Body

Researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine have taken a new approach to understanding why so many breast cancer patients in Appalachia aren't getting the care they need, and their findings are set to change how people view the obstacles to care that beset the region.

For example, the distance patients have to travel for cancer care is often viewed as a critical factor. But UVA's findings underscore the crucial importance of access to primary-care providers - the frontline doctors who could catch cancer earlier.

Old Questions, New Answers

HOUSTON -- (Nov. 2, 2015) -- Rice University scientists have solved a long-standing mystery about where the body stores and deploys blood-clotting factor VIII, a protein that about 80 percent of hemophiliacs cannot produce due to genetic defects.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (Nov. 2, 2015) -- After breast cancer surgery, women are prescribed adjuvant (or follow-up) therapies such as chemotherapy and endocrine drugs to reduce the risk of the cancer returning. It's been assumed that the treatment effects of these therapies remain constant over time, but a new study from the Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio suggests the opposite is true.

TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2015--The Apgar score that evaluates a baby's condition at birth may also be a useful tool for predicting whether a mother is critically ill, new research suggests.

The health of a baby and its mother are inextricably linked throughout pregnancy and delivery, yet none of the current tools used to assess the risk of "severe acute maternal morbidity" - a critically ill woman in need of transfer to an intensive care unit - have taken into account her baby's health.

As a result of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, the chemistry of the Southern Ocean is expected to change so fast over the next few decades that tiny creatures at the base of the food web may soon struggle to form their shells. New research by scientists from the University of Hawai'i, Mānoa (UHM) and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks (UAF) finds that for some organisms the onset of such critical conditions will be so abrupt, and the duration of events so long, that adaption may become impossible.

A team of Swedish scientists have used national register information in more than one million Swedish children to study the association of early life contact with dogs and subsequent development of asthma. This question has been studied extensively previously, but conclusive findings have been lacking. The new study showed that children who grew up with dogs had about 15 percent less asthma than children without dogs.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- When cancer cells compete with immune cells for glucose, the cancer wins. As a result, the immune T cells are not healthy and don't have the weapons to kill the cancer.

"If we have a way to manipulate the metabolic pathway, the T cells may be healthier," says senior author Weiping Zou, M.D., Ph.D., Charles B. de Nancrede Professor of Surgery, Immunology and Biology at the University of Michigan Medical School.

The finding, published in Nature Immunology, suggests a potential metabolic pathway against cancer.

Stanford, CA-- Once a mother plant releases its embryos to the outside world, they have to survive on their own without family protection. To ensure successful colonization by these vulnerable creatures, the mother plant provides the embryo with a backpack full of energy, called the endosperm. Since, over time, the only plants that will survive are those that reproduce and compete successfully, the mother plant's whole life is dedicated to producing sugars in its leaves, which are ultimately stored in these backpacks.

UPTON, NY-The first-ever images of the protein complex that unwinds, splits, and copies double-stranded DNA reveal something rather different from the standard textbook view. The electron microscope images, created by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory with partners from Stony Brook University and Rockefeller University, offer new insight into how this molecular machinery functions, including new possibilities about its role in DNA "quality control" and cell differentiation.

DNA replication is essential to all life, yet many basic mechanisms in that process remain unknown to scientists. The structure of the replisome--a block of proteins responsible for unwinding the DNA helix and then creating duplicate helices for cell division--is one such mystery.

Now, for the first time, a team of researchers from The Rockefeller University, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Stony Brook University has revealed that vital complex's molecular architecture. And to their surprise, it does not look as they had expected.

Bats in northeast China are infected with the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, a deadly disease that has decimated bat populations in North America since it first appeared in upstate New York in 2006. A team of American and Chinese researchers found the fungus in caves where bats hibernate and found bats infected with the fungus.

Although infected bats had lesions characteristic of the disease and similar to lesions seen in North American bats, the researchers do not know the extent to which Chinese bat species are affected by the disease.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- By sequencing its genome, scientists are homing in on the genes and genetic pathways that allow the juicy pineapple plant to thrive in water-limited environments. The new findings, reported in the journal Nature Genetics, also open a new window on the complicated evolutionary history of grasses like sorghum and rice, which share a distant ancestor with pineapple.

Talking about sex with parents, especially mothers, had an effect on safer sex behavior among adolescents, especially girls, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

A reduced risk for childhood asthma at the age of six was associated with exposure to dogs or farm animals during a child's first year of life, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics.

Childhood asthma is a global health concern. A number of environmental factors have been associated with either increased or decreased risk of asthma.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a nanoscale machine made of DNA that can randomly walk in any direction across bumpy surfaces. Future applications of such a DNA walker might include a cancer detector that could roam the human body searching for cancerous cells and tagging them for medical imaging or drug targeting.