BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A team of American and Italian neuroscientists has identified a cellular change in the brain that accompanies obesity. The findings could explain the body's tendency to maintain undesirable weight levels, rather than an ideal weight, and identify possible targets for pharmacological efforts to address obesity. The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Early Edition this week, identify a switch that occurs in neurons within the hypothalamus. The switch involves receptors that trigger or inhibit the release of the ...

DRY TORTUGAS, Fla. – Nesting green sea turtles are benefiting from marine protected areas by using habitats found within their boundaries, according to a U.S. Geological Survey study that is the first to track the federally protected turtles in Dry Tortugas National Park. Green turtles are listed as endangered in Florida and threatened throughout the rest of their range, and the habits of green sea turtles after their forays to nest on beaches in the Southeast U.S. have long remained a mystery. Until now, it was not clear whether the turtles made use of existing protected ...

Researchers at the University of Arizona's Tumamoc Hill have digitized 106 years of growth data on individual plants, making the information available for study by people all over the world. Knowing how plants respond to changing conditions over many decades provides new insights into how ecosystems behave. The permanent research plots on Tumamoc Hill represent the world's longest-running study that monitors individual plants, said co-author Larry Venable, director of research at Tumamoc Hill. Some of the plots date from 1906 -- and the birth, growth and death of ...

Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – among the most widely prescribed antidepressant medications – are associated with increased risk of bleeding, transfusion, hospital readmission and death when taken around the time of surgery, according to an analysis led by researchers at UC San Francisco and Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass. The scientists looked at the medical records of more than 530,000 patients who underwent surgery at 375 U.S. hospitals between 2006 and 2008. Their results will be published on April 29 in JAMA Internal Medicine. "There ...

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers have found a way to see synthetic nanostructures and molecules using a new type of super-resolution optical microscopy that does not require fluorescent dyes, representing a practical tool for biomedical and nanotechnology research. "Super-resolution optical microscopy has opened a new window into the nanoscopic world," said Ji-Xin Cheng, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and chemistry at Purdue University. Conventional optical microscopes can resolve objects no smaller than about 300 nanometers, or billionths of a meter, ...

Body dysmorphic disorder is a disabling but often misunderstood psychiatric condition in which people perceive themselves to be disfigured and ugly, even though they look normal to others. New research at UCLA shows that these individuals have abnormalities in the underlying connections in their brains. Dr. Jamie Feusner, the study's senior author and a UCLA associate professor of psychiatry, and his colleagues report that individuals with BDD have, in essence, global "bad wiring" in their brains — that is, there are abnormal network-wiring patterns across the brain ...

Surgery is often recommended for skin cancers, but older, sicker patients can endure complications as a result and may not live long enough to benefit from the treatment. A new study led by UC San Francisco focused on the vexing problem of how best to handle skin cancers among frail, elderly patients. In the study sample, the researchers found that most non-melanoma skin cancers were typically treated surgically, regardless of the patient's life expectancy or whether the tumor was likely to recur or harm the patient. One in five patients in the study reported ...

(CHICAGO) - A team of international researchers led by Northwestern Medicine scientists has identified how a defective protein plays a central role in a rare, lethal childhood disease known as Giant Axonal Neuropathy, or GAN. The finding is reported in the May 2013 Journal of Clinical Investigation. GAN is an extremely rare and untreatable genetic disorder that strikes the central and peripheral nervous systems of young children. Those affected show no symptoms at birth; typically around age three the first signs of muscle weakness appear and progress slowly but steadily. ...

JUPITER, FL, April 29, 2013 – Proteins, the workhorses of the body, can have more than one function, but they often need to be very specific in their action or they create cellular havoc, possibly leading to disease. Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have uncovered how an enzyme co-factor can bestow specificity on a class of proteins with otherwise nonspecific biochemical activity. The protein in question helps in the assembly of ribosomes, large macromolecular machines that are critical to protein production and cell growth. ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —Well-intentioned policies to make achieving tenure more family-friendly actually have negative consequences for the salaries of college faculty members, a study co-written by a University of Illinois labor and employment relations professor shows. Whether it's for the birth or adoption of a child, or a family situation that involves extended caregiving, both male and female faculty members who "stop the tenure clock" for family reasons earn a salary that's 3.1 to 4.3 percent lower the following year – even when there is no significant drop-off in the ...

Bethesda, MD (April 29, 2013) — Pregnant women with mid to high levels of antibodies common in patients with celiac disease are at risk for having babies with reduced fetal weight and birth weight, according to a new study in Gastroenterology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. The antibody tissue transglutaminase (anti-tTG) is most commonly found in patients with celiac disease. "While several observational studies have suggested that celiac disease is associated with different pregnancy outcomes, this research takes into account the ...

