Body

We all tend to assume that refugees want to go home. But often refugees cannot just return to their home country when conflict ends. Many have spent decades in exile; many second and third-generation refugees have never seen the place which they are now expected to call home. Research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) shows that for many refugees a quick return isn't the right answer.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Tiny, transient loops of genetic material, detected and studied by the hundreds for the first time at Brown University, are providing new insights into how the body transcribes DNA and splices (or missplices) those transcripts into the instructions needed for making proteins.

Scientists have found a master regulator gene needed for the development of M cells, a mysterious type of intestinal cell involved in initiating immune responses.

M cells act like "conveyor belts," ingesting bacteria and transporting substances from the gut into Peyer's patches, specialized tissues resembling lymph nodes in the intestines. Better knowledge of M cells' properties could aid research on oral vaccines and inflammatory bowel diseases.

Rio, 17 June 2012 – The world's fixation on economic growth ignores a rapid and largely irreversible depletion of natural resources that will seriously harm future generations, according to a report which today unveiled a new indicator aimed at encouraging sustainability - the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI).

DENVER – Research presented in the July 2012 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, concluded that patients with limited large cell neuroendocrine tumors or with limited stage small-cell lung cancer who were treated with perioperative chemotherapy and surgery had better overall survival outcomes than patients treated with surgery alone.

DENVER – Until recently, many elderly patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer were left untreated because treatment may not improve their quality of life. However, stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) has become one of the standards of treatment for these patients. The outpatient treatment given over a two-week period allows frail patients to undergo the treatment.

• There is a strong genetic influence on the risk of developing alcohol dependence (AD).
• Copy number variations (CNVs) refer to a class of genetic variation that can delete and duplicate whole genes, leading to powerful genetic effects.
• A first-of-its-kind study has found a significant association between AD and CNVs on chromosome 5q13.2.

• Few if any smoking-cessation "quitlines" routinely screen and counsel callers about their alcohol use.
• A new study has examined drinking patterns among smokers calling the New York State Smokers' Quitline.
• Smokers calling the quitline who reported a hazardous drinking pattern also had lower smoking-cessation rates.
• Quitlines could potentially identify hazardous drinkers and perhaps provide brief alcohol interventions.

Researchers from the University of Notre Dame have engineered nanoparticles that show great promise for the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM), an incurable cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow.

One of the difficulties doctors face in treating MM comes from the fact that cancer cells of this type start to develop resistance to the leading chemotherapeutic treatment, doxorubicin, when they adhere to tissue in bone marrow.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found a surprising connection between a key DNA-repair process and a cellular signaling network linked to aging, heart disease, cancer and other chronic conditions. The discovery promises to open up an important new area of research — one that could ultimately yield novel treatments for a wide variety of diseases.

A new approach to drug design, pioneered by a group of researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and Mt. Sinai, New York, promises to help identify future drugs to fight cancer and other diseases that will be more effective and have fewer side effects.

DENVER – In other studies, outcomes of specific surgeries has been shown to improve when performed at high-volume centralized centers. Researchers from the Netherlands Cancer Institute wanted to understand if patients undergoing lung cancer resections would benefit from having their procedures performed in a high-volume specialized center. The study, published in the July 2012 issue of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology, concluded that hospital volume and surgeon specialty are important factors in patient outcomes.

What do fireflies, nanorods and Christmas lights have in common? Someday, consumers may be able to purchase multicolor strings of light that don't need electricity or batteries to glow. Scientists in Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences found a new way to harness the natural light produced by fireflies (called bioluminescence) using nanoscience. Their breakthrough produces a system that is 20 to 30 times more efficient than those produced during previous experiments.

WASHINGTON — A new National Research Council report requested by Congress finds the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's updated site-specific risk assessment for the proposed National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) in Manhattan, Kan., a "substantial improvement" over the original 2010 version, but it has a number of deficiencies and inadequately characterizes the risks associated with operating the facility.

PHILADELPHIA — A substantial proportion of NK/T-cell lymphomas harbor Janus Kinase 3 gene mutations. Patients with these lymphomas might benefit from treatment with a Janus Kinase inhibitor according to a study published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.