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Home The News Remove tumors on this vital organ

Remove tumors on this vital organ

Tuesday, 12 August 2008 10:00 administrator
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keyword A word used as a reference point for finding other words or information.
Swahili A Bantu language of the coast and islands of eastern Africa from Somalia to Mozambique. It is an official language of Tanzania and is widely used as a lingua franca in eastern and east-central Africa.
lingua franca A shared, mixed language among people who otherwise speak different languages.
Aside from the magnetar, “there are no other sensible models” to explain a steady X-ray afterglow that suddenly drops to zero, said theorist Péter Mészáros of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. The team’s analysis of GRB 090515 boosts the likelihood that transient magnetars power some short bursts, in addition to some long ones, he said.
The average person walks around with defective copies of 250 to 300 genes, a new close-up snapshot of human genetic diversity reveals, on top of about 75 DNA variants associated with disease.
  • An analysis of data gathered during the pilot phase of the 1000 Genomes Project appears in the Oct. 28 Nature, with a companion paper published in the Oct. 29 Science.
  • Despite its name, the project is an effort to catalog genetic variation in about 2,500 people, with special emphasis on finding more of the relatively rare variants present in less than 5 percent of the population. The information can be used to search for links between DNA variation and disease, and to study events in human prehistory that have left a genetic footprint.
  • “The veil has been lifted for us on a whole new level of genetic diversity,” says Evan Eichler, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle who led a team investigating genes with variable numbers of copies.
  • The project identified about 15 million different one-letter DNA spelling variations, 1 million small insertions or deletions of portions of chromosomes, and about 20,000 larger missing or duplicated chunks of DNA in the human genetic instruction book. Among these are about 8 million newly identified genetic variants. Each person carries about 3 million spelling variations known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs.
In addition, researchers report in the Science paper that they have discovered about 1,000 genes that are duplicated in most people, including 44 gene families whose extra copies were previously unknown. About half of duplicated genes appear in varying numbers in the 159 people studied. Most genes occur in two copies — one inherited from mom and the other from dad — but sometimes genes are copied over and over again. Most of the duplicated genes the researchers found varied between zero and five copies per person, but a few extreme examples had ranges between five and 368 per person.
About five years ago roughly half of the variants discovered each time that researchers deciphered another person’s genetic blueprint were new, says David Altshuler, a geneticist at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass., and one of the leaders of the 1000 Genomes Project. “Now, about 95 percent of what you’ll find in the next person’s genome is already in the database,” he says.
The lead time for cancer of the pancreas to develop is extensive, possibly opening up a decade-long window of opportunity for doctors to someday screen for and remove tumors on this vital organ, a study in the Oct. 28 Nature shows. A companion study finds unusual chromosomal rearrangements in this deadly cancer, a characteristic that might provide insights into the cancer formation process.
Scientists have puzzled over the deadly nature of pancreatic cancer, in which fewer than 5 percent of patients survive for five years after being diagnosed. By then the cancer has usually spread beyond the pancreas to lymph nodes or other organs.
Some researchers argue that the cancer is so lethal because it is fast-growing and aggressive, while others suggest the cancer’s deadliness stems from an ability to remain hidden for years.  The new research suggests the slow-growth theory might be on target.
In 2008, cancer geneticist Bert Vogelstein and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore published the complete genetic profiles of 24 pancreatic cancers, identifying more than 60 mutations common to the tumors. One of the new studies used those data to calculate the pace of cancer growth in the pancreas. Using that figure and the average cell proliferation rate in the organ provides a molecular clock of sorts with which scientists can figure out how long it has taken for the first cancer-related mutation in a pancreas cell to develop into cancer.
Last Updated on Friday, 26 November 2010 22:17  

Newsflash

During the project, the number of scientists involved grew to 2,700, and they came from 80 different countries. These scientists studied historical documents closely and, all together, went on 540 expeditions. They published thousands of scientific papers, spent $650 million and collected millions of specimens from various aquatic environments.

These creatures look like they belong on another planet. There are fish with tongues, crabs with hairy pincers and a transparent sea cucumber that appears to have intestines. (See the slideshow featuring some of these oddities.) When the Census of Marine Life is added to work done before it, scientists have, the Census researchers report, identified more than 190,000 different species that live underwater. Census An official, usually periodic enumeration of a population, often including the collection of related demographic information invertebrate Lacking a backbone or spinal column; not vertebrate marine Of or relating to the sea

Sometimes, scientists use coffee to come up with new ideas — though not necessarily by drinking the caffeinated beverage. In the case of one new invention, scientists used coffee grounds to build a new tool that can help robots lift, hold and move objects. We human beings use our hands to hold things, so it’s not surprising that many human-looking robots have human-looking hands with fingers and thumbs. These robots might be programmed to use their hands as humans do: to lift and hold objects.

But the new tool, called the “universal gripper,” suggests robots don’t need fingers to move things around. It’s a simple device made of a small balloon filled with coffee grounds and attached to a vacuum. This strange but smart design means the robot gripper can pick up all kinds of objects, including fragile things. There are still gaps even in 20th century weather data, notably around World War I. But scientists are using crowdsourcing to take advantage of the meticulous record-keeping of the British navy at that time.

This study was led by Andrew Dickerson, a graduate student in Hu's lab. His team calls this get-dry shake “nature’s analogy to the spin cycle of a washing machine.” Both the washing machine and shaking animals can get rid of water quickly — but animals are much more efficient than washing machines. For animals, this process helps them control heat in their bodies. Climate scientists need your help — not by sending up weather balloons or drilling ice cores in Antarctica, but by turning on your computer.

Researchers are using crowdsourcing to digitize reams of historical weather data, filling gaps in existing 20th century records and extending their coverage back in time to the period before the Industrial Revolution. Anyone with an Internet connection can help scientists read the century-old logbooks where ship hands on British naval vessels scrawled weather observations. Currently, not much is known about weather over the ocean.