Many research studies have made it clear that a mother's eating habits prior to pregnancy, during pregnancy and during lactation have a profound impact on her offspring and their propensity for developing weight problems, including obesity. However, until now, the mechanisms behind this phenomenon were unclear. According to new research published in the September 2014 issue of The FASEB JournalF, scientists using an animal model found an epigenetic link between a mother's diet and an offspring's risk of future obesity. This link hinges on the blocked expression of a gene ...

JUPITER, FL, September 2, 2014 – In a new study that could ultimately lead to many new medicines, scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have adapted a chemical approach to turn diseased cells into unique manufacturing sites for molecules that can treat a form of muscular dystrophy. "We're using a cell as a reaction vessel and a disease-causing defect as a catalyst to synthesize a treatment in a diseased cell," said TSRI Professor Matthew Disney. "Because the treatment is synthesized only in diseased cells, the compounds could provide ...

Mirabegron (trade name: Betmiga) has been approved since December 2012 for the treatment of adults with overactive bladder. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy specified by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). Mirabegron had an advantage with regard to side effects: Dry mouth was less common in comparison with tolterodine. No added ...

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 2, 2014 – The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of environmental concern between Hawaii and California where the ocean surface is marred by scattered pieces of plastic, which outweigh plankton in that part of the ocean and pose risks to fish, turtles and birds that eat the trash. Scientists believe the garbage patch is but one of at least five, each located in the center of large, circular ocean currents called gyres that suck in and trap floating debris. Researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), in Sydney, Australia, ...

WASHINGTON D.C., Sept. 2, 2014 – Cancer screening is a critical approach for preventing cancer deaths because cases caught early are often more treatable. But while there are already existing ways to screen for different types of cancer, there is a great need for even more safe, cheap and effective methods to save even more lives. Now a team of researchers led by Shaoxin Li at Guangdong Medical College in China has demonstrated the potential of a new, non-invasive method to screen for prostate cancer, a common type of cancer in men worldwide. They describe their laboratory ...

The development is a step towards commercial production of a source of fuel that could one day provide an alternative to fossil fuels. Propane is an appealing source of cleaner fuel because it has an existing global market. It is already produced as a by-product during natural gas processing and petroleum refining, but both are finite resources. In its current form it makes up the bulk of LPG (liquid petroleum gas), which is used in many applications, from central heating to camping stoves and conventional motor vehicles. In a new study, the team of scientists from ...

Contrary to what one might expect, facial masculinity was negatively associated with semen quality in a recent Journal of Evolutionary Biology study. As increased levels of testosterone have been demonstrated to impair sperm production, this finding may indicate a trade-off between investments in secondary sexual signaling (i.e. facial masculinity) and fertility. Interestingly, males estimated facial images generally more attractive than females did, suggesting that males may generally overestimate the attractiveness of other men to females. INFORMATION: END ...

CAMBRIDGE, MD (September 2, 2014)—The Susquehanna Flats, a large bed of underwater grasses near the mouth of the Susquehanna River, virtually disappeared from the upper Chesapeake Bay after Tropical Storm Agnes more than 40 years ago. However, the grasses mysteriously began to come back in the early 2000s. Today, the bed is one of the biggest and healthiest in the Bay, spanning some 20 square miles. A new study by scientists at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science explores what's behind this major comeback. "This is a story about resilience," said ...

MAYWOOD, Ill – Men who are physically active are at lower risk of nocturia (waking up at night to urinate), according to a study led by a Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine researcher. The study by Kate Wolin, ScD, and colleagues is published online ahead of print in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the official journal of the American College of Sports Medicine. Nocturia is the most common and bothersome lower urinary tract symptom in men. It can be due to an enlarged prostate known as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) -- as the prostate ...

Magnetic substorms, the disruptions in geomagnetic activity that cause brightening of aurora, may sometimes be driven by a different process than generally thought, a new study in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics shows. Hwang et al. report observations using the Cluster spacecraft and ground-based magnetometers associated with the onset of a substorm. They saw two consecutive sudden jumps in the current sheet normal component of the magnetic field in the plasma sheet (the surface of dense plasma that lies approximately in Earth's equatorial plane), separated ...

Researchers at the University of Liverpool's Institute of Infection and Global Health have discovered the pattern of infection of the bacterium responsible for causing severe lung infections in people with cystic fibrosis. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is usually harmless to humans, but in people with cystic fibrosis (CF) or who have weakened immune systems – such as those who have had an operation or treatment for cancer – it can cause infections that are resistant to antibiotics. In CF patients in particular, infections can be impossible to eradicate from the lungs. The ...

Scientists who studied long-lived diving birds, which represent valuable models to examine aging in the wild, found that blood oxygen stores, resting metabolism and thyroid hormone levels all declined with age, although diving performance did not. Apparently, physiological changes do occur with age in long-lived species, but they may have no detectable effect on behavioral performance. The Functional Ecology findings suggest that reductions in metabolism with age can be viewed as strategic restraint on the part of individuals who are likely to encounter energy-related ...

Recent research has revealed that many children and adults with autism experience gastrointestinal symptoms and that such symptoms can impact the absorption and availability of medications. Because approximately 35% of people with autism take at least one psychotropic medication to help control their symptoms, the authors of a Journal of Clinical Pharmacology commentary are calling for a formal evaluation of the potential relationship between gastrointestinal symptoms and the effectiveness of autism medications. Alternative modes of drug administration may be needed to ...

