Body

A shipment of seed sent by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) earlier this month to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway included a wild Russian strawberry that an expeditionary team braved bears and volcanoes to collect.

When cells move about in the body, they follow a complex pattern similar to that which amoebae and bacteria use when searching for food, a team of Vanderbilt researchers have found.

In the far northern reaches of the Arctic, day versus night often doesn't mean a whole lot. During parts of the year, the sun does not set; at other times, it's just the opposite. A new study reported online on March 11th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, shows that Arctic reindeer have come up with a solution to living under those extreme conditions: They've abandoned use of the internal clock that drives the daily biological rhythms in other organisms.

PITTSBURGH, March 12 – Repair proteins appear to efficiently scan the genome for errors by jumping like fleas between DNA molecules, sliding along the strands, and perhaps pausing at suspicious spots, say researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Essex and the University of Vermont who tagged the proteins with quantum dots to watch the action unfold. The findings are available today in Molecular Cell.

Diabetics, under the gun to better manage their disease by controlling their food intake and weight, may find themselves in the sticky wicket of needing treatment that makes them hungry, researchers said.

Attempts to maintain healthy blood sugar levels and prevent weight gain may suggest an eating disorder when the disease and its treatment are to blame, said Dr. Deborah Young-Hyman, pediatric psychologist at the Medical College of Georgia's Georgia Prevention Institute.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest syndrome (SCA) is poorly understood, but it's a real danger for the otherwise young and healthy. For no apparent reason, the heart suddenly stops beating, and without treatment death may follow within minutes. It's why some athletes drop dead on the track and why a young man, without any warning, suddenly dies while sitting at his desk. SCA accounts for approximately 300,000 deaths per year in the U.S.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – While there are many benefits of losing weight, weight reduction also might negatively affect bones in the body. During weight loss, bones are being remodeled - breaking down old bone and forming new bone - at an accelerated rate. As a result, bone density is reduced, causing increased fragility. In a new study, University of Missouri researchers found that weight-bearing exercise, in this case, fast walking or jogging, did not prevent the increased bone turnover caused by weight loss.

French medical researchers from the AP-HP (Henri Mondor Hospital and Avicenne Hospital) and Inserm (Unit 738 "Models and methods for therapeutic evaluation of chronic illnesses" and CIC 202, at Tours) have recently demonstrated the effectiveness of a new molecule in the fight against lice. Faced with the emergence of increasing resistance to conventional treatments by these parasites, this new medication represents a real therapeutic alternative which is effective in 95% of cases.

MANHASSET, NY – An experimental thyroid drug reduces cholesterol without the troublesome side effects experienced by some people on statins, according to a study published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. An international team of investigators at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, the Karolinska University Hospital and Institute, and The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research tested a substance called Eprotirome in patients with high cholesterol.

Medical Research Council (MRC) scientists at the University of Leicester have made a new advance in understanding how the body fights certain types of cancer and other disease such as Lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

Their findings have been published in the journal Nature Immunology. http://www.nature.com/ni/index.html The work has been carried out by a team at the MRC Toxicology Unit at the University of Leicester.

For the first time, researchers have been able to confine and study an individual protein, one that plays a key role in photosynthesis, without having to pin it down so tightly as to alter its fundamental behavior.

Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, today announced the launch of a new quarterly journal, Journal of Family Business Strategy (JFBS). The journal aims to be a primary publication outlet for academics and scholars in the field of family business strategic issues and the first issue is now available on ScienceDirect.

Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) scientists have identified a new link between strong period pain experienced in adolescence and early adulthood and the risk of endometriosis.

Researchers from QIMR's Gynaecological Cancer Laboratory have found having strong period pain often at an early age doubles a woman's risk of developing endometriosis.

The study also found that girls starting their menstrual cycle after 14 years old had a significantly decreased risk of endometriosis.

DEAD SEA, Jordan — Seaweed extract may eventually emerge as a lymphoma treatment, according to laboratory research presented at the second AACR Dead Sea International Conference on Advances in Cancer Research: From the Laboratory to the Clinic, held here March 7-10, 2010.

Lymphoma is a cancer of the immune system and is classified into Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's types, which are then further classified into B-cell and T-cell groups.