Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:02:29 GMT

AIDS Day and a new Scifoo lives on session

I’ve found some interesting news about Second Life. First, it’s my pleasure to announce that a new Scifoo lives on session will take place on the Second Nature island at 17:00 GMT on Monday. The idea is based on my 10 Reasons Why Nature is the Best in Science 2.0 post. Several members of the Nature group will attend and give slideshows about their projects (Nature Network, Connotea, etc.). Everbody is warmly invited!

• Wear a skin disease! (A Sexual Health SIM in Second Life (University of Plymouth))

Below is a snapshot of a very ''quick-and-dirty'' AIDS-related Kaposi Sarcoma "skin" for use in-world (it''s actually a transparent undershirt with the lesions). People wearing it are able to see and experience on their own avatar how Kaposi Sarcoma looks/feels in AIDS patients. Of course the same principle can be expanded, refined and used to role-play patients with various skin conditions/presentations and at various stages of their disease (to show progress, worsening or healing).

• Sculptie Earth (found on sim Areumdeuli): It features a topographic Earth model with cloud layer that displays real time weather patterns streamed from satellite data. Stills are taken 3 hours apart and 2 days of data is visible in the animation.

Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

December 2, 2007, 9:25 PM CT

Colon cancer screening halves emergency admissions

Bowel cancer screening halves emergency admissions for the disease and significantly cuts death rates, reveal the fifth year results from one of the first UK pilot sites.

The figures, published ahead of print in the journal Gut, refer to tests carried out in Coventry and Warwickshire in the Midlands.

This was the only area in England to try out the feasibility of bowel cancer screening for those aged 50 to 69, using postal tests that pick up hidden traces of blood in the stool (faecal occult blood tests).

Blood in the stool is a cardinal sign of malignant and pre-malignant changes in the bowel.

One in 20 people in the UK will develop bowel cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer deaths, claiming more than 16,000 lives every year.

The research team tracked the number of emergency admissions for, and deaths within 30 days from, bowel cancer to the largest hospital trust in the region.

The timeframe spanned from 1999, a year before the pilot began, to 2004, when the programme had been running for five years.

During the entire period, 1236 new cases of bowel cancer were diagnosed, equating to 200 cases a year.

In 1999, just under 30% of bowel cancer patients had to be admitted as an emergency. By 2004, this figure had fallen to just under 16%......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 2, 2007, 9:19 PM CT

Using fMRI to study brain development

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful noninvasive tool for studying brain activity in both humans and experimental animals. Most fMRI studies are carried out on adults, but this technique also has great potential for studying early brain development. That potential is hampered, however, by a lack of knowledge about the basis of the fMRI signal in the developing brain. Now, by studying rats, MIT neuroresearchers show that the fMRI signal changes during first few weeks of life. By correcting for those changes, the scientists were able to monitor the development of the rat brain. Determining whether analogous changes occur in humans will be important for interpreting developmental fMRI studies in young children.

Our study lays a foundation for using fMRI to study development, explains senior author Alan Jasanoff, Associate Member of the McGovern Institute and Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering. It establishes an approach that others can apply to investigate a number of aspects of neurodevelopment in very young animals. Jasanoff collaborated with the lab of developmental biologist Martha Constantine-Paton, a McGovern Institute Principal Investigator. The study was published online November 25, in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

A fundamental difficulty in interpreting fMRI is that it provides only an indirect readout of brain activity, based on changes in the brains blood supply. Increases in brain activity cause increased blood flow, but the coupling mechanism that links these two processes is itself subject to change in early life. Thus, a weak fMRI signal in young animals could mean less neural activity, or it could simply mean that MRI cannot detect that activity because of weak neurovascular coupling......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 2, 2007, 8:58 PM CT

Insomniacs and a family history of the sleep disorder

Individuals with either current or past insomnia are more likely to report a family history of insomnia than are those who have never had the sleep disorder, as per a research studyreported in the December 1 issue of the journal SLEEP.

