WASHINGTON, June 9, 2014 — Garlic is good for your body, great for your taste buds, but terrible for your breath. In the American Chemical Society's latest Reactions video, we look at the plant beloved by chefs and feared by vampires. Once again we teamed up with the Compound Interest blog to break down the chemistry of garlic, and how to beat the bad breath it causes. The video is available at http://youtu.be/cAWLQ_4DphI. INFORMATION: Subscribe to the series at Reactions YouTube, and follow us on Twitter @ACSreactions to be the first to see our latest videos. The ...

Reducing Maternal Mortality In Zambia and Uganda. Margaret E. Kruk of Columbia University and co-authors assessed the effectiveness of Saving Mothers, Giving Life, a new global public-private partnership that aims to reduce maternal mortality in eight districts in Uganda and Zambia. They evaluated the first six to twelve months of the program's implementation, its ownership by national ministries of health, and its effects on health systems. According to the authors, early benefits to the broader health system included greater policy attention to maternal and child health, ...

Huntsville, Ala. – String bean, snap bean, haricot bean, and pinto and navy bean. These are just a few members of the common bean family — scientifically called Phaseolus vulgaris. These beans are critically important to the global food supply. They provide up to 15 percent of calories and 36 percent of daily protein for parts of Africa and the Americas and serve as a daily staple for hundreds of millions of people. Now, an international collaboration of researchers, led by Jeremy Schmutz of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and Phillip McClean, of North Dakota ...

Huntsville, Ala. – Sequencing the genomes of domesticated citrus revealed a very limited genetic diversity that could threaten the crop's survival prospects, according to an international research team. In a study published in the June issue of Nature Biotechnology, the international consortium of researchers from the United States, France, Italy, Spain and Brazil analyzed and compared the genome sequences of 10 diverse citrus varieties, including sweet and sour orange along with several important mandarin and pummelo cultivars. The findings provide the clearest insight ...

A new study in The Journal of Experimental Medicine reveals that a high-risk group of patients with follicular lymphoma could benefit from a novel drug combination. Follicular lymphoma, a B cell lymphoma, is an incurable form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that is diagnosed each year in 120,000 people worldwide. Follicular lymphoma is characterized by slow and relentless tumor growth with inevitable relapses despite intense chemotherapy. Follicular lymphomas are driven by mutations that activate the BCL2 protein, which prevents cancer cells from dying, but additional genetic ...

Understanding how clouds affect the climate has been a difficult proposition. What controls the makeup of the low clouds that cool the atmosphere or the high ones that trap heat underneath? How does human activity change patterns of cloud formation? The research of the Weizmann Institute's Prof. Ilan Koren suggests we may be nudging cloud formation in the direction of added area and height. He and his team have analyzed a unique type of cloud formation; their findings, which appeared recently in Science indicate that in pre-industrial times, there was less cloud cover over ...

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Twelve years ago, UNC School of Medicine researcher Brian Strahl, PhD, found that a protein called Set2 plays a role in how yeast genes are expressed – specifically how DNA gets transcribed into messenger RNA. Now his lab has found that Set2 is also a major player in DNA repair, a complicated and crucial process that can lead to the development of cancer cells if the repair goes wrong. "We found that if Set2 is mutated, DNA repair does not properly occur" said Strahl, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics. "One consequence could be that if you ...

(Salt Lake City) —What contributed to the evolution of faces in the ape-like ancestors of humans? The prehistoric version of a bar fight —over women, resources and other slug-worthy disagreements, new research from the University of Utah scheduled for publication in the journal Biological Reviews on June 9 suggests. University of Utah biologist David Carrier and Michael H. Morgan, a University of Utah physician, contend that human faces —especially those of our australopith ancestors — evolved to minimize injury from punches to the face during fights between males. ...

A study by researchers from Finland found that diagnosis and treatment of anemia is important to improve quality of life among women with heavy periods. Findings published in Acta Obstetricia et Gynecologica Scandinavica, a journal of the Nordic Federation of Societies of Obstetrics and Gynecology, suggest clinicians screen for anemia and recommend iron supplementation to women with heavy menstrual bleeding (menorrhagia). One of the common causes of iron deficiency and anemia is heavy bleeding during menstration. Over time monthly mentrual iron loss without adequate ...

Physical activity after breast cancer diagnosis has been linked with prolonged survival and improved quality of life, but most participants in a large breast cancer study did not meet national physical activity guidelines after they were diagnosed. Moreover, African-American women were less likely to meet the guidelines than white women. Published early online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, the findings indicate that efforts to promote physical activity in breast cancer patients may need to be significantly enhanced. The US Department ...

New genomic research led by UC San Francisco (UCSF) scientists reveals that two common gene variants that lead to longer telomeres, the caps on chromosome ends thought by many scientists to confer health by protecting cells from aging, also significantly increase the risk of developing the deadly brain cancers known as gliomas. The genetic variants, in two telomere-related genes known as TERT and TERC, are respectively carried by 51 percent and 72 percent of the general population. Because it is somewhat unusual for such risk-conferring variants to be carried by a majority ...

Monitoring the drug concentration in patients is critical for effective treatment, especially in cases of cancer, heart disease, epilepsy and immunosuppression after organ transplants. However, current methods are expensive, time-consuming, and require dedicated personnel and infrastructure away from the patient. Publishing in Nature Chemical Biology, scientists at EPFL introduce novel light-emitting sensor proteins that can quickly and simply show how much drug is in a patient's bloodstream by changing the color of their light. The method is so simple that it could be ...

