CHICAGO— Creating and promoting foods that contain natural inhibitors of unhealthy angiogenesis – the formation of blood vessels that feed and promote disease, obesity and inflammation – is the "new frontier in dietary health," according to a presentation at the 2013 Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Annual Meeting & Food Expo® in Chicago. "Blood vessels are critical to the health of every cell, every organ and for every function in the body," said William W. Li, M.D., president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. "Research is now showing it's possible to promote health ...

DURHAM, N.C. -- Physicians and patients who are wary of addiction to pain medication and opioids may soon have a healthier and more natural alternative. A Duke University study revealed that a derivative of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), a main ingredient of over-the-counter fish oil supplements, can sooth and prevent neuropathic pain caused by injuries to the sensory system. The results appear online in the Annals of Neurology. The research focused on a compound called neuroprotectin D1=protectin D1 (NPD1=PD1), a bioactive lipid produced by cells in response to external ...

It's common knowledge that high school can be a cruel environment where attractive students are considered "popular," and unattractive kids often get bullied. And, while that type of petty behavior is expected to vanish with adulthood, new research proves it does not. Colleagues can be just as immature as classmates. The study by Timothy Judge, professor of management at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, and Brent Scott from Michigan State University, is the first to link attractiveness to cruelty in the workplace. In "Beauty, Personality, ...

PITTSBURGH, July 17, 2013 – Poor sleep quality and quantity during pregnancy can disrupt normal immune processes and lead to lower birth weights and other complications, finds a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study published today in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. Women with depression also are more likely than non-depressed women to suffer from disturbed sleep and to experience immune system disruption and adverse pregnancy outcomes. "Our results highlight the importance of identifying sleep problems in early pregnancy, especially in women experiencing ...

Irvine, Calif., July 17, 2013 — UC Irvine microbiologists have learned how a probiotic bacterium used to treat irritable bowel syndrome can soothe gut bacterial infections caused by Salmonella, paving the way for potential relief from foodborne illnesses that affect millions of people annually. Manuela Raffatellu, assistant professor of microbiology & molecular genetics, and colleagues at UC Irvine and the University of Washington identified how a probiotic strain of E. coli reduces Salmonella colonization by competing with this pathogen for iron, an essential nutrient ...

Archaeologists tunneling beneath the main temple of the ancient Maya city of El Perú-Waka' in northern Guatemala have discovered an intricately carved stone monument with hieroglyphic text detailing the exploits of a little-known sixth-century princess whose progeny prevailed in a bloody, back-and-forth struggle between two of the civilization's most powerful royal dynasties, Guatemalan cultural officials announced July 16. "Great rulers took pleasure in describing adversity as a prelude to ultimate success," said research director David Freidel, PhD, a professor of anthropology ...

A NASA engineer has achieved yet another milestone in his quest to advance an emerging super-black nanotechnology that promises to make spacecraft instruments more sensitive without enlarging their size. A team led by John Hagopian, an optics engineer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has demonstrated that it can grow a uniform layer of carbon nanotubes through the use of another emerging technology called atomic layer deposition or ALD. The marriage of the two technologies now means that NASA can grow nanotubes on three-dimensional components, ...

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., July 17, 2013 – We may be closer to predicting who is at risk for a heart attack, according to a recently published Spectrum Health study. Researchers with Spectrum Health's Frederik Meijer Heart & Vascular Institute used new imaging technology on patients being treated for heart attacks. The imaging technology allowed researchers to identify the characteristic makeup, or signature, of arterial plaque blocking an artery and causing a heart attack. Knowing what type of plaque is present in narrowed arteries may help a physician determine a patient's ...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — July 17, 2013 — The Side-Out Foundation's breast cancer pilot study, led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), Translational Drug Development (TD2) and Scottsdale Healthcare, has shown that cancer patients do better when their treatment is guided by molecular profiling. Specifically, 52 percent of patients with advanced breast cancer received clinical benefit — meaning their disease was controlled for a longer time — when their cancer was treated based on addressing the abnormal proteins in their tumor, according to the study conducted ...

SAN ANTONIO (July 17, 2013) — Molecular biologists in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio have found a novel way to fine-tune the activity of cells' protein-disposing machinery, with potentially cancer-fighting effects. This machinery, the proteasome, is deregulated in cancer. Agents called protease inhibitors are viewed as potential anti-cancer therapies, but they indiscriminately curb proteasome activity, which also includes protein recycling. Such strategy is effective to kill cells in aggressive blood cancers but leads ...

Children whose mothers took antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) while pregnant are at increased risk of early development issues, according to a new study published in Epilepsia, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE). Results of the study suggest that children exposed to AEDs in the womb were at risk for difficulties with motor development, language skills, social skills, and autistic traits compared to children whose mothers did not take anti-seizure medications. Medical evidence suggests that epilepsy is fairly common in ...

Philadelphia, PA, July 18, 2013 – Cancer researchers have wondered why ovarian cancer cells are so attracted to the abdominal cavity, especially the omentum, with the hope that such an understanding could lead to better disease management or even prevention. Results from a series of experiments suggest a two-step model of omental colonization in which i) cancer cells are attracted to and lodge within immune cell-containing structures known as milky spots, and ii) fat storage cells (adipocytes) fuel cancer cell growth and spread. This study is scheduled for publication ...

