Ninety per cent of Norway's two million pairs of cliff-nesting seabirds are located in nesting colonies above the Arctic Circle.
But why are these colonies located exactly where they are? Much of the 1200-km stretch of coastline from the Arctic Circle to Norway's easternmost point, on the Russian border, has features that ought to be attractive to birds that nest in colonies, mainly steep, protected cliffs that are essentially inaccessible to terrestrial predators.
The development of persistent childhood asthma - characterized by having trouble breathing on an almost daily basis - is not well understood. In most cases, childhood asthma resolves with time, but as many as 20 percent of children with asthma will go on to have potentially severe symptoms in adulthood. In the largest and longest U.S. analysis of persistent asthmatics to date, investigators at Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) found a link between persistent childhood asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in early adulthood.
Longer, hotter, more regular heat waves could have a damaging effect on life expectancy and crop production in Africa warn climate scientists in a study published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Examining temperature data from 1979 to 2015, the researchers caution that heat waves classified as unusual today could become a normal occurrence within 20 years. This scenario could be triggered by an increase in average global temperature of 2 degrees.
Risk all year round
A combination of two compounds found in red grapes and oranges could be used to improve the health of people with diabetes, and reduce cases of obesity and heart disease.
The find has been made by University of Warwick researchers who now hope that their discovery will be developed to provide a treatment for patients.
Professor Thornalley who led research said: "This is an incredibly exciting development and could have a massive impact on our ability to treat these diseases. As well as helping to treat diabetes and heart disease it could defuse the obesity time bomb."
Septic or infectious arthritis of the knee and Lyme disease have similar symptoms in children but require different immediate treatment to ensure optimal recovery. A new study in the May 4 issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery identifies four symptoms that are predictive of septic arthritis when the condition presents itself in a child's knee--an important distinction in areas where Lyme disease is prevalent.
Two linked papers in The BMJ this week shed new light on the relation of alcohol and diet with breast cancer and heart disease.
The first study reports that high fruit consumption during adolescence may be associated with lower breast cancer risk, while the second study finds that increasing alcohol intake in later life is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.
The NHS should significantly increase rates of weight loss surgery to 50,000 a year, closer to the European average, to bring major health benefits for patients and help reduce healthcare costs in the long term, argue experts in The BMJ this week.
Weight loss surgery, also known as bariatric surgery, reduces the size of the stomach with a gastric band or through removal of a portion of the stomach.
Detecting HIV earlier, through screening programs that can identify the virus shortly after infection, may lead to lower rates of HIV transmission in local epidemics, suggest findings from a new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online. After an acute infection screening program was implemented in San Diego, there were fewer new HIV diagnoses than would have been expected without such testing.
Conventional chemotherapy generally fails to eradicate aggressive breast cancers due to the early distant metastasis that can occur in these diseases. Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a particularly aggressive subtype which has no targeted treatment. It has recently been discovered that the oncogene MYC is elevated in TNBC, opening up promising opportunities for the development of new targeted therapeutic strategies that will allow selective killing of MYC-overexpressing TNBC cells.
From minor acts of rebellion such as bunking off school, to the more serious experimentation with illicit substances, the teenage years can be a stressful time for parents. But what if your child goes beyond the odd cigarette behind the bike shed or sneaking sherry from the drinks cabinet? Some teenagers develop riskier behavior, such as binge drinking or drug taking, which can follow them into adulthood with all the health concerns that go with them.
A genome-wide association analysis of over 1,000 twins in the UK supports that some parts of our microbiomes are inherited and shaped--not through a spread of microbes from parent to child, but through our genes. The results, revealing new examples of heritable bacterial species--including those related to diet preference, metabolism, and immune defense--appear May 11 in Cell Host & Microbe's special issue on the "Genetics and Epigenetics of Host-Microbe Interactions."
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) have established the first models of Zika virus transmission from a pregnant mouse to her fetus. The infected mice, described May 11 in Cell, demonstrate Zika virus invasion and damage to the placenta, and then infection of the mouse fetus, leading to many of the same conditions observed in human infants. The new mouse models can also be used as a tool to develop treatments or vaccines.
Wolf puppy play behaviors may be influenced by their play partner's age, according to a study published May 11, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Jennifer Essler from the Messerli Research Institute (Vetmed Vienna) and the Wolf Science Center, Austria, and colleagues.
In recent years, the ubiquitous industrial chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) has come under scrutiny for a variety of possible health problems including cancer and increased child adiposity. Now a study links maternal blood levels of the substance to early termination of breastfeeding.
At roughly 1.3 billion people, India is the second most populous country in the world, but will likely surpass China as the most populous nation within six years, reaching 1.7 billion by 2050, according to United Nations estimates.