ANN ARBOR—Did different species of early humans interbreed and produce offspring of mixed ancestry? Recent genetic studies suggest that Neanderthals may have bred with anatomically modern humans tens of thousands of years ago in the Middle East, contributing to the modern human gene pool. But the findings are not universally accepted, and the fossil record has not helped to clarify the role of interbreeding, which is also known as hybridization. Now a University of Michigan-led study of interbreeding between two species of modern-day howler monkeys in Mexico is shedding ...

Most triple-negative breast cancer patients who were treated with chemotherapy to shrink the tumor prior to surgery still had multiple genetic mutations in their tumor cells, according to a study by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center (VICC) investigators. Finding multiple mutations instead of just one primary mutation that can be targeted for therapy sheds more light on the challenges of treating triple-negative breast cancer. The study, led by Justin Balko, Pharm.D., Ph.D., and research faculty in the laboratory of Carlos Arteaga, M.D., director of the Breast Cancer Program ...

(Boston) – According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported suffering abuse before age 11 had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women whose childhood and adolescence were free of abuse. The study, which is published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, was led by Patricia Coogan, DSc, senior epidemiologist at SEC and associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. This study followed 28,456 African-American women, ...

New Rochelle, NY, December 6, 2012—Enzymes play a crucial role as biocatalysts, increasing the speed and efficiency and decreasing the energy consumption of biochemical reactions in many industrial processes. The advantages of using compressed propane to enhance the biocatalytic activity of an industrial enzyme are described in an article published in Industrial Biotechnology, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers (http://www.liebertpub.com). The article is available free on the Industrial Biotechnology website (http://www.liebertpub.com/ind). ...

PHILADELPHIA — Periodontitis, a form of chronic gum disease that affects nearly half of the U.S. adult population, results when the bacterial community in the mouth becomes unbalanced, leading to inflammation and eventually bone loss. In its most severe form, which affects 8.5 percent of U.S. adults, periodontitis can impact systemic health. By blocking a molecular receptor that bacteria normally target to cause the disease, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have now demonstrated an ability in a mouse model to both prevent periodontitis from developing and ...

Highlights The incidence of the most severe form of acute kidney injury has increased 10% per year on average over the past decade. Deaths associated with the condition have doubled during that time. Washington, DC (December 6, 2012) — Acute kidney injury (AKI), an abrupt or rapid decline in kidney function, is a serious and increasingly prevalent condition that can occur after major infections, major surgery, or exposure to certain medications. The incidence rates of the most serious form of AKI—which requires dialysis—increased rapidly in all patient subgroups ...

The catastrophic drought last year in the Horn of Africa affected millions of people but also caused the extremely late arrival into northern Europe of several migratory songbird species, a study from University of Copenhagen published today in Science shows. Details of the migration route was revealed by data collected from small back-packs fitted on birds showing that the delay resulted from an extended stay in the Horn of Africa. The extensive 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa had significant consequences for European songbirds such as thrush nightingale and red-backed ...

HOUSTON – (Dec. 7, 2012) – For much of her professional life, Dr. Susan Rosenberg (www.bcm.edu/genetics/?pmid=11034) has studied the puzzling response of bacteria to stress and the mutations that result. In the current issue of the journal Science (www.sciencemag.org), she puts together the pieces of that puzzle, describing most of the members of an elaborate gene network that functions in causing mutations during repair of double-stranded breaks in the DNA of stressed cells. "We now know the 93 genes more than half of which are funneling into three nodes that go down ...

Scientists from New Zealand, Austria and the UK have created the world's smallest reaction chamber, with a mixing volume that can be measured in femtolitres (million billionths of a litre). Using this minuscule reaction chamber, lead researcher Peter Derrick, professor of chemical physics and physical chemistry and head of the Institute of Fundamental Sciences at Massey University in New Zealand, plans to study the kind of speedy, nanoscale biochemical reactions that take place inside individual cells. This work appears in the latest issue of the European Journal of Mass ...

Antidepressants are the most widely used treatment for people with moderate to severe depression. However, up to two thirds of people with depression don't respond fully to this type of treatment. New findings, published in The Lancet, have shown cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)*, provided in addition to usual care, can reduce symptoms of depression and help improve patients' quality of life. This is the first large-scale trial to test the effectiveness of CBT — a type of talking psychotherapy — given in addition to usual care that includes antidepressants. The National ...

The family of disorders known as ataxia can impair speech, balance and coordination, and have varying levels of severity. Scientists from the Universities of Oxford and Edinburgh have identified a new member of this group of conditions which is connected to 'Lincoln ataxia', so called because it was first found in the relatives of US President Abraham Lincoln. The results are published in the journal PLOS Genetics. Lincoln ataxia affects the cerebellum, a crucial part of the brain controlling movement and balance. It is caused by an alteration in the gene for 'beta-III ...

Women with higher circulating carotenoid levels are at a reduced risk of breast cancer according to a study published December 6 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Carotenoids, which are micronutrients found in fruits and vegetables, have been found to have anticarcinogenic properties. Previous experimental studies have shown that carotenoids inhibit the tumor progression and reduce proliferation of estrogen receptor–positive (ER+) and estrogen receptor–negative (ER-) breast cancers. Despite the inverse association between carotenoids and breast cancer ...

