Body

It may soon be possible to identify patients who will develop tuberculosis, as scientists have identified changes in the blood specific to the disease. These findings are from an international study published in the August 19 issue of Nature and conducted by doctors and researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital using blood profiling techniques to understand infections.

PULLMAN, Wash. — An international team of scientists from Italy, France, New Zealand, Belgium and the USA have published a draft sequence of the domestic apple genome in the current issue of Nature Genetics.

The availability of a genome sequence for apple will allow scientists to more rapidly identify which genes provide desirable characteristics to the fruit and which genes and gene variants provide disease or drought resistance to the plant. This information can be used to rapidly improve the plants through more informed selective breeding.

A world-wide collaboration of researchers has identified the first-ever genetic risk factor associated with common types of migraine. The researchers, who looked at the genetic data of more than 50,000 people, have produced new insights into the triggers for migraines attacks and they hope their research will open the door for novel therapeutics to prevent migraine attacks.

A team of researchers led by Dr. Hernán Makse, professor of physics at The City College of New York (CCNY), has shed new light on the way that information and infectious diseases proliferate across complex networks. Writing in Nature Physics, they report that, contrary to conventional wisdom, persons with the most connections are not necessarily the best spreaders.

New findings by McMaster University researchers contradict earlier reports that people with a certain genetic make-up don't benefit from the blood-thinner clopidogrel, also known as Plavix.

After researchers from the United States, France and Germany reported clopidogrel is less effective in some patients, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the United States issued a black box warning to physicians on the drug's package insert.

Wheat production world-wide is under threat from climate change and an increase in demand from a growing human population. Liverpool scientists, in collaboration with the University of Bristol and the John Innes Centre, have sequenced the entire wheat genome and will make the DNA data available to crop breeders to help them select key agricultural traits for breeding.

SAN ANTONIO (Aug. 26, 2010) - Maybe you worshipped the sun in your youth or weren't as meticulous as you should have been with sunscreen. If so, take heart: Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio are finding that certain plant substances, when given in combinations, may suppress damage that can cause skin cancer.

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 27 – Mothers who did not breastfeed their children have significantly higher rates of type 2 diabetes later in life than moms who breastfed, report University of Pittsburgh researchers in a study published in the September issue of the American Journal of Medicine.

The number of children admitted to English hospitals with bacterial pneumonia decreased by a fifth in the two years following the introduction of a vaccine to combat the disease, according to a new study published today in the journal Thorax.

Bacterial pneumonia is a serious illness caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae bacteria that mostly affects babies, young children and elderly people. In Europe, around one in ten deaths in the under-fives is caused by the disease.

Seoul, Korea, 25 August 2010. Almost half the agricultural land in the world, about a billion hectares, has more than 10 percent tree cover, but there is still huge potential to increase the number of trees on farmland and improve their productivity. Incorporating trees within farming landscapes, or agroforestry, can increase soil fertility, raise and sustain yields, increase income through the sale of timber and other tree products, and produce fodder and fuelwood.

Jianchu Xu, East-Asia Coordinator for the World Agroforestry Centre, which has been providing technical expertise and training for the project since 2008, said agroforestry – in this case the growing of trees on sloping land - is uniquely suited to DPR Korea for addressing food security and protecting the environment.

"What we have managed to achieve so far has had a dramatic impact on people's lives and the local environment," Jianchu explains.

One of the most spectacular migrations on Earth is that of the Christmas Island red crab (Gecarcoidea natalis). Acknowledged as one of the wonders of the natural world, every year millions of the crabs simultaneously embark on a five-kilometre breeding migration. Now, scientists have discovered the key to their remarkable athletic feat.

Westminster, Colo. (August 27, 2010) – Although having a high body mass index (BMI) is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, researchers are only beginning to understand how BMI affects the physiological processes involved in the development of the disease. Now, a study of a subset of women in the Kronos Early Estrogen Prevention Study (KEEPS), suggests that as BMI increases, so do platelet reactivity and thrombogenic microvesicles and activated protein C in the blood—all of which contribute to the formation of atherothrombosis and associated cardiovascular events.

Fertilizer chemicals may pose a bigger hazard to the environment – specifically to creatures that live in water – than originally foreseen, according to new research from North Carolina State University toxicologists.

In a study published in the Aug. 27 edition of PLoS One, the NC State researchers show that water fleas take up nitrates and nitrites – common chemicals used primarily in agriculture as fertilizers – and convert those chemicals into nitric oxide. Nitric oxide can be toxic to many organisms.