news 2009

PHILADELPHIA – Born with a retinal disease that made him legally blind, and would eventually leave him totally sightless, the nine-year-old boy used to sit in the back of the classroom, relying on the large print on an electronic screen and assisted by teacher aides. Now, after a single injection of genes that produce light-sensitive pigments in the back of his eye, he sits in front with classmates and participates in class without extra help.

People suffering from fibromyalgia have reduced activity in the parts of the brain that inhibit the experience of pain. Drugs that affect the CNS can be effective against the disease, and are thought to be even more so if administered early in its course. This according to a new thesis from Karolinska Institutet.

The Kentish-Snowy Plover, a small shorebird found in the US and Europe, is suffering from an identity crisis after scientists at the University of Sheffield and the University of Bath have found genetic evidence that the populations are, in fact, separate species. Historically, biologists classified the Kentish Plover, found in Europe, and its look-a-like, the Snowy Plover, from the US, as being different varieties of the same species due to their similar looks.

The feeling of stigmatization that people living with HIV often experience doesn't only exact a psychological toll — new UCLA research suggests it can also lead to quantifiably negative health outcomes.

LANL among organizations proposing new genome sequence strategies Los Alamos, New Mexico, OCTOBER 21, 2009—A team of geneticists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, together with a consortium of international researchers, has recently proposed a set of standards designed to elucidate the quality of publicly available genetic sequencing information.

Robots of the future could have fingertips as sensitive as those of people, thanks to research by the University of Sheffield into the way brains interpret senses. Researchers at the University, along with experts at the University of Edinburgh, connected artificial mouse whiskers to a robotic brain to better understand how the brain processes information relayed by our sense of touch.

You can teach an old dog new tricks, say UCLA scientists who found that middle-aged and older adults with little Internet experience were able to trigger key centers in the brain that control decision-making and complex reasoning after just one week of surfing the Web. The findings, presented Oct. 19 at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, suggest that Internet training can stimulate neural activation patterns and could potentially enhance brain function and cognition in older adults.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. Oct. Mark E. Richard, who specializes in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, and metaphysics and epistemology, has been named professor of philosophy at Harvard University, effective July 1, 2010. "Professor Richard is an original, rigorous, and creative scholar who has made important, and impressive, contributions to the philosophy of language," says Diana Sorensen, dean for the arts and humanities in Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The research, published online on 18 October 2009 in the journal Nature Chemistry has identified an imaging agent, which will enable scientists to understand the processes that occur within living cells and help develop new treatments for a range of diseases, including cancer. The imaging agent has helped to easily identify four-stranded DNA structures within the nucleus of cells, known as quadruplexes.

PA 269/09 Archaeologists surveying the world's oldest submerged town have found ceramics dating back to the Final Neolithic. Their discovery suggests that Pavlopetri, off the southern Laconia coast of Greece, was occupied some 5,000 years ago - at least 1,200 years earlier than originally thought. These remarkable findings have been made public by the Greek government after the start of a five year collaborative project involving the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and The University of Nottingham.

Cambridge, Mass. October 16, 2009 - As health care moves to the forefront of the national discourse, new research in the social sciences argues that the health of the population and the success or failure of many public health initiatives hinges as much on cultural and social factors as it does on doctors, facilities, or drugs.

The NASA IBEX mission has sent back data that indicates a "noodle soup" of solar material has accumulated at the outer fringes of the heliosphere bubble. Science paper to describe unexpected structural features shown by LANL camera The invisible structures of space are becoming less so, as scientists look out to the far edges of the solar wind bubble that separates our solar system from the interstellar cloud through which it flies.

BERKELEY — While some scientists have argued that cancer is such a complex genetic disease that you'd have to sequence a person's complete genome in order to predict his or her cancer risk, a University of California, Berkeley, cell biologist suggests that the risk may be more simply determined by inexpensively culturing a few skin cells.

October 15, 2009 — Coral Gables — University of Miami Law Professor Lili Levi has recently authored a research paper titled "A 'Pay or Play' Experiment to Improve Children's Educational Television." Levi's article addresses both the constitutionality and the efficacy of the FCC's current rules that effectively require broadcasters to air three hours per week of what the Commission defines as "core" children's educational programming.

Variations in how hospital resources are used across the United States have been a central component of the current discussion on health care reform. A new study by the University of California's five medical centers and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles that examined variations in medical treatment, cost and patient outcomes between hospitals has some surprising new findings to add to the debate.

The skin's pigment cells can be formed from completely different cells than has hitherto been thought, a new study from the Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet shows. The results, which are published in the journal Cell, also mean the discovery of a new kind of stem cell. The body's pigment gives essential protection against UV radiation.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that children born with low birth weight are at a higher risk of developing asthma later in life. The study, which is published in the journal Pediatrics, is based on data on the incidence of asthma in 10,918 twins from the Swedish Twin Registry. Questionnaire data on asthma in 9- and 12- year old twins was linked to the national Swedish Medical Birth Registry which records, amongst other data, birth weight and gestational age (i.e.

PA 263/09 Thousands of letters written by the controversial Poet Laureate Robert Southey (1774-1843) are to be published in full and for the first time on a free access website. Once complete The Collected Letters of Robert Southey will contain some 7,000 letters penned between 1791 and 1839. This major new edition, which will be complete in 2014, is being undertaken by a team of internationally acknowledged experts led by Dr Lynda Pratt from the School of English Studies at The University of Nottingham.

October 08, 2009 — Miami — Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine have identified a family of genes that may control the ability of the optic nerve to regenerate. The discovery of this gene family, as published in the October 9 issue of Science, is a big step forward for both visual science and neuroscience.

Scientists have identified a new neural circuit in the retina responsible for the detection of approaching objects.