The first findings of the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium are being reported nearly simultaneously in 28 papers -- eight papers in a Dec. 12 special issue of Science and 20 more in Genome Biology, GigaScience and other journals. The full set of papers in Science and other journals can be accessed at avian.genomics.cn Scientists already knew that the birds who survived the mass extinction experienced a rapid burst of evolution. But the family tree of modern birds has confused biologists for centuries and the molecular details of how birds arrived at the spectacular biodiversity ...

New research from the University of Kent suggests that chickens and turkeys have experienced fewer gross genomic changes than other birds as they evolved from their dinosaur ancestor. Professor Darren Griffin and a team at the University's School of Biosciences have conducted research that suggests that chromosomes of the chicken and turkey lineage have undergone the fewest number of changes compared to their ancient avian ancestor, thought to be a feathered dinosaur. The Kent research is part of a study by a consortium of leading scientists into avian or bird genomes, ...

An international team of scientists has completed the largest whole genome study of a single class of animals to date. To map the tree of life for birds, the team sequenced, assembled and compared full genomes of 48 bird species representing all major branches of modern birds including ostrich, hummingbird, crow, duck, falcon, parrot, crane, ibis, woodpecker and eagle species. The researchers have been working on this ambitious genetic tree of life, or phylogeny, project for four years. As part of the Avian Phylogenomics Consortium -- comprised of more than 200 scientists ...

NEW YORK, NY (December 11, 2014) Growing resistance to malaria drugs in Southeast Asia is caused by a single mutated gene inside the disease-causing Plasmodium falciparum parasite, according to a study led by David Fidock, PhD, professor of microbiology & immunology and of medical sciences (in medicine) at Columbia University Medical Center. This finding provides public health officials around the world with a way to look for pockets of emerging resistance and potentially eliminate them before they spread. Though malaria deaths have dropped by 30 percent worldwide since ...

Targeted therapies are a growing and groundbreaking field in cancer care in which drugs or other substances are designed to interfere with genes or molecules that control the growth and survival of cancer cells. Now, scientists at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) have identified a novel interaction between a microRNA and a gene that could lead to new therapies for the most common and deadly form of brain tumor, malignant glioma. In a study recently published in the journal Neuro-Oncology, a team of scientists ...

Advances in treatment for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) have made it possible for people with HIV to survive much longer. As they age, however, many experience impaired thinking, memory loss, mood swings and other evidence of impaired mental function. To stop these changes, scientists have to learn what is causing them. One possibility researchers are considering is that long-term infections with other pathogens, common in HIV-positive patients, are affecting the brain. But a new study has eliminated one of their prime suspects: the hepatitis C virus, which infects ...

Lincoln, Neb., Dec. 11, 2104 -- A University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher has contributed to discoveries about bird evolution as part of a new study that sequenced the complete genomes of 45 avian species. Published Dec. 11 in the journal Science, the study found that avian genomes -- the complete archive of genetic material present in cells -- have exhibited surprisingly slow rates of evolution when compared with their mammalian counterparts. Jay Storz, a Susan J. Rosowski Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, led a research group that assisted the study by examining ...

The fruits and vegetables provided at school deliver an important dietary boost to low income adolescents, according to Meghan Longacre, PhD and Madeline Dalton, PhD of Dartmouth Hitchcock's Norris Cotton Cancer Center and The Hood Center for Children and Families. In a study released in Preventive Medicine, Longacre and Dalton found that fruit and vegetable intake was higher among low income adolescents on days when they consumed meals at school compared to days when low income adolescent were not in school. The opposite was true for high income adolescents who consumed ...

PITTSBURGH--The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing motivated mass expressions of fear, solidarity, and sympathy toward Bostonians on social media networks around the world. In a recently released study, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Cornell University analyzed emotional reactions on Twitter in the hours and weeks following the attack. The study is the first large-scale analysis of fear and social-support reactions from geographically distant communities following a terrorist attack. The findings show the extent to which communities outside of Boston expressed ...

Origami is capable of turning a simple sheet of paper into a pretty paper crane, but the principles behind the paper-folding art can also be applied to making a microfluidic device for a blood test, or for storing a satellite's solar panel in a rocket's cargo bay. A team of University of Pennsylvania researchers is turning kirigami, a related art form that allows the paper to be cut, into a technique that can be applied equally to structures on those vastly divergent length scales. In a new study, the researchers lay out the rules for folding and cutting a hexagonal ...

A CEO's natural sunny disposition can have an impact on the way the market reacts to announcements of company earnings, according to research from the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business. The study shows that leaders' inclinations to express themselves with optimism carries over into their tone when disclosing company performance - a tendency that can create an uptick in stock price. "Ours is the first study to look at the effect of how managers naturally convey themselves," says Sauder Assistant Professor Jenny Zhang, who co-authored the paper. ...

Senescent cells have a bad-guy reputation when it comes to aging. While cellular senescence - a process whereby cells permanently lose the ability to divide when they are stressed - suppresses cancer by halting the growth of premalignant cells, it is also suspected of driving the aging process. Senescent cells, which accumulate over time, release a continual cascade of inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, growth factors and proteases. It is a process that sets up the surrounding tissue for a host of maladies including arthritis, atherosclerosis and late life cancer. But ...

The ascetic and moralizing movements that spawned the world's major religious traditions--Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, and Christianity--all arose around the same time in three different regions, and researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on December 11 have now devised a statistical model based on history and human psychology that helps to explain why. The emergence of world religions, they say, was triggered by the rising standards of living in the great civilizations of Eurasia. "One implication is that world religions and secular spiritualities ...