The foundation of the human population explosion, commonly attributed to a sudden surge in industrialization and public health during the 18th and 19th centuries, was actually laid as far back as 2,000 years ago, suggests an extended model of detailed demographic and archeological data. The Public Library of Science One (PLOS ONE) recently published the analytical framework developed by Aaron Stutz, an associate professor of anthropology at Emory University's Oxford College. "The industrial revolution and public health improvements were proximate reasons that more people ...

Experts who reviewed the terminology associated with genitourinary tract symptoms related to menopause—currently referred to as vulvovaginal atrophy—have agreed that the term genitourinary syndrome of menopause (GSM) is a medically more accurate, all-encompassing, and a more publicly acceptable term. Their thoughts are published in a recent Journal of Sexual Medicine article. Going forward, GSM will encompass a collection of symptoms and signs associated with a decrease in estrogen and other sex steroids and may include genital symptoms of dryness, burning, and irritation; ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — It's hard to comprehend how bad the current rate of species extinction around the world has become without knowing what it was before people came along. The newest estimate is that the pre-human rate was 10 times lower than scientists had thought, which means that the current level is 10 times worse. Extinctions are about 1,000 times more frequent now than in the 60 million years before people came along. The explanation from lead author Jurriaan de Vos, a Brown University postdoctoral researcher, senior author Stuart Pimm, a Duke ...

Experts have sounded a call to action for policy makers at local, national, and international levels to promote heart failure prevention, improve heart failure awareness among healthcare professionals, ensure equity of care for all patients with heart failure, support and empower patients and their caregivers, and promote heart failure research. Despite the increasing numbers of people living with and dying from heart failure, awareness of the disease is low among the public, politicians, and even some healthcare professionals. Although there is no cure for heart failure, ...

Rice is a main food source for more than half of the global population and is a model plant for genome-based research. Since the turn of the century, Chinese scientists have embarked on a "Long March" toward more intricate understanding of the complex agronomic traits of rice, spurred in part by the completion of the draft genome sequence of the indica variety 93-11 and a fine sequence analysis of chromosome 4 of the japonica variety Nipponbare. These researchers "have made crucial contributions to international efforts in sequencing the rice genome," report Jianru Zuo ...

Being subjected to abuse during childhood entails a markedly increased risk of developing obesity as an adult. This is the conclusion of a meta-analysis carried out on previous studies, which included a total of 112,000 participants. The analysis was conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, and has been published in the journal Obesity Reviews. "The study clearly shows that difficult life events leave traces which can manifest as disease much later in life. The mechanisms behind this process include stress, negative patterns of thought and emotions, ...

A research project which counts with the participation of the University of Granada has revealed new data on the climate change that took place in the Iberian Peninsula around the mid Holocene (around 6.000 years ago), when the amount of atmospheric dust coming from the Sahara increased. The data came from a study of the sediments found in an Alpine lake in Sierra Nevada (Granada) This study, published in the journal Chemical Geology, is based on the sedimentation of atmospheric dust from the Sahara, a very frequent phenomenon in the South of the Iberian Peninsula. This ...

Researchers have found that British Muslim women who wear a hijab generally have more positive body image, are less reliant on media messages about beauty ideals, and place less importance on appearance than those who do not wear a hijab. These effects appear to be driven by use of a hijab specifically, rather than religiosity. "While we shouldn't assume that wearing the hijab immunizes Muslim women from negative body image, our results do suggest that wearing the hijab may help some women reject prescriptive beauty ideals," said Dr. Viren Swami, lead author of the British ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that professional baseball pitchers with poor core stability are more likely to miss 30 or more days in a single season because of injury than are pitchers who have good control of muscles in their lower back and pelvis. In the study, 347 pitchers were assessed for lumbopelvic control during spring training. Pitchers with more tilt in their pelvis as they raised a leg to step up were up to three times more likely to miss at least 30 days – cumulative, not consecutive – during the season than were pitchers who showed minimal tilt ...

All human cells contain essentially the same DNA sequence – their genetic information. How is it possible that shapes and functions of cells in the different parts of the body are so different? While every cell's DNA contains the same construction master plan, an additional regulatory layer exists that determines which of the many possible DNA programs are active. This mechanism involves modifications of genome-bound histone proteins or the DNA itself with small chemical groups (e.g. methylation). It acts on top of the genetic information and is thus called 'epi'-genetic ...

A new study, led by researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK and the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, and just published in the Journal Early Human Development, has found that both the length of time spent in hospital after birth and the use of mechanical ventilation are key indicators of reduced mathematical ability in preterm children. Mathematic abilities are crucial for lifelong academic attainment. Impairments in mathematic abilities are common in very preterm children. Earlier studies of children who are born very preterm (before 32 weeks of gestational ...

If you think losing weight is enough to prevent Type 2 diabetes, don't get your hopes up. A new research report in September 2014 issue of The FASEB Journal, suggests that you don't have to be overweight to develop Type 2 diabetes. This study compared genetically identical twins-one heavier and one leaner-and found that after eating a fast-food meal, the circulating metabolites, including those related to Type 2 diabetes, were found in both individuals at the same levels. These findings suggest that the onset of this type of diabetes is largely influenced by genetic factors ...