Body

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Although it looks small and unassuming, the tiny origami crane sitting in a sample dish in University of Illinois professor Jennifer Lewis' lab heralds a new method for creating complex three-dimensional structures for biocompatible devices, microscaffolding and other microsystems. The penny-sized titanium bird began as a printed sheet of titanium hydride ink.

The team will publish their novel technique in the April 14 online edition of the journal Advanced Materials.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An international team of Oregon State University scientists, documentary filmmakers and environmental advocates has uncovered an apparent illegal trade in whalemeat, linking whales killed in Japan's controversial scientific whaling program to sushi restaurants in Seoul, South Korea, and Los Angeles, Calif.

In countries and states that have introduced policies that restrict smoking in public, people have less exposure to secondhand smoke. There is also a reduction in the number of people who have heart attacks, as well as an improvement in other indicators of health. These findings are reported in a new review published in the April issue of The Cochrane Library.

Despite wide acclaim as a successful policy there is currently almost no quantitative evidence showing how well spraying the walls of people's homes with mosquito-killing insecticide really works against malaria. This is the key finding of a new Cochrane Systematic Review.

Obese women who undergo bariatric surgery before having a baby have a much lower risk of developing serious health problems during pregnancy, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

CHICAGO (April 13, 2010) – The human mouth is home to an estimated 800 to 1,000 different kinds of bacteria. The warm and moist environment, along with hard tooth surfaces and soft tissues, prove to be optimal factors in boosting germ growth. Many of these bacteria are harmful and can form a film on teeth called "dental plaque," which causes cavities, gingivitis and eventually more severe kinds of gum disease.

Researchers have made a further step toward understanding sleeping sickness – a chronic disease caused by Trypanosoma parasites, which affect the human central nervous system. The team have generated a high-quality draft genome sequence for the strain of Trypanosoma brucei that is responsible for almost all reported cases of human African trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness.

The study is published on April 13 in the open access journal, PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The American Medical Association's (AMA) Council on Science and Public Health's recently released report "The use of hormones for "anti-aging": a review of efficacy and safety," has caused a leading medical authority to criticize the use of anti-aging hormones. Dr. Thomas T. Perls, an associate professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine has long spoken out against the promotion and distribution of growth hormones for non-medical uses such as anti-aging and sports. In an editorial appearing in the Future Medicine journal Aging Health, Dr.

A routine screening test for several metabolic and genetic disorders in newborns, the heel-stick procedure, is not effective in screening for cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, a leading cause of hearing loss in children, according to research published in the April 14 online issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

About 20,000-30,000 infants are born infected with CMV each year, 10-15 percent of whom are at risk for eventually developing hearing loss.

DNA analysis of dried blood samples routinely collected from newborns did not effectively identify an infection that is a major cause of hearing loss in children, according to a study in the April 14 issue of JAMA.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Researchers have identified a self-feeding "vicious circle" of molecules that keeps acute leukemia cells alive and growing and that drives the disease forward.

The findings suggest a new strategy for treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML), one that targets this molecular network and lowers the amount of a protein called KIT, say researchers at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC-James) who conducted the study.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Scientists here are taking the trial and error out of drug design by using powerful computers to identify molecular structures that have the highest potential to serve as the basis for new medications.

Most drugs are designed to act on proteins that somehow malfunction in ways that lead to damage and disease in the body. The active ingredient in these medicines is typically a single molecule that can interact with a protein to stop its misbehavior.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- As the Internet spreads across the globe, countries don't necessarily need democracy to join the online community, a new study from Ohio State University has found.

Rather, social factors such as population growth and violent conflict are much more important -- and capitalism trumps them all.

Scientists at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) and the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech have used high-performance computing to locate small genes that have been missed by scientists in their quest to define the microbial DNA sequences of life. Using an ephemeral supercomputer made up of computers from across the world, the mpiBLAST computational tool used by the researchers took only 12 hours instead of the 90 years it would have required if the work were performed on a standard personal computer.

Working in a rare, "natural seafloor laboratory" of hydrothermal vents that had just been rocked by a volcanic eruption, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other institutions have discovered what they believe is an undersea superhighway.

This superhighway carries tiny life forms unprecedented distances to inhabit the post-eruption site.

One such "pioneer species," Ctenopelta porifera, appears to have traveled more than 300 kilometers to settle at the site on the underwater mountain range known as the East Pacific Rise.