Body

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Among black men, those with more genetic variants descended from West Africa may have a relatively lower risk of being overweight, obese and diabetic, according to a new study out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham and University of Arizona. Obesity affects women and men of every ethnic group in the United States with strong gender and racial disparities.

Mentioning politics in a message about an environmental issue may turn people -- even people informed about the issue -- away from supporting a pro-science solution, according to a team of researchers.

Industrialized nations that view wildfire as the enemy have much to learn from people in some parts of the world who have learned to live compatibly with wildfire, says a team of fire research scientists.

The interdisciplinary team say there is much to be learned from these "fire-adaptive communities" and they are calling on policy makers to tap that knowledge, particularly in the wake of global warming.

COLUMBIA, Mo. - Recent studies have shown that visitors to U.S. national and state parks are disproportionately white, with low numbers of ethnic minorities, especially African Americans. Now, a University of Missouri researcher has identified several reasons why African Americans choose not to patronize public parks in greater numbers, including a racist history that curtailed African Americans' access to parks, on-going racial conflict within communities near parks, and a lack of African American heritage at parks.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have discovered that muscle cells affected by muscular dystrophy contain high levels of an enzyme that impairs muscle repair. This finding provides a new target for potential drug treatments for the disease, which currently has no cure.

Scientists from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai developed and tested a personalized cancer therapy program using an integrated genomic approach that led to therapeutic recommendations for 91 percent of patients. In a paper released today in Genome Medicine, they report results of the pilot program and show that multidimensional genomic profiles outperform the targeted cancer panels in use at many clinical labs today.

Physicians have long used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect cancer but results of a University of California San Diego School of Medicine study describe the potential use of restriction spectrum imaging (RSI) as an imaging biomarker that enhances the ability of MRI to differentiate aggressive prostate cancer from low-grade or benign tumors and guide treatment and biopsy.

Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) has received a transformational, multi-year pledge from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation to support the Wilke Cohen Lyme Disease Project. In addition to an initial $3.1 million in funding from Jeff and Liesl Wilke, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos, and the Bay Area Lyme Foundation, the project now has commitments totaling $6.1 million in pledges and cash.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool have identified and dated the genetic mutation that gave rise to the black form of the peppered moth, which spread rapidly during Britain's industrial revolution.

The new findings solve a crucial missing piece of the puzzle in this iconic textbook example of evolution by natural selection.

The typical form of the peppered moth has light-coloured wings.

In the densely populated southeastern U.S., forested watersheds are particularly important to drinking water supplies. Recent estimates show that forests in the Southeast deliver surface drinking water to an estimated 48.7 million people, with streams from the mountainous Southern Appalachian region alone providing water supplies to 10 million people, many of them living in major cities such as Atlanta, Georgia.

New identification of a gene involved in the fracture healing process could lead to the development of new therapeutic treatments for difficult-to-heal injuries.

Fracture healing involves communication between bone, muscle, vasculature and the thin membrane covering the outer surface of bones (periosteum) during the fracture repair. The periosteum contains stem cells that migrate to the fracture site and differentiate into chondrocytes (cartilage-forming cells) and/or osteoblasts (bone-forming cells).

The average healthy man is 54 percent muscle by mass, but people with muscular dystrophy, an incurable, genetic condition, have almost no muscle at terminal stages of the disease. New research from The Rockefeller University provides insights about what causes patients' muscles to degenerate and offers potential avenues for drug development.

Research at the Buck Institute shows the same mechanisms that lead to neuronal cell death in mice genetically fated to develop Parkinson's disease (PD) are involved in the much more common sporadic form of the age-related, neurodegenerative disorder that robs people of the ability to move normally. The research, published in the journal Neurobiology of Disease identifies new targets that show promise for drug development for an incurable condition that affects as many as one million Americans.

June 1, 2016 - Language is a key obstacle to meeting guidelines for educating parents of newborns about "shaken baby syndrome" -- also called abusive head trauma (SBS/AHT), reports a study in the Journal of Trauma Nursing, official publication of the Society of Trauma Nurses. The journal is published by Wolters Kluwer.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - Do you often wonder what the person next to you is thinking?

You might be high in mind-reading motivation (MRM), a newly coined term for the practice of observing and interpreting bits of social information, like whether the person next to you is rhythmically drumming his fingers because he's anxious or if someone is preoccupied because she's gazing off into the distance.