Remote reefs can be tougher than they look Western Australia's Scott Reef has recovered from mass bleaching in 1998. Isolated coral reefs can recover from catastrophic damage as effectively as those with nearby undisturbed neighbours, a long-term study by marine biologists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (CoECRS) has shown. Scott Reef, a remote coral system in the Indian Ocean, has largely recovered from a catastrophic mass bleaching event in 1998, according to the study published in Science ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., April 4, 2013 – A Spectrum Health clinical trial has found that fecal microbial transplantation (FMT) has resulted in the improvement or absence of symptoms in most pediatric patients with active ulcerative colitis. The phase I clinical trial of the procedure was conducted by members of the Pediatric Specialty Department of the Spectrum Health Medical Group at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital, the first in the country to study FMT in children. FMT is a process that involves infusion of human stool from a healthy donor into the intestine of the patient ...

Washington, D.C. – (April 5, 2013) — A person's skin and a fruit fly's exoskeleton, called a "cuticle" may not look alike, but both coverings protect against injury, infection, and dehydration. The top layers of mammalian skin and insect cuticle are mesh-works of macromolecules, the mammal version consisting mostly of keratin proteins and the fly version predominantly of the carbohydrate chitin. Yet the requirement of an outer boundary for protection is so ancient that the outermost cells of both organisms respond to some of the same signals. And because of these signaling ...

The first-in-human study of the NeuroBlate™ Thermal Therapy System finds that it appears to provide a new, safe and minimally invasive procedure for treating recurrent glioblastoma (GBM), a malignant type of brain tumor. The study, which appears April 5 in the Journal of Neurosurgery online, was written by lead author Andrew Sloan, MD, Director of Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center and Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, who also served as co-Principal Investigator, as well as Principal Investigator Gene Barnett, MD, Director ...

Researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have made a discovery in neuroscience that could offer a long-lasting solution to eating disorders such as obesity. It was previously thought that the nerve cells in the brain associated with appetite regulation were generated entirely during an embryo's development in the womb and therefore their numbers were fixed for life. But research published today in the Journal of Neuroscience has identified a population of stem cells capable of generating new appetite-regulating neurons in the brains of young and adult rodents. Obesity ...

A research team led by Professor Makoto Fujita of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and complemented by Academy Professor Kari Rissanen of the University of Jyväskylä, Finland, has made a fundamental breakthrough in single-crystal X-ray analysis, the most powerful method for molecular structure determination. The team's breakthrough was reported in Nature on 28 March 2013 (published online 27 March 2013). X-ray single-crystal diffraction (SCD) analysis has the intrinsic limitation that the target molecule must be obtained as single crystals. Now, Professor Fujita's team ...

Researchers of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) and the Leibniz Institute of Molecular Pharmacology (FMP) in Berlin-Buch, Germany, have now detected a substance that can prevent the accumulation of fluid in body tissue and thus edema formation. The results of Dr. Jana Bogum (MDC/FMP) from the MDC research group led by Professor Walter Rosenthal and PD Dr. Enno Klußmann could be important in the future for the treatment of excessive fluid retention in patients with chronic heart failure. Using a novel approach, the researchers have also discovered a new ...

A study led by Dr Akash Sinha has shown that muscle function improves with Vitamin D supplements which are thought to enhance the activity of the mitochondria, the batteries of the cell. A hormone normally produced in the skin using energy from sunlight, Vitamin D can also be found in a few foods – including fish, fish liver oils, egg yolks and fortified cereals but it can also be effectively boosted with Vitamin D supplements. It is thought around 60% of people in the UK are vitamin D deficient, with children under five, people with dark skin and the elderly being ...

HOUSTON -- (April 5, 2013) -- Rice University physicists on the hunt for the origins of high-temperature superconductivity have published new findings this week about a material that becomes "schizophrenic" -- simultaneously exhibiting the characteristics of both a metallic conductor and an insulator. In a theoretical analysis this week in Physical Review Letters (PRL), Rice physicists Qimiao Si and Rong Yu offer an explanation for a strange series of observations described earlier this year by researchers at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif. ...

Scientists have shed light on a common bleeding disorder by growing and analysing stem cells from patients' blood to discover the cause of the disease in individual patients. The technique may enable doctors to prescribe more effective treatments according to the defects identified in patients' cells. In future, this approach could go much further: these same cells could be grown, manipulated, and applied as treatments for diseases of the heart, blood and circulation, including heart attacks and haemophilia. The study focused on von Willebrand disease (vWD), which ...

This press release is available in German. For animals, prevailing in a fight affects their likelihood of winning future conflicts. The opposite is true of losing a fight. The sex hormone testosterone is often believed to mediate this "winner effect". Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen have examined whether the presence of an audience influences the behaviour and the testosterone changes of Japanese quails (Coturnix japonica) after a fight. The evidence shows that both winners and losers exhibit raised testosterone levels after a ...

Amsterdam, NL, April 5, 2013 – Each year more than three million Americans are living with traumatic brain injury (TBI), a condition that is associated with physical, cognitive, and emotional problems that often affect their sexuality, and subsequently their marital stability, identity, and self-esteem. Taking an in-depth look at the impact of TBI on sexuality, an investigative team critically reviews fourteen studies representing a collective study sample of nearly 1,500 patients, partners, spouses, control individuals, and rehabilitation professionals to examine brain ...

