feed info

168,137 articles from ScienceDaily

Rating HPV biomarkers in head, neck cancers

A new study of head and neck cancers finds that combinations of biomarkers are better than DNA alone in determining whether the human papillomavirus is involved. That's important because people with HPV-caused cancers are likely to fare much better than people whose cancer came from causes like smoking. Reliably assessing HPV's presence could prevent...

Dictionary completed on language used everyday in ancient Egypt

A dictionary of thousands of words chronicling the everyday lives of people in ancient Egypt — including what taxes they paid, what they expected in a marriage and how much work they had to do for the government — has been completed. The ancient language is Demotic Egyptian, a name given by the Greeks to denote it was the tongue of the demos, or common...

Like a spring in a toy car: Catalysis mechanism of cell growth protein Ras clarified

Proteins accelerate certain chemical reactions in cells by several orders of magnitude. The molecular mechanism by which the Ras protein accelerates the cleavage of the molecule GTP and thus slows cell growth is described by biophysicists. Using a combination of infrared spectroscopy and computer simulations, they showed that Ras puts a phosphate chain under tension to such an extent that a...

Surprising demographic shifts in endangered monkey population challenge conservation expectations

At first glance, the northern muriqui monkey is a prime conservation success story. These Brazilian primates are critically endangered, but in the past 30 years a population on a private reserve has grown from just 60 individuals to some 300, now comprising almost a third of the total remaining animals. A recent analysis of the factors contributing to this population's tremendous growth reveals...

Lack of sleep affects bone health and bone marrow activity

Scientists specializing in neurology, cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy have discovered abnormalities in bone and bone marrow in rats undergoing chronic lack of sleep. They discovered abnormalities in serum markers of bone metabolism in sleep-deprived rats, which led them to conduct direct measurements of bone parameters; this time in rats experiencing recurrent sleep restriction during a...

Oral bacteria may signal pancreatic cancer risk

Pancreatic cancer is highly lethal and difficult to detect early. In a new study, researchers report that people who had high levels of antibodies for an infectious oral bacterium turned out to have double the risk for developing the cancer. High antibody levels for harmless oral bacteria, meanwhile, predicted a reduced pancreatic cancer...

Protection for humans on Mars

For six weeks the rover "Curiosity" is working on Mars. NASA also plans to send humans to Mars within the next 20 years. On the flight and during the stay on Moon or Mars the astronauts have to be protected against long exposure to cosmic radiation that might cause cancer. Scientists are testing whether Moon and Mars regolith can be used to build shieldings for ground...

Sea surface temperatures reach record highs on Northeast continental shelf

During the first six months of 2012, sea surface temperatures in the Northeast Shelf Large Marine Ecosystem were the highest ever recorded. The annual 2012 spring plankton bloom was intense, started earlier and lasted longer than average. This has implications for marine life from the smallest creatures to the largest marine mammals like whales. Atlantic cod continued to shift northeastward from...

Women speak less when they're outnumbered

Scholars examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation – amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke. The disparity vanished when groups followed a unanimous voting...

How much product information do consumers want?

In a new study, psychologists at Brown University and the University of Colorado found that while some people require a detailed explanation of how a product works before they'll be willing to pay more, others became less willing to pay when confronted with that additional detail. A simple, standard test predicted the desire for detail — who wants more, who wants...

Quasars: Mileposts marking the universe's expansion

Researchers have found a possible way to map the spread and structure of the universe, guided by the light of quasars. The technique, combined with the expected discovery of millions more far-away quasars over the next decade, could yield an unprecedented look back to a time shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe was a fraction the size it is...

Neurodegenerative diseases: New findings on protein misfolding

Misfolded proteins can cause various neurodegenerative diseases such as spinocerebellar ataxias or Huntington's disease, which are characterized by a progressive loss of neurons in the brain. Researchers have now identified 21 proteins that specifically bind to the protein ataxin-1. Twelve of these proteins enhance the misfolding of ataxin-1 and thus promote the formation of harmful protein...