Body

A new study led by the University of Minnesota shows that monkeys in captivity lose much of their native gut bacteria diversity and their gut bacteria ends up resembling those of humans. The results suggest that switching to a low-fiber, Western diet may have the power to deplete most normal primate gut microbes in favor of a less diverse set of bacteria.

Applying an electric field to some materials causes their atoms to "switch" their electric polarization from one direction to another, making one side of the material positive and the other negative. This switching property of "ferroelectric" materials allows them to be used in a wide range of applications. For example, ferroelectric capacitors are used to store binary bits of data in memory devices.

When looking at bacteria, you typically see also flagella: long hairs that protrudes from the bacteria's body. The key function of the flagella is movement - what scientists call 'motility'. The flagella give the bacteria the ability to swim in their environment by rotating like propellers. Bacteria can have a different number of flagella, and flagella are important because there is a clear correlation between motility and infection.

Mass drug administration may have reduced malarial incidence during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Liberia, according to a study published August 31, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Anna Kuehne from Epicentre, France, and colleagues.

An acoustic analysis showed that similarities between contact calls - known as coos - of female rhesus macaques may be explained by familiarity rather than relatedness, according a study published August 31, 2016 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dana Pfefferle from the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory of the German Primate Center, Germany, Kurt Hammerschmidt from the Cognitive Ethology Laboratory of the German Primate Center, Germany, and colleagues.

MINNEAPOLIS - Two epilepsy drugs, levetiracetam and topiramate, may not harm the thinking skills and IQs of school-age children born to women who took them while pregnant, according to a recent study. The research is published in the Aug. 31, 2016, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. However, the drug valproate is associated with lower IQs in children, especially at higher dosages.

DALLAS, Aug. 31, 2016 -- People are more likely to adopt heart healthy behaviors when guided and encouraged via the Internet, their cellphones or other devices, according to 23 years of research reviewed in Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

Cell lines are cultured cells that are commonly used in medical research. New results from Uppsala University show that such cells are not always what they are assumed to be. Using genetic analyses, the researchers showed that a commonly used cell line which was established in Uppsala, Sweden, almost fifty years ago does not originate from the patient it is claimed to stem from. The findings are published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego have discovered an easy and efficient way to coax human pluripotent stem cells to regenerate bone tissue -- by feeding them adenosine, a naturally occurring molecule in the body. The stem-cell-derived bone tissue helped repair cranial bone defects in mice without developing tumors or causing infection.

CINCINNATI - Developing blood cells are caught in tugs of war between competing gene regulatory networks before finally deciding what type of cell to become, according to a study published Aug. 31 in Nature.

Risk for suicide attempts and violent offending by children appears to be associated with their parents' psychiatric disorders, according to an article published online by JAMA Psychiatry.

Suicide and violent behaviors can cluster within families, possibly because of genetics, epigenetics, and social and environmental influences.

A cell line considered to be the most commonly used in brain cancer research is different from the original patient tumor from which it was derived, say Bengt Westermark and colleagues, who first established the cell line nearly 50 years ago. According to the authors, the publicly available cell line, which has been used in more than 1,700 publications, appears to be a type of glioma cell line, likely a glioblastoma, of unknown origin.

Two newer epilepsy drugs may not harm the thinking skills or IQs of school-aged children whose mothers took them while pregnant - but an older drug is linked to cognitive problems in children, especially if their mothers took high doses - according to new research from The University of Manchester.

Researchers funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) have shown that when the metabolite fumarate accumulates in a hereditary form of renal cancer it leads to an epigenetic reprogramming that drives cancer, according to a study published in Nature. The tumour growth mechanism seen here could be similar in other cancers, such as lung and bowel cancer, where the enzyme that breaks down fumarate is not present or not fully functional.

Patients with cancer have heightened risks of unintentional and intentional injuries during the diagnostic process, reveal findings from a large study published by The BMJ today.

A range of injuries are common and some are potentially life threatening, the study shows, and the authors call for "the prevention of intentional and unintentional injuries during the diagnostic process of cancer."