Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered how the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) subverts a normal cell process in order to promote tumor growth. The finding, published in the most recent issue of PLoS Pathogens, offers new potential strategies for treating Kaposi's sarcoma and other cancers associated with viruses.

Scientists have discovered for the first time a specific biochemical pathway by which the sex hormone, androgen, increases levels of harmful chemicals called reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the prostate gland that play a role in the development of prostate cancer.

Memories of events comprise many components--including sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. Somehow the many features of an episodic memory are woven together into a coherent whole, and researchers have had little understanding of how this binding takes place as the memories are processed by the brain's memory center, the hippocampus. A central question has been whether the hippocampus receives an "episodic packet," or a collection of perceptual strands that it must integrate into a memory.

For the first time, researchers have inhibited the development of epilepsy after a brain insult in animals. By using gene therapy to modify signaling pathways in the brain, neurology researchers found that they could significantly reduce the development of epileptic seizures in rats.

Scientists have successfully transplanted light-sensing cells called photoreceptors directly into the eyes of mice and restored their visual function.

Venom from a West Indian tarantula has been shown to cause pain by exciting the same nerve cells in mice that sense high temperatures and the hot, spicy ingredient in chili peppers, UCSF scientists have discovered.

Scientists at Harvard University have developed a computer model that, for the first time, can fully map and predict how small proteins fold into three-dimensional, biologically active shapes. The work could help researchers better understand the abnormal protein aggregation underlying some devastating diseases, as well as how natural proteins evolved and how proteins recognize correct biochemical partners within living cells.

A new brain study finds major differences between women with serious depression and healthy women in a brain-chemical system that's crucial to stress and emotions.

John Verkade, left, a University Professor of chemistry at Iowa State, and Reed Oshel, a graduate student in biorenewable resources and technology, are studying a chemical compound that breaks down... John Verkade remembers just how it happened some 40 years ago: One of his Iowa State University graduate students, David Hendricker, stopped by to report somebody was stealing a little wooden applicator stick from a beaker.

Movements in space create in humans and animals so-called optical flow fields which are characteristic for the movement in question. In a forward movement, the objects flow by laterally, objects at the front increase in size and objects further away hardly change at all. At a higher level in the visual centre in the brain, there must be a computation of the visual information, so that animals can differentiate between their own movement and movement of their environment and are able to correct their course if necessary.