Citrus is the world's most widely cultivated fruit crop. In the U.S. alone, the citrus crop was valued at over $3.1 billion in 2013. Originally domesticated in Southeast Asia thousands of years ago before spreading throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas via trade, citrus is now under attack from citrus greening, an insidious emerging infectious disease that is destroying entire orchards. To help defend citrus against this disease and other threats, researchers worldwide are mobilizing to apply genomic tools and approaches to understand how citrus varieties arose and ...

Rising global temperatures could increase the amount of carbon dioxide naturally released by the world's oceans, fuelling further climate change, a study suggests. Fresh insight into how the oceans can affect CO2 levels in the atmosphere shows that rising temperatures can indirectly increase the amount of the greenhouse gas emitted by the oceans. Scientists studied a 26,000-year-old sediment core taken from the Gulf of California to find out how the ocean's ability to take up atmospheric CO2 has changed over time. They tracked the abundance of the key elements silicon ...

New research from the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Minnesota reveals that rats show regret, a cognitive behavior once thought to be uniquely and fundamentally human. Research findings were recently published in Nature Neuroscience. To measure the cognitive behavior of regret, A. David Redish, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience in the University of Minnesota Department of Neuroscience, and Adam Steiner, a graduate student in the Graduate Program in Neuroscience, who led the study, started from the definitions of regret that economists and psychologists ...

Levels of a small molecule found only in humans and in other primates are lower in the brains of depressed individuals, according to researchers at McGill University and the Douglas Institute. This discovery may hold a key to improving treatment options for those who suffer from depression. Depression is a common cause of disability, and while viable medications exist to treat it, finding the right medication for individual patients often amounts to trial and error for the physician. In a new study published in the journal Nature Medicine, Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a psychiatrist ...

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have designed a nanoparticle that has a couple of unique — and important — properties. Spherical in shape and silver in composition, it is encased in a shell coated with a peptide that enables it to target tumor cells. What's more, the shell is etchable so those nanoparticles that don't hit their target can be broken down and eliminated. The research findings appear today in the journal Nature Materials. The core of the nanoparticle employs a phenomenon called plasmonics. In plasmonics, nanostructured metals such ...

When a fruit fly detects an approaching predator, it takes just a fraction of a second to launch itself into the air and soar gracefully to safety—but there's not always time for that. Some threats demand a quicker getaway, even if things get a little clumsy. New research from scientists at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus reveals how a quick-escape circuit in the fly's brain overrides the fly's slower, more controlled behavior when a threat becomes urgent. "The fly's rapid takeoff is, on average, eight milliseconds faster than its more controlled ...

"It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people doesn't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world," Humphrey Bogart famously said in the movie Casablanca. For the farmers and breeders around the world growing the common bean, however, ensuring that there is an abundant supply of this legume is crucial, both for its importance in cropping systems to ensure plant vitality and for food security. Moreover, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science has targeted research into the common bean because of its importance in enhancing nitrogen use ...

With Father's Day approaching, SF State's Jeff Cookston has some advice for creating better harmony with dad. In a recent study, he found that when an adolescent is having an argument with their father and seeks out others for help, the response he or she receives is linked to better well-being and father-child relationships. Adolescents who receive an reason for the father's behavior or a better understanding of who is at fault feel better about themselves and about dad as well. Those feelings about dad, in turn, are linked to a lower risk of depression for youth. The ...

UPTON, NY -- Sometimes a cell has to die-when it's done with its job or inflicted with injury that could otherwise harm an organism. Conversely, cells that refuse to die when expected can lead to cancer. So scientists interested in fighting cancer have been keenly interested in learning the details of "programmed cell death." They want to understand what happens when this process goes awry and identify new targets for anticancer drugs. The details of one such target have just been identified by a group of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National ...

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Motorists in Los Angeles, San Francisco and other gridlocked cities could learn something from the fruit fly. Scientists have found that cellular blockages, the molecular equivalent to traffic jams, in nerve cells of the insect's brain can form and dissolve in 30 seconds or less. The findings, presented in the journal PLOS ONE, could provide scientists much-needed clues to better identify and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Huntington's. "Our research suggests that fixed, permanent blocks may impede the transport of important ...

BATON ROUGE – Animals incorporate a number of unique methods for detecting prey, but for the Japanese sea catfish, Plotosus japonicus, it is especially tricky given the dark murky waters where it resides. John Caprio, George C. Kent Professor of Biological Sciences at LSU, and colleagues from Kagoshima University in Japan have identified that these fish are equipped with sensors that can locate prey by detecting slight changes in the water's pH level. A paper, "Marine teleost locates live prey through pH sensing," detailing the work of Caprio and his research partners, ...

When stem cells are used to regenerate bone tissue, many wind up migrating away from the repair site, which disrupts the healing process. But a technique employed by a University of Rochester research team keeps the stem cells in place, resulting in faster and better tissue regeneration. The key, as explained in a paper published in Acta Biomaterialia, is encasing the stem cells in polymers that attract water and disappear when their work is done. The technique is similar to what has already been used to repair other types of tissue, including cartilage, but had never ...

Infants exposed to a diverse range of bacterial species in house dust during the first year of life appear to be less likely to develop asthma in early childhood, according to a new study published online on June 6, 2014, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. Children who were neither allergic nor prone to wheezing as three-year-olds were the most likely to have been exposed to high levels of bacteria, and paradoxically, to high levels of common allergens. In fact, some of the protective bacteria are abundant in cockroaches and mice, the source of these ...