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Researchers at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine have identified a genetic factor that prevents blockages from forming in blood vessels, a discovery that could lead to new therapies for cardiovascular diseases.

The findings are described in the Nov. 19 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

KANSAS CITY, MO—Changes in how DNA interacts with histones—the proteins that package DNA—regulate many fundamental cell activities from stem cells maturing into a specific body cell type or blood cells becoming leukemic. These interactions are governed by a biochemical tug of war between repressors and activators, which chemically modify histones signaling them to clamp down tighter on DNA or move aside and allow a gene to be expressed.

This release is available in Spanish.

U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists are helping deployed American troops protect themselves against sand flies, which are major pests in Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East.

A new approach to invisibility cloaking may one day be used at sea to shield floating objects – such as oil rigs and ships – from rough waves. Unlike most other cloaking techniques that rely on transformation optics, this one is based on the influence of the ocean floor's topography on the various "layers" of ocean water.

The answer is yes. Finnish researchers have developed a triumphant solution for predicting responses of breast cancer cells to a set of cancer drugs. The prediction is based on the genomic profiles of the cancer cells. Harnessing genomic profiles of cells in choosing the best treatment is considered the holy grail of personalised medicine.

Male tree frogs like to 'see what they're getting' when they select females for mating, according to a new study by Dr. Michael Reichert from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the US. His work, which is one of the first to test the importance of vision on male mating behaviors in a nocturnal anuran (frog or toad), is published online in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

It is hypothesized that cocoons attached to any material were transported by air, eg by NATO aircraft, after which the moths found their favourite hostplant commonly planted.

The finding of an unknown small moth by Dutch amateur moth hunter Hans Huisman in his backyard lead to the discovery that the American Oak skeletonizer (Bucculatrix ainsliella) is invading North West Europe on planted Northern Red oaks (Quercus rubra), a North American tree.

VIB researchers from UGent and Vrije Universiteit Brussel , together with a team of the firm Oxyrane have developed a new technology that can lead to a more efficient and possibly also cheaper therapy for diseases such as Pompe disease. Oxyrane will now start developing a clinical program for this therapy in Pompe disease.

Humans are much more inclined to cooperate than are their closest evolutionary relatives. The prevailing wisdom about why this is true has long been focused on the idea of altruism: we go out of our way to do nice things for other people, sometimes even sacrificing personal success for the good of others. Modern theories of cooperative behavior suggest that acting selflessly in the moment provides a selective advantage to the altruist in the form of some kind of return benefit.

PITTSBURGH, Nov. 19, 2012 – More than half of all retired people aged 65 and over report sleeping at least 7.5 hours per night, and between the hours of 11 p.m. and 7:30 a.m., contrary to commonly held assumptions that most elderly go to bed early and have trouble sleeping through the night, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh's Sleep and Chronobiology Center (SCC) and University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR).

November 19, 2012, Shenzhen, China – An international research team led by Nanjing Agricultural University and BGI, has completed the first genomic sequence of pear by an approach using the combination of BAC-by-BAC strategy and next-gen sequencing. The pear genome not only provides an invaluable new resource for breeding improvement of this important crop, but also sheds new light on the genome evolution and other genome-wide comparative studies. The results were published online in Genome Research.

Is there a link between the risk of breast cancer and the working environment? A study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health provides further evidence on this previously neglected research topic, confirming that certain occupations do pose a higher risk of breast cancer than others, particularly those that expose the worker to potential carcinogens and endocrine disrupters.

Decreased kidney function is associated with decreased cognitive functioning in areas such as global cognitive ability, abstract reasoning and verbal memory, according to a study led by Temple University. This is the first study describing change in multiple domains of cognitive functioning in order to determine which specific abilities are most affected in individuals with impaired renal function.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS – As a corporate responsibility consultant, Kellie McElhaney publicly criticized Apple's recent appointment of another man to an already all-male executive team. McElhaney's new research goes one step further, indicating that the number of women on a corporate board correlates with a firm's sustainability performance.