Body

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Older patients with diabetes who are not dealing well with the disease are likely to have symptoms of depression, and spouses of older patients also suffer distress related to diabetes and its management, according to research from Purdue University.

Most nature lovers know that the more colourful a male fish, reptile, or bird, the more likely it is to attract a female and to have healthy offspring. Females, on the other hand, tend to be drably coloured, perhaps to avoid predators while carrying, incubating, and caring for young.

War-time stress may lead to an increased risk death by coronary heart disease in later life. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Health Services Research surveyed a cohort of 55 year old Finnish WW2 veterans in 1980, and then carried out a follow-up study 28 years later.

New molecular evidence reveals a new species of grey wolf living in Africa. Formerly confused with golden jackals, and thought to be an Egyptian subspecies of jackal, the new African wolf shows that members of the grey wolf lineage reached Africa about 3 million years ago, before they spread throughout the northern hemisphere.

DALLAS – Jan. 26, 2011 – Type 1 diabetes could be converted to an asymptomatic, non-insulin-dependent disorder by eliminating the actions of a specific hormone, new findings by UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers suggest.

These findings in mice show that insulin becomes completely superfluous and its absence does not cause diabetes or any other abnormality when the actions of glucagon are suppressed. Glucagon, a hormone produced by the pancreas, prevents low blood sugar levels in healthy individuals. It causes high blood sugar in people with type 1 diabetes.

Professor Richard Watt and his chemistry students suspected that a common protein could potentially react with sunlight and harvest its energy – similar to what chlorophyll does during photosynthesis.

The story of how they proved it sounds as colorful as the legend of the leprechaun who hid his pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Plymouth, Mich. – January 26, 2011 – Lycera Corporation, a biopharmaceutical company pioneering an innovative approach to developing novel oral medicines to treat autoimmune diseases, today announced positive data from the University of Michigan demonstrating the role of bioenergetics in selectively inhibiting pathogenic lymphocytes while preserving and enhancing the normal immune system. The findings, published online today in Science Translational Medicine, support Lycera's promising novel therapeutic approach to treating a broad spectrum of immune diseases.

Cancer researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital (PMH) have discovered that targeting an enzyme called Uroporphyrinogen Decarboxylase (UROD) can sensitize diseased tissue to radiation and chemotherapy, which could mean fewer side effects for individuals with head and neck cancer.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine have found that particular strains of a food-borne bacteria are able to invade the heart, leading to serious and difficult-to-treat heart infections.

The study is available online in the Journal of Medical Microbiology.

One possible clue to the lack of structural rearrangement in orangutan DNA is a profound lack of repetitive "Alu" elements. These short stretches of DNA make up about 10 percent of the human genome and can pop up in unexpected places to create new mutations or genetic rearrangements.

HOUSTON -- (Jan. 27, 2011) – In the forests of Borneo and Sumatra, orangutans – the "men of the forest" in the language of Malaysia–swing among the trees, an endangered primate population so similar and yet different from man – and from each other, according to a recently published genome analysis of the two populations of orangutans still existing in the world.

The mechanism that controls the internal 24-hour clock of all forms of life from human cells to algae has been identified by scientists.

Not only does the research provide important insight into health-related problems linked to individuals with disrupted clocks – such as pilots and shift workers – it also indicates that the 24-hour circadian clock found in human cells is the same as that found in algae and dates back millions of years to early life on Earth.

The direct ancestors of orang-utans were once widely distributed in south-east Asia but the two modern orang-utan species are confined to the islands of Sumatra and Borneo. Both species are endangered, largely as a consequence of destruction of their rainforest habitat. The orang-utans are the only great apes that spend most of their time in trees. Nevertheless, the species share a number of features with other apes: they are adept in their use of tools and live in complex social groups that show evidence of cultural learning.

Northwestern University researchers have developed a new technique for rapidly prototyping nanoscale devices and structures that is so inexpensive the "print head" can be thrown away when done.

Hard-tip, soft-spring lithography (HSL) rolls into one method the best of scanning-probe lithography -- high resolution -- and the best of polymer pen lithography -- low cost and easy implementation.

January 26, 2011 – In a study published online today in Genome Research (www.genome.org), in coordination with the publication of the orangutan genome sequence, scientists have presented the surprising finding that although orangutans and humans are more distantly related, some regions of our genomes are more alike than those of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.