This news release is available in Spanish.
Body
In a contribution to an extraordinary international scientific collaboration the University of Sydney found that genomic 'fossils' of past viral infections are up to thirteen times less common in birds than mammals.
Crocodilians, including the Australian saltwater crocodile, mutate at about a quarter of the rate of birds, new research has revealed.The discovery is the result of genome sequencing three crocodilian species - the Australian saltwater crocodile, the American alligator and the Indian gharial - by an international collaboration of scientists, including six from the University of Sydney's Faculty of Veterinary Science.
Malnutrition is a major cause of stunted growth in children, but new UCL research on mothers and children in Egypt suggests that the problem is not just about quantity of food but also quality.
Obesity and malnutrition are often thought of as problems at opposite ends of the nutrition spectrum, but the study found that 6.7% of Egyptian mothers were obese and had stunted children. In these 'double-burden' households with obese mothers and stunted children, malnutrition is unlikely to be down to scarcity of food.
In fact, political centrists would do well to stop 'sitting on the fence' and boost their physical activity levels to improve their health, say the researchers.
The term "armchair socialist" was coined in the 19th century by German economists who scoffed at academics advocating social policy, dubbing them "socialists of the chair" (Kathedersozialisten).
The term has since evolved to describe middle class people who talk a lot about politics but who aren't politically active in any way, and fail to "walk the talk."
The most ambitious genetic study ever undertaken on bird evolution has found that almost all modern birds diversified after the dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago.
"The popular view until now has been that the extraordinary diversity of birds began during the dinosaur age but we found little support for this," said Associate Professor Simon Ho, from the University of Sydney who led a major component of the research looking at evolutionary timescale.
People with a high level of education who complain about memory lapses have a higher risk for stroke, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
"Studies have shown how stroke causes memory complaints," said Arfan Ikram, M.D., associate professor of neuroepidemiology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. "Given the shared underlying vascular pathology, we posed the reverse question: 'Do memory complaints indicate an increased risk of strokes?'"
Children with public insurance waited longer after initial evaluation for sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) to undergo polysomnography (PSG, the gold standard diagnostic test) and also waited longer after PSG to have surgery to treat the condition with adenotonsillectomy (AT) compared with children who were privately insured, according to a report published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.
EAST LANSING, Mich. - It's well known that chemotherapy helps fight cancer. It's also known that it wreaks havoc on normal, healthy cells.
Michigan State University scientists are closer to discovering a possible way to boost healthy cell production in cancer patients as they receive chemotherapy. By adding thymine - a natural building block found in DNA - into normal cells, they found it stimulated gene production and caused them to multiply.
MADISON, Wis. -- Frederick Crane was a researcher under David E. Green in the mid-1950s, during the early days of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Enzyme Institute, when he made his defining discovery.
The lab group was on a mission to determine, bit by bit, how mitochondria -- the power plants of cells -- generate the energy required to sustain life. What Crane found, a compound called coenzyme Q, was a missing piece of the puzzle and became a major part of the legacy of mitochondrial research at UW-Madison. But it was no accident.
(Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- With more and more rainforest giving way to pasture and grazing land every year, the practice of cattle ranching in the Amazon has serious implications on a global scale. At the same time, however, it provides a degree of socioeconomic flexibility for Amazonian smallholders who simply can't survive on what the forest or agriculture provide.
BOSTON (December 11, 2014) -- A new study from epidemiologists at Tufts University School of Medicine helps to identify communities with the greatest public health need in Massachusetts for resources relating to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The study, published today in PLOS ONE, used geospatial techniques to identify hotspots for deaths related to HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. The findings show large disparities in death rates exist across race and ethnicity in Massachusetts.
BALTIMORE, December 11, 2014 - Insilico Medicine along with scientists from Vision Genomics and Howard University shed light on AMD disease, introducing the opportunity for eventual diagnostic and treatment options.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. --- Nature abhors a vacuum, which may explain the findings of a new study showing that bird evolution exploded 65 million years ago when nearly everything else on earth -- dinosaurs included -- died out.
The study is part of an ambitious project, published in today's issue of the journal Science, in which hundreds of scientists worldwide have decoded the avian genome.
Lincoln, Neb., Dec. 11, 2104 -- A University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher has contributed to discoveries about bird evolution as part of a new study that sequenced the complete genomes of 45 avian species.
Published Dec. 11 in the journal Science, the study found that avian genomes -- the complete archive of genetic material present in cells -- have exhibited surprisingly slow rates of evolution when compared with their mammalian counterparts.