Building on their discovery of a gene linked to eating disorders in humans, a team of researchers at the University of Iowa has now shown that loss of the gene in mice leads to several behavioral abnormalities that resemble behaviors seen in people with anorexia nervosa. The team, led by Michael Lutter, MD, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry in the UI Carver College of Medicine, found that mice that lack the estrogen-related receptor alpha (ESRRA) gene are less motivated to seek out high-fat food when they are hungry and have abnormal social interactions. The effect ...

WASHINGTON -- Facial plastic surgery may do more than make you look youthful. It could change -- for the better -- how people perceive you. The first study of its kind to examine perception after plastic surgery finds that women who have certain procedures are perceived as having greater social skills and are more likeable, attractive and feminine. The study is not superficial -- the importance of facial appearance is rooted in evolution and studies suggest that judging a person based on his or her appearance boils down to survival. The results were published online ...

Facial rejuvenation surgery may not only make you look younger, it may improve perceptions of you with regard to likeability, social skills, attractiveness and femininity, according to a report published online by JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery. The relationship between facial features and personality traits has been studied in other science fields, but it is lacking in the surgical literature, according to the study background. Michael J. Reilly, M.D., of the MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, and coauthors measured the changes in personality perception ...

Axillary lymph node evaluation is performed frequently in women with ductal carcinoma in situ breast cancer, despite recommendations generally against such an assessment procedure in women with localized cancer undergoing breast-conserving surgery, according to a study published online by JAMA Oncology. While axillary lymph node evaluation is the standard of care in the surgical management of invasive breast cancer, a benefit has not been demonstrated in ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS). For women with invasive breast cancer, sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) replaced ...

LAWRENCE -- A team of scientists at the University of Kansas has pinpointed six chemical compounds that thwart HuR, an "oncoprotein" that binds to RNA and promotes tumor growth. The findings, which could lead to a new class of cancer drugs, appear in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology. "These are the first reported small-molecule HuR inhibitors that competitively disrupt HuR-RNA binding and release the RNA, thus blocking HuR function as a tumor-promoting protein," said Liang Xu, associate professor of molecular biosciences and corresponding author of the paper. The ...

As we age, the physical make up of our brains changes. This includes changes in neural processing in grey matter, but also in the deterioration of structural connections in the brain, which allow communication between distinct brain regions, so the brain is able to work as a well-wired network system. Researchers at the Lifelong Brain and Cognition Lab at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois have utilized the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) facilities available in Beckman's Biomedical Imaging Center to measure the moment-to-moment ...

Every year, 300,000 pregnant women and 2,600,000 newborn babies are estimated to die worldwide, and more than 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. Effective interventions to reduce maternal and neonatal mortality are critically needed, and an ongoing challenge for researchers and health professionals is finding the best way to deliver these interventions in resource-limited settings such as Mongolia. Antenatal visits can provide the first opportunity to deliver these interventions. Now, a new study has shown that Japan's flagship intervention, the Maternal ...

The question if humans can communicate via pheromones in the same way as animals is under debate. Cell physiologists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have demonstrated that the odorous substance Hedione activates the putative pheromone receptor VN1R1, which occurs in the human olfactory epithelium. Together with colleagues from Dresden, the Bochum-based researchers showed that the scent of Hedione generates sex-specific activation patters in the brain, which do not occur with traditional fragrances. "These results constitute compelling evidence that a pheromone effect ...

Well intentioned, but costly and potentially problematic. That's how researchers describe the end result of a decision by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate colchicine, a drug used to treat gout, among other ailments. Fewer patients are actually now taking it, and it has come at a cost to their wallets, says study leader Aaron Kesselheim of Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Medical School in the US. The findings¹ appear in the Journal of General Internal Medicine,² published by Springer. Colchicine had been sold at low cost for many ...

Shakespeare is such a towering literary figure that any new insight into the man, or his work, tends to generate a jolt of excitement in academic and non-academic communities of Shakespeare aficionados. Applying psychological theory and text-analyzing software, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have discovered a unique psychological profile that characterizes Shakespeare's established works, and this profile strongly identifies Shakespeare as an author of the long-contested play Double Falsehood. The findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal ...

The dispersant used to remediate the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is more toxic to cold-water corals than the spilled oil, according to a study conducted at Temple University. The study comes on the eve of the spill's fifth anniversary, April 20th. In this collaborative study between researchers from Temple and the Pennsylvania State University, the researchers exposed three cold-water coral species from the Gulf to various concentrations of the dispersant and oil from the Deepwater Horizon well. They found that the dispersant is toxic to the ...

April 9, 2015 - A wealth of studies have shown that violent video games contribute to antisocial and aggressive behavior. But what makes those games appealing in the first place? One possibility is that storytelling plays a role, particularly if it lets players engage in meaningful choices. A new study suggests that non-violent video games that capitalize on such storytelling have prosocial benefits that could ultimately be helpful to clinical disorders such as autism. "The motivation to engage in and enjoy video games corresponds with principals that apply to ...

Scientists at the University of York have discovered a potential new treatment for prostate cancer using low temperature plasmas (LTPs). Published in the British Journal of Cancer (BJC), the study is the first time LTPs have been applied on cells grown directly from patient tissue samples. It is the result of a unique collaboration between the York Plasma Institute in the Department of Physics and the Cancer Research Unit (CRU) in York's Department of Biology. Taking both healthy prostate cells and prostate cancer tissue cells from a single patient, the study allowed ...

