UPI NewsTrack Health and Science News

Smallest N. American dinosaur fossil found

CALGARY, Alberta, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Canadian scientists announced the discovery of the fossil of a species of tiny dinosaur that's the smallest dinosaur yet found in North America.

University of Calgary paleontology researcher Nick Longrich said the unusual dinosaur was the size of a chicken, ran on two legs and scoured the ancient forest floor for termites. The fossil was found by Longrick and University of Alberta paleontologist Philip Currie during the excavation of an ancient bone bed near Red Deer, Alberta.

"These are bizarre animals," said Longrich. "They have long and slender legs, stumpy arms with huge claws and tweezer-like jaws. They look like an animal created by Dr. Seuss."

Called Albertonykus borealis, the slender bird-like creature is a new member of the family Alvarezsauridae and one of only a few such fossils found outside of South America and Asia, the scientists said.

"Proportionately, the forelimbs are shorter than in a Tyrannosaurus, but they are powerfully-built, so they seem to have served a purpose," Longrich said, suggesting the newly discovered species might have used their forelimbs to rip open logs in search of insects.

Longrich, Currie and colleagues report their discovery in the August edition of the journal Cretaceous Research.

Theory of colorectal cancer risk revised

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've found failure to inherit a cancer-inhibiting gene from just one parent increases the risk of contracting colorectal cancer.

That discovery challenges the well-established, so-called "two-hit" theory that cancer only occurs in those who fail to inherit the gene from both parents.

The two-hit theory was advanced by Dr. Alfred Knudson more than 30 years ago. Now, Knudson and colleagues from the Fox Chase Cancer Center, the National Cancer Institute and Thomas Jefferson University say they've found evidence that "one hit" -- or failure to inherit a cancer-inhibiting gene from just one parent -- is enough to allow the growth of colorectal cancer cells.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States.

"We hypothesized that an inherited one-hit gene mutation can, by itself, lead to changes in the proteins of normal-looking cells" said Anthony Yeung, a researcher from Fox Chase, and lead author of the paper. "The 'one-hit' event makes a second mutation that much more likely to push the cell over the edge into cancer," he added.

The research is reported in the Sept. 15 issue of the journal Cancer Research.

Age estimation software is created

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., Sept. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. programmers say they have developed software that can fairly accurately estimate a person's age by examining his or her face.

"Age-estimation software is useful in applications where you don't need to specifically identify someone, such as a government employee, but would like to know their age," said University of Illinois Professor Thomas Huang, the study's leader.

Huang said age-recognition algorithms might be used to stop underage drinkers from entering bars, preventing minors from purchasing tobacco products from vending machines or denying children access to adult Web sites.

Consisting of three modules -- face detection, discriminative manifold learning and multiple linear regression -- the researchers' age-estimation software was trained on a database containing photos of 1,600 faces.

Huang said the program can estimate ages from 1 year to 93 years, with about 50 percent accuracy when estimating ages to within five years. The program achieves more than 80 percent accuracy when estimating ages to within 10 years.

"All of this can be done without violating anyone's privacy," Huang said. "Our software does not identify specific individuals. It just estimates their ages."

The researchers published their findings in IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

Toxic genes kill pancreatic cancer cells

PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they've created a technique in which nanoparticles are used to deliver a deadly diphtheria toxic gene that kills pancreatic cancer cells.

The scientists from Thomas Jefferson University's medical college and Kimmel Cancer Center said their achievement marks the first time such a strategy has been tested in pancreatic cancer cells, and its success offers promise for future pre-clinical animal studies, and, possibly, a new clinical approach.

The researchers found delivery of a diphtheria toxin gene inhibited a basic function of pancreatic tumor cells by more than 95 percent, resulting in significant cell death of pancreatic cancer cells six days after a single treatment. They also determined the treatment targets only pancreatic cancer cells and leaves normal cells alone.

"For the pancreatic cancer world, this is very exciting," said lead author, Assistant Professor Jonathan Brody. "We can't help being hopeful. Our findings suggest that such a strategy will work in the clinical setting against the majority of pancreatic tumors."

The study is to appear in the October issue of the journal Cancer Biology & Therapy.