Scientists trying to get a grip on the arms race between plant-eating insects and the defenses put up by their hosts just got a boost from new research by a University of Arizona entomologist published in the early view edition of Molecular Ecology. Noah Whiteman, an assistant professor in the UA's department of ecology and evolutionary biology, has found a miniature ecosystem consisting of a plant and a tiny fly that spends its entire life cycle on the plant. What makes this system special is the fact that both its key players – the plant and the insect – are what ...

1. Moderate Drinking Benefits Kidney Transplant Recipients Modest Amounts of Alcohol Prevent Diabetes and Premature Death Moderate alcohol consumption reduces one's risk for diabetes and premature death in the general population. To find if the same were true for stable kidney transplant recipients, Dorien Zelle (University Medical Center Groningen, the Netherlands) and her colleagues studied 600 renal transplant recipients who had their transplant more than one prior and followed them for several years post-transplant. Of these, 288 (48%) were abstainers, 94 (16%) ...

African Americans—along with some groups of Hispanics—have faster rates of decline in kidney function compared to white Americans, according to a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition. "Racial/ethnic differences are present early, before chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been established," comments Carmen A. Peralta, MD (University of California, San Francisco). Based on a large nationwide study of heart disease risk factors (the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis), the researchers analyzed data on ...

Among kidney disease patients, earlier care from a nephrologist is associated with a decreased likelihood of developing end-stage renal disease and a lower risk of death during the first year of dialysis, according to a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition. Although confirmatory studies are needed, increasing the number of patients who receive nephrologist treatment for advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) could have a substantial impact on the currently high U.S. ESRD rates as well as improve outcomes ...

Older adults with even mildly decreased levels of sodium in the blood (hyponatremia) experience increased rates of fractures and falls, according to a study presented at the American Society of Nephrology's 43rd Annual Meeting and Scientific Exposition. Falls are a serious health problem for the elderly and account for about 50 percent of deaths due to injury in the elderly. "Screening for a low sodium concentration in the blood, and treating it when present, may be a new strategy to prevent fractures," comments Ewout J. Hoorn, MD, PhD (Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, ...

1. Potassium Citrate May Help Prevent and Treat Osteoporosis Supplement Neutralizes Bone Damage Inflicted by the Western Diet The Western diet creates an acidic environment in the body that removes calcium from bones and may contribute to the development of osteoporosis. Healthy adults who consume the standard US diet sustain a chronic, low-grade state of acidosis that worsens with age as kidney function declines, limiting urinary acid excretion. Reto Krapf, MD (University of Basel, in Bruderholz/Basel, Switzerland) and colleagues designed a study to see if daily alkali ...

LOS ANGELES (Nov. 19, 2010) – In a study of more than 4,500 children, researchers found those with higher waist circumferences had significantly higher pulse pressures, which is known to increase the risk of heart-related disorders, according to an abstract presented today at the American Society of Nephrology's Renal Week conference in Denver. Gangadarshni Chandramohan, MD, a researcher at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA BioMed) and the lead author of the abstract, said the research team studied data from 4,667 children aged ...

Moderate to severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may be an auto-immunity problem, according to researchers in Spain, who studied the presence of auto-antibodies in patients with COPD and compared them to levels of control subjects. They found that a significant number of patients with COPD had significant levels of auto-antibodies circulating in their blood, about 5 to 10 times the level in controls. The findings were published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. "We ...

TORONTO, Nov. 19, 2010--For every one person in Canada who is homeless, another 23 live in unsafe, crowded or unaffordable housing, meaning the country's housing crisis is even worse than previously thought, according to Dr. Stephen Hwang of St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Those "vulnerably housed" people have the same severe health problems and dangers of assault as homeless people, said Hwang, principal investigator of a new report on housing and health issues in Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa. "The key point is that Canada needs a national housing strategy," ...

Eating five portions of fruit and vegetables per day is one of the means that experts most frequently recommend for preventing cancer. Now, the European EPIC study carried out by researchers from 10 countries has shown that, in the case of lung cancer, the important thing is not just the quantity but also the variety of fruit consumed, which can reduce the risk by up to 23%. "This research looks more deeply into the relationship between diet and lung cancer", María José Sánchez Pérez, co-author of the study and director of the Granada Cancer Registry at the Andalusian ...

Researchers from Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), and other universities have published a special section in the journal Ecological Economics that analyzes the link between ecological economics and political ecology. This issue stems from the institute's research on impacts and resistance at the "commodity frontiers", where the extraction of natural resources and the disposal of toxic wastes produce a range of economic, environmental, cultural and social conflicts. The special issue, titled Social Metabolism, ...

Researchers from the University of Southampton have helped construct an online interactive world map which gives stark facts and figures about the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and following the birth of their child. Social scientists Professor Zoë Matthews and Dr Sarah Neal are working in collaboration with the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood and the University of Aberdeen on a joint project worth in excess of £160,000 called 'The Atlas of Birth', which also includes a book, short film and flyers. "We are using data from the United Nations ...

For the first time, there is no need to chemically fix, stain or cut cells in order to study them. Instead, whole living cells are fast-frozen and studied in their natural environment. The new method delivers an immediate 3-D image, thereby closing a gap between conventional microscopic techniques. The new microscope delivers a high-resolution 3-D image of the entire cell in one step. This is an advantage over electron microscopy, in which a 3-D image is assembled out of many thin sections. This can take up to weeks for just one cell. Also, the cell need not be labelled ...

