Body

Montreal, March 2, 2010 – Did women and men contribute equally to the lineage of contemporary populations? Did our ancestors, Homo sapiens, lean more toward polygamy or monogamy? To answer these questions, Dr. Damian Labuda, an investigator at the Sainte-Justine University Hospital Research Center and a professor at the Department of Pediatrics of the Université de Montréal, headed a team that analyzed genomic data from three population samples of African, Asian and European origin.

Researchers from the Institute for Food and Agricultural Research and Technology (IRTA) have analysed the definitions of 'traditional food' and 'innovation' in order to predict the degree to which people will accept changes in the foods they eat. Although change seems to be accepted, the results show that some innovations in foods could harm their traditional product image.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- A new study is providing insight into how estrogen fuels many breast cancers, and researchers say the findings could lead to new cancer-fighting drugs.

Researchers found that estrogen inhibits a protein called MLK3 that causes normal cell death. Blocking MLK3 leads to uncontrolled growth of cancer cells and resistance to chemotherapy.

Researchers from Loyola University Health System and three other centers reported the findings in the journal Cancer Research.

ATLANTA— Residents of states with more government corruption may not only lose trust in political officials, but also have less trust in the general public, according to a new study by Sean Richey, an assistant professor of political science at Georgia State University.

Richey studied arrests of government officials in 50 states combined with 2002 through 2004 survey data of the American National Election Studies panel, which produces data on voting, public opinion and political participation.

The adjuvants present in vaccines have a bad reputation. For most people, they are only unnecessary compounds within a medicinal product. This is a misunderstanding since adjuvants have a critical impact on the success of a vaccination. In the best case scenario, one single vaccination shot would be now sufficient for conferring life-long protection.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Only 68 percent of corporate executives took their cholesterol lowering medication as prescribed by a doctor, a new study shows.

Overall, the executives who took their medication even sporadically were twice as likely to meet their cholesterol goals. The study finding also questions the prevailing wisdom that income is a primary factor in medication adherence.

The benefits of using insulin to treat diabetes far outweigh the risks, but a review just published online by IJCP, the International Journal of Clinical Practice, suggests that commonly used diabetes therapies may differ from each other when it comes to their influence on cancer risk.

Cancer expert Professor Michael Pollak from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, teamed up with diabetes expert Professor David Russell-Jones from The Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, UK, to review more than three decades of laboratory and population studies.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---With concern over mercury contamination of tuna on the rise and growing information about the health effects of eating contaminated fish, scientists would like to know exactly where the pollutant is coming from and how it's getting into open-ocean fish species.

A new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology uses chemical signatures of nitrogen, carbon and mercury to get at the question. The work also paves the way to new means of tracking sources of mercury poisoning in people.

The next 10 to 20 years could be extremely significant for restoring wild populations of American bison to their original range, including the Canadian Rockies; but for this to happen, more land must be made available for herds to roam free, government policies must be updated and the public must change its attitude towards bison, according to a new international study on the species co-authored by University of Calgary experts.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, MARCH 1, 2010 – A two-year study led by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) found that healthy, long-term weight loss diets can significantly reverse carotid (main brain artery) atherosclerosis, a direct risk factor for strokes and heart attacks. The study is one of the first to prove the potential of moderate weight loss as a strategy to reverse atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) in overweight and mildly obese people.

A study published in PLoS Medicine this week examines why poor countries are falling behind with the UN Millennium Development Goals for health, finding that noncommunicable diseases and HIV prevalence are strongly associated with the difficulty countries have meeting these targets.

Biologists at UC San Diego have discovered that a protein from a soil bacterium used to kill insects naturally on organic crops is a highly effective treatment for intestinal parasitic roundworms. These parasites, which include hookworms and whipworms, infect about two billion people in underdeveloped tropical regions and are cumulatively one of the leading causes of debilitation worldwide.

Why do domestic dogs vary so much in size, shape, coat texture, color and patterning? Study of the dog genome has reached a point where the molecular mechanisms governing such variation across mammalian species are becoming understood. In an essay published in the March 2, 2010 issue of PLoS Biology, National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) researchers discuss advances in understanding the genomic mechanisms controlling canine morphology.

The remains of an extraordinary fossil unearthed in 67 million-year old sediments from Gujarat, western India, provide a rare glimpse at an unusual feeding behavior in ancient snakes. An international paleontological team led by the University of Michigan's Jeff Wilson, and the Geological Survey of India's Dhananjay Mohabey, publish their discovery this week in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The remains of an extraordinary fossil unearthed in 67-million-year-old sediments from Gujarat, western India provide a rare glimpse at an unusual feeding behavior in ancient snakes.

An international paleontological team led by the University of Michigan's Jeff Wilson and the Geological Survey of India's Dhananjay Mohabey will publish their discovery online March 2 in the open-access journal PLoS Biology.