ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Researchers at the University of Michigan have identified a promising new compound for targeting one of the most aggressive types of breast cancer.

The compound, currently called UM-164, goes after a kinase known to play a role in the growth and spread of triple-negative breast cancer. UM-164 blocks the kinase c-Src and inhibits another pathway, p38, involved in this subtype. The researchers also found that the compound had very few side effects in mice.

In treating diseases with drugs, dosing is critical; too little is ineffective, while too much can be lethal. Colorado State University's Brad Reisfeld takes a mathematical approach to achieving optimal dosing for various drugs.

Publishing earlier this week in the American Society for Microbiology's Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Reisfeld, associate professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and a faculty member in the School of Biomedical Engineering, has described a new computational model for optimizing dosing for the drug Rifapentine.

Installing a microgrid, such as a cooperative of power generators and power consumers operating in a coordinated system, within a regulated electricity market, will not work any better than the type of regulated de-regulation that led to California having utility rates 50 percent higher than other states.

It can work, it just depends on how heavily things are regulated. Microgrids are touted as hybrid alternatives to smooth out kinks in existing electricity networks. Wealthy elites with electric cars, for example, believe they are using no fossil fuels, without factoring in that each charger is equivalent in load to a whole new house on the grid, with power draws from nuclear or coal or natural gas just the same.

A few years ago, there were concerns about Dengue in Florida. This plight on humanity is carried by a small number of mosquitoes that have no ecological value of any kind, they are just disease carriers that have somehow survived evolution. 

Pesticides obviously work, DDT has been killing the bugs that carry malaria for 70 years, but a more targeted approach is making sure they can't viably reproduce - a genetically modified mosquito does that quite well, but an activist mom, funded by environmentalists, whipped the public into frenzy. Science rationally showed that the arguments were hype, not science. 

Griffith University researchers have found evidence that demonstrates Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit Australia, as reported in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal this week.

The work refutes an earlier landmark study that claimed to recover DNA sequences from the oldest known Australian, Mungo Man.

The Neanderthal genome included harmful mutations that made the hominids around 40% less reproductively fit than modern humans, according to estimates published in the latest issue of the journal GENETICS. Non-African humans inherited some of this genetic burden when they interbred with Neanderthals, though much of it has been lost over time. The results suggest that these harmful gene variants continue to reduce the fitness of some populations today. The study also has implications for management of endangered species.