Daily non-political popular news in brief.

Heatwave on the top of the world

03-02-2007 · EurekAlert!

CNRS scientists in collaboration with a team announce findings that global warming has increased the average temperature by 0.74°C over the last century. This result was published on Feb. 7, 2007, in the European Journal "Climate of the Past."

Keywords: heatwave, top, world

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Advance in understanding of blood pressure gene could lead to new treatments
02-04-2007 · EurekAlert!
Research by scientists at UCL (University College London) has clearly demonstrated for the first time the structure and function of a gene crucial to the regulation of blood pressure. The discovery could be important in the search for new treatments for illnesses such as heart disease, the UK's biggest killer. In a paper published online today in Nature Medicine, the team, led by Professor Patrick Vallance and Dr James Leiper, UCL Department of Medicine, reveal the role of the human gene dimethylarginine dimethylaminohydrolase (DDAH), showing that loss of DDAH activity disrupts nitric oxide (NO) production. NO is critical in the regulation of blood pressure, nervous system functions and the immune system. The role of DDAH is to break down modified amino acids (Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) and monomethyl arginine (L-NMMA)) that are produced by the body and have been shown to inhibit NO synthase. These molecules accumulate in various disease states including diabetes, renal failure and pulmonary and systemic hypertension, and their concentration in plasma (the fluid component of blood) is strongly predicative of cardiovascular disease and death. In a healthy human body, the majority of ADMA is eliminated through active metabolism by DDAH. Scientists have hypothesised that if DDAH function is impaired, NO production is reduced, and that this could be an important feature of increased cardiovascular risk. To examine this pathway in more detail, the researchers deleted the DDAH gene in mice. These mice went on to develop hypertension, or high blood pressure. They also designed specific inhibitors (small molecules) which bind to the active site of human DDAH. These small molecule inhibitors also induced hypertension in mice, confirming the importance of DDAH in the regulation of blood pressure. Dr Leiper, UCL Medicine, said: “These genetic and chemical approaches to disrupt DDAH showed remarkably consistent results, and provide compelling evidence that loss of DDAH function increases the concentration of ADMA and thereby disrupts vascular NO signalling. “There has been considerable scientific interest in this pathway and the role of ADMA as a novel risk factor, but so far there's been little evidence to support the idea that it's a cause of disease, rather than just a marker. Genes and their pathways are crucial to our understanding of cardiovascular disease and a better understanding of DDAH-1 could lead to important new treatments. “It could help us to establish if genetic variation predisposes certain people to these diseases, or whether environmental factors exert some of their effects through modulation of DDAH activity. “Our research also shows that this pathway could be harnessed therapeutically to limit production of NO in certain situations where too much nitric oxide is a bad thing; for example, hypotension and septic shock. These are some of the biggest problems in intensive care medicine and there is a huge unmet need for drug treatments.” The study, which was carried out at UCL's Rayne Institute, was funded by grants from the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, said: "The unexpected finding in the 1980s that a simple gas, nitric oxide (NO), is made by cells in the blood vessel wall and is a powerful control of blood vessel relaxation led to the award of the Nobel Prize in 1998 to its discoverers. "More recently, there has been increasing evidence that impairment of NO production is likely to be an important factor in the development of heart and circulatory disease, but the mechanisms responsible are not fully understood. "This study suggests for the first time that the loss of the activity of the enzyme DDAH-1 leads to reduced NO production and may cause heart and circulatory disease. These findings are likely to be important in the search for new ways to optimise the health of our blood vessels." ### Notes for Editors 1. For more information, please contact Ruth Metcalfe in the UCL Media Relations Office on tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9739, mobile: +44 (0)7990 675 947, out of hours: +44 (0)7917 271 364, e-mail: r.metcalfe@ucl.ac.uk2. 