Body

In a lecture he delivered in 1906, the German physician Paul Ehrlich coined the term Zuberkugel, or "magic bullet," as shorthand for a highly targeted medical treatment.

Magic bullets, also called silver bullets, because of the folkloric belief that only silver bullets can kill supernatural creatures, remain the goal of drug development efforts today.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision. The finding is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology.

Hydra are simple animals that, along with jellyfish, belong to the phylum cnidaria. Cnidarians first emerged 600 million years ago.

New findings that shed light on how genetic damage to muscle cell proteins can lead to the development of the rare muscle-wasting disease, nemaline myopathy, are reported today (15 March) in the Biochemical Journal.

Professor Laura Machesky and colleagues from the CRUK Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, tested cultures of muscle cells that displayed mutations of the ACTA1 gene to determine how the mutations affected the biochemical pathways leading to the muscle damage seen in nemaline myopathy.

The American Thoracic Society has released a new official clinical policy statement on congenital central hypoventilation syndrome (CCHS), a disorder of respiratory and autonomic nervous system (ANS) regulation. The ANS regulates reflexive acts, including heart rate and blood pressure, digestion, body temperature and pain perception.

The statement appears in the March 15, 2010 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– By studying the hydra, a member of an ancient group of sea creatures that is still flourishing, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have made a discovery in understanding the origins of human vision. The finding is published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British journal of biology.

Hydra are simple animals that, along with jellyfish, belong to the phylum cnidaria. Cnidarians first emerged 600 million years ago.

HAMILTON, CANADA: MARCH 11, 2010 –If you're the type of person who invokes the "not enough time" clause when it comes to exercising, it's time to find a new excuse. Researchers who have been studying interval training have found that it not only takes less time than what is typically recommended, but the regimen does not have to be "all out" to be effective in helping reduce the risk of such diseases at Type 2 diabetes.

The study appears in the March issue of The Journal of Physiology.

Blind scorpions that live in the stygian depths of caves are throwing light on a long-held assumption that specialized adaptations are irreversible evolutionary dead-ends. According to a new phylogenetic analysis of the family Typhlochactidae, scorpions currently living closer to the surface (under stones and in leaf litter) evolved independently on more than one occasion from ancestors adapted to life further below the surface (in caves). The research, currently available in an early online edition, will be published in the April issue of Cladistics.

The reluctance of securities analysts to recommend investment in veteran companies using new techniques to grapple with radical technological change may be harming these companies as they struggle to compete, according to a new study in the current issue of Organization Science, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®).

Telemonitoring may reduce the mortality of patients with heart failure by 20%. Silke Schmidt et al. present their study results in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[8]131-8).

Sexual problems are frequent after operations for carcinoma of the rectum. Christian Schmidt et al. describe the consequences for quality of life in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[8]: 123-30).

UCSF scientists have discovered how a mutated gene known as Kras is able to hijack mouse cells damaged by acute pancreatitis, putting them on the path to becoming pancreatic cancer cells.

A team of engineers from the CEIT-IK4 technological centre and doctors from the University Hospital of Navarra have designed a new tool for operating on the inner ear with maximum precision, reducing the possibility of damage to the auditory function during the surgery. This is the first micromanipulator specifically for operations involving cochlear and middle ear implants, of which about a hundred are carried out in this hospital annually.

The secret world of inflammation is slowly being revealed by the application of advanced techniques in microscopy, as shown in a study published March 12 in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens. Researchers at the Hull York Medical School and the University of York used 2-photon microscopy to identify how killer T lymphocytes behaved when they enter sites of inflammation caused by the parasite Leishmania donovani, and which infected cells they were able to recognise.

New research reveals Small Colony Variants (SCVs) of P. aeruginosa to be a hallmark of chronic infection in cystic fibrosis (CF) patients. Results, published March 12th in the open-access journal PLoS Pathogens, suggest that SCV-mediated persistence might be a good target for antimicrobial chemotherapy.

More high risk cases of human papilloma virus (HPV) could be detected by offering home testing kits to women who do not come forward for cervical screening, according to research published on bmj.com today.

While cervical cancer screening programmes in Western countries have contributed to a decrease in deaths from cervical cancer, one of the major drawbacks remains the number of women who do not come forwards for smears.