EMBARGOED for release Thursday, Dec. 11, 2014, at 12 p.m. ET HOUSTON - (Dec. 11, 2014) - The ancient Japanese art of origami is based on the idea that nearly any design - a crane, an insect, a samurai warrior - can be made by taking the same blank sheet of paper and folding it in different ways. The human body faces a similar problem. The genome inside every cell of the body is identical, but the body needs each cell to be different -an immune cell fights off infection; a cone cell helps the eye detect light; the heart's myocytes must beat endlessly. Appearing online ...

Clinical trials to test the new drugs in patients should begin as early as 2015. Existing drugs target faulty versions of a protein called BRAF which drives about half of all melanomas, but while initially very effective, the cancers almost always become resistant to treatment within a year. The new drugs - called panRAF inhibitors - could be effective in patients with melanoma who have developed resistance to BRAF inhibitors. The new study was funded by the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK, and jointly led by scientists at The Institute of Cancer Research, ...

Scientists at the University of Southampton have found that the precise shape of an antibody makes a big difference to how it can stimulate the body's immune system to fight cancer, paving the way for much more effective treatments. The latest types of treatment for cancer are designed to switch on the immune system, allowing the patient's own immune cells to attack and kill cancerous cells, when normally the immune cells would lie dormant. In a study, funded by Cancer Research UK and published in the journal Cancer Cell, the Southampton team have found that a particular ...

PHILADELPHIA - (Dec. 11, 2014) - A team of scientists, led by researchers at The Wistar Institute, has found that an infection with herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) causes rearrangements in telomeres, small stretches of DNA that serve as protective ends to chromosomes. The findings, which will be published in the Dec. 24 edition of the journal Cell Reports, show that this manipulation of telomeres may explain how viruses like herpes are able to successfully replicate while also revealing more about the protective role that telomeres play against other viruses. "We know ...

The saga of the Osedax "bone-eating" worms began 12 years ago, with the first discovery of these deep-sea creatures that feast on the bones of dead animals. The Osedax story grew even stranger when researchers found that the large female worms contained harems of tiny dwarf males. In a new study published in the Dec. 11 issue of Current Biology, marine biologist Greg Rouse at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and his collaborators reported a new twist to the Osedax story, revealing an evolutionary oddity unlike any other in the animal kingdom. Rouse's ...

HOUSTON -- (Dec. 11, 2014) -- In a triumph for cell biology, researchers have assembled the first high-resolution, 3-D maps of entire folded genomes and found a structural basis for gene regulation -- a kind of "genomic origami" that allows the same genome to produce different types of cells. The research appears online today in Cell. A central goal of the five-year project, which was carried out at Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, the Broad Institute and Harvard University, was to identify the loops in the human genome. Loops form when two bits of DNA that ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Some drugs used to treat diabetes mimic the behavior of a hormone that a University at Buffalo psychologist has learned controls fluid intake in subjects. The finding creates new awareness for diabetics who, by the nature of their disease, are already at risk for dehydration. Derek Daniels' paper "Endogenous Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Reduces Drinking Behavior and Is Differentially Engaged by Water and Food Intakes in Rats," co-authored with UB psychology graduate students Naomi J. McKay and Daniela L. Galante, appears in this month's edition of the Journal ...

London, United Kingdom, December 11, 2014 - Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is an emerging virus, with the first case reported in 2012. It exhibits a 40% fatality rate and over 97% of the cases have occurred in the Middle East. In three new studies in the current issue of the International Journal of Infectious Disease, researchers reported on clinical outcomes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), how long patients will shed virus during their infections, and how the Sultanate of Oman is dealing with cases that have appeared there. An editorial ...

(MEMPHIS, Tenn. - December 11, 2014) Toddlers who undergo total body irradiation in preparation for bone marrow transplantation are at higher risk for a decline in IQ and may be candidates for stepped up interventions to preserve intellectual functioning, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital investigators reported. The findings appear in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The results clarify the risk of intellectual decline faced by children, teenagers and young adults following bone marrow transplantation. The procedure is used for treatment of cancer ...

University of Rochester researchers believe they're on track to solve the mystery of weight gain - and it has nothing to do with indulging in holiday eggnog. They discovered that a protein, Thy1, has a fundamental role in controlling whether a primitive cell decides to become a fat cell, making Thy1 a possible therapeutic target, according to a study published online this month by the FASEB Journal. The research brings a new, biological angle to a problem that's often viewed as behavioral, said lead author Richard P. Phipps, Ph.D. In fact, some diet pills consist of ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 11, 2014--In cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI), predicting the likelihood of a cranial lesion and determining the need for head computed tomography (CT) can be aided by measuring markers of bone injury in the blood. The results of a new study comparing the usefulness of two biomarkers released into the blood following a TBI are presented in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/neu.2013.3245 ...

MAYWOOD, Il. - Riding a couple roller coasters at an amusement park appears to have triggered an unusual stroke in a 4-year-old boy, according to a report in the journal Pediatric Neurology. The sudden acceleration, deceleration and rotational forces on the head and neck likely caused a tear in the boy's carotid artery. This tear, called a dissection, led to formation of a blood clot that triggered the stroke, Loyola University Medical Center neurologist Jose Biller, MD and colleagues report. Strokes previously have been reported in adult roller coaster riders, but ...