A team of European researchers has devised a method for locating plastic anti-personnel mines, which are manufactured to avoid detection by metal detectors. The technique involves analysing the temperature of the ground in three dimensions using specific software and hardware, according to a study published in the journal Computers & Geosciences…
Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have discovered a new gene therapy that may prevent the progression of emphysema. The study, which appears on-line in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, describes a method to express therapeutic genes in lung tissue for a lifetime after only a single treatment. Alpha-1 Anti-trypsin Deficiency is the most common inherited form of emphysema seen in young people due to a mutation in the Alpha-1 Anti-trypsin gene. This genetic disease predisposes affected individuals to early emphysema and cirrhosis of the liver…
A group of Norwegian and American researchers have shown that common variations in genes associated with microcephaly – a neuro-developmental disorder in which brain size is dramatically reduced – may explain differences in brain size in healthy individuals as well as in patients with neurological and psychiatric disorders…
Boys with the sexual birth defects known as hypospadias and cryptorchidism are at risk for developing testicular germ cell cancer, but their relatives are not, according to a new study published online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Although hypospadias, the birth defect that involves an abnormally-placed urinary opening, and cryptorchidism, the lack of descension of one or both testes in the scrotal sac, are associated with a risk of developing testicular germ cell cancer, it was unclear whether all three were part of an inheritable dysgenesis syndrome…
A new study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that depressed patients are unable to sustain activity in brain areas related to positive emotion. The study challenges previous notions that individuals with depression show less brain activity in areas associated with positive emotion. Instead, the new data suggest similar initial levels of activity, but an inability to sustain them over time. The new work was reported online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences…
Researchers at National Jewish Health have discovered that a naturally occurring lipid in the lung can prevent RSV infection and inhibit spread of the virus after an infection is established. RSV is the major cause of hospitalization for children in the first two years of life, and is increasingly recognized as a dangerous pathogen in adults with chronic lung diseases, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. Currently, there is no effective vaccine for the virus…
Antibodies directed against the protein CD20, which is expressed by immune cells known as B cells, are used to treat B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis. Despite this, the function of CD20 has not been determined. Now, a team of researchers led by René van Lier, at the Academic Medical Center, The Netherlands, has determined that CD20 has a nonredundant role in generating optimal B cell immune responses by analyzing a patient lacking the protein…
Famous mugs do more than prompt us into buying magazines, according to new Université de Montréal research. In the December issue of the Canadian Journal on Aging, a team of scientists explain how the ability to name famous faces or access biographical knowledge about celebrities holds clues that could help in early Alzheimer’s detection…
The premiere issue of an aging-focused newsletter deals with two pressing societal concerns – the economic downturn and health care reform – from the perspective of older minority adults. WHAT’S HOT is the newest publication from The Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the country’s largest interdisciplinary organization devoted to the field of aging. Support for this issue was provided by sanofi-aventis…
Researchers and the general public have a new resource for information on the health and intimate relationships of older people, thanks to a new supplemental issue of The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological and Social Sciences (Volume 64B, Supplement 1)…