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A study from Emory University School of Medicine published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has found that severe anemia, but not red blood cell transfusions (RBC), is associated with an increased risk for a potentially fatal intestinal condition in premature infants.

HOUSTON - (March 1, 2016) -- When confronted with invading bacteria, cells within the multicellular slug stage of the social amoeba (Dictyostelium discoideum) immediately seek to kill them, casting extracellular traps made of DNA nets studded with antimicrobial granules. The bacteria stick to and die on the nets. The activity is similar to that seen in mammalian immune cells called neutrophils, said an international scientific partnership from Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Geneva in a report that appears online in Nature Communications.

The scale of workers' insecurity since the economic crisis is revealed in research showing that 32% believed that there was a risk of losing their jobs and 38% were anxious that their pay would be cut.

Many workers also feared arbitrary dismissal and loss of autonomy and pay, as well as discrimination and victimisation by management.

Duncan Gallie, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oxford, and his colleagues analysed survey data on 2,949 people in Britain for a paper published in the journal Work, Employment and Society.

In both humans and animals, voluntary movement is the result of a complex and precisely-coordinated interplay of nerves, muscles and bones. How does this 'neuromuscular unit' develop during early embryonic development, and which genes are involved? "This is the question we asked ourselves, particularly in the case of certain patients born with broken bones who, even as newborns, were neither able to move properly nor breathe unaided," explains Dr. Ellen Knierim, a researcher at Charité's NeuroCure Clinical Research Center and the study's first author.

A group of drugs already in everyday use to treat psychosis or depression may also be used to defeat deadly and emerging viruses, according to new research led by the University of Leeds.

Researchers found that common drugs in everyday use were successful in preventing a particular virus from infecting cells, by blocking the ion channels that regulate potassium levels in those cells. Ion channels normally control the balance of chemicals such as potassium, calcium and sodium within our cells.

The current study proposes a multi-criteria decision aid framework to funding agencies for the integrated evaluation of water storage systems in Ethiopia and more broadly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Various water storage schemes within the country are assessed while the farmers are placed at the centre of the analysis as the principal stakeholders. The approach is based on a multi-criteria outranking method for the avoidance of complete trade-offs between criteria.

Using the example of the red flour beetle, the biologists are presenting a new model system for the exploration of the dynamic development of animal tissues. In this context, a high-tech light sheet fluorescence microscope was used for the first time on red flour beetles at the University of Cologne.

As the digital age dawned, pioneers successfully snapped up broad swathes of the most popular and memorable domain names, such as nouns, places and combinations thereof - claiming valuable 'virtual real estate' under the top level domains such as dot-com, dot-co-dot-uk and so on.

Washington, DC - March 1, 2016 - A new study suggests that the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) develops mutations that make the virus less virulent during an outbreak rather than more virulent. The study, published this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, has implications for vaccine development.

Warnings, operating instructions, design modifications and safety tips all aim to protect children and teens from injuries caused by lawn mowers.

In a new study, Chen-Yu Zhang's group at Nanjing University collaborate with Ze-liang Chen's group at academy of Military Medical Sciences report that an Ebola virus-encoded microRNA-like fragment serves as a biomarker for early diagnosis. It is published in Cell Research.

With just a tiny tweak, researchers at Kyushu University greatly increased the device lifetime of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that use a recently developed class of molecules to convert electricity into light with the potential for increased efficiency at a lower cost in future displays and lighting.

The easily implemented modifications can also potentially increase the lifetime of OLEDs currently used in smartphone displays and large-screen televisions.

SAN ANTONIO (Feb. 29, 2016) -- How do some viruses--comparable to HIV--insert their genetic information into cells and permanently infect them? In a paper published in Nature in February, scientists showed the structure of a protein complex that enables this to occur.

To confirm the discovery, the team of scientists turned to a technology developed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Pregnant women with asthma may be at greater risk of preterm birth when exposed to high levels of certain traffic-related air pollutants, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions.

The researchers observed an increased risk associated with both ongoing and short-term exposure to nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide, particularly when women were exposed to those pollutants just before conception and in early pregnancy.

Researchers have determined that the protein nucleophosmin (NPM1) serves as glue that holds proteins and RNA together in the nucleolus and showed how NPM1's structure makes it ideal for the job. St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists led the study, which appears today in the scientific journal eLife.