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Imaging techniques in cancer medicine provide far more than merely information on the scale and location of cancerous ulcers. There are modern methods that additionally characterise the tumour cells precisely, for instance by specific molecules they carry on their surface. Such additional information gives doctors key clues as to the precise cancer type and enables them to predict the probability that a patient will respond to a particular form of therapy.

The influenza virus' ability to mutate quickly has produced new, emerging strains that make drug discovery more critical than ever. For the first time, researchers at Seattle BioMed, along with collaborators at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the University of Washington, have mapped how critical molecules regulate both the induction and resolution of inflammation during flu infection. The results are published this month in the journal Cell.

Flu is an elusive foe

Ungulates like Tibetan antelope, Kiang, wild yak, Przewalski's gazelle, Tibetan gazelle, Mongolian gazelle, roam on the steppes and grasslands of Asia, need large open habitats. For examples, once millions of Mongolian gazelles migrate to the Inner Mongolian steppe in winter and return to steppes in eastern Mongolia and Durian, Russia during the breeding in summer. Hundreds of thousands of Przewalski's gazelles also roam in the Alpine steppe in Qinghai lake drainage (Fig. 1). Those wild ungulates move freely on the grasslands are animal spectacles in Eurasia.

Unique nano-structures on guillemot eggshells eggs enable them to survive precarious habitats, on exposed cliffs with no nest. A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on July 5, shows how these structures act as self-cleaning guardians of the eggs, preventing them from falling and protecting them from salt and guano exposure.

The team of researchers headed Dr Steven Portugal (Royal Veterinary College, University of London) discovered the nano-scale cone-like structures.

Worldwide colonization by octopods is in their blood! They manage to survive temperature habitats ranging from as low as -1.8°C to more than 30°C due to their ability to keep supplying oxygen to their body tissues. A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting on July 5, shows that a blue colored pigment, hemocyanin, in their blood, responsible for oxygen transport, crucially allows octopods to live in freezing temperatures.

The immune response to the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB) varies between patients of different ethnic origin, raising important implications for the development of tests to diagnose and monitor treatment for the disease, according to new research published today in the journal PLOS Pathogens.

A rich assemblage of fossils and artifacts in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Iran has revealed that the early inhabitants of the region began cultivating cereal grains for agriculture between 12,000 and 9,800 years ago. The discovery implies that the transition from foraging to farming took place at roughly the same time across the entire Fertile Crescent, not in a single core area of the "cradle of civilization," as previously thought.

The British landscape is not being used to its best advantage according to a new report from environmental economists from the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Research published today in the journal Science shows that allowing land use to be determined purely by an agricultural market, which is distorted by multi-billion pound subsidies, will result in considerable financial and environmental costs to the public.

It shows that a shake-up in the way EU subsidies are given out could greatly improve the way UK farm land is managed.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed the first method for directly measuring the extent to which drugs reach their targets in the cell. The method, which is described in the scientific journal Science, could make a significant contribution to the development of new, improved drug substances.

Flapping insects build up an electrical charge that may make them more easily snared by spider webs, according to a new study by University of California, Berkeley, biologists.

The positive charge on an insect such as a bee or fly attracts the web, which is normally negatively or neutrally charged, increasing the chances that an insect flying by will contact and stick to the web, said UC Berkeley post-doctoral fellow Victor Manuel Ortega-Jimenez.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers report that they have found a direct genetic link between the remains of Native Americans who lived thousands of years ago and their living descendants. The team used mitochondrial DNA, which children inherit only from their mothers, to track three maternal lineages from ancient times to the present.

The findings are reported in the journal PLOS ONE.

Analysis of three biomarkers in the urine of kidney transplant recipients can diagnose -- and even predict -- transplant rejection, according to results from a clinical trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. This test for biomarkers -- molecules that indicate the effect or progress of a disease -- offers an accurate, noninvasive alternative to the standard kidney biopsy, in which doctors remove a small piece of kidney tissue to look for rejection-associated damage.

Violent or antisocial video games like Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto do not reliably reduce helpful behaviors in players shortly after playing, according to research published July 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Morgan Tear and Mark Nielsen from the University of Queensland, Australia.

Tweet timing can differentiate individual, corporate and bot-controlled Twitter accounts independent of the language or content of a tweet, according to research published July 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Aldo Faisal and Gabriela Tavares from Imperial College London, UK.

Salamanders' capacity to regrow lost limbs may seem infinite when compared with that of humans, but even amongst salamanders, some species regenerate body parts very slowly, while others lose this capacity as they age. Now, researchers have found that salamanders' capacity to regrow a cut tail depends on several small regions of DNA in their genome that impact how wide the tail grows. The results are published July 3 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Randal Voss and colleagues from the University of Kentucky.