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PORTLAND, Ore. -- The pediatric cardiac team at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children's Hospital is the first in the region and one of a handful in the nation to implant a pulmonary heart valve without open-heart surgery.

To date, four patients have received the landmark valve in the OHSU Pediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiac Catheterization Lab. All reported immediate improvement in their energy level and stamina.

The amount of time families spend eating meals together has been linked to the health and well-being of children and teens, with families who eat together regularly reporting declines in substance abuse, eating disorders, and unhealthy weight in their children. Now, a new study that looks at children with asthma has found that the quality of family interactions during mealtime affected the children's health.

Many teens work part-time during the school year, and in the current economic climate, more youths may take jobs to help out with family finances. But caution is advised: Among high school students, working more than 20 hours a week during the school year can lead to academic and behavior problems.

That's the finding of a new study by researchers at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, and Temple University. It appears in the January/February issue of the journal, Child Development.

Childhood obesity in the United States has more than tripled in the past three decades, and prior research has linked maternal employment to children's body mass index (BMI), a measure of their weight-for-height. A new study in the January/February issue of the journal Child Development has found that children's BMI rose the more years their mothers worked over their children's lifetimes.

ATLANTA, February 4, 2011—A new American Cancer Society report says cancers associated with lifestyles and behaviors related to economic development, including lung, breast, and colorectal cancers, will continue to rise in developing countries if preventive measures are not widely applied. The finding comes from the second edition of Global Cancer Facts & Figures and its academic publication, Global Cancer Statistics, published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Both publications are being released on World Cancer Day, Feb. 4, 2011.

MADISON - By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells, a team of Wisconsin scientists has laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish.

Although vast improvements have been made in the clinical care of patients suffering from an acute myocardial infarction, heart attacks still remain the No.1 cause of death in the western world. A promising approach in overcoming this troublesome issue is to make use of an innate cardioprotective response: the ability of short ischemic episodes to precondition the heart against a subsequent prolonged ischemic insult.

Newly discovered dinosaur likely father of Triceratops

New Haven, Conn.—Triceratops and Torosaurus have long been considered the kings of the horned dinosaurs. But a new discovery traces the giants' family tree further back in time, when a newly discovered species appears to have reigned long before its more well-known descendants, making it the earliest known member of its family.

SRNL demonstrating low-energy remediation with patented microbes

Using funding provided under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory has launched a demonstration project near one of the Savannah River Site's former production reactor sites to clean up chemically contaminated groundwater, naturally.

Communication pathways within proteins may yield new drug targets to stop superbugs

INDIANAPOLIS – A School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis biophysicist has developed a new method to identify communication pathways connecting distant regions within proteins.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Genetic research is showing that healthy steelhead runs in Pacific Northwest streams can depend heavily on the productivity of their stay-at-home counterparts, rainbow trout.

Steelhead and rainbow trout look different, grow differently, and one heads off to sea while the other never leaves home. But the life histories and reproductive health of wild trout and steelhead are tightly linked and interdependent, more so than has been appreciated, a new Oregon State University study concludes.

Cancer researchers have discovered an important protein, produced naturally inside cells, that appears to suppress the growth of prostate cancer cells in the laboratory. The findings, published tomorrow in the journal Cancer Research, offer promising leads for research towards new treatments.

From the highest mountaintop comes a new research report in the FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) that gets to the bottom of what happens to the hearts of people when exposed to low-levels of oxygen, such as those on Mount Everest or in the intensive care unit of a hospital.