Body

Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Tracy Langkilde has shown that native fence lizards in the southeastern United States are adapting to potentially fatal invasive fire-ant attacks by developing behaviors that enable them to escape from the ants, as well as by developing longer hind legs, which can increase the effectiveness of this behavior. "Not only does this finding provide biologists with an example of evolution in action, but it also provides wildlife managers with knowledge that they can use to develop plans for managing invasive species," said Langkilde.

Fruit farmers in Southern Europe have been struggling for decades in a losing battle against the Mediterranean fruit fly, or Medfly, which is one of the world's most destructive farm pests, since it lays its eggs in fruit and vegetables.

The female can produce up to 800 offspring per season. The larvae or worms feed on the pulp of fruits, tunnelling through it, and reducing the fruit to an inedible mush.

Montreal, January 19, 2008 – Continuous poverty during toddler years can curb the height of children by the time they reach kindergarten, even in industrialized countries, according to new research from the Université de Montréal. Regardless of hereditary factors such as maternal height and education level, according to the finding published in the Journal of Epidemiology Community Health, children from poor families are more likely to be shorter than their peers.

ST. LOUIS -- Doctors are not doing enough to pick up on problems with excessive weight loss, says a Saint Louis University physician who helped draft recent guidelines to diagnose the condition called "cachexia" (kuh-kex-ee-uh).

"In sick people, weight loss is an important indicator of disease and potentially impending death," said John Morley, M.D., an endocrinologist and director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University School of Medicine.

A new species of fish from tropical South America is confirming suspected roots to the loricariid catfish family tree. Lithogenes wahari shares traits with two different families of fish: the bony armor that protects its head and tail, and a grasping pelvic fin that allows it to climb vertical surfaces.

Costa Rica, one of the countries with the highest age-adjusted incidence and mortality rates for gastric cancer (GC), has regions with contrasting gastric cancer incidence rate (GCIR). Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a Gram-negative microaerobic bacterium that persistently colonizes the human gastric mucosa. There is an increased GC risk in subjects infected with H. pylori strains, especially those co-expressing the cagA, vacA s1 and babA2 genes. Cytokine gene polymorphisms of the host, IL-1beta, IL-1RN and IL-10, in response to H.

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH), primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and primary sclerotic cholangitis (PSC) form the triad of autoimmune liver diseases. However, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development in AIH as well as in PBC is a rare event. The common clinical features of HCC associated with AIH and PBC have not yet been extensively described.

A research team led by Dr. Takuya Watanabe from Japan addresses this question and their study will be published on January 14, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

Gastric mucosal blood flow has a vital role in gastric mucosal protection. A high blood flow is considered a good protection against injury, as it dilutes, neutralizes, and removes hazardous substances that have penetrated the gastric mucosal barrier. A research group in Sweden has previously found that a water extract of H. pylori reduces the mucosal blood flow in rats by a mast cell- and platelet activating factor (PAF)-dependent pathway. In this study they further investigated the mechanisms behind the reduction in blood flow in mice.

The ¤3 million, three-year study will use gene knock-out technology developed in Nottingham to study the function of genes in a 'super' strain of the bacteria Clostridium difficile to discover why it causes more severe disease, kills more people, is harder to eradicate and more resistant to antibiotics.

European and Canadian researchers have, for the first time, drawn a map of genetic risk factors that can lead to two forms of severe obesity: early-onset obesity in children, and morbid obesity in adults.

A cure for debilitating genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease, Friedreich's ataxia and Fragile X syndrome is a step closer to reality, thanks to a recent scientific breakthrough.

The finding, which was published in Science on January 15, is the result of a collaboration between a team led by Dr Sureshkumar Balasubramanian at The University of Queensland's School of Biological Sciences and Professor Dr Detlef Weigel at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany.

(PHILADELPHIA) – As the nation's growing population of breast cancer survivors ages, many patients will likely develop common chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease, and they'll need specialized care to balance those problems with the late effects of cancer therapies they received. They'll also need screenings and advice about new strategies for preventing recurrences of their disease.

Trials showing a positive treatment effect, or those with important or striking findings, were much more likely to be published in scientific journals than those with negative findings, a new review from The Cochrane Library has found.

"This publication bias has important implications for healthcare. Unless both positive and negative findings from clinical trials are made available, it is impossible to make a fair assessment of a drug's safety and efficacy," says lead researcher, Sally Hopewell of the UK Cochrane Centre in Oxford, UK.

A new study by UCLA planetary scientists and their colleagues in Germany overturns a longstanding scientific tenet and provides new insights into how convection controls much of what we observe in planets and stars.

The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, unifies results from an extensive array of previous experiments. It appears in the Jan. 15 edition of the journal Nature.

GALVESTON – When more than 20 coastal barrier island researchers arrived on Galveston Island in early January, many had never seen the level of destruction wrought by Hurricane Ike.

They came from New England, the Pacific coast and all points between where ocean meets U.S. soil. From a common interest in coastal barrier islands and their multitude of questions that emerged from the rubble that still litters Galveston and neighboring Bolivar Peninsula has emerged a goal.