science newsletter: Science News SciGuru.com

Τετάρτη 19 Φεβρουαρίου 2014

Science News SciGuru.com

Cleverer management of the local memory banks known as ‘caches’ could improve computer chips’ performance while reducing their energy consumption
New drug candidate starves dormant cancer cells
Intra-sleep wakefulness may help in remembering our dreams
Controlling inflammation may hold key for triple-negative breast cancer therapy

Cleverer management of the local memory banks known as ‘caches’ could improve computer chips’ performance while reducing their energy consumption

Posted: 19 Feb 2014 06:58 AM PST

Computer chips keep getting faster because transistors keep getting smaller. But the chips themselves are as big as ever, so data moving around the chip, and between chips and main memory, has to travel just as far. As transistors get faster, the cost of moving data becomes, proportionally, a more severe limitation.

New drug candidate starves dormant cancer cells

Posted: 19 Feb 2014 03:11 AM PST

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University in Sweden present a new drug candidate, which selectively kills dormant cells within a cancer tumour through starvation. These tumour cells, which are found in less oxygenated parts of solid tumours, are resistant to conventional treatments.

Intra-sleep wakefulness may help in remembering our dreams

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 08:00 AM PST

Why do some of us regularly recall our dreams in the morning while others rarely do? A study from the Lyon Neuroscience Research Centre in France suggests that brief periods of night wakefulness due to increased activity of particular forebrain regions may assist in memorising dreams. The study, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, suggests that dream recall and intra-sleep wakefulness correlate with increased activity of regions of the brain called the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) and/or the white matter of the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC).

Controlling inflammation may hold key for triple-negative breast cancer therapy

Posted: 18 Feb 2014 07:32 AM PST

An international team of researchers from the USA, Spain, India and Korea have dissected links between inflammatory and cancer pathways to uncover a potential future therapeutic option for patients with triple-negative breast cancer. The study is published in the journal Oncogene. It shows that in a human mammary cell model of triple-negative breast cancer, an inhibitor of inflammatory responses called SOCS3 is degraded, resulting in loss of control over the inflammatory cytokine interleukin (IL)-6.