If you're sick from stress, a new research report appearing in the August 2012 issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org) suggests that what your mother ate—or didn't eat—may be part of the cause. The report shows that choline intake that is higher than what is generally recommended during pregnancy may improve how a child responds to stress. These improvements are the result of epigenetic changes that ultimately lead to lower cortisol levels. Epigenetic changes affect how a gene functions, even if the gene itself is not changed. Lowering cortisol is important as ...

The Social Security Trust Fund is off on its prediction by $730 billion for needed benefits in 2030. That is because its forecasting methods have hardly been updated since 1935 when the program first started, according to a study in the August issue of Demography. Two researchers, Samir Soneji of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy & Clinical Practice and Gary King of Harvard's Institute for Quantitative Social Science, in the article titled, "Statistical Security for Social Security," found that the financial viability of Social Security, the single largest U.S. ...

A new report involving mice suggests that a relationship exists between maternal metabolic or psychological stress and the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and metabolic syndrome in her offspring. What's more, the report shows that if the stress cannot be reduced or eliminated, manipulating the neuropeptide Y (NPY) system in visceral fat may prevent maternal stress-induced obesity from occurring in the next generation. This discovery is reported in the August 2012 issue of The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org). "Obesity is a worldwide disease. Here we found ...

Imagine eating all of the sugar and fat that you want without gaining a pound. Thanks to new research published in The FASEB Journal (http://www.fasebj.org), the day may come when this is not too far from reality. That's because researchers from the United States and Europe have found that blocking one of three opioid receptors in your body could turn your penchant for sweets and fried treats into a weight loss strategy that actually works. By blocking the delta opioid receptor, or DOR, mice reduced their body weight despite being fed a diet high in fat and sugar. The scientists ...

Based on data from the last five Olympic games, a study by the University of Western Australia has identified those athletes with asthma and airway hyper-responsiveness. With a prevalence of around 8% they are the most common chronic conditions among Olympic athletes, and could be related to intense training. In summer and winter sports there is widespread suffering from asthma and airway hyper-responsiveness (AHR) among athletes who take part in endurance sports. Its relatively late onset in many older athletes suggests to the experts that the years of intense training ...

Scientists have found that the anti-inflammatory molecule, IL-10, may improve success rates of skin autografts (skin moved from one site of the body to another). This information provides a valuable drug target that may benefit burn and accident victims. Specifically, researchers from Portugal and Brazil show that IL-10 plays an important role in whether or not an isogenic skin graft (skin from one individual grafted into another genetically identical) is successful and that the cells responsible for this effect are from the donor skin and not from any tissue of the recipient. ...

Men with large waists urinate more frequently than their slimmer counterparts, according to research in the August issue of the urology journal BJUI. Researchers from Weill Medical College, Cornell University, New York, found that men with waists measuring 100cm plus reported up to three times more urinary problems than men with waists of 90cm or less. They also found that larger waist measurements were associated with a greater prevalence of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and erection and ejaculation problems. "The global epidemic ...

The presence of specific autoantibodies of the immune system is associated with blood vessel damage in the brain. These findings were made by Marion Bimmler, a graduate engineer of medical laboratory diagnostics at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine Berlin-Buch and Dr. Peter Karczewski of the biotech company E.R.D.E.-AAK-Diagnostik GmbH in studies on a rat model. The researchers' results suggest that autoimmune mechanisms play a significant role in the pathogenesis and progression of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia (PloS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041602)*. Antibodies ...

From how relationships affect our health to the psychology of an awkward party moment to why we often choose ignorance over information – a guide to some talks with new research in personality and social psychology at the APA Convention in Orlando, Aug. 2-5, 2012 ... Costs of forgiveness in marriage It is not always best to forgive and forget in marriage, according to new research that looks at the costs of forgiveness. Sometimes expressing anger might be necessary to resolve a relationship problem – with the short-term discomfort of anger benefiting the health of the ...

TORONTO, July 31, 2012 – Think you know what one serving of food looks like? You may want to think again, according to a new study from York University. Many people overestimate the size of one serving of food as defined in Canada's Food Guide, so they may be overeating even if they believe they are being careful, according to a study by Jennifer Kuk, a professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science in York's Faculty of Health, and lead author Sharona Abramovitch, a former graduate student at York. The study was published online today in the journal Applied ...

Brain-computer interfaces are at the cutting edge for treatment of neurological and psychological disorder, including Parkinson's, epilepsy, and depression. Among the most promising advance is deep brain stimulation (DBS) — a method in which a silicon chip implanted under the skin ejects high frequency currents that are transferred to the brain through implanted electrodes that transmit and receive the signals. These technologies require a seamless interaction between the brain and the hardware. But there's a catch. Identified as foreign bodies by the immune system, the ...

New Rochelle, NY, July 31, 2012—Recent research supports the ability of some herbal agents, taken orally or applied topically, to prevent sunburn and limit the damage caused by excessive exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light. Natural products with proven and promising photoprotective properties are highlighted in an article in Alternative and Complementary Therapies, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Alternative and Complementary Therapies website at http://www.liebertpub.com/act. The article "Herbal Sunscreens and Ultraviolet ...

