BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham have found that the amount of proteins excreted in the urine of preterm infants with acute kidney injury, or AKI, is different from that excreted by infants with healthy kidneys.
The study, led by principal investigator David Askenazi, M.D., was published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
CORVALLIS, Ore. - As fewer teens overall take up smoking, those who do smoke daily are reporting more health complaints than in years past, a new study indicates.
"Teens who smoke report significantly higher levels of health complaints than nonsmoking teens, and we found that this gap has widened over the years, even as the overall prevalence of teen smoking has dropped," said Marc Braverman a professor, lead author and Extension specialist in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University, who worked with collaborators in Norway.
Scientists have developed a new method of measuring the activity of disease-causing mutations in the LRRK2 gene, a major cause of inherited Parkinson's disease.
The team believes this breakthrough, which is published in the Biochemical Journal, could help pave the way for future development of a clinical test that could facilitate evaluation of drugs to target this form of the condition.
In a study published in Scientific Reports, scientists discovered impressive abundance and diversity among the creatures living on the seafloor in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ)--an area in the equatorial Pacific Ocean being targeted for deep-sea mining. The study, lead authored by Diva Amon, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), found that more than half of the species they collected were new to science, reiterating how little is known about life on the seafloor in this region.
For medics on the battlefield and doctors in remote or developing parts of the world, getting rapid access to the drugs needed to treat patients can be challenging.
Biopharmaceutical drugs, which are used in a wide range of therapies including vaccines and treatments for diabetes and cancer, are typically produced in large, centralized fermentation plants. This means they must be transported to the treatment site, which can be expensive, time-consuming, and challenging to execute in areas with poor supply chains.
ITHACA, NY--A new way of fixing inactive proteins has been discovered in an algae, which uses chloroplast extracts and light to release an interrupting sequence from a protein.
Research specialist Stephen Campbell and Professor David Stern at the Boyce Thompson Institute report the discovery in the July 29 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. This repair system may have applications in agriculture and biotechnology because it could potentially be harnessed to enable proteins to become active only in the light.
They may be slimy, but they are a perfect environment for microorganisms: biofilms. Protected against external influences, here bacteria can grow undisturbed, and trigger diseases. Scientists at Kiel University, in cooperation with colleagues at the Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH) in Hamburg-Harburg, are researching how it can be possible to prevent the formation of biofilms from the beginning. On this basis, alternatives to antibiotics could be developed, as many pathogens are already resistant to most commercially used antibiotics.
Heterogeneous parallel computing combines various processing elements with different characteristics that share a single memory system. Normally multiple cores (like the 'multicores' in some smart phones or personal computers) are combined with graphic cards and other components to process large quantities of data.
The Kansas prairie seems like the very picture of beauty and simplicity, with undulating fields of corn and wheat stretching as far as the eye can see.
But below ground, the soil bears witness to the incredible diversity and chaos of life within even the smallest patch of ground. Just a teaspoonful of Kansas soil contains tens of thousands of microbial species.
Now scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have untangled that Kansas-based mess of microbes more fully than scientists have ever done for a sample of soil.
Tomato plants deter attacks from a parasitic plant that's known to ravage crops by detecting one of its peptides, a new study reveals. Worldwide, parasitic plants cost billions of dollars in crop losses, but a better understanding of how some plants fend off invaders could help efforts to mitigate these losses. Cuscuta reflexa is a parasitic, leafless vine that infects the stems of most dicotyledonous plants -one exception is Solanum lycopersicum, a species of tomato.
Researchers have developed a technique to generate miniature light beams that are twisted in orientation, similar in shape to a helix. While such a feat has been achieved on larger scales using bulky devices, the ability to create the same effect on a microscale has remained elusive; tapping into angled light on smaller scales could lead to important advances in telecommunication and information technologies, by increasing the rate of the information transmission.
When a plant evolves new traits, it can get a little boost in terms of its ability to spread through a uniform landscape, and a big boost in terms of its ability to spread through a landscape that's "patchy," a new experimental study shows. The results suggest that when predicting how fast certain species -- including invasive species -- will spread, accounting for any evolutionary changes they are undergoing is critical.
Scientists from the University of British Columbia have shown that there is a genetic basis to the migratory routes flown by songbirds, and have narrowed in on a relatively small cluster of genes that may govern the behaviour.
"It's amazing that the routes and timing of such complex behaviour could be genetically determined and associated with a very small portion of the genome," said researcher Kira Delmore, lead author of the paper published today in Current Biology.
According to new research it could be difficult to improve the health of the English bulldog, one of the world's unhealthiest dog breeds, from within its existing gene pool. The findings will be published in the open access journal Canine Genetics and Epidemiology.
The English bulldog's limited genetic diversity could minimize the ability of breeders to recreate healthy phenotypes from the existing genetic stock, which were created by human-directed selection for specific desired physical traits.
New research by University of Iowa scientists helps explain how a hormone system often targeted to treat cardiovascular disease can also lower metabolism and promote obesity.
The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) controls blood pressure and is important for cardiovascular health. Many of the drugs used to treat hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart failure block or inhibit the RAS.