http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Johns Hopkins patient safety experts say it's high time for diagnostic errors to get the same attention from medical institutions and caregivers as drug-prescribing errors, wrong-site surgeries and hospital-acquired infections. Diagnostic misadventures represent a potentially much larger source of preventable health problems and deaths than many of the more popular targets of safety reform, they say in a commentary in the March 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. http://www.physorg.com/news155926395.html Medicine & Health Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:55:08 EST news155926395 Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Washington University School of Medicine have identified a key to eye development - a protein that regulates how the light-sensing nerve cells in the retina form. While still far from the clinic, the latest results, published in the Jan. 29 issue of Neuron, could help scientists better understand how nerve cells develop. http://www.physorg.com/news155831839.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:37:45 EST news155831839 (PhysOrg.com) -- Titan's vast dune fields, which may act like weather vanes to determine general wind direction on Saturn's biggest moon, have been mapped by scientists who compiled four years of radar data collected by the Cassini spacecraft. http://www.physorg.com/news154966417.html Space & Earth Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:14:26 EST news154966417 (PhysOrg.com) -- The National Center for Data Mining (NCDM) at the University of Chicago at Illinois established a cloud computing system that can quickly compile data from widely geographically distributed data centers across high performance networks. NCDM used the Open Cloud Testbed, managed by the Open Cloud Consortium, to demonstrate the "Sector System" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference earlier this month in Chicago. http://www.physorg.com/news154893012.html Technology Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:50:59 EST news154893012 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and The Johns Hopkins University have constructed a unique tool for exploring the properties of promising new materials with unprecedented sensitivity and speed -potentially allowing them to identify quickly those most useful for nanotechnology and industrial applications. http://www.physorg.com/news154769190.html Nanotechnology Wed, 25 Feb 2009 07:27:35 EST news154769190 People who start smoking before age 17 may increase their risk for developing multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology's 61st Annual Meeting in Seattle, April 25 to May 2, 2009. http://www.physorg.com/news154618005.html Medicine & Health Mon, 23 Feb 2009 13:27:17 EST news154618005 Certain men age 75 to 80 are unlikely to benefit from routine prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing, according to a Johns Hopkins study published in the April 2009 issue of The Journal of Urology. http://www.physorg.com/news154333146.html Medicine & Health Fri, 20 Feb 2009 06:19:36 EST news154333146 Cancer cells need a lot of nutrients to multiply and survive. While much is understood about how cancer cells use blood sugar to make energy, not much is known about how they get other nutrients. Now, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how the Myc cancer-promoting gene uses microRNAs to control the use of glutamine, a major energy source. The results, which shed light on a new angle of cancer that might help scientists figure out a way to stop the disease, appear Feb. 15 online at Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news154016792.html Medicine & Health Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:27:10 EST news154016792 Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine are one gene closer to understanding schizophrenia and related disorders. Reporting in the Jan. 9 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, the team describes how a variation in the neuregulin 3 gene influences delusions associated with schizophrenia. http://www.physorg.com/news152897163.html Medicine & Health Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:27:34 EST news152897163 In what is believed to be a first-ever procedure, surgeons at Johns Hopkins have successfully removed a healthy donor kidney through a small incision in the back of the donor's vagina. http://www.physorg.com/news152816889.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:09:15 EST news152816889 A century-old drug that failed in its original intent to treat tuberculosis but has worked well as an antileprosy medicine now holds new promise as a potential therapy for multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases. http://www.physorg.com/news152560827.html Medicine & Health Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:00:58 EST news152560827 Results from a large-scale Johns Hopkins study of more than 40 hospitals and 160,000 patients show that when health information technologies replace paper forms and handwritten notes, both hospitals and patients benefit strongly. http://www.physorg.com/news152215250.html Medicine & Health Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:01:21 EST news152215250 Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered how