A University of Alberta-led research team has discovered that insects that bore into trees as long ago 90 million years, or as recently as last summer, leave a calling card that's rich with information. The information is contained in the resin found within trees and on their bark. Resin is produced in large quantities by a tree when it's under attack by insects. Normally, to assess if a tree is under an attack from boring insects researchers have sometimes had to rip patches of bark from healthy trees. But now forestry workers looking for the telltale sign of insect ...

A mother's iron deficiency early in pregnancy may have a profound and long-lasting effect on the brain development of the child, even if the lack of iron is not enough to cause severe anemia, according to a University of Rochester Medical Center study published in the scientific journal PLoS One. The results are important because obstetricians might not notice or treat mild or moderate iron deficiency, and therefore the study authors believe their research underscores the need for monitoring a pregnant woman's iron status beyond anemia. Low iron is so common that an ...

Victims of severe traumatic elder abuse are more likely to be female, suffer from a neurological or mental disorder, and to abuse drugs or alcohol, according to research published in the March issue of the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. "Past studies have shown that alcohol abuse by the perpetrator plays a substantial role and is strongly associated with physical abuse," says Lee Friedman, assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago and lead author of the study. "Our findings indicate that ...

Ann Arbor, Mich. — In 1998, a study linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism in children appeared in a respected medical journal. For a decade, the study grabbed headlines worldwide. Worried parents rejected the life-saving vaccine for their children and those with autistic children agonized that they allowed an injection that caused the condition. But the vaccine-autism research was a fraud. The paper was retracted 12 years later, denounced as an elaborate deception. "The fraud in that MMR study epitomizes how fabricated research can lead to a ...

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- An Indiana University study found that a smoke-free air law implemented in an Indiana community did not hurt business at the off-track betting facility in that community. The findings, the researchers said, suggest there is "no economic reason for policymakers to exclude OTB facilities from smoke-free legislation." Indiana legislators currently are debating a statewide smoke-free air law. Exceptions could include casinos and other gaming venues. Jon Macy, assistant professor in IU's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and lead author ...

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Field tests by University of Missouri scientists have backed up laboratory research indicating that buffer strips of grass and other plants can reduce the amount of herbicide and veterinary antibiotics in surface runoff from farm plots. Vegetative buffer strips have already proven effective in limiting erosion as well as reducing sediment and nutrients in runoff. The findings come amid concerns about the potential of veterinary antibiotics in surface water leading to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The antibiotics can enter the environment ...

CHICAGO --- A new study from Northwestern Medicine shows a high-fiber diet could be a critical heart-healthy lifestyle change young and middle-aged adults can make. The study found adults between 20 and 59 years old with the highest fiber intake had a significantly lower estimated lifetime risk for cardiovascular disease compared to those with the lowest fiber intake. The study will be presented March 23 at the American Heart Association's Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention Scientific Sessions 2011 in Atlanta, ...

Richmond, Va. – (March 23, 2011) – Researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM) have discovered a novel mechanism in gene regulation that contributes to the development of a form of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Currently, there is virtually no effective treatment for HCC, and this breakthrough identifies a promising new target for therapeutic intervention. In the journal Hepatology, Devanand Sarkar, M.B.B.S., Ph.D., Harrison Endowed Scholar in Cancer Research at VCU Massey Cancer ...

New research provides the first evidence that sensory recalibration — the brain's automatic correcting of errors in our sensory or perceptual systems — can occur instantly. "Until recently, neuroscientists thought of sensory recalibration as a mechanism that is primarily used for coping with long-term changes, such as growth during development, brain injury or stroke," said Ladan Shams, a UCLA assistant professor of psychology and an expert on perception and cognitive neuroscience. "It appeared that extensive time, and thus many repetitions of error, were needed for ...

The absence of specific laws which define the ownership, storage and use of blood drops taken from every Australian baby since 1971 could threaten public trust in newborn screening (NBS) programs in Australia, a University of Melbourne academic has warned. For the past 40 years, the heel of nearly every baby born in Australia has been pricked to collect several drops of blood. These drops – which are then tested for a variety of genetic conditions, such as cystic fibrosis - are effective health checks. But according to Dr Diana Bowman, from the Melbourne School of Population ...

A sleepless night can make us cranky and moody. But a lesser known side effect of sleep deprivation is short-term euphoria, which can potentially lead to poor judgment and addictive behavior, according to new research from the University of California, Berkeley. The findings, published today, March 22, in the Journal of Neuroscience, underscore the need for people in high-stakes professions and circumstances not to shortchange themselves on sleep, Walker said. "We need to ensure that people making high-stakes decisions, from medical professionals to airline pilots to ...

The more physically active you are, the less your blood pressure rises in response to a high-salt diet, researchers reported at the American Heart Association's Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions. "Patients should be advised to increase their physical activity and eat less sodium," said Casey M. Rebholz, M.P.H., lead author of the study and a medical student at the Tulane School of Medicine and doctoral student at the Tulane University School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine in New ...

Overweight and obese mothers and their children think they weigh less than their actual weight, according to research reported at the American Heart Association's Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism/Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention 2011 Scientific Sessions. In the study of women and children in an urban, predominantly Hispanic population, most normal weight women and children in the study correctly estimated their body weight, but most obese women and children underestimated theirs. "Obesity is a well-known risk factor for the development ...

