Body

Nearly 100 fossil species pulled from a flooded cave in the Bahamas reveal a true story of persistence against all odds -- at least until the time humans stepped foot on the islands.

Eczema - an itchy dry-skin condition - affects an estimated one in five children and one in 12 adults in the UK. Genes play an important role in determining how likely we are to develop eczema but the majority of the genes that cause the condition have yet to be detected.

When a Lake Malawi cichlid loses a tooth, a new one drops neatly into place as a replacement. Why can't humans similarly regrow teeth lost to injury or disease?

More and more, scientists have realized that DNA is not the only way that a parent can pass on traits to their offspring. Events experienced by a parent over a lifetime can also have an impact.

Now University of Pennsylvania researchers have shown at the molecular level how experiencing stress changes a male mouse's sperm in such a way that it affects his offspring's response to stress. This change is imparted epigenetically, or through a means other than the DNA code, by molecules called microRNAs, or miRs.

October 19, 2015, LA JOLLA, CA--Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have found a way to change leukemia cells into leukemia-killing immune cells. The surprise finding could lead to a powerful new therapy for leukemia and possibly other cancers.

"It's a totally new approach to cancer, and we're working to test it in human patients as soon as possible," said senior investigator Richard A. Lerner, Institute Professor and the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Immunochemistry at TSRI.

Genetic ancestry, as well as facial characteristics, may play an important part in who we select as mates, according to an analysis from UC San Francisco, Microsoft Research, Harvard, UC Berkeley and Tel Aviv University.

Researchers used population genomics and quantitative social sciences to gauge the relatedness of parents in a study of asthma in Mexican and Puerto Rican children.

Two insect species from Latin America, the dinosaur ant and the red paper wasp, have been used to uncover the molecular mechanisms underpinning queen and worker roles in social insects. The research by an international team of scientists brings us closer to understanding how genomes are used to generate castes in social evolution.

Physiological processes in the body are in large part determined by the composition of secreted proteins found in the circulatory systems, including the blood. Each of the hundreds of proteins in the blood has a specific life span that determines its unique range of abundance. In fact, measurements of their quantities and activities contribute to many clinical diagnoses. However, the way in which normal protein concentrations in the blood are determined and maintained has been a mystery for decades.

The higher a patient's income, the better are his or her chances of surviving cardiac surgery in both the short and long term. This is the finding of a new registry study by researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

Cars appear to produce carbon nanotubes, and some of the evidence has been found in human lungs.

Rice University scientists working with colleagues in France have detected the presence of man-made carbon nanotubes in cells extracted from the airways of Parisian children under routine treatment for asthma. Further investigation found similar nanotubes in samples from the exhaust pipes of Paris vehicles and in dust gathered from various places around the city.

MONTRÉAL (October 19, 2015)-- Many hospitalized patients have an indwelling urinary catheter (IUC), and previous studies have found up to one-third of IUCs are unneeded. A team of researchers from Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, implemented an intervention that decreased the use of IUCs in patients from 92.3 percent to just 15 percent, representing a 77.3 percent reduction in use.

MONTRÉAL (October 19, 2015)- Social media is a tool that groups have adopted to help educate, market, and promote causes or topics to a broad audience. Researchers examined trends in social media use at pulmonary and critical care conferences and found substantial growth and adoption of Twitter. Over the past two years, three major critical care conferences have used Twitter and garnered impressions far surpassing the number of attendees at each conference.

MONTRÉAL (October 19, 2015)- Low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) lung cancer screening is recommended to screen patients with an increased risk of developing lung cancer, but little research regarding the emotional toll of screening has been conducted. Researchers from Stony Brook Cancer Center in Stony Brook, New York found 43 percent of patients undergoing LDCT experienced elevated distress before screening, and one-third of patients experienced continued distress even after being told there was no sign of cancer.

In a recent breakthrough to combat malaria, a collaboration of Indian and American scientists have identified a malarial parasite protein that can be used to develop antibodies when displayed on novel nanoparticles. This approach has the potential to prevent the parasite from multiplying in the human host and also inhibits transmission through mosquitoes. The finding points towards developing a powerful malaria vaccine in the hope of eradicating this debilitating and often fatal disease.

MONTRÉAL (October 19, 2015)- Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston found that families with children admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) incurred significant nonmedical, out-of-pocket expenses and demonstrated work absenteeism and inability to perform daily activities, with lowest income brackets bearing the highest burden.