Body

Rockville, Md., May 23, 2012 — As part of its ongoing efforts to help ensure the quality of medicines, the U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP) has announced two new standards related to elemental impurities: General Chapters <232> Elemental Impurities—Limits and <233> Elemental Impurities—Procedures. The new standards provide procedures for the detection of selected impurities in drug products based on modern analytical methods, as well as acceptable limits for their presence based on toxicity data and exposure levels.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) who become infected with the bacterium Pseudomonas aerguinosa are more likely to have worse clinical outcomes and experience more hospitalizations during the course of their disease than COPD patients who are not infected, according to researchers from Buffalo, N.Y.

The study will be presented at the ATS 2012 International Conference in San Francisco.

ATS 2012, SAN FRANCISCO – The expanded use of antiretrovirals, potent drugs used to treat retroviral infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), has been linked to significant decreases in hospital mortality rates among severely ill HIV-positive(HIV+) patients nationwide, primarily due to a decrease in opportunistic infections, according to a new study by researchers at Stanford University. Despite these encouraging data, the study also revealed that in this population, chronic diseases and bloodstream infections are on the rise.

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are molecules produced in the skin to fend off infection-causing microbes. Vitamin D has been credited with a role in their production and in the body's overall immune response, but scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine say a hormone previously associated only with maintaining calcium homeostasis and bone health is also critical, boosting AMP expression when dietary vitamin D levels are inadequate.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—University of Michigan researchers have proven that a special surface, free of biological contaminants, allows adult-derived stem cells to thrive and transform into multiple cell types. Their success brings stem cell therapies another step closer.

To prove the cells' regenerative powers, bone cells grown on this surface were then transplanted into holes in the skulls of mice, producing four times as much new bone growth as in the mice without the extra bone cells.

New research out today on the long-term impact of species extinctions suggests that the disappearance of one species does not necessarily allow remaining competitor species to thrive by filling now-empty niches.

UCLA life scientists have discovered new laws that determine the construction of leaf vein systems as leaves grow and evolve. These easy-to-apply mathematical rules can now be used to better predict the climates of the past using the fossil record.

The research, published May 15 in the journal Nature Communications, has a range of fundamental implications for global ecology and allows researchers to estimate original leaf sizes from just a fragment of a leaf. This will improve scientists' prediction and interpretation of climate in the deep past from leaf fossils.

Lunge feeding in rorqual whales (a group that includes blue, humpback and fin whales) is unique among mammals, but details of how it works have remained elusive. Now, scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and University of British Columbia have solved the mystery. They discovered a sensory organ in the chin of rorqual whales that communicates to the brain. The organ orchestrates the dramatic changes and adjustments needed in jaw position and throat-pouch expansion to make lunge feeding successful.

Scientists at the University of British Columbia and the Smithsonian Institution have discovered a sensory organ in rorqual whales that coordinates its signature lunge-feeding behaviour – and may help explain their enormous size.

TEMPE, Ariz. – The International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University and a committee of scientists from around the world announced their picks for the top 10 new species described in 2011. This is the fifth year for the top 10 new species list, which was released May 23 to coincide with the anniversary of the birth of Carolus Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who was responsible for the modern system of plant and animal names and classifications.

Children are more likely to have more body fat during childhood if their mother has low levels of Vitamin D during pregnancy, according to scientists at the Medical Research Council Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit (MRC LEU), University of Southampton.

Low vitamin D status has been linked to obesity in adults and children, but little is known about how variation in a mother's status affects the body composition of her child.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An individual's sense of right or wrong may change depending on their activities at the time – and they may not be aware of their own shifting moral integrity — according to a new study looking at why people make ethical or unethical decisions.

MAYWOOD, Ill. -- Loyola University Medical Center researchers are reporting one of the first studies to examine how patients and families are soliciting living kidney donors on Facebook.

Researchers examined 91 Facebook pages that were seeking kidney donations for patients ranging in age from 2 to 69.

WASHINGTON, May 23, 2012 — The latest episode in the American Chemical Society's (ACS') award-winning Global Challenges/Chemistry Solutions podcast series describes a simple, inexpensive dip-and-dry treatment can convert ordinary silk into a fabric that kills disease-causing bacteria — even the armor-coated spores of microbes like anthrax — in minu

Scientists are reporting development of a new, higher-yield, two-step, less costly process that may ease supply problems and zigzagging prices for the raw material essential for making the mainstay drug for malaria. That disease sickens 300-500 million people annually and kills more than 1 million. The report on the process, which uses readily available substances and could be easily implemented by drug companies, appears in ACS' journal Organic Process Research & Development.