As millions of Americans gear up for the Thanksgiving holiday, a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), may provide some relief for those leery of having a second helping. In the report, researchers describe a discovery that may allow some obese people avoid common obesity-related metabolic problems without actually losing weight: they make a common antioxidant, melanin, in excess.
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A new study raises the question, do barriers to health care for undocumented immigrants increase the public health risk of tuberculosis? The study, published in the November 15, 2008 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and now available online, suggests that undocumented immigrants with tuberculosis have symptoms longer before seeking care than documented immigrants or U.S.-born patients, resulting in more severe symptoms and more opportunities for transmission.
DALLAS – Oct. 29, 2008 – Doctors need not go straight to Caesarean section when delivering twins, but can start with vaginal delivery of the first twin in many cases, researchers have found in a study led by UT Southwestern Medical Center.
Should the second-born twin turn out to require a Caesarean section, there is a slightly higher risk of infection for the baby and the mother, but that is easily treated and the risk of more serious complications for the second twin is not increased, the researchers found.
Montreal, Canada – October 29, 2008 – A new study in the Canadian Journal of Economics provides the first evidence on sexual orientation and economic outcomes in Canada. The study found that gay men have 12 percent lower personal incomes and lesbians have 15 percent higher personal incomes than heterosexual men and women.
Christopher S. Carpenter of The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California Irvine used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey which includes standard demographic questions as well as self-reports on sexual orientation.
Nottingham, England – October 29, 2008 – A new study in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy explored how men and women perceive online and offline sexual and emotional infidelity. Results show that men felt sexual infidelity was more upsetting and women felt emotional infidelity was more upsetting.
Monica T. Whitty and Laura-Lee Quigley of Queen's University Belfast surveyed 112 undergraduate students and asked them questions about sexual and emotional infidelity both offline and on the internet.
PHILADELPHIA – Charles J. Yeo, M.D., Samuel D. Gross Professor and Chair, Department of Surgery at Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, announces the establishment of the new Jefferson Pancreas Tumor Registry (JPTR).
"The purpose of the registry is to further study whether pancreatic cancer occurs more frequently in families with a history of the disease," said Dr. Yeo, who is the principal investigator of JPTR. "It will also be used to determine the environmental and occupational risk factors to which pancreatic cancer patients have been exposed."
Providence, RI –Rhode Island Hospital researchers report that findings from a new study of retail meat in the Providence, RI area indicate little to no presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The study, prompted by the identification of such organisms in retail meat in Canada, Europe and Asia, is among the first in this country to look at the possible spread of infection through retail meat. The study was published in the Journal of Food, Agriculture & Environment, Vol. 6 (3&4), 2008.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Approximately 250,000 people in the United States have some form of muscular dystrophy. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most common type of the disease, predominantly affecting males. Boys with DMD will lose the ability to walk by their teens and typically die before the age of 30.
The potential role of Eph receptor and ephrin ligand family in human cancer is receiving increasing attention. Compared with other Eph receptors, EphA4 is distinguished by its ability to bind to both type A ephrins and most type B ephrins. EphA4 reportedly forms a hetero receptor complex with FGFR1 and that EphA4/FGFR1 complex potentiates FGFR-mediated downstream signal transduction. However, alterations of EphA4 are not well understood in gastric cancer.
The sequencing of the human genome has opened the door for proteomics by providing a sequence-based framework for mining proteomes. As a result, there is intense interest in applying proteomics to foster a better understanding of cancer processes, develop new biomarkers for diagnosis and early detection of cancer. Gastric carcinoma is one of the most common malignancies worldwide and is the most common cause of cancer-related death in China. The main barrier for improving survival rate is short of useful marker for early diagnosis.
The association of DM2 with solid tumors, and particularly with HCC, has been long suspected and several studies have reported increased mortality rates for neoplastic diseases in patients with DM2. However, the temporal relationship between onset of diabetes and development of HCC, and the clinical and metabolic characteristics of patients with DM2 and HCC have not been well examined.
Expression of Livin in fresh esophageal cancer tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC), Western blotting and reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), VEGF by Its correlation Western blotting and RT-PCR. Livin positivity was also significantly correlated with tumor stages, increasing with tumor progression. Expression of Livin and VEGF increased with the process of esophageal carcinoma. In the fourth clinical stage, expression of Livin and VEGF was the most significant. Expression of Livin was positive correlation with VEGF.
A research team, led by North Carolina State University's Dr. Mitzi M. Montoya, has developed a new way of measuring how "real" online virtual worlds are – an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world.
PHOENIX, Ariz. – Oct. 29, 2008 -- In less time than the blink of an eye, the Translational Genomics Research Institute's new supercomputer at Arizona State University can do operations equal to every dollar in the recent Wall Street bailout.
That would be 700 billion computations in less than 1/60th of a second, says Dan Stanzione, director of the High Performance Computing Initiative at ASU's Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering.
This study is reported in "Science in China Series E: Technological Sciences, Vol. 51, No. 5, pp. 529-555, May, 2008." (http://tech.scichina.com) This research project was sponsored by Ruentex Construction Group, Taiwan, China. Professor Frank C.C. Weng with the "Civil Engineering Department of National Chiao Tung University" acted as the project leader.