Scientists at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia have identified both common and rare gene variants associated with the eating disorder anorexia nervosa. In the largest genetic study of this psychiatric disorder, the researchers found intriguing clues to genes they are subjecting to further investigation, including genes active in neuronal signaling and in shaping interconnections among brain cells. Anorexia nervosa (AN) affects an estimated 9 in 1000 women in the United States. Patients have food refusal, weight loss, an irrational fear of weight gain even when ...

Boston, Mass. – Although people infected with HIV produce many antibodies against the protein encapsulating the virus, most of these antibodies are strangely ineffective at fighting the disease. A new study suggests why some of the most common of these antibodies don't work: they target the protein in a form it takes after the virus has already invaded the cell, when it's too late, report researchers at Children's Hospital Boston and their colleagues. The findings, published online Nov. 14 in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, refocus attention on the ...

MONTREAL, CANADA - November 19, 2010 - Data presented today from a pivotal, phase III randomized clinical trial for patients with recurrent glioblastoma tumors suggest that Tumor Treating Fields (TTF) therapy may increase median survival time and improve quality of life scores compared to best standard of care chemotherapy. Professor Zvi Ram, chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, presented the data at the Society for Neuro-Oncology (SNO) Annual Scientific Meeting. Physicians delivered the investigational TTF therapy to patients ...

New Rochelle, NY, November 19, 2010—Mounting evidence linking childhood obesity to an increasing risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and other cardiovascular and metabolic disorders in adulthood is clearly presented in a comprehensive review article in the current issue of Childhood Obesity, published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The article is available free online. Authors Megan Moriarty-Kelsey, MD and Stephen Daniels, MD, PhD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, caution that the rising prevalence of obesity in children will ...

An old pinworm medicine is a new lead in the search for compounds that block a signaling pathway implicated in colon cancer. The findings, reported by Vanderbilt University Medical Center researchers in the November issue of Nature Chemical Biology, suggest a fresh approach for developing therapeutics that target the pathway. More than 90 percent of sporadic (non-inherited) colon cancers – the second deadliest type of cancer in the developed world – are caused by mutations that result in inappropriate activation of the Wnt (pronounced "wint") signaling pathway. Blocking ...

JUPITER, FL, November 19, 2010 – Scientists from the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute have identified a novel synthetic activator of a pair of proteins that belong to a protein family playing key roles in human metabolism and immune function. The discovery could provide new and potentially more effective therapeutic approaches to diseases ranging from diabetes to osteoporosis. The study was published in the November issue (Volume 5, Issue 11) of the journal ACS Chemical Biology. "This new compound is particularly important because it works in vivo, ...

FORT COLLINS - In the last 50 years, modern medicine has made astounding advances in surgery, yet many of today's veterinary and human medicine students still hone basic surgical and suturing skills on carpet pads and pig's feet before transitioning to a live patient. An invention by Colorado State University veterinarians provides students with artificial body parts that look, feel, behave, and even bleed just like real skin, muscles and vessels. The artificial replicas of sections of human and animal bodies -- such as an abdominal wall -- give students a realistic learning ...

HOUSTON, Nov. 19, 2010 – University of Houston (UH) physicists are using complex computer simulations to illuminate the workings of a crucial protein that, when malfunctioning, may cause Alzheimer's and cancer. Margaret Cheung, assistant professor of physics at UH, and Antonios Samiotakis, a physics Ph.D. student, described their findings in a paper titled "Structure, function, and folding of phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) are strongly perturbed by macromolecular crowding," published in a recent issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, one ...

Researchers in the United States have developed a medical model for regenerating bladders using stem cells harvested from a patient's own bone marrow. The research, published in STEM CELLS, is especially relevant for paediatric patients suffering from abnormally developed bladders, but also represents another step towards new organ replacement therapies. The research, led by Dr Arun Sharma and Earl Cheng from the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University and Children's Memorial Research Center, focused on bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) taken from ...

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The first study to ever explore biological activity in the deepest layer of ocean crust has found bacteria with a remarkable range of capabilities, including eating hydrocarbons and natural gas, and "fixing" or storing carbon. The research, just published in the journal PLoS One, showed that a significant number and amount of bacterial forms were present, even in temperatures near the boiling point of water. "This is a new ecosystem that almost no one has ever explored," said Martin Fisk, a professor in the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences ...

COLLEGE STATION - Functional amino acids play a critical role in the development of both animals and humans, according to a Texas AgriLife Research scientist. In a journal article appearing in the American Society for Nutrition (Advances in Nutrition 1:31-37, 2010), Dr. Guoyao Wu, AgriLife Research animal nutritionist and senior faculty fellow in the department of animal science at Texas A&M University, calls for scientists to "think out of the box" and place more emphasis on this area of study. "We need to move forward and capitalize on the potential of functional ...

Though it's been at least a billion years since plants and animals shared a common ancestor, they have through the eons shared a common threat in the form of microbes, including bacteria, eukaryotes and viruses. This has resulted in remarkably similar mechanisms for detecting the molecular signatures of infectious organisms that hold promise for the future treatment of infectious diseases in humans. The recognition of microbial signature molecules by host receptors is the subject of a paper published in the journal Science titled "Plant and Animal Sensors of Conserved ...