The Djehuty Project, led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), has discovered on the hill of Dra Abu el-Naga in Luxor (ancient Thebes), the burials of four personages belonging to the elite of the 17th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, who lived about 3.550 years ago. These findings, discovered during the 12th campaign of archeological excavations of the project, shed light on a little-known historical period in which Thebes becomes the capital of the kingdom and the empire's foundations become established with the dominance of Egypt over Palestine and Syria to the ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- The cost of complying with tougher EPA air-quality standards could spur an increased shift away from coal and toward natural gas for electricity generation, according to a new Duke University study. The stricter regulations on sulfur dioxide, particulate matter, nitrogen oxide and mercury may make nearly two-thirds of the nation's coal-fired power plants as expensive to run as plants powered by natural gas, the study finds. "Because of the cost of upgrading plants to meet the EPA's pending emissions regulations and its stricter enforcement of current ...

TORONTO, ON – Chemical Engineering Professor Tim Bender and Post-Doctoral Fellow Benoit Lessard's discovery of an unexpected side product of polymer synthesis could have implications for the manufacture of commercial polymers used in sealants, adhesives, toys and even medical implants, the researchers say. Bender and Lessard discuss their discovery in "Boron subphthalocyanine polymers by facile coupling to poly (acrylic acid-ran-styrene) copolymers and the associated problems with autoinitition when employing nitroxide mediated polymerization," a paper published this ...

(Boston) – Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have shown that using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure blood flow over atherosclerotic plaques could help identify plaques at risk for thrombosis. The findings, which appear in the March issue of Circulation Cardiovascular Imaging, offer a non-invasive application in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with atherosclerosis. Atherosclerosis is a chronic disease of the human vascular system associated with lipid (cholesterol) accumulation and inflammation. It can remain silent and undetected ...

It seems the ads were right. A milk mustache is a good thing to have. Animal and dairy scientists have discovered that drinking milk at an early age can help mammals throughout their lives. But understanding exactly how milk affects the body is a complicated story of hormones, antibodies and proteins, as well as other cells and compounds researchers have not yet identified. Learning how milk affects offspring was the subject of the Lactation Biology Symposium, held as part of the 2012 Joint Annual Meeting in Phoenix, AZ. The presentations were summarized in a recent ...

Highlights Individuals who are overweight starting in early adulthood are twice as likely to have chronic kidney disease at age 60 to 64 years than those who are not overweight. Larger waist-to-hip ratios ("apple-shaped" bodies) during middle age are also linked with chronic kidney disease at age 60 to 64 years. More than one-third of chronic kidney disease cases at age 60 to 64 years in the US could be avoided if nobody became overweight until at least that age. In 2008, more than 1.4 billion adults worldwide were overweight, with approximately 500 million of ...

Highlights: Growth hormone therapy can help reverse growth problems in children with kidney failure. Growth hormone therapy increases bone turnover in children on dialysis Additional studies are needed to evaluate the impact of growth hormone therapy on final height, fracture risk, bone deformities, and puberty in children with kidney failure. Growth failure occurs early in chronic kidney disease and causes severe short stature in children. Washington, DC (April 4, 2013) — Growth hormone therapy can help reverse growth problems in children with kidney failure, ...

COLUMBUS, Ohio—Two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes reveal Earth's tropical climate history in unprecedented detail—year by year, for nearly 1,800 years. Researchers at The Ohio State University retrieved the cores from a Peruvian ice cap in 2003, and then noticed some startling similarities to other ice cores that they had retrieved from Tibet and the Himalayas. Patterns in the chemical composition of certain layers matched up, even though the cores were taken from opposite sides of the planet. In the April 4, 2013 online edition of the ...

TORONTO, ON – Pigments found in plants and purple bacteria employed to provide protection from sun damage do more than just that. Researchers from the University of Toronto and University of Glasgow have found that they also help to harvest light energy during photosynthesis. Carotenoids, the same pigments which give orange color to carrots and red to tomatoes, are often found together in plants with chlorophyll pigments that harvest solar energy. Their main function is photoprotection when rays of light from the sun are the most intense. However, a new study published ...

LA JOLLA, CA – April 4, 2013 – Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have illuminated the mechanism at the heart of one of the most useful processes in modern chemistry. A reaction that is robust and easy to perform, it is widely employed to synthesize new pharmaceuticals, biological probes, new materials and other products. But precisely how it works had been unclear since its invention at TSRI more than a decade ago. "These new findings allow us to exert greater control of the reaction and make it faster and more efficient under the most challenging conditions," ...

Chronic or persistent pain is a common — and likely under-recognized — complication of ischemic strokes (caused by a blocked blood vessel) according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. In a large trial of treatments to prevent a second stroke, researchers found that 10.6 percent of more than 15,000 stroke survivors developed chronic pain. "Chronic pain syndromes are common, even following strokes of mild to moderate severity," said Martin J. O'Donnell, M.D., lead author and professor of translational medicine at the National University of ...

Walking briskly can lower your risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes as much as running can, according to surprising findings reported in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. Researchers analyzed 33,060 runners in the National Runners' Health Study and 15,045 walkers in the National Walkers' Health Study. They found that the same energy used for moderate intensity walking and vigorous intensity running resulted in similar reductions in risk for high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and ...

A custom-built programmable 3D printer can create materials with several of the properties of living tissues, Oxford University scientists have demonstrated. The new type of material consists of thousands of connected water droplets, encapsulated within lipid films, which can perform some of the functions of the cells inside our bodies. These printed 'droplet networks' could be the building blocks of a new kind of technology for delivering drugs to places where they are needed and potentially one day replacing or interfacing with damaged human tissues. Because droplet ...