Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute in Los Angeles have combined a special protein that targets cancer cells with neural stem cells (NSC) to track and attack malignant brain tumor cells. Results of their study appear in the Dec. 15 issue of Cancer Research.

Glioblastoma multiforme, or gliomas, are a particularly deadly type of brain tumor. They are highly invasive with poorly defined borders that intermingle with healthy brain tissue, maki

A collaboration of scientists from Harvard Medical School and Dartmouth Medical School has developed a new mouse model of lipoatrophic diabetes, and highlighted leptin therapy as a successful tool to combat this rare form of type II diabetes.

Lipoatrophic diabetes mellitus is characterized by a lack of subcutaneous fat (lipoatrophy), high blood sugar (hyperglycemia), and high blood insulin (hyperinsulinemia). Because patients with lipoatrophic diabetes are insulin-resistant, although high l

Dr. Mario Capecchi and colleagues at the University of Utah and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Salt Lake City, UT) have discovered that a gene called xanthine oxidoreductase, or XOR for short, is required for lactation in female mice. This previously unidentified role for XOR in lactation reveals a possible genetic basis for the lactation difficulties experienced by nearly 5% of women.

XOR was originally identified as encoding an enzyme involved in purine catabolism (the

A key role in synchronizing daily rhythms to the day/night cycle has been traced to a light-sensitive protein in the eye, by knocking out the gene that codes for it. Mice lacking a gene for the photopigment melanopsin show a dramatic deficiency in their ability to regulate their circadian rhythms by light. The discovery, by National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) grantees, helps unravel the heretofore elusive mechanisms by which day/night cycles regulate such rhythms in mammals. NIMH grantees Igna

Honeybees communicate by dancing. The dances tell worker bees where to find nectar. A UC Riverside study reports that under natural foraging conditions the communication of distance and direction in the dance language can increase the food collection of honeybee colonies. The study also confirms that bees use this directional information in locating the food sources advertised in the dance.

Based on work done in 2001 in the Agricultural Experiment Station at UC Riverside, P. Kirk Visscher,

High-power ultrasound, currently used for cell disruption, particle size reduction, welding and vaporization, has been shown to be 99.99 percent effective in killing bacterial spores after only 30 seconds of non contact exposure in experiments conducted by researchers at Penn State and Ultran Labs, Boalsburg, Pa.

In the experiments, bacterial spores contained in a paper envelope, were placed slightly (3mm) above the active area of a specially equipped source of inaudible, high frequency (70