Categories
Cardiovascular
Diagnostics
Endocrinology
Health Insurance
Medical Devices
Mental Health
Nutrition
Oncology
Public Health
Sexual Health
Popular Articles
Natural Remedies

Diet, Smoking, Exercise Key In Colon Cancer Risk
People who want to reduce their risk of colon cancer may want to start exercising more and cutting down on red meat and alcohol, a new research review suggests.
generic viagra online
Hawai'i Tumor Registry To Launch "Sharing Ohana" Study To Learn How Lifestyle And Genes Influence Development And Survival Of Cancer
The Hawai"i Tumor Registry (HTR), jointly operated by the Cancer
News of the day
Tiller's Patients, Not Critics, Should Be Ones To 'Define His Memory,' Opinion Piece Says
In a "portrayal that defied logic," George Tiller -- the Kansas abortion provider who was murdered last month -- has been depicted "on Web sites, TV and radio talk shows and in legislative hearings as the reckless "abortionist," willing to euthanize babies close to birth just so the mother could fit into a prom dress or attend a rock concert," Barbara Shelly, a member of the Kansas City Star editorial board, writes in a Star opinion piece. She asks, "Would someone in the third trimester of pregnancy travel to the heart of Kansas and pay a $6,000 fee just to fit into a size six party dress?" Shelly adds that the "overwhelming majority of the 250 to 300 women a year" that sought abortions from Tiller in the second and third trimesters had planned their pregnancies. She profiles a Missouri college professor, pregnant with twins, who traveled to Tiller"s clinic with her husband to obtain an abortion after an amniocentesis revealed that neither fetus would survive and that she faced potentially life-threatening complications if the pregnancy continued. Shelly writes that the woman and others like her went to Tiller "heartbroken and afraid, carrying fetuses with malfunctioning kidneys, missing organs and syndromes certain to cause death in the womb or soon after birth." A smaller number were survivors of rape and incest, including young girls, according to Shelly. The "prom queen who talked her way into a late-term abortion" is a "creation of Tiller"s enemies," Shelly writes, concluding that the "real people" affected by his death are the "thousands who wrote the notes that now serve as a memorial wall to a fallen physician. They are the ones who should define his memory" (Shelly, Kansas City Star, 6/9).
Cardiovascular

Chemists Explain The Switchboards In Our Cells

Our cells are controlled by billions of molecular "switches" and chemists at UC Santa Barbara have developed a theory that explains how these molecules work. Their findings may significantly help efforts to build biologically based sensors for the detection of chemicals ranging from drugs to explosives to disease markers. Their research is described in an article published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Biosensors are artificial molecular switches that mimic the natural ones, which direct chemical responses throughout the cell. "These switching molecules control the behavior of our cells," said Alexis Vallçİe-Bçİlisle, a postdoctoral scholar who spearheaded the project and is first author of the paper. "By studying these switches, we can better understand how living organisms are able to monitor their environment and use this knowledge to build better sensors to detect, for example, disease markers." All creatures, from bacteria to humans, must monitor their environments in order to survive, explained the authors. They do so with biomolecular switches, made from RNA or proteins. For example, in our sinuses, there are receptor proteins that can detect different odors. Some of those scents warn us of danger; others tell us that food is nearby. In addition to deriving the mathematical relationships underlying switching, Vallçİe-Bçİlisle spent months performing a hands-on study of an artificial biomolecular switch to demonstrate that the theory holds up quantitatively. Like a light switch, biomolecular switches often exist in two states - on or off. When a biomolecule switches from on to off, or vice versa, its shape changes. This change in structure is often triggered by the physical binding of a signaling molecule (for example, the odorant molecule responsible for a given smell) to the switch. However, unlike the single light switch that controls any one light in a house, cells use hundreds to millions of copies of each switch. Because there is more than one copy involved, the switching process is not a binary, "all-or-none" process. Instead, the output signal is determined by the fraction of switches that move from the off state to the on state. In their PNAS paper, the authors describe a simple mathematical model that will allow biotech researchers to fine-tune the ease with which artificial biomolecular switches can be "flipped." They also shed light on how natural biomolecular switches evolved. Additional co-authors are Francesco Ricci of the University of Rome Tor Vergata, and senior author Kevin Plaxco, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCSB. Gail Gallessich University of California - Santa Barbara


Add your comment:
Name:
Site address: http://
Your message:
Enter today\\\\'s date, 2 digits
(spam protection):

İ Copyright 2009