Skin Cancer & You

AVAC issues a call to action to donors, policy-makers, researchers and advocates to ensure that critical follow-up studies to the landmark CAPRISA 004 microbicide trial receive the economic and political support needed to move forward as quickly as possible. The call comes as a group of microbicide and public health experts have agreed upon a plan for further studies, which are expected to cost $100 million over three years, of which only $58 million has been committed. "We have an imperative to learn about the effectiveness of 1 percent tenofovir gel, the product tested in CAPRISA 004...

"The Colorado Society of Anesthesiologists (CSA) strongly disagrees with NPATCH's support for allowing nurses to administer anesthesia without physician supervision. Regrettably, their action was not unexpected. It is disturbing that NPATCH and others would support policies whereby a patient's life-and-death medical decisions would be made by nurses, not doctors. "Medical practice laws in Colorado clearly state that physicians are responsible for anesthesia care, and the Governor's opt-out plan is inconsistent with state law...

The Maryland Stem Cell Research Commission (Commission) will host the Third Annual Maryland Stem Cell Research Symposium in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Wednesday, Sept. 22, 2010. The symposium, “Facilitating State and National Collaboration to Advance Groundbreaking Life Science Research,” will be held at the NIST main campus in Gaithersburg, Md., and will feature research supported by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund (MSCRF) and federal agencies in the state of Maryland…

Virtual characters can behave according to actions carried out unconsciously by humans. Researchers at the University of Barcelona have created a system which measures human physiological parameters, such as respiration or heart rate, and introduces them into computer designed characters in real time...

Engineers at Harvard University have created a millionth-scale automobile differential to govern the flight of minuscule aerial robots that could someday be used to probe environmental hazards, forest fires, and other places too perilous for people. Their new approach is the first to passively balance the aerodynamic forces encountered by these miniature flying devices, letting their wings flap asymmetrically in response to gusts of wind, wing damage, and other real-world impediments...

Lupus Research Institute-funded researcher Betty Tsao, PhD, at the University of California Los Angeles has discovered that humans - males in particular - with a variant form of the immune receptor gene "Toll Like Receptor 7 (TLR7)" are at increased risk of developing the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (lupus). This breakthrough finding offers renewed hope for developing more targeted treatments...

Sociologist Ms Lucía Merino presented her PhD thesis entitled, Digital natives: a study of the technological socialisation of young people, at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). Considering that young people nowadays are natives of the so-called digital culture, Ms Merino explored their relationship with the new technologies and how they learn and socialise through them. With this research, the author wished to set out guidelines as a basis to continue studying the so-called digital natives in the future...

The results of a three-year research project into pandemic flu preparedness in Europe will be launched at a meeting in Brussels in September. The results of the PHLawFlu (Public Health Law Flu) conference, Pandemic Influenza Preparedness in Europe: Are National Public Health Laws Fit for Purpose? will be presented by Professor Richard Coker, Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) on 23 September at the European Parliament in Brussels...

Judith Kulich, Associate Principal, and Emily Jin, Manager, at ZS Associates talk to eyeforpharma about how patient flow modeling can inform forecasting. Patient flow, or system dynamics forecasting is a common approach for modeling situations in which patient potential is affected by movement between disease states. The technique is used frequently in oncology, diabetes, RA, and other markets with lines of therapy dynamics...

A basic requirement for growth and life of a multicellular organism is the ability of its cells to divide. Chromosomes in the cells duplicate and are then distributed among the daughter cells. This distribution is organized by a protein complex made up of several hundred different proteins, called the centrosome. In cancer cells, the centrosome often assumes an unnatural shape or is present in uncontrolled numbers. The reasons for this were previously largely unknown...