A new study conducted by Loyola University researchers could lead to new treatments for skin cancer that would shrink the tumors with a class of drugs called protein kinase inhibitors. The drugs would work by turning on a gene called protein kinase C (PKC), which prevents skin cells from becoming cancerous, said senior author Mitchell Denning, Ph.D. The study was published today in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

More than 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. In the new study, researchers examined a type of skin cancer, called squamous cell carcinoma, which accounts for between 200,000 and 300,000 new cases per year.

What we learn from our siblings when we grow up has a considerable influence on our social and emotional development as adults, according to researchers from the the University of Illinois and the University of California, Davis. The team says that a clearer understanding of how siblings function as "agents of socialization" will help answer critical societal questions such as why some children pursue antisocial behavior. Their volume on the subject appears in a recent issue of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development.

Cancer-initiating stem cells that launch glioblastoma multiforme, the most lethal type of brain tumor, also suppress an immune system attack on the disease, say scientists from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

In a paper featured in the Jan. 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research, the researchers demonstrate that this subset of tumor cells stifles the immune response in a variety of ways, but that the effect can be greatly diminished by encouraging the stem cells to differentiate into other types of brain cell.

Writing in Psychological Sciences, researchers from New York University and Cornell University say they've demonstrated that our desires influence how we see our environments. According to the new research, we view things we want as being physically closer to us than they actually are. The authors say this bias exists to encourage us to pursue things that we want by making them appear close. When we see a goal as being close to us (literally within our reach), it motivates us to keep on going to successfully attain it.

 People's tendency to match their risk perceptions about policy issues with their cultural values may explain the intense disagreement over proposals to vaccinate young girls against human-papillomavirus (HPV), according to a new study in Law and Human Behavior. The study also indicates people's values shape their perceptions of expert opinion on the vaccine.

Children have a reputation for driving their parents crazy, so chances are that most people don't become parents for the health benefits. But maybe they should. According to a study conducted by researchers at Brigham Young University, raising children is associated with lower blood pressure, particularly so among women.