Body

KNOXVILLE--Two researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have developed a method that could help clinicians and scientists better predict which mutations in people's genes could cause a disease and which would remain dormant.

Using a computational approach, Ogun Adebali and Igor Jouline have created a way to trace the evolutionary history of a human gene much more precisely.

Data gleaned from this method will help doctors know how to more effectively treat patients. It also could be used in the development of drugs to correct some of these mutations.

Researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and McGill University in Montreal (Canada) have taken an important step towards developing a drug against cystic fibrosis. In people suffering from this illness the CFTR protein is not located in the right place in mucus-producing cells: it remains inside the cell while it should be in the cell wall. Those cells secrete a tough mucus with serious consequences. However, the researchers have succeeded in conducting the CFTR to the cell walls. Their findings are published this week in the leading science journal PNAS.

Many hospital patients were protected from a dangerous bug and at least 96 years of life will be saved each year, said Professor Nicholas Graves from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation (IHBI).

Professor Graves conducted an NHMRC-funded evaluation of the National Hand Hygiene Initiative in 50 Australian hospitals across all states and territories from 2009 to 2012, published this week in PLOS One.

A new study has revealed following a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet for just eight weeks can lead to rapid weight gain and health complications.

The surprise finding, detailed in a paper in Nature journal Nutrition and Diabetes, has prompted University of Melbourne researchers to issue a warning about putting faith in so-called fad diets with little or no scientific evidence.

As the natural forest cover in Ethiopia is already less than 3% of what it once has been, the banana frog species, dwelling exclusively in the remnants of the country's southwestern forests in only two populations, is exposed to a great risk of extinction.

Spanish and German researchers have successfully seen for the first time the pores, shaped like rings and crescent moons, that the Bax protein perforates in mitochondrial membranes. This advance has been achieved thanks to super-resolution microscopy and may help find the "holy grail" of cell suicide, a crucial process in preventing cancer.

A carbon-based active material produced from apple leftovers and a material of layered oxides might help reduce the costs of future energy storage systems. Both were found to have excellent electrochemical properties and stand for the environmentally compatible and sustainable use of resources. Now, these materials are presented by researchers of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the journals ChemElectroChem and Advanced Energy Materials.

Ecotourism can provide the critical difference between survival and extinction for endangered animals, according to new research from Australia's Griffith University.

Using population viability modelling, the Griffith team of Professor Ralf Buckley, Dr Guy Castley and Dr Clare Morrison have developed a method that for the first time quantifies the impact of ecotourism on threatened species.

Their findings are published in the journal PLOS ONE.

A new study of the time-honored tradition of haggling over new car prices shows that sales personnel who are trained to understand a customer's price sensitivity will strike a better deal for their employers.

Three faculty members from the sales and marketing department of the University of Bochum, Germany, investigated how well car salespeople were able to judge how important price was to their customers and what difference that made to the outcome of the negotiations.

CINCINNATI--Researchers at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have discovered that a human cancer-causing gene, called DEK, can be detected in the plasma of head and neck cancer patients. DEK may help doctors understand how a person's immune system could be used to treat cancer or predict outcomes for patients.

These results are being presented via poster at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium in Scottsdale, Arizona, Feb. 18-20.

The first study to measure the full spectrum of age-related damage to all five senses found that 94 percent of older adults in the United States have at least one sensory deficit, 38 percent have two, and 28 percent have three, four or five.

The study, published in the February issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, also found that deficits in multiple senses were strongly associated with age, gender and race.

Diabetes describes a disease where the body is not receiving a sufficient supply of insulin. It commonly inflicts the pancreas, the organ responsible for insulin production. More specifically, it inflicts the cells that produce insulin, which are found in the endocrine tissue of the pancreas. However, new results from the Yoshiya Kawaguchi lab suggest the exocrine tissue, which is responsible for digestion, could have a role in treatment. "The pancreas is constituted of two tissues that are structurally and functionally distinct, which makes it unique", says Prof.

An international team of scientists, led by the China University of Geosciences in Beijing and including palaeontologists from the University of Bristol, has shed new light on some unusual dinosaur tracks from northern China. The tracks appear to have been made by four-legged sauropod dinosaurs yet only two of their feet have left prints behind.

An analysis of scientific reports and comments on the health effects of a salty diet reveals a polarization between those supportive of the hypothesis that population-wide reduction of salt intake is associated with better health and those that were not. In all, 54 percent were supportive of the hypothesis; 33 percent, not supportive; and 13 percent inconclusive.

Zika virus has been detected in the amniotic fluid of two pregnant women whose foetuses had been diagnosed with microcephaly, according to a study published today in The Lancet Infectious Diseases. The report suggests that Zika virus can cross the placental barrier, but does not prove that the virus causes microcephaly, as more research is needed to understand the link.