Body

This news release is available in German.

Do scientific papers written by well-known scholars get more attention than they otherwise would receive because of their authors' high profiles?

A new study co-authored by an MIT economist reports that high-status authorship does increase how frequently papers are cited in the life sciences — but finds some subtle twists in how this happens.

Winston-Salem, N.C. – Jan. 27, 2014 – More than 25 million people in the United States have asthma, a chronic lung disease that inflames and narrows the airways causing recurring periods of wheezing, chest tightness, shortness of breath and coughing.

Humans, by most estimates, discovered fire over a million years ago. But when did they really begin to control fire and use it for their daily needs? That question – one which is central to the subject of the rise of human culture – is still hotly debated. A team of Israeli scientists recently discovered in the Qesem Cave, an archaeological site near present-day Rosh Ha'ayin, the earliest evidence – dating to around 300,000 years ago – of unequivocal repeated fire building over a continuous period.

Contract killing is one of the least studied, but most intriguing areas of organized crime; and new research into British hitmen has found that in some cases victims were murdered for as little as £200. The first typological study of British hitmen, published in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, identified four main types of contract killer; the novice, the dilettante, the journeyman; and the master.

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have identified how a mutated protein can lead to holes in a protein sitting in a cell's membrane. Such holes cause high blood pressure, and the discovery can now lead to new and better medication for high blood pressure.

High blood pressure can be caused by many things - one of them being a specific mutated protein. Now the researchers at University of Southern Denmark have found out exactly what unfortunate events in the human organism are initiated by the mutated protein.

A new analysis of animal studies on cholesterol-lowering statins by UC San Francisco researchers found that non-industry studies had results that favored the drugs even more than studies funded by industry.

The analysis of 63 animal studies of statins, led by Lisa Bero, PhD, UCSF professor clinical pharmacy, was published online January 21, 2014, in the scientific journal PLoS Biology.

As a fetal surgeon at UC San Francisco, Tippi MacKenzie, MD, has long known that conducting surgery on a fetus to correct a problems such as spina bifida often results in preterm labor and premature birth.

Now, MacKenzie and her UCSF colleagues have shown that, in mice at least, pregnancy complications after fetal surgery are triggered by activation of the mother's T cells – the same T cells that cause the body to reject a donor organ after transplant surgery.

A new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers provides insight into how much women of reproductive age in the United States know about reproductive health. Published in the Jan. 27 issue of Fertility & Sterility, the study found that about 50% of reproductive-age women had never discussed their reproductive health with a medical provider and about 30% visited their reproductive health provider less than once a year or never.

A potentially fatal bacterial disease of the heart, infective endocarditis frequently affects the heart's tricuspid valve, often resulting in permanent tissue damage. But a reconstructive technique, in which the valve is repaired with a bioscaffold on which new tissue can grow, can give some patients a new lease on life—a lease that has been extended to patients at Temple University Hospital, in Philadelphia, thanks to the pioneering work of T.

OTTAWA, ON – January 27, 2014 – Cancer is the leading cause of death in Canada and is responsible for about 30% of all deaths, according to the Canadian Cancer Society. Despite the urgent need for new and effective drugs, it remains extremely difficult to develop anti-cancer therapies in a timely way. Researchers in Ottawa looked at how to leverage current experimental therapies, in different combinations, to speed the fight against cancer. Scientific evidence suggests a specific combination approach is effective, as published today in Nature Biotechnology.

A new method allows for large-scale generation of human embryonic stem cells of high clinical quality. It also allows for production of such cells without destroying any human embryos. The discovery is a big step forward for stem cell research and for the high hopes for replacing damaged cells and thereby curing serious illnesses such as diabetes and Parkinson's disease.

Researchers from Warwick Medical School have discovered a critical point of failure in the microscopic transport system that operates inside every cell in the human body.

The study, published today in Nature Communications, explains how this tiny 'railway' system is a key target for cancer drugs and, as such, how this new discovery reveals how better drugs might be made. The tracks of this so called 'railway' are tiny tubes, called microtubules, 1000 times thinner than a human hair.

About 20 children per day in the United States are injured by firearms seriously enough to require hospitalization, and more than 6% of these children die from their injuries, according to a study by Yale School of Medicine researchers and their colleagues published in the Jan. 27 online issue of Pediatrics.

Researchers at Cardiff University are developing a novel compound known to reverse the spread of malignant breast cancer cells.

The vast majority of deaths from cancer result from its progressive spread to vital organs, known as metastasis. In breast cancer up to 12,000 patients a year develop this form of the disease, often several years after initial diagnosis of a breast lump.

In a recent series of studies researchers identified a previously unknown critical role for a potential cancer causing gene, Bcl3, in metastatic breast cancer.