Body

The separation of Neardenthal and Homo sapiens might have occurred at least one million years ago, more than 500,000 years earlier than previously believed, according to new DNA-based analyses, says a doctoral thesis conducted at the National Center for Research on Human Evolution (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana)associated with the University of Granada. The researchers analyzed the teeth of almost all species of hominids that have existed during the past 4 million years.

HOBOKEN, N.J. (June 23, 2010) – An estimated 60 million people in the U.S. are affected by allergic rhinitis, commonly known as hay fever, according to the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology. Hay fever is an allergic inflammation of the nasal airways that causes itching, swelling, mucus production, hives and rashes. A study published in the June 14, 2010 issue of Phytotherapy Research demonstrates Pycnogenol® (pic-noj-en-all), an antioxidant plant extract derived from the bark of the French maritime pine tree, substantially improves the symptoms of hay fever.

The evolution of bird bills is related to climate according to latest research by the University of Melbourne, Australia and Brock University, Canada.

By examining bill sizes of a diverse range of bird species around the world, researchers have found that birds with larger bills tend to be found in hot environments, whilst birds in colder environments have evolved smaller bills.

Ensuring the optimum radiation dose on the same day as the brachytherapy implant in prostate cancer treatment manages to control the illness in about 95% of the cases. This is the result of research undertaken at the University Hospital of Navarre and published in the latest issue of Brachytherapy, journal of the American Society of Brachytherapy.

As is known, brachytherapy is a radiotherapy treatment involving the insertion of radioactive sources within or near the tumour.

Researchers have developed an experimental cure for Type 1 diabetes, a disease that affects about one in every 400 to 600 children and adolescents. They will present their results in a mouse model of Type 1 diabetes on Sunday at The Endocrine Society's 92nd Annual Meeting in San Diego.

London (June 23, 2010) – Athletes have been enjoying the benefits of creatine supplements to gain stronger muscles since the 1990s, and the supplement has also proven beneficial among other groups. Could it help cardiac patients regain strength to help with their heart-training workouts as part of rehabilitation? The evidence at this stage suggests not - exercise alone proved a far more powerful tonic for patients in a study out today. The results appear in the journal Clinical Rehabilitation, published by SAGE.

LOS ANGELES (June 23, 2010) – Researchers looking for the first time at how migraine sufferers experience the stigmatizing effects of their disease show that chronic migraine sufferers experience worse stigma than episodic migraine sufferers and more than those with other neurological diseases including stroke, epilepsy and MS.

LOS ANGELES (June 23, 2010) – Reporting at the American Headache Society's 52nd Annual Scientific Meeting in Los Angeles this week, new research shows that sleep deprivation leads to changes in the levels of key proteins that facilitate events involved in the underlying pathology of migraine.

Paul L. Dunham, Ph.D. and his team at Missouri State University's Center for Biomedical & Life Sciences sought to understand the mechanisms by which sleep disturbance increases the risk of migraine and may even trigger migraine.

Fighting, paternity tests and infidelity. No, not a daytime talk show, but the results of new research examining why the fur will fly if a four-striped grass mouse (Rhabdomys pumilio) wanders into his neighbour's territory. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Frontiers in Zoology investigated aggression in the mammalian species, finding that breeding males are much more concerned with repelling their neighbours than with defending their partners from complete strangers.

Consumers shouldn't assume that, because a product is organic, it's also environmentally friendly. A new University of Guelph study reveals some 'organic' pesticides have a higher environmental impact than conventional pesticides because the organic product may require larger doses.

Environmental sciences professor Rebecca Hallett and PhD candidate Christine Bahlai compared the effectiveness and environmental impact of organic pesticides to those of conventional and novel reduced-risk synthetic products on soybean crops.

For individuals 65 years of age and older, obesity, excess body fat around the waist and gaining weight after the age of 50 are associated with an increased risk of diabetes, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA.

A large, systematic postmortem study carried out in South Africa by Ted Cohen and colleagues has revealed that 94% of deceased patients were HIV infected and 50% had culture-positive tuberculosis at the time of death. These data, which reveal that the toll of tuberculosis in young people (age 20-45) in KwaZulu-Natal is higher than we previously thought, are published this week in the open access medical journal PLoS Medicine.

PITTSBURGH, June 22 – Two new approaches could form the basis for the first-ever human vaccine for Rift Valley Fever (RVF), an infectious disease that threatens both farm animals and people, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Vaccine Research. Reported in this week's PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, experimental vaccines developed with these approaches produced strong immune responses in mice and may be safer than the only available RVF vaccine, which is limited to animal use.

A greater frequency of severe sepsis among black patients is attributable to higher rates of infection and higher risks of organ dysfunction than what white patients experience, according to a study in the June 23/30 issue of JAMA.