Body

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Historically, the media have been particularly harsh to sharks, and it's affecting their survival.

The results of a Michigan State University study, appearing in the current issue of the journal Conservation Biology, reviewed worldwide media coverage of sharks – and the majority isn't good.

Chicago (November 7, 2012)—An acute care surgery model led to improvement in the quality of surgical patient care and reduced the cost of emergency surgical care at Loma Linda University Medical Center, report researchers who published their findings in the November issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have mimicked pulmonary edema in a microchip lined by living human cells, as reported today in the journal Science Translation Medicine. They used this "lung-on-a-chip" to study drug toxicity and identify potential new therapies to prevent this life-threatening condition.

The study offers further proof-of-concept that human "organs-on-chips" hold tremendous potential to replace traditional approaches to drug discovery and development.

DALLAS – Nov. 7, 2012 – UT Southwestern Medical Center scientists led by Dr. Sean Morrison, director of the Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern, have developed an innovative model for predicting the progression of skin cancer in patients.

Whole genome sequencing of the DNA code of three prenatal samples provided a detailed map of the locations of their chromosomal abnormalities in 14 days, scientists reported today at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2012 meeting in San Francisco.

BOSTON, MA—Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have discovered a new gene that regulates hemoglobin synthesis during red blood cell formation. The findings advance the biomedical community's understanding and treatment of human anemias and mitochondrial disorders.

The study will be published online on November 7, 2012 in Nature.

On the south coast of South Africa, scientists have found evidence for an advanced stone age technology dated to 71,000 years ago at Pinnacle Point near Mossel Bay. This technology, allowing projectiles to be thrown at greater distance and killing power, takes hold in other regions of Africa and Eurasia about 20,000 years ago. When combined with other findings of advanced technologies and evidence for early symbolic behavior from this region, the research documents a persistent pattern of behavioral complexity that might signal modern humans evolved in this coastal location.

Researchers have mapped the precise 3-D atomic structure of a thin protein filament critical for cells in the inner ear and calculated the force necessary to pull it apart.

Even empty gaps have a colour. Now scientists have shown that quantum jumps of electrons can change the colour of gaps between nano-sized balls of gold. The new results, published today in the journal Nature, set a fundamental quantum limit on how tightly light can be trapped.

The team from the Universities of Cambridge, the Basque Country and Paris have combined tour de force experiments with advanced theories to show how light interacts with matter at nanometre sizes. The work shows how they can literally see quantum mechanics in action in air at room temperature.

(Lebanon, NH, 11/5/2012) — Dartmouth researchers have found that duration of ibuprofen use was associated with a reduced risk of bladder cancer in patients in northern New England, which has a high mortality rate of this disease.

Vancouver researchers have discovered the cellular pathway that causes lung-damaging inflammation in cystic fibrosis (CF), and that reducing the pathway's activity also decreases inflammation. The finding offers a potential new drug target for treating CF lung disease, which is a major cause of illness and death for people with CF.

HOUSTON – (Nov. 7, 2012) – Administering stem cells derived from patients' own bone marrow either three or seven days after a heart attack is safe but does not improve heart function six months later, according to a clinical trial supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

New Rochelle, NY, November 7, 2012—Anaplastic thyroid cancer is a rare form of thyroid tumor, but it is also the most deadly.

Paleontology, with its rocks and fossils, seems far removed from the world of developmental genetics, with its petri dishes and embryos. Whereas paleontology strives to determine "What happened in evolution?", developmental genetics uses gene control in embryos to try to answer "How did it happen?" Combined, the two approaches can lead to remarkable insights that benefit both fields.

Months of painstaking work in the laboratory at Bielefeld University's Center for Biotechnology (CeBiTec) have paid off: the 15 students participating in this year's 'international Genetically Engineered Machine competition' (iGEM) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have good reason to celebrate. The goal of their project was to develop a biological filter that removes estrogen from drinking water. It was a success: they managed to produce enzymes that break down the hormone. On Monday 5 November, the competition finals came to a close in Boston.