The study, authored by Simon Beaulieu-Bonneau, MPs, of the cole de psychologie at Universit Laval in Qubec, Canada, focused on 953 adults between 18 and 83 years of age, who completed several questionnaires, including a survey of current and past history of insomnia/sleep disorders for self and first-degree relatives. Fifty-two percent of the subjects were classified as good sleepers, 32.5 percent as individuals with insomnia symptoms, and 15.5 percent as having met criteria for an insomnia syndrome.

As per the results, 39.7 percent of the subjects reported at least one first-degree relative (i.e., parent or sibling) with a current or past sleep problem. Insomnia (34.9 percent) was by far the most frequent sleep problem reported in first-degree relatives, followed by sleep apnea (4.6 percent), restless legs syndrome (2.6 percent) and excessive daytime sleepiness (2.4 percent). The subjects mother (19.7 percent) was the most frequently afflicted first-degree relative with insomnia, followed by sister (11.1 percent), father (7.5 percent), and brother (5.9 percent). For 2.2 percent of the sample, both parents had current or past insomnia......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

December 2, 2007, 8:37 PM CT

Mutant sperm guide clinicians to new diseases

Research published recently in Nature Genetics shows that some rearrangements of the human genome occur more frequently than previously thought. The work is likely to lead to new identification of genes involved in disease and to improve diagnosis of genomic disease.

The researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute looked at four unstable regions in the genome where rearrangements cause genetic diseases, so-called 'genomic disorders', and observed that some of these rearrangements were found in sperm much more frequently than expected.

In work published in November 2006, the team, led by Dr Matt Hurles, showed that losses or duplication of 'chunks' of the human genome occurred frequently in apparently healthy people. These losses or gains of DNA regions are called Copy Number Variants (CNVs), and can be found all over the genome in every individual.

Some of the mechanisms thought to produce CNVs would be expected to produce about one duplication for every deletion: however, clinical records for genomic disorders show only a few duplications, compared with hundreds of deletions.

"There was no direct, global measure of the relative rate at which human DNA is gained or lost, a study that requires a number of thousands of human genomes," explained Dr Matt Hurles, Investigator at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, "so we carried out a study on four clinically important regions using human sperm cells as our population of genomes......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

November 28, 2007, 10:07 PM CT

High blood pressure may heighten effects of Alzheimer's disease

Having hypertension, or high blood pressure, reduces blood flow in the brains of adults with Alzheimers disease, as per a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

While high blood pressure is not a cause of Alzheimers disease, our study shows that it is another hit on the brain that increases its vulnerability to the effects of the disease, said co-author of study Cyrus Raji, scientist and M.D. and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburgh where the study was conducted.

High blood pressure is a condition in which the blood circulates through the arteries with too much force. As per the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, approximately 50 million Americans have hypertension. People with high blood pressure are at elevated risk for heart attack, stroke and aneurysm. Recently, there has been mounting evidence tying cardiovascular health to brain health.

This study demonstrates that good vascular health is also good for the brain, said co-author Oscar Lopez, M.D., professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. Even in people with Alzheimers disease, it is important to detect and aggressively treat high blood pressure and also to focus on disease prevention......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

November 28, 2007, 10:03 PM CT

Detecting HIV in resource-limited settings

Integrating HIV testing programmes into primary medical care can help achieve early diagnosis of HIV infection, even in relatively poor areas, research reported in the online open access journal AIDS Research and Therapy has shown.

Scientists from Harvard Medical School and the non-governmental organisation Partners In Health (PIH, www.pih.org), both based in Boston, USA set out to see if HIV diagnosis was delayed because doctors missed opportunities to test people who were at risk of HIV during clinic visits.

The team works with the Haitian Ministry of Health to improve patients' access to primary care in central Haiti. This includes "provider-initiated HIV testing" (offering patients HIV tests when they visit primary care clinics) and the provision of free HIV therapy if required. The scientists then looked back at records from a single primary care clinic to examine the 'missed opportunities' and delays in diagnosing patients with HIV.

The scientists found few missed opportunities for diagnosis in the clinic - 85% of the first 112 patients found to have HIV were diagnosed on their first visit to the doctor. Patients with HIV who were not diagnosed on their first visit had to wait a median of just 62 days until diagnosis.

