visits and anesthesia-related procedures in a small single-center study, according to a report published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.