Body

Increasing weight loss per decade as people age from midlife to late life was associated with an increased risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI), according to an article published online by JAMA Neurology.

Oncology researchers have discovered that an abnormal fused gene that drives pediatric brain tumors poses a triple threat, operating simultaneously through three distinct biological mechanisms--the first such example in cancer biology.

This finding potentially offers triple benefits as well--more accurate diagnoses, clues for more effective treatments and new insights into molecular processes underlying other types of cancer.

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- The genome-editing technique known as CRISPR allows scientists to clip a specific DNA sequence and replace it with a new one, offering the potential to cure diseases caused by defective genes. For this potential to be realized, however, scientists must find a way to safely deliver the CRISPR machinery and a corrected copy of the DNA into the diseased cells.

The genome of eelgrass (Zostera marina) has now been unveiled. It turns out that the plant, once land-living but now only found in the marine environment, has lost the genes required to survive out of the water. Scientists from the University of Gothenburg participated in the research study, the results of which are published in the scientific journal Nature.

Eelgrass belongs to a group of flowering plants that have adapted to a life in water. As such, it is a suitable candidate for studies of adaptation and evolution.

Ants and humans represent approximately the same amount of biomass on our planet. Together with other social insects, ants make up a third of the entire animal biomass in the tropics and hence have a major effect on their ecosystems. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) investigated the role of different ant species in various ecosystem processes in tropical rain forests. They discovered that the dominant role is often played by only a few or even a single ant species when it comes to consuming food resources, something that can make an ecosystem vulnerable.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - In the face of a disrupted circadian rhythm, a low-salt diet and a hormone known to constrict blood vessels have the same unhealthy result: elevated resting blood pressure and vascular disease, scientists report.

Sleep disorders, shift work, disease, even aging may be signs of or triggers for clock dysfunction that increases the risk for hypertension and blood vessel disease, and now scientists in the journal Hypertension show that even a low-salt diet can have an unfortunate synergy with a dysfunctional clock.

Traditional fruit gardens planted by indigenous communities in the Malaysian rainforest increase the diversity of the animals who make it their home, research has found.

The study, led by researchers at The University of Nottingham's campuses in the UK and Malaysia, has shown that the impact of humans can have positive outcomes for the conservation of this precious ecosystem when managed effectively.

Montreal, February 1, 2016 - Sex (biological and physiological characteristics) differences are increasingly being studied to assess symptoms, risk factors and outcomes for various diseases. Now, a new pan-Canadian study led by a team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC), suggests that gender* rather than sex is associated with the risk of recurrence of cardiovascular events in adults. The results of this innovative research are now published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Positive fantasies about how future events will turn out can boost your mood in the here and now, but they may actually lead to increased depressive symptoms in the long run, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"Our findings suggest that as pleasurable and helpful as positive fantasies are for depressive mood in the moment, they can be problematic and cumbersome over time," says lead researcher Gabriele Oettingen of New York University.

As the study shows, a high-fat diet during pregnancy and lactation leads to epigenetic* changes in the offspring. These changes affect metabolic pathways regulated by the gut hormone GIP**, whereby the adult offspring are more susceptible to obesity and insulin resistance, the precursor to type 2 diabetes. Similar mechanisms cannot be ruled out in humans, according to Pfeiffer.

The micro-environment surrounding cancer cells is just as important as genes in regulating tumour progression. Scientists have therefore examined the biophysical and biochemical cues occurring in the vicinity of cancer cells. This represents a departure from the traditional measurement of secreted molecules, called biomarkers.

A team of investigators led from LSTM has published findings from a lung health study to determine the prevalence of lung disease among adults in Malawi, in the leading international respiratory journal, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Female mammals, including humans, may try to outcompete one another by producing bigger babies, ground-breaking research conducted by scientists at the University of Exeter has suggested.

A 13-year-long study published in the journal Scientific Reports, the first of its kind to use ultrasound, found that female mongooses respond to reproductive competition by producing bigger pups.

TORONTO, Feb. 1, 2016--A new study has found a steep decline in the number of scholarly papers about basic science published in leading medical journals in the last 20 years.

"This rapid decline in basic science publications is likely to affect physicians' understanding of and interest in the basic mechanisms of disease and treatments," warned Dr. Warren Lee, lead author of the study published in the February issue of the FASEB Journal, one of the world's most-cited biology journals.

A new Yale-led study offers a new conceptual framework for understanding the biogeochemistry of watersheds. The framework combines hydrologic and biogeochemical theory to test well established concepts in watershed ecology.

The paper, published in the journal Ecology, suggests that heavy weather events, though infrequent, cause an inordinate amount of organic material to bypass headwater systems, pushing them downstream into larger rivers, coastal waters, and inland basins.