HOUSTON -- (Sept. 8, 2011) -- In a significant advance for cosmetic and reconstructive medicine, scientists at Rice University have unveiled a new method for making synthetic collagen. The new material, which forms from a liquid in as little as an hour, has many of the properties of natural collagen and may prove useful as a scaffold for regenerating new tissues and organs from stem cells.
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An analysis of the genome of a superbug has yielded crucial, novel information that could aid efforts to counteract the bacterium's resistance to an antibiotic of last resort. The results of the research led by scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) are published in the Sept. 8 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
MIAMI –September- Understanding animal communication has long been a fascinating and vast area of research for those who dare to welcome the challenge. Some species use body language to express their message while others use calls and loud noises. In fact, some animals communicate in frequencies that are inaudible to humans, either above or below our hearing range.
The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity, created by the president as part of the first lady's "Let's Move" campaign, aims to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation, returning the country to a rate of 5 percent by 2030, which was the rate before childhood obesity first began to rise in the late 1970s.
In a recent U-M study, published online ahead of print in Obesity Journal, researchers evaluated the balance of prevention and treatment required for achieving goals laid out by the Task Force's May 2010 report.
OTTAWA – Sept. 8, 2011 – Researchers at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI) have discovered that an ancient pathway called autophagy also mobilizes and exports cholesterol from cells.
A team led by Yves Marcel, PhD, Director of the HDL Biology Laboratory, UOHI, has shown that autophagy, a pathway preserved during evolution, functions to engulf and digest cholesterol accumulated in artery walls. This process facilitates the removal of cholesterol and may provide an entirely new target to reverse atherosclerosis, the main cause of heart attack and stroke.
The origin of three costly cattle diseases is genetically linked, according to findings from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers.
Scientists at the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Roman L. Hruska U.S. Meat Animal Research Center (USMARC) in Clay Center, Neb., have discovered a location on bovine chromosome 20 that is associated with the incidence of the most prevalent bacterial diseases--pinkeye, foot rot and bovine respiratory disease (pneumonia)--that affect feedlot cattle.
Among 13,894 women in the Nurses' Health Study, investigators prospectively examined alcohol use assessed at midlife in relation to "successful ageing," which was defined as survival to age 70 years, not having a major chronic disease (such as coronary disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes), and having no major cognitive impairment, physical impairment, or mental health problems. Only 11% of the women met these criteria.
Researchers have revealed new details about the brain, pelvis, hands and feet of Australopithecus sediba, a primitive hominin that existed around the same time early Homo species first began to appear on Earth. The new Au. sediba findings make it clear that this ancient relative displayed both primitive characteristics as well as more modern, human-like traits. And due to this "mosaic" nature of the hominin's features, researchers are now suggesting that Au. sediba is the best candidate for an ancestor to the Homo genus.
Hand bones from a single individual with a clear taxonomic affiliation are scarce in the hominin fossil record, which has hampered understanding of the evolution of manipulative abilities in hominins. An international team of researchers including Tracy Kivell of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany has now published a study that describes the earliest, most complete fossil hominin hand post-dating the appearance of stone tools in the archaeological record, the hand of a 1.98-million-year-old Australopithecus sediba from Malapa, South Africa.
Clinicians from a leading UK children's hospital have called for European countries to change the way they tackle the shortage of organ donations from children, after a review, published in the September issue of Acta Paediatrica, found a large number of legal, ethical and cultural barriers.
Great Ormond Street Hospital's clinical lead for organ donations, consultant paediatric intensivist Dr Joe Brierley, teamed up with Dr Vic Larcher, consultant in general paediatrics and ethics, to review the discrepancies between and within European countries.
Spontaneous ordering of DNA fragments in a special matrix holds the key to creating non-toxic gene therapy delivery vectors, according to a study recently published in the European Physical Journal E.
Researchers have confirmed the age of possibly our oldest direct human ancestor at 1.98 million years old.
The discovery was made after researchers conducted further dating of the early human fossils, Australopithecus sediba, found in South Africa last year.
A series of studies carried out on newly exposed cave sediments at the Malapa Cave site in South Africa, where the fossils were found, has assisted researchers to determine their more precise age at 1.98 million years old, making the Malapa site one of the best dated early human sites in the world.
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – At any given time, one of every 20 hospital patients has a hospital-acquired infection, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This leads to an estimated 99,000 deaths in the U.S. each year and up to $33 billion in preventable health care costs.
Now a new study by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill researchers finds that adopting an inexpensive set of infection control measures could potentially save many thousands of lives and billions of dollars. The study appears in the September 2011 issue of Health Affairs.
Scientists at A*STAR's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) have made a landmark discovery in the battle against the rapid spread of aggressive cancers associated with PRL-3 oncoprotein.
Baltimore, MD – September 7, 2011 – Surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center have transplanted the first lungs treated in the United States with an experimental repair process before transplantation. The procedure is part of a five-center national clinical research trial to evaluate the efficacy of repairing, before transplant, lungs that might otherwise have been passed over as unsuitable for organ donation. The results of this study, if successful, could significantly expand the number of transplantable lungs available to patients awaiting transplants.