Body

Hepatitis G virus was identified in 1995. Some little research was carried out on the virus and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declared it a non-harmful virus in 1997. Researchers in Saudi Arabia, writing in the International Journal of Immunological Studies present evidence to suggest that this may have been the wrong decision. They claim that transmission of the virus through donated blood that was not screened for the virus as well as infection through other routes has led to an increase in cirrhosis of the liver and liver cancer.

In one of the largest studies of its kind to date, researchers have found that babies born to mothers who smoke while pregnant face substantial delays in early neurological development, and the effects may be stronger than researchers had previously thought.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Human Capital, smoking may cause as much as a 40 percentage point increase in the probability of being at risk of developmental problems in babies between 3 and 24 months old. The effects were strongest among children from poor families, the research found.

In a time when a five-year grant is considered a long-term grant, Alan R. Templeton, PhD, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has managed to follow some of the species he studies for 10, 20 or even 30 years.

Early in his career he studied parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, in fruit fly populations at a dump and in cactus patches in Hawaii.

Weizmann Institute scientists have added a significant piece to the puzzle of scaling – how patterns stay in sync with size as an embryo or organism grows and develops. In a new study appearing in Current Biology, Institute scientists Profs. Naama Barkai and Ben-Zion Shilo and research student Danny Ben-Zvi of the Molecular Genetics Department have shown how scaling works in developing fruit fly wings – in which the vein structure stays perfectly proportioned – and their findings should be applicable to many different examples of development, including human embryonic development.

A new analysis has found that a decline in hormone therapy (HT) use among women aged 50 to 64 years is linked with lower mammogram rates among these women. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the study suggests that when women stop seeing their doctor for HT prescriptions, physicians do not have the opportunity to remind them that their mammograms are due.

STANFORD, Calif. — The onset of narcolepsy appears to follow seasonal patterns of H1N1 and other upper airway infections, according to a new study of patients in China that was led by Stanford University School of Medicine narcolepsy expert Emmanuel Mignot, MD.

The findings, which will be published online Aug. 22 in Annals of Neurology, a journal of the American Neurological Association and Child Neurology Society, show that a peak in narcolepsy cases occurred five to seven months after a peak in flu/cold or H1N1 infections in the country.