Johns Hopkins scientists have found a surprising mechanism that gives male sex hormones like testosterone control over the gender-specific absence or presence of mammary gland nerves that sense the amount of milk available in breast milk ducts. In a Dec. 7 report on their discovery in Science, they say the hormones do the job by altering the availability of a nerve growth factor, called BDNF for short. The most obvious differences between males and females involve the presence or absence of physical structures. Below the surface, however, these structures are penetrated ...

A team of chemists at USC has developed a way to transform a hitherto useless ozone-destroying greenhouse gas that is the byproduct of Teflon manufacture and transform it into reagents for producing pharmaceuticals. The team will publish their discovery in a paper entitled "Taming of Fluoroform (CF3H): Direct Nucleophilic Trifluoromethylation of Si, B, S and C Centers," in the Dec. 7 issue of Science. The method is also being patented. Because of the popularity of Teflon, which is used on everything from cooking pans to armor-piercing bullets, there's no shortage ...

A new study demonstrates for the first time how the Toxoplasma gondii parasite enters the brain to influence its host's behavior. This research was led by researchers from the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University in Sweden publishes today in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens. The Toxoplasma gondii parasite causes toxoplasmosis. The parasite is common and infects between 30 and 50 per cent of the global population. It also infects animals, especially domestic cats. Human infection is contracted by eating poorly cooked (infected) meat and handling cat feces. ...

A new study shows that a microbicide gel is highly effective in block infection by the AIDS virus in a non-human primate model. In the paper published December 6 in the Open Access journal PLOS Pathogens, Dereuddre-Bosquet and colleagues from the European Combined Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Microbicides (CHAARM) Consortium describe the gel's key ingredient, which are small peptides engineered to present a decoy to bind up the virus and prevent it from entering and infecting the cells of the body. Because this is a gel it can be topically applied and could represent ...

It is well known that plant growth patterns are influenced by a variety of stimuli, gravity being one amongst many. On Earth plant roots exhibit characteristic behaviours called 'waving' and 'skewing', which were thought to be gravity-dependent events. However, Arabidopsis plants grown on the International Space Station (ISS) have proved this theory wrong, according to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Plant Biology: root 'waving' and 'skewing' occur in spaceflight plants independently of gravity. In plant roots, 'waving' consists of a series ...

Although rare there are several treatments available for cutaneus lupus erythematosus (CLE). However other options are needed for people who do not respond to medication or relapse. A new study into the thalidomide derivative lenalidomide, published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy, shows that treatment with lenalidomide is safe, with patients seeing an improvement in as little as two weeks. There have been several small scale clinical studies into the use of thalidomide for CLE for the third of patients which do not respond to ...

Research: Effect of reducing total fat intake on body weight: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and cohort studies The ideal proportion of total fat in the human diet is unclear. But reducing overall fat in the typical diet can lead to small reductions in body weight in adults that could be highly significant on a population-wide scale, a study published today on bmj.com reveals. The optimal intake of total fat was recently debated at the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations / World Health Organization (FAO/WHO) ...

Findings published today in the British Medical Journal show that exchanging fatty foods for lower fat alternatives will help people shift around three-and-a-half pounds - without dieting. People taking part in trials also saw their waist-lines become slimmer, and levels of bad cholesterol decrease. The results prove for the first time that weight loss can happen without trying to lose weight – simply by choosing foods lower in fat. The report was commissioned by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) Subgroup on Diet ...

Moths are able to enjoy a pollinator's buffet of flowers – in spite of being among the insect world's picky eaters – because of two distinct "channels" in their brains, scientists at the University of Washington and University of Arizona have discovered. One olfactory channel governs innate preferences of the palm-sized hawk moths that were studied – insects capable of traveling miles in a single night in search of favored blossoms. The other allows them to learn about alternate sources of nectar when their first choices are not available. For moths, the ability to ...

Findings of Cambridge scientists, published today in the journal PLoS Pathogens, show a new mechanism used by bacteria to spread in the body with the potential to identify targets to prevent the dissemination of the infection process. Salmonella enterica is a major threat to public health, causing systemic diseases (typhoid and paratyphoid fever), gastroenteritis and non-typhoidal septicaemia (NTS) in humans and in many animal species worldwide. In the natural infection, salmonellae are typically acquired from the environment by oral ingestion of contaminated water ...

A century after the world's first ultrasonic detection device – invented in response to the sinking of the Titanic – Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute scientists have provided the first neurophysiological evidence for something that researchers have long suspected: ultrasound applied to the periphery, such as the fingertips, can stimulate different sensory pathways leading to the brain. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The discovery carries implications for diagnosing and treating neuropathy, which affects millions of people around the world. "Ideally, ...

Researchers from North Carolina State University, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and a host of other institutions have developed a safety testing system to help chemists design inherently safer chemicals and processes. The innovative "TiPED" testing system (Tiered Protocol for Endocrine Disruption) stems from a cross-disciplinary collaboration among scientists, and can be applied at different phases of the chemical design process. The goal of the system is to help steer companies away from inadvertently creating harmful products, and thus avoid ...

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) have found that adults with autism, who represent about 1 percent of the adult population in the United States, report significantly worse health care experiences than their non-autistic counterparts. "Like other adults, adults on the autism spectrum need to use health care services to prevent and treat illness. As a primary care provider, I know that our health care system is not always set up to offer high-quality care to adults on the spectrum; however, I was saddened to see how large the disparities ...