The liver is one of the few organs in our body that can regenerate itself, but how it occurs is a biological mystery. New research from BRIC, University of Copenhagen and the Finsen Laboratory, Rigshospitalet, has identified a protein complex that acts as a molecular switch turning on a self-regeneration program in the liver. The protein complex furthermore fine tunes liver metabolism, allowing this to run efficiently in parallel with the tissue damage repair. The new knowledge challenges the current focus on stem cells and may point towards future simplification of treatments ...

Residents of new housing developments increased their exercise and their wellbeing when they had more access to shops and parks, a new University of Melbourne study reveals. The ten year study found that the overall health of residents of new housing developments in Western Australia, improved when their daily walking increased as a result of more access to parks, public transport, shops and services. Lead researcher Professor Billie Giles-Corti, Director of the McCaughey VicHealth Centre for Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne said the study provided ...

Does good behavior lead to more good behavior? Or do we try to balance our good and bad deeds? The answer depends on our ethical mindset, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Psychological scientist Gert Cornelissen of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra and colleagues found that people who have an "ends justify the means" mindset are more likely to balance their good and bad deeds, while those who believe that what is right and wrong is a matter of principle are more likely to be consistent in ...

An air-breathing bio-battery has been constructed by researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. The core element providing the new power source with relatively high voltage and long lifetime is a carefully designed cathode taking up oxygen from air and composed of an enzyme, carbon nanotubes and silicate. People are increasingly taking advantage of devices supporting various functions of our bodies. Today they include cardiac pacemakers or hearing aids; tomorrow it will be contact lenses with automatically changing ...

Geneva, Switzerland (07 March, 2013) – A new survey reveals that more than half of British women did not play competitive sport or spend any time on intensive workouts such as running or cycling, in a given week. Seven months on from the 2012 Olympics, British women are still less likely than their European counterparts to devote any time to competitive sport, with Britain trailing behind Germany, Denmark, Sweden and France, according to a new multi-national survey on sport and exercise habits. Following record turn-outs for women's football at the Olympics, the countdown ...

Geneva, Switzerland (07 March, 2013) – A new survey reveals that 1 in 3 Danish women did not play competitive sport or spend any time on intensive workouts such as running or cycling, in a given week. However, more Danish women were physically active than their European counterparts in Germany, France, Sweden and the UK, according to a new multi-national survey on sport and exercise habits. As the Danish women's football team prepare for this summer's UEFA Women's EURO in Sweden, the countdown to the championships offers an opportunity for women to kick start heart-healthy ...

MINNEAPOLIS – People with multiple sclerosis (MS) who have cognitive problems, or problems with memory, attention, and concentration, have more damage to areas of the brain involved in cognitive processes than people with MS who do not have cognitive problems, according to a study published in the March 6, 2013, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study used a type of MRI brain scan called diffusion tensor imaging along with regular MRI scans to compare brain measurements in 20 people with MS who had related cognitive ...

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, ...