Contact: Chantal Wandja chantal.wandja@iucn.org 237-795-04667 Contact: Dan Klotz 301-280-5756 dklotz@burnesscommunications.com Burness Communications Contact: Jenna DiPaolo 202-412-0331 jdipaolo@rightsandresources.org Rights and Resources Initiative New reports: African governments giving land away quickly, recognizing land rights slowly Africa remains a target for land-grab developments worth billions; regional dialogue in Yaoundé focuses on the need for speed Yaoundé, Cameroon (7 March 2013) -- While African governments are moving gradually towards ...

The human brain can learn to treat relevant prosthetics as a substitute for a non-working body part, according to research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mariella Pazzaglia and colleagues from Sapienza University and IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia of Rome in Italy, supported by the International Foundation for Research in Paraplegie. The researchers found that wheelchair-bound study participants with spinal cord injuries perceived their body's edges as being plastic and flexible to include the wheelchair, independent of time since their injury ...

Subtle changes in messaging can have a profound impact on the effectiveness of charitable messages such as calls for blood donations, according to research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Eileen Chou from the University of Virginia and co-author Keith Murnighan at Northwestern University. Though chronic shortages in U.S blood banks could be alleviated by a small increase in the number of blood donors, people are not always motivated enough to help. In the current study, researchers collaborated with the Red Cross to assess the effects of changing ...

Analysis of DNA extracted from a fossil tooth recovered in southern Siberia confirms that the tooth belonged to one of the oldest known ancestors of the modern dog, and is described in research published March 6 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Anna Druzhkova from the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Russian Federation, and colleagues from other institutions. Human domestication of dogs predates the beginning of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, but when modern dogs emerged as a species distinct from wolves is still unclear. Although some previous ...

Most scientists are starting to agree that repeat, sub-concussive hits to the head are dangerous and linked to neurological disorders later in life. A new collaborative study, though, attempted to find out why – and discovered that damage to the blood-brain barrier and the resulting autoimmune response might be the culprit. Published in journal PLOS ONE by the University of Rochester Medical Center and the Cleveland Clinic, the research suggests a new way of thinking about concussions: That the brain degeneration observed among professional football players (including ...

For the past few decades, health officials have been reporting increases in the incidence of autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Now researchers at Yale School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute have identified a prime suspect in the mystery — dietary salt. In the March 6 issue of the journal Nature, Yale researchers showed that salt can induce and worsen pathogenic immune system responses in mice and that the response is regulated by genes already implicated in a variety of autoimmune diseases. In accompanying papers in the ...

Astronomers survey the scale of the Universe by first measuring the distances to close-by objects and then using them as standard candles [1] to pin down distances further and further out into the cosmos. But this chain is only as accurate as its weakest link. Up to now finding an accurate distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way, has proved elusive. As stars in this galaxy are used to fix the distance scale for more remote galaxies, it is crucially important. But careful observations of a rare class of double star have ...

Adding the dietary supplements folate and vitamin B12 to treatment with antipsychotic medication improved a core symptom component of schizophrenia in a study of more than 100 patients. The study focused on negative symptoms of schizophrenia – which include apathy, social withdrawal, and a lack of emotional expressiveness. While the level of improvement across all participants was modest, results were more significant in individuals carrying specific variants in genes involved with folate metabolism. The report from a team based at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will ...

MANHASSET, NY – In collaboration with other research institutions, a Feinstein Institute for Medical Research investigator discovered a new protein that controls the sense of taste. The findings are published in the March issue of Nature. In a search for new proteins involved in the progression of Alzheimer's disease, Philippe Marambaud, PhD, an investigator in the Litwin-Zucker Research Center for the Study of Alzheimer's Disease at the Feinstein Institute, discovered the protein calcium homeostasis modulator 1 (CALHM1) in 2008. CALHM1 represents a new family of pore-forming ...

Cambridge and Boston, MA. Wed. March 6, 2013 – New work from the Broad Institute's Klarman Cell Observatory, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard University, MIT, and Yale University expands the understanding of how one type of immune cell – known as a T helper 17 or Th17 cell – develops, and how its growth influences the development of immune responses. By figuring out how these cells are "wired," the researchers make a surprising connection between autoimmunity and salt consumption, highlighting the interplay of genetics and environmental factors in disease susceptibility. ...

PHILADELPHIA (March 6, 2013) -- Working with a multidisciplinary consortium of 19 researchers from nine institutions, Monell scientists have provided critical information to identify CALHM1, a channel in the walls of taste receptor cells, as a necessary component in the process of sweet, bitter, and umami (savory) taste perception. When sweet, bitter and umami molecules reach the tongue, they activate taste receptors in specialized cells called Type II taste cells. "The question that the consortium wanted to answer is, 'how do these taste cells tell the brain that they ...

PHILADELPHIA – Saying that the sense of taste is complicated is an understatement, that it is little understood, even more so. Exactly how cells transmit taste information to the brain for three out of the five primary taste types was pretty much a mystery, until now. A team of investigators from nine institutions discovered how ATP – the body's main fuel source– is released as the neurotransmitter from sweet, bitter, and umami, or savory, taste bud cells. The CALHM1 channel protein, which spans a taste bud cell's outer membrane to allow ions and molecules in and out, ...

