Israel Discovers New Therapy For Brain Cancer

Arutz Sheva - Israeli researchers at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School made a ground breaking discovery of a cancer-driving protein.

Regina Golan-Gerstl, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University Hadassah Medical School, has successfully identified a genetic protein which is involved in the development of the most common and aggressive type of brain cancer found in adults called glioblastoma.

For the 22,000 American citizens who are diagnosed each year with brain cancer, these never before known molecular aspects can provide new diagnosis and treatment options for patients.

Golan-Gerstl and her team of biochemists supported by the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) discovered a splicing factor hnRNP A2/B1, a protein gene found in humans, which was detected to have higher than normal levels found in glioblastoma samples.   More

Itch at first bite: Researchers capture unnerving video of mosquitoes feeding

A mosquito lands on your leg. It takes you a few minutes to notice, but in that time a lot has happened. Check out some amazing footage of mosquito probes breaking through skin and searching for blood vessels.

CNET - In the dead heat of summertime here in Georgia, it's nearly impossible to walk more than 10 paces without a hungry mosquito latching onto you. Bloodcurdling footage, captured by French researchers, delivers an extremely close view of what exactly happens when a skeeter strikes -- and after watching, you may never want to go outside again.

Let's get this out of the way first: The following horrifying videos -- full of mosquito mouth parts moving in ways you probably never imagined -- aren't a high-tech peepshow designed to freak you out.   More

Recently patched Java flaw already targeted in mass attacks, researchers say

PCWorld - A recently patched Java remote code execution vulnerability is already being exploited by cybercriminals in mass attacks to infect computers with scareware, security researchers warn.

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2013-2423, was one of the 42 security issues fixed in Java 7 Update 21 that was released by Oracle on April 16.

According to Oracle’s advisory at the time, the vulnerability only affects client, not server, deployments of Java. The company gave the flaw’s impact a 4.3 out of 10 rating using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) and added that “this vulnerability can be exploited only through untrusted Java Web Start applications and untrusted Java applets.”

However, it seems that the low CVSS score didn’t stop cybercriminals from targeting the vulnerability. An exploit for CVE-2013-2423 was integrated into a high-end Web attack toolkit known as Cool Exploit Kit and is used to install a piece of malware called Reveton, an independent malware researcher known online as Kafeine said Tuesday in a blog post.

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Stanford researchers make heart implant powered by radio waves, put batteries out of a job

Engadget - Batteries used to be the only way to power implantable gadgets, but additional surgeries are needed to replace the power packs once their juice runs out -- a less-than-ideal solution for patients. Recent discoveries, however, have such medgadgets being powered by photons, hip hop and now high-frequency radio waves. Electrical engineers at Stanford built a cardiac device that uses a combination of inductive and radiative transmission of power, at about 1.7 billion cycles per second, to its coiled receiving antenna.

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Video: Researchers Produce the First High-Quality 3-D Images of an Individual Protein

The First High-Quality 3-D Images of an Individual Protein 

The various images of a protein particle (A), the 
3-D rendering (B), and the complex analysis of the 
three individual proteins that make up the particle. 
via Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

PopSci - Proteins are like the workhorses of genetic biology, but they can be notoriously difficult to study. Their structure has everything to do with their function–and sometimes dysfunction–which has far-reaching implications in health and medicine. That’s why it’s such a big deal that a couple of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have more or less hacked their cryo-electron microscope to see at far greater resolutions than its manufacturer intended and produced the first 3-D images of an individual protein with enough clarity to determine its structure.

Cataloging the shapes and structures of proteins is fairly routine science at this point. Pharmaceutical companies dealing in biologic drugs do so all the time as they search for protein therapies that might relieve one condition or another. But it’s not easy, and these conventional protein models are averages of the analyses of many thousands of molecules because it’s simply too difficult to get the resolutions necessary to image the features of an individual protein.

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Video: Researchers Watch Type 1 Diabetes As It Unfolds, in Real Time

T Cells Attacking This image, captured from video, shows the T cells (purple dots) attacking the pancreatic islets (green images in center), which contain the insulin‑producing beta cells. Beta cell destruction leads to type 1 diabetes. The attack continues over several hours before a number of beta cells are destroyed. La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology

A new real-time view of immune cells attacking the pancreas sheds light on how type 1 diabetes unfolds, as white blood cells seek out and destroy insulin-producing beta cells. Researchers believe it could help point the way to new intervention methods to halt the destruction before the onset of type 1 diabetes, also known as juvenile diabetes.

Diabetes results from the body’s lack of ability to produce sufficient insulin, which keeps blood glucose levels in check. Type 1 is an autoimmune disorder in which the body’s T lymphocytes attack and kill the pancreas’ insulin-making beta cells; type 2 also involves pancreatic destruction and can result from several factors, though in this country it is often the result of poor diet and obesity. There is no cure, at least not yet. Watching exactly how the destructive process unfolds could be a major step in that direction, however.

Researchers at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology used two-photon excitation microscopy and a new imaging technique to access a live, functioning pancreas in a mouse. The pancreas is small, soft and tucked away beneath other organs in the abdominal area, so it’s difficult to see in action. This study marks the first time researchers have used two-photon microscopy to study the pancreas (it’s previously been used to image the liver, lymph nodes and some other organs).                   More

How Microbes Travel Around Earth: Models Show Bacteria Sized Microbes Carried Between Mexico and Australia

UK and Switzerland have investigated the remarkable distance that microorganisms may be able to blow between continents, raising questions about their potential to colonise new lands and also potentially to spread diseases.

The researchers from Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) the University of Neuchâtel published their results in the Journal of Biogeography this month. They used large computer models of Earth's atmosphere to study how widely microbes could be dispersed.

LJMU's Dr Dave Wilkinson led the team along with Symeon Koumoutsaris, from the International Space Science Institute in Bern, who modified computer models which were designed for studying the dispersal of dust particles. They looked at what would happen if they released virtual microbes from both the southern tip of South America and also from Mexico. Once airborne, microbes of 0.02mm in diameter and below can easily travel thousands of kilometres.             
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