'Disruption of methylarginine metabolism impairs vascular homeostasis' is published in the February issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Advance online publication is embargoed to 18.00 GMT (13.00 US Eastern) Sunday 4 February 2007. Journalists can obtain copies of the paper by contacting the UCL Media Relations Office.3. The study was funded by the British Heart Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council. About UCL Founded in 1826, UCL was the first English university established after Oxford and Cambridge, the first to admit students regardless of race, class, religion or gender, and the first to provide systematic teaching of law, architecture and medicine. In the government's most recent Research Assessment Exercise, 59 UCL departments achieved top ratings of 5* and 5, indicating research quality of international excellence. UCL is the fourth-ranked UK university in the 2006 league table of the top 500 world universities produced by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University. UCL alumni include Mahatma Gandhi (Laws 1889, Indian political and spiritual leader); Jonathan Dimbleby (Philosophy 1969, writer and television presenter); Junichiro Koizumi (Economics 1969, Prime Minister of Japan); Lord Woolf (Laws 1954, Lord Chief Justice of England & Wales); Alexander Graham Bell (Phonetics 1860s, inventor of the telephone), and members of the band Coldplay.
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Stony Brook and Brookhaven Lab Unveil New York Blue Supercomputer
06-15-2007 · Brookhaven National Laboratory
Stony Brook University and the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory today unveiled one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. The IBM Blue Gene supercomputer, named New York Blue and located at Brookhaven Lab, is the world's fastest supercomputer for general users and is expected to rank among the top ten fastest computers in the world.
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Curbing world's most fatal diseases: consensus created by health experts offers global prescription
11-21-2007 · EurekAlert!
Twenty-seven experts, including several of the world's most eminent health scientists, have guided a project to create a global consensus on the 20 foremost measures needed to curb humanity’s most fatal diseases. In a feature article in the Nov. 22 issue of Nature, experts lay out the top 20 research and policy priorities for these illnesses -- reached via a formal, global consensus exercise -- as a list entitled "Grand Challenges for Non-Communicable Diseases."
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Science survey ranks top Biopharma employers
10-19-2006 · EurekAlert!
Genentech, Inc, of San Francisco, CA, has earned top honors in a ranking of the world's most respected biopharmaceutical employers. The company has placed first each of the five years that Science has carried out this survey.
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Fourth EURYI Award brings 4 young top researchers to Germany
08-06-2007 · EurekAlert!
The fourth round of the European Young Investigator (EURYI) Award has once again shown how attractive Germany is for young scientists from all over the world.
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High-tech ventilation fails to control secondhand smoke
10-31-2006 · EurekAlert!
What happened when James Repace, one of the world's leading experts on secondhand smoke exposure, teamed up with Dr. Ken Johnson, a top authority on secondhand smoke epidemiology, to investigate claims that new high-tech "displacement" ventilation systems could protect nonsmokers from toxic tobacco smoke in restaurants and bars? The hospitality industry promoted these expensive ventilation systems in desperation and convinced some city councils to allow smoking in dining establishments where it would normally have been banned.
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Student research makes the pages of top scientific journal
11-28-2007 · EurekAlert!
Leslie Hayden's research into deep Earth interactions has led to some important findings, particularly for someone so new to the field, and the scientific world is paying attention. Hayden, a graduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is first author on a paper to be published in the scientific journal Nature. The findings will be published in the Nov 29, 2007, edition of the journal.
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Why are Danes the world's happiest nation?
12-21-2006 · EurekAlert!
Earlier this year, Denmark came top in a world map of happiness (the UK ranked 41st out of 178 nations). And for more than 30 years it has ranked first in European satisfaction surveys. So what makes Danes so content?Researchers in this week's Christmas issue of the BMJ decided to find out why life satisfaction in Denmark substantially exceeds that in Sweden and Finland, the two countries most similar to Denmark.
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UD scientists build an "ice top" at the bottom of the world
05-23-2007 · EurekAlert!
University of Delaware researchers are building the "Ice Top," a novel surface array of detectors for high-energy cosmic rays, on the giant "IceCube" neutrino telescope at the South Pole.
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Anderson garners ORNL top honor at annual awards night
11-06-2006 · Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)
Ian Anderson's key role in helping Oak Ridge National Laboratory deliver one of the world's largest science projects on time and on budget has earned him the UT-Battelle Director's Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology.
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