FROSTBURG, MD (April 9, 2015)--Nitrogen fertilizers make it possible to feed more people in the world than ever before. However, too much of it can also harm the environment. Professor Eric Davidson, director of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Appalachian Laboratory, has been leading a group of scientists, economists, social scientists, and agriculture experts in figuring out how to produce more food while lowering pollution at the same time. He calls it a "Mo Fo Lo Po": more food, low pollution. "The main objective is to produce abundant, ...

MINNEAPOLIS/ST.PAUL (4/9/15) - Research published in the open access journal Microbiome offers new evidence for the success of fecal microbial transplantation (FMT) in treating severe Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), a growing problem worldwide that leads to thousands of fatalities every year. Research led by Michael Sadowsky, Alex Khoruts, and colleagues at the University of Minnesota in collaboration with the Rob Knight Lab at the University of Colorado, Boulder, reveals that healthy changes to a patient's microbiome are sustained for up to 21 weeks after transplant, ...

After decades in ornithological obscurity, one of the world's least-known birds is finally coming to light thanks to the persistence of a small group of researchers. Pablo Negret, Oscar Garzón, Pablo Stevenson, and Oscar Laverde-R. of the Universidad de los Andes have just published the results of their year-long study of the Black Tinamou (Tinamus osgoodi hershkovitzi) in The Auk: Ornithological Advances, including new ecological information as well as some of the first video and sound recordings of this elusive species. The Black Tinamou is a chicken-sized bird ...

A simple test of the number of fish living on a coral reef can be used as a roadmap to restore degraded reefs and fishers' livelihoods according to a global study published in the journal Nature. An international team of marine scientists surveyed more than 800 coral reefs worldwide to develop a diagnostic test of reef health. "By studying remote and marine protected areas, we were able to estimate how many fish would be on a coral reef without fishing, and how long it should take newly protected areas to recover," says study lead author, Dr Aaron MacNeil from the ...

WASHINGTON - Recognizing and giving thanks for the positive aspects of life can result in improved mental, and ultimately physical, health in patients with asymptomatic heart failure, according to research published by the American Psychological Association. "We found that more gratitude in these patients was associated with better mood, better sleep, less fatigue and lower levels of inflammatory biomarkers related to cardiac health," said lead author Paul J. Mills, PhD, professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego. The study ...

A new device developed by UCLA engineers and doctors eventually help scientists study the development of disease, enable them to capture improved images of the inside of cells and lead to other improvements in medical and biological research. The researchers created a highly efficient automated tool that delivers nanoparticles, enzymes, antibodies, bacteria and other "large-sized" cargo into mammalian cells at the rate of 100,000 cells per minute -- significantly faster than current technology, which works at about one cell per minute. The research, published online ...

ANN ARBOR--Efforts to reduce the amount of phosphorus and other nutrients washing off farm fields and into Lake Erie shifted into overdrive after high levels of a bacterial toxin shut down the drinking water supply to more than 400,000 Toledo-area residents last August. Nutrient levels help determine when and where rapid cyanobacterial buildups occur, as well as the size of those blooms. But what factors control their toxicity? The Great Lakes are home to dozens of common cyanobacterial species, but only a few are toxic troublemakers. "We know what causes these blooms: ...

This news release is available in German. An international collaboration led by the research group of superheavy elements at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), Tokai, Japan has achieved the ionization potential measurement of lawrencium (element 103) with a novel-type technique at the JAEA tandem accelerator. Based on the empirically developed "actinide concept", and in agreement with theoretical calculations, in today's Periodic Table the series of actinide elements terminates with element 103, lawrencium (Lr). Now researchers have measured the first ionization ...

A drug that breaks up blood clots in the brains of stroke patients could be used more widely than at present without increased risk, a brain scan study suggests. It had previously been thought that giving the drug to people with signs of early damage in the brain caused by a stroke would increase the chances of them suffering a bleed on the brain - which can be fatal. The study is the first to show that early tissue damage seen in brain scans does not necessarily indicate an increased risk of bleeding. Patients with early tissue damage from strokes are less likely to ...

Since November 2014 nintedanib (trade name: Vargatef) has been approved in combination with docetaxel for the treatment of adults with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) of the glandular tissue (adenocarcinoma) who have already received chemotherapy. The German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined in a dossier assessment whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy. According to the findings, there is an indication of a minor added benefit of nintedanib in combination with docetaxel in patients ...

It is cultural transmission - the ability to pass knowledge on from one individual to another even across generations - that makes us unique among animals. True, we also learn by observing what happens in the world around us, for example, by associating events that frequently occur together (or in a rapid sequence). However, human "communication" may constitute such a powerful instrument that it overrides "statistics", as observed in a study just published in PLOS One and conducted by Hanna Marno, researcher at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in Trieste. ...

TORONTO, April 9, 2015: Salt used for winter road maintenance in Canada could wipe out water flea populations that keep our lakes clear of algae and feed the fish, a recent York University study has revealed. "These water fleas are like little living lawnmowers in our lakes. They 'graze' the entire volume of lakes many times during the summer, passing what they've eaten up the food chain to fish," explains Professor Norman Yan, to stress the importance of the water flea's role in the ecosystem. The study, conducted at Yan's lab in the Department of Biology, Faculty of ...