Body

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – June 6, 2011 – A natural nutritional supplement, marketed for the last decade as a sexual aid, has been shown to significantly improve overall quality of life for female cancer survivors, according to researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

The findings will be presented today at the 2011 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago.

Terrorist groups bend the rules of 'true' Islam to justify the use of female suicide bombers, according to Margaret Gonzalez-Perez from Southeastern Louisiana University in the US. Her paper traces the development of radical Islamic doctrine over time, highlights how it deviates from mainstream Islam, and identifies the building blocks that have culminated in Jihadi female suicide bombers.

Cancer cells do not grow equally well everywhere in the body. Often, they first create the conditions in which they can grow. Many years ago researchers discovered that solid tumors attract blood vessels to ensure their supply of nutrients by secreting specific factors. Now the immunologist Dr. Uta Höpken (Tumor and Immunogenetics Research Group at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine, MDC, Berlin-Buch in the Helmholtz Association) and the hematologist Dr.

A groundbreaking new test for male infertility, which will save time, money and heartache for couples around the world, has been developed at Queen's University Belfast.

The medical breakthrough, known as the SpermComet, has resulted from more than a decade's research by Professor Sheena Lewis, who leads the Reproductive Medicine research group at Queen's.

An article in the current issue of Global Change Biology Bioenergy finds that natural populations of Miscanthus are promising candidates as second-generation energy sources because they have genetic variation that may increase their stress tolerance.

Sustainable, large-scale bioenergy production requires domestication that develops crops capable of producing sufficiently high biomass on marginal and degraded land.

Back in the mid 19th century, a French doctor, Armand Trousseau, discovered a connection between cancer and thrombosis – the formation of often dangerous blood clots that can lead to venous occlusion. Today it is known that cancer and its treatment change blood flow properties and thus promote the formation of clots. However, clots do not only occur as a side effect and consequence of cancer, but, vice versa, an increased blood clotting tendency may also be associated with an elevated cancer risk.

A group of scientists at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, in Portugal, have uncovered a surprising link between the cell's skeleton and organ size. The team, led by Florence Janody, show in the journal Development(*), that one of the proteins that regulates the skeleton of the cell also acts to blocks activation of genes that promote cell survival and proliferation. Their findings have implications for cancer research, as they add to the puzzle of understanding how proliferation genes are abnormally activated, often leading to tumours.

Forests in many regions are becoming larger carbon sinks thanks to higher density, U.S. and European researchers say in a new report.

In Europe and North America, increased density significantly raised carbon storage despite little or no expansion of forest area, according to the study, led by Aapo Rautiainen of the University of Helsinki, Finland, and published in the online, open-access journal PLoS One.

Even in the South American nations studied, more density helped maintain regional carbon levels in the face of deforestation.

CHICAGO – As the world marks the 30-year anniversary of the first reporting of HIV/AIDS, now comes the realization of a new challenge for people with the incurable disease. For reasons not yet clear, people with HIV face a higher rate of cancers not usually associated with HIV. This increasing rate of "non-AIDS defining cancers" includes lung, head and neck, liver, kidney, and anal cancers, among others. The alarming uptick in cancer rates highlights the critical need to understand how to treat tumors in people taking highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART) for HIV.

Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have discovered a key molecule needed to kill the blood vessels that supply tumours.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore have invented a graphene-based polarizer that can broaden the bandwidth of prevailing optical fibre-based telecommunication systems.

Researchers from the University of Hull have discovered a way to load up nanoparticles with large numbers of light-sensitive molecules to create a more effective form of photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating cancer.

Photodynamic therapy uses molecules which, when irradiated with light, cause irreparable damage to cells by creating toxic forms of oxygen, called reactive oxygen species. Most PDT works with individual light-sensitive molecules – but the new nanoparticles could each carry hundreds of molecules to a cancer site.

Work by researchers at Queen Mary, University of London could point to a new way to treat aggressive types of cancer.

The scientists have found that a molecule called Met is responsible for stimulating the growth and spread of cancer because it is relocating to the wrong part of the cell.

Experiments in the lab suggest that moving Met molecules from the inside of the cell to the cell surface could halt the growth of cancer cells and even cause tumours to shrink.

Scientists could have a revolutionary new way of measuring how much of the potent greenhouse gas methane is produced by cows and other ruminants, thanks to a surprising discovery in their poo.

Researchers from the University of Bristol and the Teagasc Animal and Grassland Research Centre in Ireland, have found a link between methane production and levels of a compound called archaeol in the faeces of several fore-gut fermenting animals including cows, sheep and deer.