[EMBARGOED FOR JULY 18, 2013] Facebook posts helped alert public health officials to a strep throat outbreak among a high school dance team in 2012, and DNA fingerprinting led investigators to pasta prepared by a previously ill parent as the likely source. Although strep throat, or Group A Streptococcus (GAS) pharyngitis, usually spreads from person to person by droplets, foodborne transmission is possible, as a report published online in Clinical Infectious Diseases found. The most common form of GAS illness is strep throat, but some cases can have more severe consequences. Among ...

The mighty tuna is more closely related to the delicate seahorse than to a marlin or sailfish. That is one of the surprises from the first comprehensive family tree, or phylogeny, of the "spiny-rayed fish," a group that includes about a third of all living vertebrate species. The work is published July 15 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The spiny-rayed fish are an incredibly diverse group, including tuna and billfish, tiny gobies and seahorses, and oddities such as pufferfish and anglerfish. The fish occupy every aquatic environment from ...

Bethesda, MD—Two new studies, in Health Affairs July 2013 issue, describe health success stories outside the US. One, by Sema Sgaier of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and colleagues, is titled "How The Avahan HIV Prevention Program Transitioned From The Gates Foundation To The Government Of India." It explains how the Gates Foundation worked with the Government of India to ensure a smooth transition of Avahan – an HIV prevention program funded and initiated by the Gates Foundation – to be run and managed by that government. The transition strategy, implemented ...

Atherosclerosis is widely recognized as an independent risk factor for stroke, and its occurrence is closely related to lipid metabolism. numerous studies using transgenic and knockout animals have shown that scavenger receptor class B type I has a protective effect against atherosclerosis. Previous studies of scavenger receptor class B type I gene polymorphisms have focused on the exon 1 G4A polymorphism and the exon 8 C1050T polymorphism, and these polymorphic loci impact blood lipid levels and are involved in the dyslipidemia in diabetes patients. A recent study published ...

Cochlear implants, electrical prosthetic devices that stimulate inner ear neurons of individuals who have lost their cochlear sensory cells, restore usable hearing to deaf patients. Cochlear implant electrodes are placed in the fluid-filled scala tympani of the cochlea, at a significant distance from the spiral ganglion and even from the spiral ganglion dendrites. Stimulation via a cochlear implant electrode pair is therefore likely to activate large numbers of neurons concurrently. This may decrease the resolution and dynamic range of information transmitted in patients ...

Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory emphasizes the development of a series of nested environment systems with which an individual interacts. These systems interact with the individual, and also affect the development of the individual. The theory is that the natural environment is the major source influencing human development, which is often ignored by scholars in the laboratory. U Brofenbrenner saw the individual's experience "as a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls". In other words, the individual develops in the middle ...

During the last decade, our understanding of this hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis has quickly expanded. Two novel hypothalamic Arg-Phe-amide- related peptides, kisspeptin and gonadotropin-inhibitory hormone, may be important regulators of the reproductive axis. Kisspeptins are currently recognized as the most potent activators of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis. Kisspeptin and its receptor, G protein-coupled receptor 54 (GPR54), are expressed on gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons, thus regulating the reproductive axis. Kisspeptins strongly release gonadotropin- ...

1. Scientists at A*STAR's Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) have discovered a new class of white blood cells in human lung and gut tissues that play a critical role as the first line of defence against harmful fungal and bacterial infections. This research will have significant impact on the design of vaccines and targeted immunotherapies for diseases caused by infectious microbes such as the hospital-acquired pneumonia. 2. The scientists also showed for the first time that key immune functions of this new class of white blood cells are similar to those found in mice. ...

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL…July 17, 2013 -- Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers have discovered that a single dose of methylphenidate (MPH), used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, helps to improve balance control during walking, hence reducing the risk of falls among elderly adults. Falls in older adults are the leading cause of hip fractures and other injury-related visits to emergency rooms and of accidental death. Age-related deterioration in gait and balance is a major contributor to falls in older adults. According ...

A remarkable new species of horned dinosaur has been unearthed in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, southern Utah. The huge plant-eater inhabited Laramidia, a landmass formed when a shallow sea flooded the central region of North America, isolating western and eastern portions for millions of years during the Late Cretaceous Period. The newly discovered dinosaur, belonging to the same family as the famous Triceratops, was announced today in the British scientific journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The study, funded in large part by the Bureau of ...

In 2011 ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) discovered a gas cloud with several times the mass of the Earth accelerating towards the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (eso1151 [1]. This cloud is now making its closest approach and new VLT observations show that it is being grossly stretched by the black hole's extreme gravitational field. "The gas at the head of the cloud is now stretched over more than 160 billion kilometres around the closest point of the orbit to the black hole. And the closest approach is only a bit more than 25 billion kilometres from the black ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Although malaria has been eradicated in many countries, including the United States, it still infects more than 200 million people worldwide, killing nearly a million every year. In regions where malaria is endemic, people rely on preventive measures such as mosquito netting and insecticides. Existing drugs can help, but the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to many of them. Scientists working to develop new drugs and vaccines hope to target the parasite in the earliest stages of an infection, when it quietly reproduces itself in the human liver. In ...

Scientists at Bonn University Hospital and at the Max Planck Institute for neurological research in Cologne have developed a method with which the chances of success of a surgical procedure for temporal lobe epilepsy can be accurately predicted. The rate of accurate predictions is more than 90%. The results are now being presented in the scientific journal "NeuroImage:Clinical." When many nerve cells simultaneously fire in the brain, an epileptic seizure results. The most frequent form is temporal lobe epilepsy. It originates in one of the two temporal lobes which contain, ...