A study in The Journal of General Physiology presents new methods to evaluate how astrocytes contribute to brain function, paving the way for future exploration of these important brain cells at unprecedented levels of detail. Astrocytes—the most abundant cell type in the human brain—play crucial roles in brain physiology, which may include modulating synaptic activity and regulating local blood flow. Existing research tools can be used to monitor calcium signals associated with interactions between astrocytes and neurons or blood vessels. Until now, however, astrocytic ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The Obama administration's controversial proposal to "means-test" Medicare recipients is ostensibly aimed at generating more cash for the government from those who can afford it – or squeezing more money out of upper-income seniors, depending upon one's point of view. But according to a University of Illinois expert on retirement benefits, the Medicare program is already means-tested. Law professor Richard L. Kaplan says whenever the issue of cutting Medicare emerges, one of the first ideas to "fix" the program is to make its upper-income beneficiaries ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — When designing product lines, one important decision marketing and manufacturing managers must consider is whether to use common or product-specific components. While the use of common components can reduce manufacturing costs, firms have traditionally shied away from that strategy over concerns of intensifying what scholars call "product cannibalization." But according to research from two University of Illinois business professors, commonality can actually reduce product line cannibalization, a finding that could allow firms to redesign their product ...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — For companies with employees around the globe, the challenges of distance, diversity and technology may threaten team cohesiveness among their long-distance workers. But according to a new study by a University of Illinois business professor, out of sight doesn't necessarily have to mean out of mind for virtual teams. Ravi S. Gajendran, a professor of business administration at Illinois, says leaders of globally distributed teams can mitigate the isolation of virtual employees by taking a relationship-based approach in the form of a "leader-member exchange" ...

WATERLOO, Ont. (Monday, April 29, 2013) – Researchers at the University of Waterloo have found that children hear more complex language from parents when they read a storybook with only pictures compared to a picture-vocabulary book. The findings appear in the latest issue of the journal First Language. "Too often, parents dismiss picture storybooks, especially when they are wordless, as not real reading or just for fun," said the study's author, Professor Daniela O'Neill. "But these findings show that reading picture storybooks with kids exposes them to the kind of talk ...

Bethesda, MD (April 29, 2013) — A commonly used class of biologic response modifying drugs can cause acute liver injury with elevated liver enzymes, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official clinical practice journal of the American Gastroenterological Association. Patients with inflammatory diseases such as Chron's disease or ulcerative colitis often are prescribed tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) antagonists, which modify the body's response to infection. Patients with inflammatory arthropathies and selected dermatological ...

Predecessors to dinosaurs missed the race to fill habitats emptied when nine out of 10 species disappeared during Earth's largest mass extinction 252 million years ago. Or did they? That thinking was based on fossil records from sites in South Africa and southwest Russia. It turns out, however, that scientists may have been looking in the wrong places. Newly discovered fossils from 10 million years after the mass extinction reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs in Tanzania and Zambia. That's still millions of years before dinosaur relatives ...

CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Suppose you hear someone say, "The man gave the ice cream the child." Does that sentence seem plausible? Or do you assume it is missing a word? Such as: "The man gave the ice cream to the child." A new study by MIT researchers indicates that when we process language, we often make these kinds of mental edits. Moreover, it suggests that we seem to use specific strategies for making sense of confusing information — the "noise" interfering with the signal conveyed in language, as researchers think of it. "Even at the sentence level of language, there is ...

HOUSTON – (April 29, 2013) – Squeeze a piece of silicone and it quickly returns to its original shape, as squishy as ever. But scientists at Rice University have discovered that the liquid crystal phase of silicone becomes 90 percent stiffer when silicone is gently and repeatedly compressed. Their research could lead to new strategies for self-healing materials or biocompatible materials that mimic human tissues. A paper on the research appeared this month in Nature's online journal Nature Communications. Silicone in its liquid crystal phase is somewhere between a solid ...

LA JOLLA, CA----In the spring following a forest fire, trees that survived the blaze explode in new growth and plants sprout in abundance from the scorched earth. For centuries, it was a mystery how seeds, some long dormant in the soil, knew to push through the ashes to regenerate the burned forest. In the April 23 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego, report the results of a study that answers this fundamental "circle of life" question in plant ...

More than a third of stroke patients don't get to the hospital by ambulance, even though that's the fastest way to get there, according to new research in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, an American Heart Association journal. Researchers studied records on more than 204,000 stroke patients arriving at emergency rooms at 1,563 hospitals participating in the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association's Get With The Guidelines®-Stroke quality improvement program in 2003-10. Emergency medical services (EMS) transported 63.7 percent of the patients, ...

Scientists have devised a method for delivering tumor cell-killing enzymes in a way that protects the enzyme until it can do its work inside the cell. In their study in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology, researchers assembled microscopic protein packages that can deliver an enzyme called PEIII to the insides of cells. By attaching a protein called ubiquitin to the enzyme, they were able to protect it from degradation by the cell, allowing the enzyme to complete its mission. The results indicate that ubiquitin may be a useful ...

A new virus that causes severe breathing distress and kidney failure elicits a distinctive airway cell response to allow it to multiply. Scientists studying the Human Coronavirus-Erasmus Medical Center, which first appeared April 2012 in the Middle East, have discovered helpful details about its stronghold tactics. Their findings predict that certain currently available compounds might treat the infection. These could act, not by killing the virus directly, but by keeping lung cells from being forced to create a hospitable environment for the virus to reproduce. The ...

EMBARGOED UNTIL 12:01 A.M. ET, Tuesday, April 30, 2013, Cleveland: The use of Internet-based stress management programs (ISM) effectively reduce stress for a sustainable period, according to a Cleveland Clinic study published recently in Annals of Behavioral Medicine. Online stress management programs aim to increase accessibility for individuals affected by chronic stress at a lesser cost than traditional methods. Data suggests that stress reduction using ISM is comparable to face-to-face stress management. Three-hundred study participants completed an eight-week ISM ...