BOSTON– Kidney failure affects 25 million individuals in the U.S. and many more throughout the world. Loss of kidney function means the majority of these patients must undergo dialysis treatments to remove excess fluids and waste products. Although dialysis therapy coupled with medication has improved the life expectancy for people with kidney failure, for unknown reasons, patients' risk of sudden heart failure and death remains 10 to 20 times greater than average. Now, a study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Massachusetts General ...

A survey of bat activity in burned and unburned areas after a major wildfire in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains found no evidence of detrimental effects on bats one year after the fire. The findings suggest that bats are resilient to high-severity fire, and some species may even benefit from the effects of fire on the landscape. The study, led by bat ecologist Winifred Frick of the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be published in the journal PLOS ONE on March 6. The findings are important because current understanding of how wildlife responds to fire is ...

LA JOLLA, CA – Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified patterns of epigenomic diversity that not only allow plants to adapt to various environments, but could also benefit crop production and the study of human diseases. Published March 6 in Nature, the findings show that in addition to genetic diversity found in plants throughout the world, their epigenomic makeup is as varied as the environments in which they are found. Epigenomics is the study of the pattern of chemical markers that serve as a regulatory layer on top of the DNA sequence. ...

In a huge study of half a million men and women, research in Biomed Central's open access journal BMC Medicine demonstrates an association between processed meat and cardiovascular disease and cancer. One of the difficulties in measuring the effect of eating meat on health is the confounding effect of lifestyle on health. Often vegetarians have healthier lifestyles than the general population, they are less likely to smoke, are less fat, and are more likely to be physically active. Only within a very large study can the consequences of eating meat and processed meat ...

Increased dietary salt intake can induce a group of aggressive immune cells that are involved in triggering and sustaining autoimmune diseases. This is the result of a study conducted by Dr. Markus Kleinewietfeld, Prof. David Hafler (both Yale University, New Haven and the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, and Harvard University, USA), PD Dr. Ralf Linker (Dept. of Neurology, University Hospital Erlangen), Professor Jens Titze (Vanderbilt University and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, FAU, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) ...

The resulting increased blood and oxygen flow to the pre-frontal cortex may explain the effects, suggest the researchers. They trawled medical research databases for studies looking at the impact of physical exercise on higher brain functions, such as memory, concentration, planning, and decision-making, in three groups: 6 to 12 year olds; 13 to 17 year olds; and 18 to 35 year olds. They found 24 relevant studies published up to April 2012. Nineteen of these, involving 586 participants, addressed the impact of short bouts of exercise, and five, involving 358 participants, ...

This means that 320 million people - 40% of Europe's population - who could benefit from treatment with disease modifying drugs (DMARDs) would struggle to get access to them, say the researchers. DMARDs are extremely effective for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, and the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) recommends the use of synthetic DMARDs immediately after diagnosis to halt progress of the disease. But they are expensive. The authors therefore surveyed key experts in 49 countries during 2011 about the availability, affordability and acceptability ...

The authors base their findings on an analysis of the anonymised search logs of millions of US web users, who agreed to install a browser add-on and share their online searches with Microsoft throughout 2010. The researchers developed automated tools to analyse the queries of people who searched for information on the antidepressant (paroxetine) and a cholesterol lowering drug (pravastatin), using the search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo. In 2010, it was not yet public knowledge that taking both these two drugs caused high blood sugar (hyperglycaemia), but the authors ...

VIDEO: Dr. Andres Lozano of the Krembil Neuroscience Centre describes how Deep Brain Stimulation works to help patients with severe Anorexia Nervosa. Click here for more information. TORONTO – In a world first, a team of researchers at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre and the University Health Network have shown that Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) in patients with chronic, severe and treatment-resistant Anorexia Nervosa (anorexia) helps some patients achieve and maintain ...

ITHACA, N.Y. – Cornell University researchers have discovered a likely origin of epithelial ovarian cancer (ovarian carcinoma), the fifth leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States. Pinpointing where this cancer originates has been difficult because 70 percent of patients are in advanced stages of disease by the time it is detected. Because the origin of ovarian carcinoma development is unknown, early diagnostic tests have so far been unsuccessful. Some epithelial cancers are known to occur in transitional zones between two types of epithelium (layers ...

PHILADELPHIA - The wide consensus that health care spending poses a threat to the nation's fiscal solvency has led to the championing of "value" as a goal of health care reform efforts. But the divergence of opinions between patients and physicians on the meaning of value presents an obstacle to progress in achieving genuine reform, says Lisa Rosenbaum, MD, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholar and cardiologist at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In a Medicine and Society article published this week the New England Journal ...

As baby-boomers age and the number of people with serious chronic illnesses continues to rise, the demand for experts in palliative medicine is sure to outstrip the supply, according Timothy E. Quill, M.D., professor of Medicine, Psychiatry and Medical Humanities in the Center for Ethics, Humanities and Palliative Care at the University of Rochester Medical Center. In a perspective published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, Quill, who serves as president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM), suggests that arming generalists and ...

Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers including Carnegie's Ian Thompson have managed to improve the measurement of the distance to our nearest neighbor galaxy and, in the process, refine an astronomical calculation that helps measure the expansion of the universe. Their work is published March 7 by Nature. The Hubble constant is a fundamental quantity that measures the current rate at which our universe is expanding. It is named after 20th Century Carnegie astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who astonished the world by discovering that our universe has been growing continuously ...