Dr. Haibe-Kains’s article investigated results from two large-scale pharmacogenomic studies — the Cancer Genome Project (CGP) and the Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE) — published last year in Nature. …
The INFORMED study is believed to be the first of its kind to track physician practice patterns as an outcome of a skin cancer detection training course. INFORMED stands for INternet curriculum FOR Melanoma Early Detection. Key findings of 54 physicians who took the course: • Scores for diagnosing and managing all skin cancer lesions increased 10 percent. …
"Two recent phase III trials of another anti-angiogenic drug, bevacizumab, showed no improvement in overall survival for glioblastoma patients, but our study suggests that only a subset of such patients will really benefit from these drugs," explains Tracy Batchelor, MD, director of the Pappas Center for Neuro-Oncology at the MGH Cancer Center and co-lead and corresponding author of the current study. "Our results also verify that normalization of tumor vasculature appears to be the way that anti-angiogenic drugs enhance the activity of chemotherapy and radiation treatment." Anti-angiogenic drugs, which block the action of factors that stimulate the growth of blood vessels, were first introduced for cancer treatment under the theory that they would act by ‘starving’ tumors of their blood supply…
Actively growing cells must synthesize large amounts of protein, which in turn requires huge numbers of protein production plants, the so-called ribosomes. Ribosomes themselves consist of proteins mounted on a framework of ribosomal RNA…
The studies involved controlling the actions of microRNAs, tiny pieces of RNA that were once considered to be "junk" but are now known to fine-tune gene activation and expression. The researchers showed that treating mice with short RNA strands that precisely target and inhibit microRNAs ("antimicroRNAs") can stop the aberrant growth of blood vessels ("neovascularization"). It is this abnormal proliferation of vessels that exacerbates vision loss in neovascular eye diseases like "wet" macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, two of the leading causes of blindness. Described in the cover story of the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, the microRNA treatments blocked aberrant vessel growth without damaging existing vasculature or neurons in three separate models of neovascular eye disease — a proof-of-principle that suggests future treatment based on the same approach may be effective in humans…
In the June 2013 issue of Experimental Biology and Medicine, Zagon and colleagues demonstrate that exposure of human breast cancer cell lines to OGF in vitro repressed growth within 24 hr in a receptor-mediated and reversible manner. Treatment with low dosages of the opioid antagonist naltrexone (LDN) provoked a compensatory elevation in endogenous opioids (i.e., OGF) and receptors that interact for 18-20 hr daily following receptor blockade to elicit a robust inhibition of cell proliferation. Because OGF is an endogenous neuropeptide, there are minimal or no side effects. The mechanism of action for OGF is upregulation of the p21 cyclin-dependent inhibitory kinase pathway that delays passage through the cell cycle…
Among girls, puberty generally begins between the ages of 10 and 14. Boys undergo these changes later, usually between 12 to 16 years of age. Precocious puberty is diagnosed in girls when sexual development begins before the age of 8; in boys, it is diagnosed when these changes occur before age 9. Recently, medical research has linked vitamin D deficiency to a number of diseases, including cancer, obesity and autoimmune disease. …
A simple visual test is surprisingly accurate at predicting IQ, according to new research. The study, published May 23 in the journal Current Biology, found that people's ability to efficiently filter out visual information in the background and focus on the foreground is strongly linked to IQ. The findings could help scientists identify the brain processes responsible for intelligence. That doesn't mean snappy, efficient visual processing leads to smarts, said study co-author Duje Tadin, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York. Instead, common brain processes may underlie both intelligence and efficient visual processing. IQ hunting Since the 1800s, the forefathers of IQ testing, including Sir Francis Galton (who also pioneered the science of fingerprinting), suspected that highly intelligent people also have supersensory discrimination. But studies in the subsequent decades have found only a modest connection between IQ-test scores and peoples ability to quickly or accurately spot motion in images. Tadin and his colleagues were studying a separate question on visual perception in 12 participants when they found something striking: IQ seemed to be correlated strongly with performance on a visual task. The test asked users to spot the direction of motion on a series of black-and-white stripes on a screen. Sometimes, the lines formed inside a small central circle, and other times, they were large stripes that took up the entire screen. Participants also completed a short IQ test. [Watch Video of Motion and Test Your Smarts] The team noticed that people with higher IQs were good at spotting motion in the small circles, but terrible at detecting motion in the larger black-and-white stripes. Because they had looked at so few people, Tadin and his colleagues wondered if their