Body

Los Angeles (May 5, 2016) -- A major type of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) may be caused in part by genetic variants that prevent beneficial bacteria in the gut from doing their job, according to a new study published today in the journal Science.

The multicenter study from several research institutions, including Cedars-Sinai, uncovered the protective role some bacteria can play in disease management.

ANN ARBOR--A pioneering study of worldwide sleep patterns combines math modeling, mobile apps and big data to parse the roles society and biology each play in setting sleep schedules.

The study, led by University of Michigan mathematicians, used a free smartphone app that reduces jetlag to gather robust sleep data from thousands of people in 100 nations. The researchers examined how age, gender, amount of light and home country affect the amount of shut-eye people around the globe get, when they go to bed, and when they wake up.

A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has developed a device with the potential of shortening the time required to rapidly diagnose pathogens responsible for health-care-associated infections from a couple of days to a matter of hours. The system described in the journal Science Advances also would allow point-of-care diagnosis, as it does not require the facilities and expertise available only in hospital laboratories.

NASHVILLE, Tennessee May 6, 2016 -- People who have peripheral artery disease (PAD) and take cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins have a lower risk of amputation and death than PAD patients who don't take statins. And the higher the dose of statins, the lower the risks, according to research presented at the American Heart Association's Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology | Peripheral Vascular Disease 2016 Scientific Sessions.

It is one of the most famous paintings in American history: Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth. The painting, which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, depicts a young woman in a field, gazing at a farmhouse on an idyllic summer day.

But this lovely image has a dark side.

BOSTON - Delirium, or sudden severe confusion due to rapid changes in brain function that can occur with physical or mental illness, affects 15% to 53% of older surgical patients. New research led by investigators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) may now help clinicians assess an individual patient's risk of developing post-operative delirium, enabling preventive measures to safeguard their health.

The Australian Government has listed the iconic Tasmanian swift parrot as critically endangered, lifting its status from endangered, following research by The Australian National University (ANU).

Dr Dejan Stojanovic from the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society is part of a team that published the 2015 research which found the swift parrot could be extinct in as little as 16 years.

He welcomed the reclassification, which he said should provide greater protection for Tasmanian bird.

Introducing a noise net around airfields that emits sound levels equivalent to those of a conversation in a busy restaurant could prevent collisions between birds and aircraft, saving passenger lives and billions in damages, new research has found.

A study published in Ecological Applications led by Professor John Swaddle, visiting Research Associate at the University of Exeter, found that filling a controlled area with acoustic noise around an airfield, where the majority of collisions tend to take place, can reduce the number of birds in the area by 80 per cent.

(BOSTON) - An international, multi-institutional team of researchers led by synthetic biologist James Collins, Ph.D. at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, has developed a low-cost, rapid paper-based diagnostic system for strain-specific detection of the Zika virus, with the goal that it could soon be used in the field to screen blood, urine, or saliva samples.

In a recent placebo-controlled study, long acting testosterone undecanoate (an ester of testosterone) improved erectile function, intercourse satisfaction, and sexual desire scores in type 2 diabetic men with severe hypogonadism, a condition in which the body doesn't produce enough testosterone. Only sexual desire improved significantly with testosterone replacement therapy in those with mild hypogonadism.

How did birds get their wings? Bacteria may provide a clue, say scientists

The evolution of major novel traits - characteristics such as wings, flowers, horns or limbs - has long been known to play a key role in allowing organisms to exploit new opportunities in their surroundings.

What's still up for debate, though, is how these important augmentations come about from a genetic point of view.

Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) affects hundreds of thousands of people each year, many of them children. Those with this life threatening condition have severely injured and wet lungs, and are treated with mechanical ventilation. Now, a study led by Professor Kanwaljeet Anand published in Frontiers in Pediatrics, investigates the effects of a new steroid treatment on children suffering from ARDS.

Researchers have found that the rates of surgical operations for gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) in the United States have fallen rapidly in recent years, from 0.062 percent in 2009 to 0.047 percent in 2013. The numbers of overweight and obese patients having this surgery have increased, however. Also, women are more likely than men to have surgery for GERD.

Importantly, surgery was not found to bring complete relief from GERD symptoms: 80% of patients who had surgery were still being treated with a proton pump inhibitor.

In modern microelectronics, nanobiotechnology, nanorobots increasingly have being used both organic biomacromolecules and fragments, as nucleotides, peptides, DNA, and inorganic elements, like as metallic nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes. The charge transfer in such heterogeneous systems to a large extent has to determined by the conformational changes of biological fragments. In studying the properties of these complex nanoparticles one of the effective tool is a hybrid method of molecular dynamics simulation, combining molecular-mechanical and quantum-mechanical approaches.

May 6, 2016-- (BRONX, NY)--For the first time, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine have developed a technology allowing them to "see" single molecules of messenger RNA as they are translated into proteins in living mammalian cells. Initial findings using this technology that may shed light on neurological diseases as well as cancer were published online today in Science.