Body

Philadelphia, PA, May 4, 2010 – High altitude medicine is a "natural research laboratory" for the study of cardiovascular physiology and pathophysiology. As such, it can shed light on conditions and diseases that mimic the low oxygen content of the atmosphere at the top of mountains.

Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists have identified sources of genetic resistance to sheath blight, a major disease affecting rice production worldwide.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – New research suggests that Charles Darwin's family was a living human example of a theory that he developed about plants: that inbreeding could negatively affect the health and number of resulting offspring.

DURHAM, N.C. – DNA testing of garden ferns sold at plant nurseries in North Carolina, Texas, and California has found that plants marketed as American natives may actually be exotic species from other parts of the globe.

The finding relied on a new technique called "DNA barcoding" that uses small snippets of DNA to distinguish between species, in much the same way that a supermarket scanner uses the black lines in a barcode to identify cans of soup or boxes of cereal.

By the time they reach school age, one in 20 children have hearing loss in one ear. That can raise significant hurdles for these children, say the results of a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, because loss of hearing in one ear hurts their ability to comprehend and use language.

URBANA – In the race to find answers about ovarian cancer, researchers now have something to cluck about. For five years, University of Illinois researchers have been using the chicken as a model to study this deadly disease and have recently discovered that a diet enriched with flaxseed decreases severity of ovarian cancer and increases survival in hens.

A medication most often used to treat heart arrhythmias also reduces a central symptom of myotonic dystrophy, the most common type of muscular dystrophy in adults.

The findings about the medication mexiletine – a chemical cousin of lidocaine – were published May 4 in the journal Neurology, a publication of the American Academy of Neurology.

AMES, Iowa - Using technology available through a local company, an Iowa State University researcher is working on a faster method to detect and genetically identify salmonella from contaminated foods.

In people with insulin resistance or full-blown diabetes, an inability to keep blood sugar levels under control isn't the only problem by far. A new report in the May issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, shows that our arteries suffer the effects of insulin resistance, too, just for entirely different reasons.

"We think about insulin resistance in liver, muscle, and fat, but insulin also works on vascular cells," said Christian Rask-Madsen of the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston.

Type 2 diabetes is a widespread problem for many people these days, and our risk for insulin resistance and diabetes only grows as we age. Now, a new report in the May issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, reveals a new contributor to the problem: The muscles of elderly people and of people with type 2 diabetes contain lower concentrations of a protein known as PARL (short for "presenilin-associated rhomboid-like").

CINCINNATI—The popular diabetes medication metformin works in different fashion than the current widely accepted view. This new finding could lead to wider use of the drug—particularly in people with cancer and diseases linked to TSC deficiency like tuberous sclerosis and lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM).

The results of this study, led by George Thomas, PhD, scientific director of UC's Metabolic Diseases Institute, are published in the May 5 edition of Cell Metabolism.

URBANA – New treatments for intestinal failure and other intestinal absorption disorders are a step closer to the patients who need them after a discovery in Kelly Tappenden's University of Illinois laboratory.

NEW ORLEANS, LA (May 4, 2010) – Rates of colorectal cancer screening vary by race and ethnicity as well as method, according to data being presented at Digestive Disease Week® (DDW®) 2010. Scientists examine data on minority and older populations as well as utilization rates of virtual and optical colonoscopies to better understand adherence to recommended screening guidelines. DDW is the largest international gathering of physicians and researchers in the field of gastroenterology, hepatology, endoscopy and gastrointestinal surgery.

The UK trawl fishing fleet has to work 17 times harder to catch the same amount of fish today as it did when most of its boats were powered by sail, according to new research.

Researchers from the University of York and the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) used UK Government data on the amount of fish caught and the size and number of boats involved – the fleet's fishing power – to analyse the change in fish stocks since 1889.