Futurity.org » University of Pennsylvania

Massive Cascadia quake on the horizon?

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:12:16 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — Tiny fossils offer clues to a 1700 earthquake in the Pacific Northwest that was strong enough to cause a tsunami as far away as Japan.

The lack of local documentation has made studying this historic event challenging. New work provides a finer-grained portrait of this earthquake and the changes in coastal land level it produced, enabling modelers to better prepare for future events. The research was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.

Genetic ‘typos’ linked to testicular cancer

Steve Graff-Pennsylvania — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:14:14 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — A study looking at the genomes of more than 13,000 men identified four new genetic variants associated with an increased risk of testicular cancer, the most commonly diagnosed type of cancer in young men today.

The discovery of these genetic variations—chromosomal “typos,” so to speak—could ultimately help researchers better understand which men are at high risk and allow for early detection or prevention of the disease.

Not all congenital heart disease is inherited

Bill Hathaway-Yale — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:13:43 +0000

YALE (US) — New mutations that are absent in parents but appear in their children account for at least 10 percent of severe congenital heart disease, a new study reveals.

The analysis of all the genes of more than 1800 individuals found hundreds of mutations that can cause congenital heart disease, the most common form of birth defect that afflicts nearly 1 percent of all newborns.

Conservatives don’t buy into ‘green’ labels

Erin Medlyn-Duke — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:22:48 +0000

DUKE (US) — When it comes to deciding which light bulb to buy, a label touting a product’s environmental benefit may actually discourage politically conservative shoppers.

Researchers conducted two studies to determine how political ideology affected a person’s choice to buy energy-efficient products in the United States.

No ‘quick fix’ to reduce hospital readmissions

Sara LaJeunesse-Penn State — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 07:52:53 +0000

PENN STATE (US) — Medical providers need to create networks of collaboration in order to lower patients’ risk of being readmitted to the hospital, researchers say.

But achieving widespread reductions in preventable hospital readmissions among Medicare beneficiaries could take longer than many health care professionals originally anticipated, according to a study that appears in the journal Population Health Management.

Gene tied to double Alzheimer’s risk in African Americans

Michelle Falling-Columbia — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:57:20 +0000

COLUMBIA (US) — African Americans with a specific gene variant have almost double the risk of developing late-onset Alzheimer’s disease compared with African Americans who lack the variant.

The ABCA7 gene is involved in the production of cholesterol and lipids, which suggests that lipid metabolism may be a more important pathway in Alzheimer’s disease in African Americans than in whites.

Dual therapies treat blindness in dogs

Andy McGlashen-Michigan State — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:01:56 +0000

MICHIGAN STATE (US) — Two kinds of therapy may be a knockout combo against inherited blindness. The study focused on impaired dogs, but the remedy may help people, too.

Published in the journal Molecular Therapy, the study builds on earlier work by Michigan State University veterinary ophthalmologist András Komáromy and colleagues. In 2010, they restored day vision in dogs suffering from achromatopsia, an inherited form of total color blindness, by replacing the mutant gene associated with the condition.

While that treatment was effective for most younger dogs, it didn’t work for canines older than 1 year. Komáromy began to wonder if the older dogs’ cones—the photoreceptor cells in the retina that process daylight and color—might be too worn out.

Kids ‘get’ grammar as young as age 2

Evan Lerner-Pennsylvania — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:08:01 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — When they first learn to speak, children as young as 2 are doing more than just imitating adults—they actually understand basic grammar rules, new research suggests.

Linguists have long debated whether young children actually understand the grammar they are using or are simply memorizing and imitating adults. One of the difficulties in resolving this debate is the inherent limitations of the data; 2-year-old children have very small vocabularies and thus don’t provide many different examples of grammar usage.

New path may lead to better HIV vaccine

Karl Bates-Duke — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:13:57 +0000

DUKE (US) — For the first time, researchers describe the co-evolution of antibodies and virus in a person with HIV whose immune system mounted a broad attack against the pathogen.

Most vaccines work by inducing this antibody response, but the HIV virus has proved to be a difficult vaccine target. When HIV antibodies are produced, they typically have a limited range, and the virus changes rapidly to escape harm, leading to an arms race that the virus usually wins.

The current research, published in Nature, was aided by new technologies that can detect early infection and track the subsequent immune response and virus evolution. It fills gaps in knowledge that have impeded development of an effective vaccine for a virus that has killed more than 30 million people worldwide.

Placenta may transmit mom’s stress

Katherine Unger Baillie-Penn — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:28:51 +0000

U. PENNSYLVANIA (US) — The placenta can translate a mother’s exposure to stress into an altered protein, which affects the brains of male and female offspring differently.

These findings suggest one way in which maternal-stress exposure may be linked to neurodevelopmental diseases such as autism and schizophrenia, which affect males more frequently or more severely than females.