Body

KEYSTONE, CO (July 10, 2009) – Athletic injuries can derail any player's ability to compete, but for a baseball pitcher his shoulder strength and control is critical. A new study to be presented at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine's (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Keystone, Colorado, suggests that testing a pitcher's shoulder strength through a series of exercises during the preseason may help create a focused strength training program to prevent serious injury during the season.

Southern Elephant seals responded rapidly to climate and habitat change and established a new breeding site thousands of kilometres from existing breeding grounds, according to new research.

The strain of influenza, A/H1N1, that is currently pandemic in humans has been shown to be infectious to pigs and to spread rapidly in a trial pig population.

Dialysis treatments do not affect the heart health of kidney disease patients who have had a heart attack, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). Since cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death in kidney disease patients, the findings are good news for individuals who need the treatments.

Ask biologists how many species live in a pond, a grassland, a mountain range or on the entire planet, and the answers get increasingly vague. Hence the wide range of estimates for the planet's biodiversity, predicted to be between 2 million and 50 million species.

A new way of estimating species richness reported this month in the journal Ecology Letters by University of California, Berkeley, ecologist John Harte and colleagues, will make such estimates more precise for habitats of all sizes and types, from deserts to tropical rainforests.

July 9, 2009 - (BRONX, NY) - Elevated insulin levels in the blood appear to raise the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women, according to researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. Their findings are published in the online version of the International Journal of Cancer.

Heavy drinking, being 45 to 49 years old, type 1 diabetes or having a preceding infection are associated with more than twice the risk of death in stroke patients 15 to 49 years old, according to a Finnish study.

Furthermore, heart failure was associated with seven times the risk of death and active cancer malignancy with 16 times the risk of death in stroke patients.

The restoration of a 2,000-year-old bronze sculpture of the famed ancient Greek athlete Apoxyomenos may help modern scientists understand how to prevent metal corrosion, discover the safest ways to permanently store nuclear waste, and understand other perplexing problems. That's the conclusion of a new study on the so-called "biomineralization" of Apoxyomenos appearing in the current issue of ACS' Crystal Growth & Design, a bi-monthly journal. Best known as "The Scraper," the statue depicts an athlete scraping sweat and dust from his body with a small curved instrument.

DALLAS – July 9, 2009 – A new study says scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have discovered why mouse embryonic ste, (ES) cells can be easily grown in a laboratory while other mammalian ES cells are difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.

If the findings in mice can be applied to other animals, scientists could have an entirely new palette of research tools to work with, said Dr. Steven McKnight, chairman of biochemistry at UT Southwestern and senior author of the study appearing in the July 9 issue of Science Express.

BALTIMORE (July 9, 2009) – Is your head where your heart is? It may be now. A strong connection between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease (CVD) has been suggested in recent clinical studies. As many as 75 percent of adults in the United States have been affected by periodontal disease and an estimated 80.7 million adults (1 out of every 3) have been a victim of CVD in 2006 according to the American Heart Association. From the 80.7 million adults in the United States, 38.2 million are less than 60 years of age, which is almost 50 percent. According to Marvin J.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Coastal marine ecosystems are at risk worldwide as a result of human activities, according to scientists at UC Santa Barbara who have recently published a study in the Journal of Conservation Letters. The authors have performed the first integrated analysis of all coastal areas of the world.

DURHAM, N.C. -- Using a nicotine patch before quitting smoking can double success rates, according to Duke University Medical Center researchers. They say their latest data suggest changes should be made to nicotine patch labeling.

"Right now, the nicotine patch is only recommended for use after the quit date," explains Jed Rose, director of the Duke Center for Nicotine and Smoking Research and lead author of the paper that is published online in the current issue of the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Research.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is arguably the world's most successful infectious agent because it knows how to avoid elimination by slowing its own growth to a crawl. Now, a report in the July 10 issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, offers new insight into the bugs' talent for meager living.

Surgeons from Hospital for Special Surgery in New York have identified a drilling technique that improves the outcome of surgery to reconstruct the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The news will be presented during the annual meeting of the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, June 9-12, in Keystone. Colo.

Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine identified a novel link between ITCH, a gene known to regulate inflammation in the body and NOD2, a gene which causes the majority of genetic Crohn's Disease diagnoses. ITCH, when malfunctioning, causes widespread inflammatory diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease, gastritis, uncontrolled skin inflammation, and pulmonary pneumonitis. Derek Abbott, M.D., Ph.D., and his team of researchers found that ITCH also influences NOD2-induced inflammation.