Body

The study conducted by the Vall d'Hebron Institute of Oncology (VHIO) in conjunction with the GEICAM cooperative group and other American and Canadian researchers has led to a change in the definition of hormone-sensitive breast tumours.

Bethesda, MD—A drug currently being used to treat ischemic strokes may prove to be a significant advance in the treatment of tuberculosis and ulcers. In a new research report appearing online in The FASEB Journal, a compound called ebselen effectively inhibits the thioredoxin reductase system in a wide variety of bacteria, including Helicobacter pylori which causes gastric ulcers and Mycobacterium tuberculosis which causes tuberculosis.

Philadelphia, Pa. (December 20, 2012) – Robotic technologies have the potential to help neurosurgeons perform precise, technically demanding operations, together with virtual reality environments to help them navigate through the brain, according to a special supplement to Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have demonstrated that photons (light particles) emitted from light sources embedded in a complex and disordered structure are able to mutually coordinate their paths through the medium. This is a consequence of the photons' wave properties, which give rise to the interaction between different possible routes. The results are published in the scientific journal, Physical Review Letters.

Waves do not spread in a disordered medium if there is less than one wavelength between two defects. Physicists from the universities of Zurich and Constance have now proved Nobel Prize winner Philip W. Anderson's theory directly for the first time using the diffusion of light in a cloudy medium.

With the purpose of developing new biological methods to control one of the major pests affecting the southwest Europe pine stands, a joint collaboration leaded by the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária, Portugal (R. Petersen-Silva, P. Naves, E. Sousa), together with the Universidad de Barcelona, Spain (J.

From a single-cell egg to a fully functional body: as embryos develop and grow, they must form organs that are in proportion to the overall size of the embryo. The exact mechanism underlying this fundamental characteristic, called scaling, is still unclear. However, a team of researchers from EMBL Heidelberg is now one step closer to understanding it. They have discovered that scaling of the future vertebrae in a mouse embryo is controlled by how the expression of some specific genes oscillates, in a coordinated way, between neighbouring cells.

Leeches, despite the yuck factor, have captured the hearts of two University of California, Berkeley, scientists who are part of a team that this week is publishing the leech's complete genome sequence.

"This genome has revolutionized our studies," said David Weisblat, a UC Berkeley professor of molecular and cell biology who lobbied for inclusion of the leech in a genome sequencing initiative that has targeted a variety of animals in order to learn what they have in common with one another and with humans.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 19 – A global network of people monitoring bee populations may form an early warning system alerting scientists to dangers threatening the world's food system and economies.

PHILADELPHIA — The use of androgen deprivation therapies to prevent precancerous prostate abnormalities developing into aggressive prostate cancer may have adverse effects in men with precancers with specific genetic alterations, according to data from a preclinical study recently published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Boston, Mass.—A set of proteins detected in urine by researchers at Boston Children's Hospital may prove to be the first biomarkers for Kawasaki disease, an uncommon but increasingly prevalent disease which causes inflammation of blood vessels that can lead to enlarged coronary arteries and even heart attacks in some children. If validated in more patients with Kawasaki disease, the markers could make the disease easier to diagnose and give doctors an opportunity to start treatment earlier.

DALLAS – Dec. 20, 2012 – UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have pinpointed a molecular mechanism needed to unleash the heart's ability to regenerate, a critical step toward developing eventual therapies for damage suffered following a heart attack.

Although climate change may alter the distributions of many species, changes in land use may compound these effects. Now, a new study by PRBO Conservation Science (PRBO) researcher Dennis Jongsomjit and colleagues suggests that the effects of future housing development may be as great or greater than those of climate change for many bird species. In fact, some species projected to expand their distributions with climate change may actually lose ground when future development is brought into the picture.

WASHINGTON — Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center say they have new evidence that challenges scientific dogma involving two fatal neurodegenerative diseases — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) — and, in the process, have uncovered a possible therapeutic target as a novel strategy to treat both disorders.

(Philadelphia, PA) – By all accounts, a combination of colon cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure can be a recipe for medical disaster. Now, a new study led by a surgical oncologist and researcher at Temple University School of Medicine and Fox Chase Cancer Center has shown just how deadly this mix can be.