In the developing world, much HIV testing is done through maternity clinics or special HIV clinics that perform voluntary counselling and testing (i.e. on request of the individuals themselves) but that often do not provide other medical services or comprehensive HIV therapy. The authors suggest that provider-initiated testing at primary care clinics can be an effective way to identify patients with HIV infection......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:35 PM CT

Stem-cell therapies for brain

An MIT research teams latest finding suggests that stem cell therapies for the brain could be much more complicated than previously thought.

As per a research findings reported in the Public Library of Science (PloS) Biology on Nov. 13, MIT researchers report that adult stem cells produced in the brain are pre-programmed to make only certain kinds of connectionsmaking it impossible for a neural stem cell originating in the brain to be transplanted to the spinal cord, for instance, to take over functions for damaged cells.

Some scientists hope to use adult stem cells produced in the brain to replace neurons lost to damage and diseases such as Alzheimers. The new study calls this into question.

It is wishful thinking to hope that adult stem cells will be able to modify themselves so that they can become other types of neurons lost to injury or disease, said Carlos E. Lois, assistant professor of neuroscience in MITs Picower Institute for Leaning and Memory.

In developing embryos, stem cells give rise to all the different types of cells that make up the body--skin, muscle, nerve, brain, blood and more. Some of these stem cells persist in adults and give rise to new skin cells, stomach lining cells, etc. The idea behind stem-cell treatment is to use these cells to repair tissue or organs ravaged by disease......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:31 PM CT

HIV Subtype More Deadly Than Others

Two studies led by scientists at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health observed that people infected with HIV in Thailand die from the disease significantly sooner than those with HIV living in other parts of the world. As per the researchers, the shorter survival time measured in the studies suggests that HIV subtype E, which is the most common HIV subtype in Thailand, may be more virulent than other subtypes of the virus. Both studies are published in a special issue of the journal AIDS, the offical journal of the International AIDS Society.

The first study followed 228 men over a 14-year period starting in 1991. All of the men were serving in the Thai military and were HIV-negative when they enrolled in the study. The scientists tested for HIV every six months to determine approximately when they acquired HIV. The men were also diagnosed at a time before combination antiretroviral drug treatment was available.

The scientists compared the group of Thai men to a group of similar HIV-positive men living in North America and Europe who were included in another study. The median time from HIV infection to death for the Thai men was 7.8 years in comparison to 11 years for HIV-positive men living in North America and Europe. The survival rate for the Thai men was also lower than studies of similar populations living in low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa where subtypes A, C, D and G circulate. However, the shorter survival after HIV infection among persons in Africa infected with subtype D was similar to the survival among the Thai men......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:07 PM CT

Prenatal arsenic exposure in newborns

The children of mothers whose water supplies were contaminated with arsenic during their pregnancies harbored gene expression changes that may lead to cancer and other diseases during the later part of life, MIT scientists reported in a new study. In addition to establishing the potential harmful effects of these prenatal exposures, the study also provides a possible method for screening populations to detect signs of arsenic contamination.

This is the first time evidence of such genome-wide changes resulting from prenatal exposure has ever been documented from any environmental contaminant. It suggests that even when water supplies are cleaned up and the children never experience any direct exposure to the pollutant, they may suffer lasting damage.

The research was reported in the Nov. 23 issue of PLoS Genetics (published by the Public Library of Science).

The evidence comes from studies of 32 mothers and their children in a province of Thailand that experienced heavy arsenic contamination from tin mining. Similar levels of arsenic are also found in a number of other regions, including the U.S. southwest.

The research was led by Mathuros Ruchirawat, Director of the Laboratory of Environmental Toxicology of the Chulabhorn Research Institute (CRI) in Thailand, and Leona D. Samson, Director of MIT's Center for Environmental Health Sciences (CEHS) and the American Cancer Society Professor in the Departments of Biological Engineering and Biology at MIT. The first author of the study was Rebecca C. Fry, a research scientist at CEHS. Co-authors included Panida Navasumrit of the CRI and Chandni Valiathan, graduate student at MIT's Computational and Systems Biology Initiative......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source