cancer

Ageing answers no longer a hard cell

The holy grail of healthy old age may lie in the riddle of cells that stop Centenary Logocancer and hasten age at the same time.

Professor Judith Campisi, the head of research labs at San Francisco’s Buck Institute for Research on Ageing and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will present this research at the Inflammation in Disease and Ageing conference at Manly, organised by the Centenary Institute.

She has found that senescent cells, which stop cancer in its tracks, also promote the inflammation that drives many age-related problems and chronic diseases.

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Australia’s smallest miners; Unlimited energy from fusion and more

At the national physics congress this week:

And from Fresh Science

Keeping our best young bioscience brains in Australia: Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize

The winner of the Centenary Institute Lawrence Creative Prize will be announced at 12.30 pm, Thursday 15 November 2012, at a lunch at UBS in Sydney.

He will receive $25,000, and a glass trophy designed by Australian sculptor Nick Mount.

The 2012 finalists are:

  • Robert McLaughlin, a medical engineer from the University of Western Australia (UWA), who has developed an optical probe that fits inside a hypodermic needle and can help surgeons accurately determine the boundaries of breast cancer tumours.
  • Marc Pellegrini, from Melbourne’s Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI), whose discoveries about how the body regulates its immune system are being applied to clinical trials of cancer vaccines and treatments for HIV and hepatitis.
  • Jian Yang, from the Diamantina Institute at the University of Queensland, who has solved a major puzzle of missing heritability by developing software and methods to determine the multiple genes involved in conditions such as schizophrenia, obesity and diabetes.

Australians risking skin cancer to avoid nanoparticles

And yet the latest research reported in Perth this week suggests they have little to fear from ‘nano-sunscreens’.

Posted on behalf of ICONN 2012: Australia’s International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology

More than three in five Australians are concerned enough about the health implications of nanoparticles in sunscreens to want to know more about their impact. And while the initial scientific information released suggests little cause for alarm, it does justify the community’s confusion.

That’s the message that emerges from a survey and three research papers on nanoparticles in sunscreens presented at the 2012 International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICONN) in Perth this week. [continue reading…]

Oz research of note, 4 December, 2011

Eggs that talk to each other, the stressed hearts of the broken-hearted and online chat fighting depression are just some of the interesting stories that emerged from Australian research published in the last week.  Find over a dozen other stories below.

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