a whole class of commonly used chemotherapy drugs can block cancer growth. Their findings, reported online this week at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition, suggest that a subgroup of cancer patients might particularly benefit from these drugs. http://www.physorg.com/news151866022.html Medicine & Health Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:00:53 EST news151866022 A Johns Hopkins study finds that HIV-positive kidney transplant recipients could have the same one-year survival rates for themselves and their donor organs as those without HIV, provided certain risk factors for transplant failure are recognized and tightly managed. http://www.physorg.com/news151609761.html Medicine & Health Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:51:01 EST news151609761 Scientists who study how human chemistry can permanently turn off genes have typically focused on small islands of DNA believed to contain most of the chemical alterations involved in those switches. But after an epic tour of so-called DNA methylation sites across the human genome in normal and cancer cells, Johns Hopkins scientists have found that the vast majority of the sites aren't grouped in those islands at all, but on nearby regions that they've named "shores." http://www.physorg.com/news151508416.html Medicine & Health Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:40:16 EST news151508416 Experiments at Johns Hopkins have found that the gradual maturing of embryonic cells into cells as varied as brain, liver and immune system cells is apparently due to the shut off of several genes at once rather than in individual smatterings as previous studies have implied. http://www.physorg.com/news151508246.html Medicine & Health Sun, 18 Jan 2009 13:37:26 EST news151508246 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using a NASA radar flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters. http://www.physorg.com/news151331093.html Space & Earth Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:24:53 EST news151331093 (PhysOrg.com) -- In experiments that pave the way for tiny mobile surgical tools activated by heat or chemicals, Johns Hopkins researchers have invented dust-particle-size devices that can be used to grab and remove living cells from hard-to-reach places without the need for electrical wires, tubes or batteries. Instead, the devices are actuated by thermal or biochemical signals. http://www.physorg.com/news151002472.html Chemistry Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:07:52 EST news151002472 New cells are born every day in the brain's hippocampus, but what controls this birth has remained a mystery. Reporting in the January 1 issue of Science, neuroscientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have discovered that the birth of new cells, which depends on brain activity, also depends on a protein that is involved in changing epigenetic marks in the cell's genetic material. http://www.physorg.com/news150657983.html Medicine & Health Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:26:23 EST news150657983 The enzyme machine that translates a cell's DNA code into the proteins of life is nothing if not an editorial perfectionist. http://www.physorg.com/news150559493.html Biology Wed, 07 Jan 2009 14:04:53 EST news150559493 Pterosaurs have long suffered an identity crisis. Pop culture heedlessly - and wrongly - lumps these extinct flying lizards in with dinosaurs. Even paleontologists assumed that because the creatures flew, they were birdlike in many ways, such as using only two legs to take flight. http://www.physorg.com/news150483980.html Other Sciences Tue, 06 Jan 2009 17:06:20 EST news150483980 With 30 million drivers in the US aged 65 and over, we count on older Americans to recognize when they can no longer drive safely and decide that it's time to stay off the road. A new study finds that a decrease in vision function is a key factor in bringing about this decision. http://www.physorg.com/news150478381.html Medicine & Health Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:33:01 EST news150478381 Johns Hopkins and other researchers report what is believed to be the first direct evidence in lab animals that the erectile dysfunction drug sildenafil amplifies the effects of a heart-protective protein. http://www.physorg.com/news150398115.html Medicine & Health Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:15:15 EST news150398115 Digitalis-based drugs like digoxin have been used for centuries to treat patients with irregular heart rhythms and heart failure and are still in use today. In the Dec. 16 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine now report that this same class of drugs may hold new promise as a treatment for cancer. This finding emerged through a search for existing drugs that might slow or stop cancer progression. http://www.physorg.com/news150389159.html Medicine & Health Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:45:59 EST news150389159 (PhysOrg.com) -- When researchers look inside human cancer cells for the whereabouts of an important tumor-suppressor, they often catch the protein playing hooky, lolling around in cellular broth instead of muscling its way out to the cells' membranes and foiling cancer growth. http://www.physorg.com/news149924576.html Medicine & Health Wed, 31 Dec 2008 05:42:56 EST news149924576