Body

Researchers at the University of Sheffield have discovered that cuckoo eggs are internally incubated by the female bird for up to 24 hours before birth, solving for the first time the mystery as to how a cuckoo chick is able to hatch in advance of a host's eggs and brutally evict them.

Published today (22 September 2010) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, the research shows that internal incubation allows the cuckoo chick to hatch before its nest mates, evict them, and monopolise the food brought by the foster parents.

If you are more inclined to love thyself than thy neighbor, it could be your mother's fault.

Those are the findings of Francisco Úbeda, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Taking part in sports is good all round for young teens: physically, socially, and mentally, according to a new study1 by Dr. Keith Zullig and Rebecca White from West Virginia University in the US. Their research shows that middle-school teenagers who are physically active and play on sports teams are more satisfied with their life and feel healthier. Zullig and White's paper is published online in Springer's journal Applied Research in Quality of Life.

Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and 50 other centers found that weight-based dosing of taribavirin reduces rates of anemia while increasing sustained virologic response (SVR) in patients with chronic hepatitis C (HCV). Full details of this study are available in the October issue of Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Spanish researchers have confirmed there is a genetic risk factor for osteoporosis and bone fractures. Although more studies are still needed, these findings will make it possible to take preventive measures.

The multi-welled microplate, long a standard tool in biomedical research and diagnostic laboratories, could become a thing of the past thanks to new electronic biosensing technology developed by a team of microelectronics engineers and biomedical scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

CRP is commonly used as a serum marker for inflammation or infection, but the genetic effects of CRP variants on acute-phase serum CRP concentrations in patients with rheumatoid arthritis may be large enough to have a clinically relevant impact on the assessment of inflammatory disease activity, which in turn may influence therapeutic decision making. Furthermore, failure to take into account the potential for genetic effects may result in the inappropriate reassurance or under-treatment of patients simply because they carry low-CRP associated genetic variants.

Regional efforts towards an AIDS vaccine must be strengthened and harmonized, says a new article in this week's PLoS Medicine Magazine. Yiming Shao from the National Center for AIDS/STD Control and Prevention in Beijing, China and colleagues from a range of Asian and international agencies announce the formation of AVAN—the AIDS Vaccine for Asia Network—that aims to strengthen its regional efforts in finding an AIDS vaccine.

Anti-malarial drugs are being used inappropriately for sick children in Zambia with fevers and difficulty breathing – a problem that can be addressed by arming community health workers with a simple rapid-diagnostic test and a supply of antibiotics, a study led by a team of Boston University School of Public Health [BUSPH] researchers has found.

Denver (September 21, 2010) – For decades scientists believed Neanderthals developed `modern' tools and ornaments solely through contact with Homo sapiens, but new research from the University of Colorado Denver now shows these sturdy ancients could adapt, innovate and evolve technology on their own.

The findings by anthropologist Julien Riel-Salvatore challenge a half-century of conventional wisdom maintaining that Neanderthals were thick-skulled, primitive `cavemen' overrun and outcompeted by more advanced modern humans arriving in Europe from Africa.

SALT LAKE CITY—Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah have discovered that a protein, zyxin, is necessary for the maintenance and repair of the cell's cytoskeleton, or internal framework, which serves as the muscle and bone of the cell. The research has implications for cancer, as well as other diseases, since alterations in the cytoskeleton are often associated with disease. The research was published in the Sep. 14, 2010, issue of the journal Developmental Cell.

Patients with mild to moderate heart failure who received educational materials and self-management counseling in an attempt to improve adherence to medical advice did not have a reduced rate of death or hospitalization compared to patients who received educational materials alone, according to a study in the September 22/29 issue of JAMA.

Among patients receiving immunosuppressive therapy for severe aplastic anemia (a condition in which the bone marrow is unable to produce blood cells), the length of telomeres (chromosome markers of biological aging) was not related to the response to treatment but was associated with a higher rate of relapse (return to low blood cell counts) and lower overall survival, according to a study in the September 22/29 issue of JAMA.

An inexpensive, hundred-year-old therapy for pain – aspirin – is effective in high doses for the treatment of severe headache and migraine caused by drug withdrawal, according to a new study by researchers with the UCSF Headache Center. Study participants were administered aspirin through an IV and 25 percent of the time they reported a significant reduction in pain – three points on the 10-point pain scale. (A difference of three points downgrades a headache from severe to moderate, moderate to mild, or from mild to pain-free).

PHILADELPHIA (September 21, 2010)—Molecularly targeted therapies can reduce tumors rapidly. However, not all tumors respond to the drugs, and even those that do often develop resistance over time. Looking for a way to combat the problem of resistance, researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center hypothesized that hitting already weakened cancer cells with a second targeted agent could kill them—but only if it was the right second agent.