Researchers have defined a mutation in the mouse genome that mimics progressive hearing loss in humans. A team from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, working with colleagues in Munich and Padua, found that mice carrying a mutation called Oblivion displayed problems with the function of hair cells in the inner ear, occurring before clear physical effects are seen. The study is published October 31 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics.
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Researchers from Nijmegen and Leiden have now characterized a large number of parasite proteins that may prove useful in the development of a human malaria vaccine. Details are published October 31st in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens.
Every day 2000 children die from malaria in Africa alone. The infection is transmitted from human to human by biting mosquitoes. Despite many years of effort, a vaccine is still not available to fight the deadly disease.
PHILADELPHIA (October 30, 2008) -- Reporting in the October 31 issue of the online journal PLoS ONE, scientists from the Monell Center present behavioral and chemical findings to reveal that an individual's underlying odor signature remains detectable even in the face of major dietary changes.
Normal-weight women who carry out lots of vigorous exercise are approximately 30% less likely to develop breast cancer than those who don't exercise vigorously. A study of more than thirty thousand postmenopausal American women, reported in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research, has revealed that a sedentary lifestyle can be a risk factor for the disease – even in women who are not overweight.
Since the UK's move to 24-hour drinking, a large city centre hospital in Birmingham has seen an increase in drink-related attendances between the hours of 3am and 6am. A new study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, shows no significant decrease in alcohol-related attendances after 24-hour drinking was introduced but a significant shift in the time of attendances.
The incidence of malaria has fallen significantly in The Gambia in the last 5 years, according to a study carried out by experts there with support from scientists based in London.
The findings from the study, which was funded by the UK Medical Research Council, appear in today's Lancet, and raise the possibility of eliminating malaria as a public health problem in parts of Africa.
Giving children with milk allergies increasingly higher doses of milk over time may ease, and even help them completely overcome, their allergic reactions, according to the results of a study led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and conducted jointly with Duke University.
With only a few days remaining before Election Day, researchers from Harvard School of Public Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation, writing for the November 6, 2008, New England Journal of Medicine, find that seven in ten registered voters say major changes are needed in the U.S. health care system.
STANFORD, Calif. — Investigators combing the genome in the hope offinding genetic variants responsible for triggering early-onset diabetesmay be looking in the wrong place, new research at the StanfordUniversity School of Medicine suggests.
Early-onset diabetes, also known as type-1 diabetes, is an autoimmunedisease, caused when the immune system attacks and destroysinsulin-producing cells in a person's pancreas.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– A study of populations of tiny water fleas is helping ecologists to understand population dynamics, which may lead to predictions about the ecological consequences of environmental change.
The study is published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The water flea, called Daphnia, plays a key role in the food web of many lakes.
Allowing joint bidding helps reduce potential mismatch between an e-tailer's costs and the consumer's bids on name-your-own-price websites like Priceline, according to the Management Insights feature in the current issue of Management Science, the flagship journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).
Management Insights, a regular feature of the journal, is a digest of important research in business, management, operations research, and management science. It appears in every issue of the monthly journal.
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Oregon and Hawaiian researchers have found that a woman's weight does not seem to affect sexual behavior. In fact, overweight women are more likely to report having sex with men than women considered to be of "normal weight."
Sometimes it's hard to tell friends from foes, biologically speaking. Naturally produced in the body, urokinase plasminogen activator and plasminogen interact to break up blood clots and recruit clean-up cells to clear away debris related to inflammation. In fact, urokinase manufactured as a drug effectively clears clogged arteries by generating clot-busting plasmin from blood-derived plasminogen.
Treatment that combines a certain type of psychotherapy with an antidepressant medication is most likely to help children with anxiety disorders, but each of the treatments alone is also effective, according to a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The study was published online Oct. 30, in the New England Journal of Medicine.
A previously undescribed, cold-loving fungus has been linked to white-nose syndrome, a condition associated with the deaths of over 100,000 hibernating bats in the northeastern United States. The findings are published in this week's issue of Science.
The probable cause of these bat deaths has puzzled researchers and resource managers urgently trying to understand why the bats were dying in such unprecedented numbers. Since the winter of 2006-07, bat declines at many surveyed hibernation caves exceeded 75 percent.