A team of researchers from the Yale University (United States) and a Spanish company have developed a system to detect the vapours emitted by human skin in real time. The scientists think that these substances, essentially made up of fatty acids, are what attract mosquitoes and enable dogs to identify their owners.
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Planarian flatworms are only a few millimeters up to a few centimeters in length, live in freshwater and are the object of intense research, because they possess the extraordinary ability to regenerate lost tissue with the help of their stem cells (neoblasts) and even grow an entirely new worm out of minute amputated body parts. Now researchers from the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin, Germany together with researchers in the US and Canada present the first comprehensive catalogue of small RNAs of planaria, elements that regulate gene expression.
Researchers at the University of Warwick have recovered significant DNA information from a lost form of ancient barley that triumphed for over 3000 years seeing off: 5 changes in civilisation, water shortages and a much more popular form of barley that produces more grains. This discovery offers a real insight into the couture of ancient farming and could assist the development of new varieties of crops to face today's climate change challenges.
To control mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, researchers need to look at the behavior of people, not just the insect that transmits the disease, according to new research by Steven Stoddard of the University of California, Davis, and intercollegiate colleagues. The study, published July 21 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, exhibits work by an international, multidisciplinary team of vector biologists, sociologists and virologists studying dengue in Iquitos, Peru.
In 1989 scientists identified the gene mutation that causes cystic fibrosis (CF), which led to the hope that CF lung disease could be 'cured' using gene therapy. The premise of gene therapy is that modified viruses or other gene-based systems could be used to deliver a corrected version of a gene into affected tissues. However, the projected cure has been hampered by the natural ability of the lung to limit the introduction of foreign genes into its cells.
David Moher, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute; University of Ottawa, and an international consortium of contributors publish the PRISMA guidelines: a set of tools developed to help authors improve the reporting of systematic reviews and meta-analyses. In order to ensure wide distribution, the guidelines are being published simultaneously in several medical journals: Annals of Internal Medicine, the BMJ, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Open Medicine, and PLoS Medicine.
Should the financial ties between doctors and drug companies be completely cut, or are healthy alliances between the two possible with the common aim of improving human health? A debate in this week's PLoS Medicine discusses whether the influence of drug company money on doctors is always a corrupting one.
CHAPEL HILL – Scientists have worked for 20 years to perfect gene therapy for the treatment of cystic fibrosis, which causes the body to produce dehydrated, thicker-than-normal mucus that clogs the lungs and leads to life threatening infections.
TUCSON, ARIZ. – It is an amazing sight: What looks like a tiny beating heart is actually a piece of synthetic, gauze-like mesh, barely the size of a fingernail, floating in a Petri dish. And yet it keeps squeezing away, nice and rhythmically.
Researchers at The University of Arizona's Sarver Heart Center and the Southern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System (SAVAHCS) have come a step closer to repairing hearts damaged by a heart attack or weakened by chronic heart failure.
Arctic springtails (Megaphorura arctica) survive freezing temperatures by dehydrating themselves before the coldest weather sets in. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Genomics have identified a suite of genes involved in controlling this extreme survival mechanism.
A team of researchers, at the Genome Institute of Singapore, has identified a new gene that seems to contribute to aggressive breast cancer behavior. As discussed in an accompanying commentary, by Gordon Mills and colleagues, the data generated in this study provide new insight into cellular processes underlying tumor cell proliferation and metastasis and identify potential new therapeutic targets.
A switch from annual to multiyear colonies and a willingness to feed just about any prey to their young have allowed invasive yellowjacket wasps to disrupt native populations of insects and spiders on two Hawaiian islands, a new study has found.
By analyzing the DNA from bits of prey snatched from foragers returning to nests, ecologists from the University of California, San Diego, found that introduced yellowjacket wasps kill or scavenge prey from 14 different taxonomic orders of animals, even reptiles and birds.
A research collaboration between Munich-based biophysicists and a structural biologist in Hamburg is helping to explain why our muscles, and those of other animals, don't simply fall apart under stress. Their findings may have implications for fields as diverse as medical research and nanotechnology.
HOUSTON – (July 20, 2009) – Compared with patients with moderately controlled glucose levels, diabetic patients who have heart failure and either too high or too low glucose levels may be at increased risk of death, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine(www.bcm.edu) in a report published in the current issue of Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.