Body

An experimental vaccine developed to prevent outbreaks of Marburg hemorrhagic fever continues to show promise in monkeys as an emergency treatment for accidental exposures to the virus that causes the disease. There is no licensed treatment for Marburg infection, which has a high fatality rate.

The world is a cooler, wetter place because of flowering plants, according to new climate simulation results published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The effect is especially pronounced in the Amazon basin, where replacing flowering plants with non-flowering varieties would result in an 80 percent decrease in the area covered by ever-wet rainforest.

Researchers at National Jewish Health and the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus have identified the precise protein fragment, or peptide, that can trigger diabetes in mice. The finding, published in the June 15, 2010, issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, supports an emerging theory about the origins of autoimmunity, and may lead to new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies in humans.

Montreal, June 16, 2010 – A team of researchers from the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) of the Université de Montréal have defined for the first time the mechanism behind three cancer-causing genes in acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Published in the journal Genes and Development, the findings offer insight on the complex interaction between the genes and their contributions to leukemia, thereby providing the foundation for the design of targeted therapies.

In an effort to assess ties between birds' feeding habits and the spread of nonnative invasive plants, researchers provided ornithologists from four U.S. states with questionnaires on daily bird-plant encounters. The 1,143 unique interactions reported by the birders laid the groundwork for a study on the role of native birds in the seed dispersal of invasive plants throughout the U.S.

An international team of researchers led by scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech have sequenced the genome of an Amerindian strain of the gastric bug Helicobacter pylori, confirming the out-of-Africa migration of this bacterial stowaway to the New World. Experiments in animals have highlighted how specific genes in the bacterial strain may be crucial to the onset of inflammation and disease.

Wild potato germplasm that offers resistance to some major potato diseases has been identified by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists.

Geneticists Dennis Halterman and Shelley Jansky pinpointed the resistant wild potato species in studies at the ARS Vegetable Crops Research Unit in Madison, Wis.

Exposure to chemical pollutants is of growing concern to regulators, health workers, and environmentalist groups alike. Now, researchers in the US and Russia have demonstrated that samples of human bone can act as a biological marker for dozens of metals and toxic elements across the periodic table. They describe details in a study published in the International Journal of Environment and Health.

College Park, MD (June 17, 2010) -- "Robust" is an adjective appreciatively applied to certain vintage wines, but when describing viruses and pathogens, robustness is a property that may be much less desirable. It evokes drug resistant microbes and other superbugs that can wreak havoc as researchers struggle to deal with new pandemics. How can we undercut this robustness?

Low-salt foods may be harder for some people to like than others, according to a study by a Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences food scientist. The research indicates that genetics influence some of the difference in the levels of salt we like to eat.

Those conclusions are important because recent, well-publicized efforts to reduce the salt content in food have left many people struggling to accept fare that simply does not taste as good to them as it does to others, pointed out John Hayes, assistant professor of food science, who was lead investigator on the study.

KNOXVILLE -- How do we begin to understand what early life was like on Earth about 700 million years ago as our planet shifted from an oxygen-free and probably ice-covered realm to the oxygen-rich world that we know today?

There is no evidence that the common practice of giving patients oxygen to inhale during a heart attack is beneficial, according to a new Cochrane Systematic Review. Until further research is carried out, the researchers say the possibility that giving oxygen may actually increase a patient's risk of dying cannot be ruled out.

Women who have had intrauterine devices (IUDs) fitted as contraceptives are less likely to become pregnant than those who have hormone injections, a new review by Cochrane Researchers has found. The review, which focused on women in developing countries, also found a possible link between contraceptive method and disease progression in HIV.

Being obese impacts on sexual health according to research published on bmj.com today.

Inbred male sperm have been found to fertilise fewer eggs when in competition with non-inbred males according to a new study by the University of East Anglia.

Research into the breeding habits of the red flour beetle, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that the reduced fitness of inbred beetles, known as 'inbreeding depression', reveals itself in competitive scenarios.