A team of researchers has found that pursuing carefully planned goals and engaging in more automatic habits shows overlapping neurological mechanisms. Because the findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Neuron, show a neurological linkage between goal-directed and habitual, and perhaps damaging, behaviors, they may offer a pathway for beginning to address addiction and similar maladies. The study was conducted by researchers at New York University's Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology, Princeton University's Department of Psychology ...

Boston, MA -- Although research has shown that eating fish, which is rich in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, is associated with lower risk of cardiovascular diseases, mixed evidence from prior studies has suggested that mercury exposure from fish consumption may be linked to higher risk of cardiovascular diseases. In a new, large-scale study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), researchers found no evidence that higher levels of mercury exposure were associated with higher risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or total cardiovascular ...

[EMBARGOED FOR MARCH 23, 2011] Norovirus is the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis in the United States and is estimated to cause nearly 21 million cases annually. It is highly transmissible through person-to-person contact and contaminated food, water, and environmental surfaces. The results of an investigation of a 2009 outbreak on a cruise ship shed light on how the infections can spread and the steps both passengers and crew can take to prevent them. The findings are published in a new study in Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online (http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/cid/cir144.pdf). ...

BOSTON – March 23, 2011 – People with type 1 diabetes, whose insulin-producing cells have been destroyed by the body's own immune system, are particularly vulnerable to a form of inflammatory heart disease (myocarditis) caused by a different autoimmune reaction. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center have revealed the exact target of this other onslaught, taking a large step toward potential diagnostic and therapeutic tools for the heart condition. Researchers in the lab of Myra Lipes, M.D., have shown in both mice and people that myocarditis can be triggered by a protein ...

BOSTON – It's been nearly 10 years since Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) scientists Kun Ping Lu, MD, PhD and Xiao Zhen Zhou, MD, discovered PinX1, the first potent endogenous protein shown to inhibit telomerase in mammals. Now the scientific team has discovered a vitally important new function for this telomerase inhibitor. The investigators report in today's on-line edition of the Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) that low levels of PinX1 contribute to cancer development, providing the first genetic evidence linking telomerase activation to chromosome ...

HACKENSACK, N.J. (March 23, 2011) — Using new genome sequencing technologies, researchers from the John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center joined colleagues from 20 major North American research institutions to publish the first complete genomic portrait of multiple myeloma, a highly aggressive blood cancer. Findings from the study point to new directions for potential myeloma therapies, and begin to unlock the mysteries of what causes this devastating malignancy. The paper will be published in the March 24, 2011 issue of Nature. Multiple ...

A breakthrough discovery by the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Children's Hospital Boston promises an effective new treatment for one of the deadliest forms of cancer. Reporting in the March 24 edition (front cover story) of the journal Nature, the researchers found that leflunomide - a drug commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis – also inhibits the growth of malignant melanoma. Melanoma is a cancer of the pigment cells in our skin. It is the most aggressive form of skin cancer and, unlike most other cancers, incidence of the disease is increasing. More than ...

Brown dwarfs are essentially failed stars: they lack enough mass for gravity to trigger the nuclear reactions that make stars shine. The newly discovered brown dwarf, identified as CFBDSIR 1458+10B, is the dimmer member of a binary brown dwarf system located just 75 light-years from Earth [1]. The powerful X-shooter spectrograph on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) was used to show that the composite object was very cool by brown dwarf standards. "We were very excited to see that this object had such a low temperature, but we couldn't have guessed that it would turn out ...

Smokers of mentholated cigarettes are no more likely to develop lung cancer than other smokers, according to a new, very large, prospective study of black and white smokers published online March 23 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. In fact, contrary to a popular hypothesis, menthol smokers in this study had a somewhat lower risk of developing and dying from lung cancer than non-menthol smokers. Lung cancer rates are higher among blacks than whites, and use of mentholated cigarettes, also higher among blacks, has been suggested as a possible explanation. ...

The latest clues suggesting potential new ways to treat melanoma come from an unlikely source: fish. Zebrafish don't get sunburns, but they can get skin cancer – at least those fish that have been engineered to model the often deadly human cancer. When Leonard Zon, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Children's Hospital Boston, developed this melanoma model five years ago, he hoped to use the tiny striped fish to discover new melanoma genes or new therapies for this aggressive cancer that consistently eludes treatment. Now, in work described in two papers ...

Scientists have unveiled the most comprehensive picture to date of the full genetic blueprint of multiple myeloma, a form of blood cancer. A study of the genomes from 38 cancer samples has yielded new and unexpected insights into the events that lead to this form of cancer and could influence the direction of multiple myeloma research. This work, led by scientists at the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, appears in the March 24 issue of Nature. Multiple myeloma is the second most common blood cancer in the United States and causes about 20,000 new cases ...

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, U.S.A. (March 24, 2011) — A pill taken once a day in the morning prevented type 2 diabetes in more than 70 percent of individuals whose obesity, ethnicity and other markers put them at highest risk for the disease, U.S. scientists reported today. The team also noted a 31 percent decrease in the rate of thickening of the carotid artery, the major vessel that supplies blood to the brain. The study, which enrolled 602 participants through The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio and seven collaborating centers, is described in the New ...