Body

PHILADELPHIA - Minority men and women who perceived discrimination from their health care providers were less likely to be screened for colorectal or breast cancer, according to a report in the August issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

The drug rituximab causes considerable kidney injury healing in patients with membranous nephropathy, a common form of kidney disease, according to a study appearing in the November 2008 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). The results suggest that this condition, previously destined to progress to kidney failure in 30-40 percent of cases, can actually be healed in some patients.

NEW YORK, August 6, 2008 – A professor at The Faculty of Health Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) is beginning an intensive program in Ethiopia this August to eradicate intestinal worms which affect as much as 50 percent of the population in Africa.

BGU Professor Zvi Bentwich, who heads the Center for Tropical Diseases and AIDS in Israel (CEMTA), believes there is a possible connection between the AIDS epidemic in Africa and intestinal worms, one of the many Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) which affect nearly one quarter of the world's population.

ATHENS, Ohio (Aug. 5, 2008) – With long limbs and a soft body, the duck-billed hadrosaur had few defenses against predators such as tyrannosaurs. But new research on the bones of this plant-eating dinosaur suggests that it had at least one advantage: It grew to adulthood much faster than its predators, giving it superiority in size.

Athens, Ga. – Herbs and spices are rich in antioxidants, and a new University of Georgia study suggests they are also potent inhibitors of tissue damage and inflammation caused by high levels of blood sugar.

MONTREAL, QC and DURHAM, N.C. - August 5, 2008 – Argos Therapeutics and Université de Montréal today announced the presentation of new information on Argos'process for developing dendritic cell-based immunotherapies for HIV. Results from the study demonstrate that loading monocyte-derived dendritic cells with combinations of HIV antigen RNA stimulates the expansion of HIV-specific T cells, which attack and kill HIV-infected cells.

To avoid producing vaccines that treat the wrong strains during flu season, the FDA should consider deferring some of its selections as well as other changes to the vaccine composition, according to a study by two decision analysts published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

"Repeated Commit-or-Defer Decisions with a Deadline: The Influenza Vaccine Composition" is by Laura J. Kornish of the University of Colorado and Ralph L. Keeney of Duke University. It appears in the current issue of Operations Research.

RIVERSIDE, Calif. – Cerambycid beetles, also known as long-horned beetles, can cause severe damage to standing trees, logs and lumber. How then might they be promptly detected and their numbers swiftly controlled?

Two entomologists have devised a solution based on how male and female cerambycid beetles communicate with, and attract, each other.

University of Minnesota researchers have answered a key question as to why antiretroviral therapy isn't effective in restoring immunity in HIV-infected patients.

Once a person is infected with the virus, fibrosis, or scarring, occurs in the lymph nodes – the home of T cells that fight infection. And once fibrosis occurs, T cells can't repopulate the lymph nodes when HIV therapy begins, said Timothy Schacker, M.D., professor of medicine and principal investigator on the study.

STANFORD, Calif. - A drug commonly used in the developing world to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child persists in the breast milk and blood of the mothers, putting them and their babies at risk for developing drug-resistant strains of the virus, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have recently reached what they are calling a milestone in experimental quantum mechanics.

In a paper published in the July 17 issue of the journal Nature, UCSB physicists Max Hofheinz, John Martinis, and Andrew Cleland documented how they used a superconducting electronic circuit known as a Josephson phase qubit, developed in Martinis's lab, to controllably pump microwave photons, one at a time, into a superconducting microwave resonator.

New insight into key players in iron metabolism has yielded a novel tool for distinguishing among root causes of iron overload or deficiency in humans, the researchers report in the August issue of Cell Metabolism, a publication of Cell Press. While the body needs iron to produce hemoglobin, a substance in red blood cells that enables them to carry oxygen, too much iron can build up and eventually damage organs.

SALT LAKE CITY – University of Utah School of Medicine researchers have developed a new tool that facilitates diagnosis of anemia related to chronic illness, as well as diseases of iron overload. The results of a study detailing the new tool are published in the August 2008 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, a publication of Cell Press.

Richmond, Va. (Aug. 5, 2008) — Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine have published findings that implicate a new chemoprevention gene therapy (CGT) for preventing and treating pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal and treatment-resistant forms of cancer.

Planning and anticipating occur so frequently in our everyday lives that it is hard to imagine a time when we didn't have this capability. But just as many other capacities develop, so does this mental time traveling ability. Researchers have recently explored how children comprehend the future and ways that this understanding can be affected by, for example, their current physiological state.