Body

Tendons are the body's marionette strings, connecting bones to muscles that raise an eyebrow or propel us into a full run.

That is, until an unusually forceful or awkward pull on the strings leaves us with a sprain, strain or tear. Surgeons attempt to repair over 300,000 of these injuries every year, and doctors visits for sore tendons run into the millions.

Using a combination of nanoscience and biomedical and civil engineering to explore tendon structure from atoms on up, researchers have unraveled part of the mystery behind why we have problems with our tendons.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In the complex world of ant-plant partnerships, serial monogamy can help trees maximize their evolutionary fitness, a new University of Florida study shows.

Trees that sequentially partner with multi-species sets of ants produce more offspring than trees that maintain a lifelong association with any single ant — even when those sets include ant species that appear to harm the tree, said Todd Palmer, a UF biology professor.

Washington, DC – In order for targeted therapies against cancer to be effective, scientists need to understand upfront what related proteins in a signaling "network" makes a cancer cell resistant to a drug and selectively target them as well, say researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and Fox Chase Cancer Center.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Patients who experience physical or psychological stress – including rigorous exercise – one or two days before a cancer treatment might be unknowingly sabotaging their therapy, new research suggests.

Stress in the body – even physical stress caused by intense exercise – activates a stress-sensitive protein that can spark a series of events that allow cancer cells to survive such treatments as chemotherapy and radiation, according to the research.

PORTLAND, Ore - Research conducted at Oregon Health & Science University's Vaccine and Gene Therapy Institute may spur debate about the risks associated with administering a specific compound in some forms of bone-marrow transplantation. The research is published in the current edition of Cell Host and Microbe.

Fluorescent microscopy makes use of molecules, such as green fluorescent protein (GFP), that emit colored light when illuminated with light of a specific wavelength. Molecules like GFP can be used to label proteins of interest and can reveal information about the relationships of molecules within cells. Fluorescence polarization, also known as anisotropy, is specific parameter of fluorescence that can provide additional information about the properties of individual molecules.

EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Unlike Vegas, what happens in China doesn't stay in China.

The country's environmental challenges have worldwide implications, so more developed nations, such as the United States, need to help China adopt integrated solutions for the sake of global sustainability, a Michigan State University environmental scientist argues.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The presidents of six leading research universities and two higher-education associations joined Vice President Joe Biden and White House science advisor Dr. John Holdren this morning to discuss the scientific research and related activities that have been made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

EAST LANSING, Mich. — Using digital evolution techniques that give scientists the ability to watch evolution in action, Michigan State University researchers have shed new light on what it is that makes species altruistic.

Defined as the ability to sacrifice yourself for the sake of others, altruism has been a bit of a genetic mystery. Understanding why altruism evolves is one of the fundamental challenges in evolutionary theory.

Solomons, Md. (September 21, 2010) – In an era when fisheries management is rife with controversy, new research led by a team of University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science fisheries scientists shows that a new, stakeholder-driven process can improve the way we manage fisheries targeted by both commercial and recreational interests.

The incidence of serious infection after common ultrasound-guided procedures, such as biopsy, fine-needle aspiration (a form of biopsy) and thoracentesis (procedure involving needle drainage of the chest cavity) is low, according to a study in the October issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org). Ultrasound imaging, also called ultrasound scanning or sonography, involves exposing part of the body to high-frequency sound waves to produce pictures of the inside of the body.

Research on the quality of US resident physician performance levels has often been limited by lack of a comparison group or strict focus on specific diseases and geographical areas. In order to gain insight on differences in quality of care provided by resident physicians versus staff physicians, Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Palo Alto Medical Foundation researchers investigated performance of physicians in 33,900 hospital-based outpatient visits throughout the US.

NEW YORK, 20 September 2010 – Immunising children against preventable diseases is critical to achieving United Nations-led goals to reduce child deaths, global health and development chiefs said in New York today.

At an event hosted by UNICEF, the Republic of Kenya and the GAVI Alliance, health ministers, donors and the heads of UN agencies called for the introduction of new vaccines that can dramatically reduce deaths due to diarrhoea and pneumonia, the two biggest killers of children under five.

Researchers have found that magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may be sufficient for the routine surveillance of some great vessel (primary blood vessels [e.g., aorta and vena cavae]) stents that are commonly used to treat congenital heart defects (a defect in the structure of the heart and great vessels that is present at birth) in children and young adults, according to a study in the October issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (www.ajronline.org).

Scientists at the University of Granada have developed a new therapy for the treatment of skin and lung cancer. This therapy involves the use of a suicide coliphage-gene (gene E) that can induce death to cells transfected with it.. Their studies have demostrated that this technique is not only effective in vitro (using tumour cell cultures), but also in vivo through the use of experimental animals in which tumours were induced.