results were a fluke. They repeated the experiment with 53 people, who also took a full IQ test. The ability to visually filter the motion strongly predicted IQ in fact, motion suppression (the ability to focus on the action and ignore background movements) was as predictive of total IQ as individual subsections of the IQ test itself. Relevant information As people walk, the background scenery is always changing, so efficient brains may be better at filtering out this irrelevant visual information. And that efficiency could be operating across a wide range of tasks, Tadin said. “What happens in brains of high-IQ people is, they're automatically processing motion of small moving objects efficiently, whereas they're suppressing the background,” Tadin said. The findings reshape the conventional view that quick thinking leads to smarts. “Speedy processing does matter, but it's only half the story. It's how you filter out things that are less relevant and focus your speedy resources on what is important,” Tadin said. Big variation The study reveals new insights into brain efficiency and smarts, said Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics and owner of www.themindhub.com. Even though the link between IQ and visual filtering was very strong, IQ tests won't be replaced by motion tracking anytime soon, said McGrew, who was not involved in the study. “Their task accounts for or explains about 50 percent of the IQ scores,” McGrew told LiveScience. “That is impressive in psychology, but it still means there is 50 percent of the scores that they're not explaining.” Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/simple-vision-test-predicts-iq/
A simple visual test is surprisingly accurate at predicting IQ, according to new research. The study, published May 23 in the journal Current Biology, found that people's ability to efficiently filter out visual information in the background and focus on the foreground is strongly linked to IQ. The findings could help scientists identify the brain processes responsible for intelligence. That doesn't mean snappy, efficient visual processing leads to smarts, said study co-author Duje Tadin, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York. Instead, common brain processes may underlie both intelligence and efficient visual processing. IQ hunting Since the 1800s, the forefathers ofIQ testing, including Sir Francis Galton (who also pioneered the science of fingerprinting), suspected that highly intelligent people also have supersensory discrimination. But studies in the subsequent decades have found only a modest connection between IQ-test scores and peoples ability to quickly or accurately spot motion in images. Tadin and his colleagues were studying a separate question on visual perception in 12 participants when they found something striking: IQ seemed to be correlated strongly with performance on a visual task. The test asked users to spot the direction of motion on a series of black-and-white stripes on a screen. Sometimes, the lines formed inside a small central circle, and other times, they were large stripes that took up the entire screen. Participants also completed a short IQ test. [Watch Video of Motion and Test Your Smarts] The team noticed that people with higher IQs were good at spotting motion in the small circles, but terrible at detecting motion in the larger black-and-white stripes. Because they had looked at so few people, Tadin and his colleagues wondered if their results were a fluke. They repeated the experiment with 53 people, who also took a full IQ test. The ability to visually filter the motion strongly predicted IQ in fact, motion suppression (the ability to focus on the action and ignore background movements) was as predictive of total IQ as individual subsections of the IQ test itself. Relevant information As people walk, the background scenery is always changing, so efficient brains may be better at filtering out this irrelevant visual information. And that efficiency could be operating across a wide range of tasks, Tadin said. “What happens in brains of high-IQ people is, they're automatically processing motion of small moving objects efficiently, whereas they're suppressing the background,” Tadin said. The findings reshape the conventional view that quick thinking leads to smarts. “Speedy processing does matter, but it's only half the story. It's how you filter out things that are less relevant and focus your speedy resources on what is important,” Tadin said. Big variation The study reveals new insights into brain efficiency and smarts, said Kevin McGrew, director of the Institute for Applied Psychometrics and owner of www.themindhub.com. Even though the link between IQ and visual filtering was very strong, IQ tests won't be replaced by motion tracking anytime soon, said McGrew, who was not involved in the study. “Their task accounts for or explains about 50 percent of the IQ scores,” McGrew told LiveScience. “That is impressive in psychology, but it still means there is 50 percent of the scores that they're not explaining.” Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.source : http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/05/24/simple-vision-test-predicts-iq/
Now new research reveals a possible chink in the armor of this recalcitrant disease. Many cancers, including pancreatic, lung, and colon cancer, feature a mutated protein known as Ras that plays a central role in a complex molecular chain of events that drives cancer cell growth and proliferation…