Body

LA JOLLA, CA—Bony fish like the tiny zebrafish have a remarkable ability that mammals can only dream of: if you lop off a chunk of their heart they swim sluggishly for a few days but within a month appear perfectly normal. How they accomplish this — or, more importantly, why we can't — is one of the significant questions in regenerative medicine today.

The electronics can bend, stretch and twist. No small feat. Now the flexible and stretchable electronics can map waves of electrical activity in the heart with better resolution and speed than that of conventional cardiac monitoring technology.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Arrhythmic hearts soon may beat in time again, with minimal surgical invasion, thanks to flexible electronics technology developed by a team of University of Illinois researchers, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Northwestern University. These biocompatible silicon devices could mark the beginning of a new wave of surgical electronics.

PHILADELPHIA – A team of cardiologists, materials scientists, and bioengineers have created and tested a new type of implantable device for measuring the heart's electrical output that they say is a vast improvement over current devices. The new device represents the first use of flexible silicon technology for a medical application.

A method pioneered to find the genetic basis of human diseases also holds promise for locating the genes behind important traits in plants, according to a study published online March 24 by the journal Nature.

A large team led by biologists at the University of Southern California carried out what one author called "the first extensive use" of genome-wide association (GWA) in a plant species. The study located dozens of genes that may determine key traits such as flowering time and disease resistance.

A new study that provides a snapshot of a typical American workplace observed that chronic job stress and lack of physical activity are strongly associated with being overweight or obese.

Unexpectedly, researchers also found that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables did little to offset the effect of chronic job stress on weight gain among the employees, who were mostly sedentary. Instead, exercise seemed to be the key to managing stress and keeping a healthy weight.

New guidance to improve the reporting of trial findings is published simultaneously today (24 March 2010) by PLoS Medicine and eight other leading journals around the world, BMJ, The Lancet, Obstetrics & Gynecology, Annals of Internal Medicine, Open Medicine, Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, BMC Medicine, and Trials. Full and transparent reporting of trials is crucial to ensure that decisions about health care are based on the best available evidence.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Protein phosphorylation is a process by which proteins are flipped from one activation state to another. It is a crucial function for most living beings, since phosphorylation controls nearly every cellular process, including metabolism, gene transcription, cell-cycle progression, cytoskeletal rearrangement and cell movement.

Dolphins, whales and porpoises have extraordinarily small balance organs, and scientists have long wondered why.

Now a study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has contradicted a leading theory, which held that the animals moved their heads so vigorously that they had to have smaller, less responsive balance organs to avoid overwhelming their senses.

Some regions of the deep ocean floor support abundant populations of organisms, despite being overlain by water that contains very little oxygen, according to an international study led by scientists at the United Kingdom's National Oceanography Centre, Southampton. But global warming is likely to exacerbate oxygen depletion and thereby reduce biodiversity in these regions, they warn.

A short-term economic boom is not always a good thing for children in developing nations, according to a new study in the Journal of Political Economy. The study found that when Colombia's coffee trade suddenly booms, illness and mortality rates among children increase in coffee-producing counties.

PITTSBURGH, March 24 – An experimental vaccine against an abnormal protein found in some tumors has the potential to delay the onset of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and in turn prevent progression to colon cancer, according to researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. Their findings are reported this week in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Receiving soothing massages for eight weeks after the death of a loved one can provide much-needed consolation during an intense, stressful period of grieving, according to a study in the April issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing.

Eighteen people who had lost a relative to cancer took part in the study. Participants ranged from 34 to 78 years of age and included widows, widowers, daughters and sisters. Nine chose foot massage, eight chose hand massage and one asked for both. Only three had previous experience of soft tissue massage.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Lung transplant patients may one day benefit from a synthetic peptide that mimics the body's natural ability to reduce excess fluid accumulation, Medical College of Georgia researchers report.

Excess fluid and other problems that can occur within 72 hours of a transplant can dramatically reduce short-term survival odds and long-term lung function. About 10 percent of patients experience an acute lung injury in the hours after their transplant, killing more than 40 percent of those patients within 30 days.

NEW YORK, March 24, 2010 – Early-stage human clinical trials showed that a new topical drug was safe and had biological effects in a type of diabetic eye disease, and may offer researchers a new approach to prevent and treat diabetic macular edema.