A new study from Zambia suggests that halting breastfeeding early causes more harm than good for children not infected with HIV who are born to HIV-positive mothers. Stopping breastfeeding before 18 months was associated with significant increases in mortality among these children, according to the study's findings, described in the Feb. 1, 2010 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, and available online (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/649886) now.
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Scientists have mapped the genomes for three kinds of parasitic wasps, providing a new genetic model system based on the Nasonia genus. The availability of these genome sequences will aid the analysis of complex genetic traits, such as skin color, as well as complex human diseases. Published in the Jan. 15 issue of Science, the findings may help advance our understanding of how to use these wasps as natural agents against agricultural pests and disease-carrying insects.
SALT LAKE CITY, Jan. 14, 2010 – University of Utah scientists discovered that air flows in one direction as it loops through the lungs of alligators, just as it does in birds. The study suggests this breathing method may have helped the dinosaurs' ancestors dominate Earth after the planet's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago.
Before and until about 20 million years after the extinction – called "the Great Dying" or the Permian-Triassic extinction – mammal-like reptiles known as synapsids were the largest land animals on Earth.
The three wasp genomes Werren and Richards sequenced are in the wasp genus Nasonia, which is considered the "lab rat" of parasitoid insects. Among the future applications of the Nasonia genomes that could be of use in pest control is identification of genes that determine which insects a parasitoid will attack, identification of dietary needs of parasitoids to assist in economical, large-scale rearing of parasitoids, and identification of parasitoid venoms that could be used in pest control.
About 100 million years ago, the bacterium Wolbachia came up with a trick that has made it one of the most successful parasites in the animal kingdom: It evolved the ability to manipulate the sex lives of its hosts.
Plant scientists at the Centre for Novel Agricultural Products (CNAP) in the Department of Biology at the University of York are addressing this problem by using molecular technologies to rapidly improve the Artemisia crop. In the latest issue of Science, they publish the first genetic map of this species, plotting the location on the plant's genome of genes, traits and markers associated with high performance. This will enable scientists to recognise young plants as high performers from their genetics.
(Jena) When fully grown they have a diminutive size of only 1-2 mm: the "Nasonia" wasps. But great hopes are drawn from them. Nasonia are parasitic insects infesting fly pupae. By doing so, they are naturally eliminating important agricultural pests. In order to provide constant supply of food for its offspring, the wasp must prevent the early death of the host flies – not less then 40-50 eggs are laid into each pupa. As biological pest control Nasonia is not yet perfect.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have discovered how cells in the body flatten out as they adhere to internal bodily surfaces, the first step in a wide range of important processes including clot formation, immune defense, wound healing, and the spread of cancer cells.
Their study is published in the January 15 issue of Science.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Taking both calcium and vitamin D supplements on a daily basis reduces the risk of bone fractures, regardless of whether a person is young or old, male or female, or has had fractures in the past, a large study of nearly 70,000 patients from throughout the United States and Europe has found.
The study included data published in 2006 from clinical trials conducted at UC Davis in Sacramento as part of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). It appears online in this week's edition of the British Medical Journal.
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 14 – How often patients receive surveillance colonoscopy may need to be better aligned with their risks for colorectal cancer, according to two papers published this month by University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine researchers. The studies provide evidence that colonoscopy is both overused and underused in particular patient populations with serious implications for health care spending.
KNOXVILLE -- It's not thinking in the way humans, dogs or even birds think, but new findings from researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, show that bacteria are more capable of complex decision-making than previously known.
The discovery sets a landmark in research to understand the way bacteria are able to respond and adapt to changes in their environment, a trait shared by nearly all living things, and it could lead to innovations in fields from medicine to agriculture.
Figs and the wasps that pollinate them present one of biologists' favorite examples of a beneficial relationship between two different species. In exchange for the pollination service provided by the wasp, the fig fruit provides room and board for the wasp's developing young. However, wasps do not always pollinate the fig. Fig trees "punish" these "cheaters" by dropping unpollinated fruit, killing the wasp's offspring inside, report researchers working at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
PITTSBURGH, Jan. 14 – Endocrinologists at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC are launching a human trial of a new drug that their research indicates holds great promise for building bones weakened by osteoporosis.
For more than twenty years this team has been trying to identify links between the ecology and functioning of rivers and the surrounding terrestrial environment because, when all is said and done, rivers are like the excretory apparatus of the continents, just like the kidney is to the human body. River water often reflect the state of health of the external environment.
WASHINGTON – Genetic analyses refute the hypothesis that an overly abundant population of minke whales is creating too much competition over food for populations of other whale species to rebound, according to a new study supported by the Lenfest Ocean Program and published this week in the journal Molecular Ecology. The study's findings indicate that the Southern Ocean minke whale population around Antarctica has not grown unnaturally large in the wake of industrial whaling, which decimated populations of other larger whales in the region.