HEIDELBERG, 31 July 2012 – Researchers have used computational analysis to identify a new Achilles heel for the treatment of drug-resistant breast cancer. The results, which are published in Molecular Systems Biology, reveal that the disruption of glucose metabolism is an effective therapeutic strategy for the treatment of tumours that have acquired resistance to front-line cancer drugs such as Lapatinib. "The growth and survival of cancer cells can often be impaired by treatment with drugs that interfere with the actions of one or more oncogenes," said Prahlad Ram, the ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The recent economic recession has caused many changes in the business landscape across the country, including high unemployment rates. Due to these high rates and the struggling economy, University of Missouri researchers have found that in recent years the number of Americans engaging in entrepreneurship has risen significantly. Maria Figueroa-Armijos, a doctoral candidate in the University of Missouri Truman School of Public Affairs, says that this trend could be positive for the future. "We've seen similar trends occur in past economically slow periods ...

WASHINGTON, July 31, 2012 - After an epic 354-million-mile trek through space, the Mars Curiosity Rover is zooming along at 13,000 miles per hour toward a scheduled August 6 landing on the Red Planet to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. The newest episode of the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Bytesize Science video series highlights Curiosity Rover's mission, scientific instrumentation and the role that chemistry plays in the search for life on other planets. The video, produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, is available at www.BytesizeScience.com. ...

Cambridge, Mass. - July 31, 2012 - Watch out, Barbie: omnivorous beasts are assembling in a 3D printer near you. A group of graphics experts led by computer scientists at Harvard have created an add-on software tool that translates video game characters -- or any other three-dimensional animations -- into fully articulated action figures, with the help of a 3D printer. The project is described in detail in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Transactions on Graphics and will be presented at the ACM SIGGRAPH conference on August 7. Besides its obvious consumer ...

Moths are iconic examples of camouflage. Their wing coloration and patterns are shaped by natural selection to match the patterns of natural substrates, such as a tree bark or leaves, on which the moths rest. But, according to recent findings, the match in the appearance was not all in their invisibility. Despite a long history of research on these iconic insects, whether moths behave in a way to increase their invisibility has not been determined. A research team from the Laboratory of Behavioral Ecology and Evolution at the Seoul National University has conducted an ...

When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months. Kate Stafford, an oceanographer with UW's Applied Physics Lab, set out to find if any endangered bowhead whales passed through the Fram Strait, an inhospitable, ice-covered stretch of sea between Greenland and the northern islands of Norway. Only around 40 sightings of bowhead whales, ...

An international team of mathematicians has proposed a new solution to understanding a biological puzzle that has confounded molecular biologists. They have applied a mathematical model to work out the functioning of small molecules known as microRNAs – components of the body akin to the electronics in modern airplanes. For a long time molecular biologists thought that the major role of RNA in living cells was to serve as a copy of a gene and a template for producing proteins, major cell building blocks. This belief had been changed at the end of 90s when it was found ...

Diamond Light Source is being used to improve low cost methods for carbon capture. Scientists from the University of Leeds are using the UK's national synchrotron to investigate the efficiency of calcium oxide (CaO) based materials as carbon dioxide (CO2) sorbents. Their results, published in the journal of Energy & Environmental Science, provide an explanation for one of the key mechanisms involved. This new knowledge will inform efforts to improve the efficiency of this economically viable method of carbon capture and storage. Current techniques for post-combustion ...

TORONTO, Ontario (July 31, 2012)– UofT researchers Axel Guenther Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, cross-appointed to the Institute of Biomaterials and Biomedical Engineering (IBBME), and Milica Radisic, Associate Professor at IBBME and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, along with graduate students from their labs—Lian Leng, Boyang Zhang, and Arianna McAllister—have invented a new device that may allow for the uniform, large-scale engineering of tissue. "There's a lot of interest in soft materials, ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A dramatic increase in childhood obesity in recent decades may have impacts that go beyond the usual health concerns – it could be disrupting the timing of puberty and ultimately lead to a diminished ability to reproduce, especially in females. A body of research suggests that obesity could be related to growing problems with infertility, scientists said in a recent review, in addition to a host of other physical and psycho-social concerns. The analysis was published in Frontiers in Endocrinology. Human bodies may be scrambling to adjust to a problem ...

EUGENE, Ore. -- (July 31, 2012) -- Using mutant zebra fish, researchers studying the earliest formation of cartilage of the mouth believe they may have gotten a look at a mechanism involved in a genetic defect linked to Fraser syndrome deafness in humans. Reporting in the Aug. 1 issue of the journal Development, they identify a potential developmental pathway worthy of more scrutiny in future research into Fraser syndrome, a many-faceted and rare recessive genetic disease. In humans, a mutation in the gene FRAS1, which plays a role in skin epithelial formation during ...

People who worry about workplace rejection or sabotage can end up bringing it upon themselves, according to University of British Columbia research. The UBC Sauder School of Business study reveals that paranoia about negative gossip or being snubbed leads people to seek out information to confirm their fears, ultimately annoying colleague and increasing the likelihood they will be rejected or subverted. "It may be best to ignore impulses that tell you that you're the victim of office politics," says lead author and Sauder Prof. Karl Aquino, whose study was recently ...

New York, NY - A new report published in the international conservation journal Oryx concludes that commercial 'wildlife encounter' operations across Africa promoting the reintroduction of captive lions do little to further the conservation of African lions in the wild. Released 'Early Online' on July 31, 'Walking with lions: Why there is no role for captive-origin lions (Panthera leo) in species restoration,' was authored by a blue-ribbon panel of lion conservationists and wild cat biologists from Panthera, the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and a team of university-based ...