Body

Princeton University researchers have found that a family of proteins with important roles in the immune system may be responsible for fine-tuning a person's motor control as they grow -- and for their gradual loss of muscle function as they age. The research potentially reveals a biological cause of weakness and instability in older people, as well as a possible future treatment that would target the proteins specifically.

Honed over millions of years of evolution, our circadian rhythms are responsible for the adaptation of our bodies to cycles of light and dark. One need only experience a bout of jetlag to appreciate how we resynchronize various bodily functions to a new time zone.

PORTLAND, OR - Using PET imaging to guide chemotherapy treatment significantly increases the number of people who go into remission and also decreases toxic side effects for people with advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, according to research conducted by SWOG and two other National Cancer Institute research groups.

Large-scale genetic studies have identified a number of variations in genes that increase an individual's susceptibility to obesity. An allelic variant in the intronic region of a gene called fat mass and obesity-associated (FTO) is strongly linked to increased food intake and body weight in humans, but it is unclear how the variant causes these effects. In this month's issue of the JCI, a research team led by Rudolph Leibel at Columbia University examined how the obesity-risk allele alters the regulation of nearby genes to promote obesity.

Dramatic improvements in air quality in U.S. cities since the 1990s may not be enough to ensure normal lung function in children, according to new research published in the April 15 American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care, a journal of the American Thoracic Society.

Aiken, S.C. - Researchers at the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory warn that the extinction to two amphibian species--the southern toad and the southern leopard frog--may be hastened by the combined effects of climate change and copper-contaminated wetlands.

Copper sulfate has been used in agriculture since the 1800s, at least. In the U.S. it is widely used as a fungicide on organic and conventional crops, and it is also found in some fertilizer products.

A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigator has found that increased expression of the angiogenic factor VEGF-A promotes three common aging-related eye conditions - both versions of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and also cataracts - in an animal model. While VEGF-A was known to be associated with neovascular or 'wet' AMD, whether it was a direct cause of the condition was unknown. Its role in 'dry' AMD was even less certain, and its contribution to cataract formation was totally unexpected.

The authors of the study Luis Miller, lecturer at the UPV/EHU's Faculty of Economics and Business, and Paloma Úbeda, a UPV/EHU researcher, highlight the importance of understanding how becoming unemployed affects people's behaviour. Many studies link unemployment and poverty with depression, anxiety, stress, low levels of well-being and self-esteem, high suicide rates, murder, alcohol-related deaths, etc. In this study, however, the researchers have looked at a different kind of effect and have concluded that unemployment changes people's morals around the distribution of money.

A group of six newly discovered proteins may help to divulge secrets of how we age, potentially unlocking new insights into diabetes, Alzheimer's, cancer, and other aging-related diseases.

Simon Fraser University scientists have developed a new way to exterminate rats by identifying and synthetically replicating the male brown rat's sex pheromone. The chemical is a powerful attractant for luring female brown rats into traps.

Writing in the April 11 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say abnormalities in a protein that helps transport and sort materials inside cells are linked to axonal dysfunction and degeneration of neurons in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Down syndrome (DS).

Tempe, Ariz.-- The world's total human population has jumped to over 7.4 billion just this year. Feeding the human species takes a tremendous toll on our natural resources including water, soil and phosphorus -- a chemical element in fertilizer essential for food production.

BOSTON - (April 11, 2016) - In type 1 diabetes, the immune system attacks the body's own insulin-producing cells. Scientists understand reasonably well how this autoimmune attack progresses, but they don't understand what triggers the attack or how to stop it, says Stephan Kissler, Ph.D., Investigator in the Section on Immunobiology at Joslin Diabetes Center and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

WOODS HOLE, Mass.-- The front line of the human immune system is made up of T-cells: white blood cells that circulate in the body and scan for foreign invaders and infections. If a T-cell surface receptor detects a threat during its surveillance, it relays a signal to the interior of the cell and activates it to attack.