Body

Honeybees are important to plants for reasons that go beyond pollination, according to a new study published in the December 23rd issue of Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The insects' buzz also defends plants against the caterpillars that would otherwise munch on them undisturbed.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Here's one more reason to say "shade grown, please" when you order your morning cup of coffee. Shade coffee farms, which grow coffee under a canopy of multiple tree species, not only harbor native birds, bats and other beneficial creatures, but also maintain genetic diversity of native tree species and can act as focal points for tropical forest regeneration.

The finding comes from a study published by University of Michigan researchers Shalene Jha and Christopher Dick in the Dec. 23 issue of the journal Current Biology.

Even though the most deadly form of malaria for humans, Plasmodium falciparum, has been linked to malaria found in chimpanzees, this group has been fairly isolated on the malarial family tree—until now. A new phylogenetic analysis from the Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics at the American Museum of Natural History reveals that malarial parasites found in tree-dwelling rats share a close evolutionary relationship with P. falciparum and Plasmodium reichenowi.

Boston, MA— Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) have determined the optimal dose-management strategy to derive maximal benefit from warfarin therapy and improve patient outcomes. Results of the study appear online in the December 2008 issue of the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2008 — Scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting new evidence that humans can make their own salicylic acid (SA) — the material formed when aspirin breaks down in the body. SA, which is responsible for aspirin's renowned effects in relieving pain and inflammation, may be the first in a new class of bioregulators, according to a study scheduled for the Dec. 24 issue of ACS' biweekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Immigrant children have a greater risk of suffering from overweight and obesity. This is the result of a study from Augsburg with 2306 children examined on starting school. Elisabeth Weber and her coauthors present the results in the current issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztbl Int 2008; 105 [51-52]: 883-9). The doctors recorded not only the age, sex, weight, and height of the children, but also their mother tongue. Their parents had to answer a questionnaire covering sporting activity, amount of television watched, and eating behavior.

Researchers have made several, subtle changes in the structure of a key protein, dramatically increasing its ability to drive blood clotting, according to a study published in a December edition of the Journal of Thrombosis and Haemostasis. The findings have profound implications for the treatment of hemophilia, the inherited blood disorder that causes easy or excessive bleeding in 30,000 Americans.

WASHINGTON DC – A survey conducted by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed that while scientists are disposed to assist in criminal investigations, they often fear working with law enforcement agencies. The survey questions were designed to evaluate the working relationship between FBI field agents and scientists, and the results, published on 22 December 2008 in Science Progress, indicate a reluctance to discuss research with law enforcement and other issues that are specific to the science community.

Owing to the novel properties of carbon nanotubes (CBNs), a series of problems associated with in vitro toxicity assessments of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have appeared in many literatures. In order to properly evaluate the potential risk to human health, the cell toxicity assay of CBNs can not be conducted by traditional methods employed in common toxicology.

It's not just patients with autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that have self-attacking immune cells—healthy people have them too, according to a new report in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. In healthy adults, however, these cells are maintained in an 'off' state, perhaps explaining their innocuous nature. Whether these cells are the true predecessors of the self-attacking cells prevalent in lupus and RA and, if so, what prevents them from causing disease in everyone is not yet known. The new study will appear online on December 22nd.

Rube Goldberg—the cartoonist who devised complex machines for simple tasks—would have smiled at one of leptin's mechanisms for curbing insulin release. As Hinoi et al. show, the fat-derived hormone enlists the sympathetic nervous system to prevent bone-making cells from releasing a molecule that prods the pancreas to discharge insulin.

The study will appear online December 22, 2008 (www.jcb.org) and in the December 29, 2008 print issue of The Journal of Cell Biology (JCB).

The research was carried out by a team of researchers led by Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, an Assistant Professor of Medicine and Public Health at Temple University. She said, "Compared to normal weight women who accurately assessed their pre-pregnancy weight status, the odds of gaining excessively during pregnancy were increased seven-fold among overweight and obese women who thought they weighed less than they really did. Normal weight women who thought they were overweight had twice the odds of excessive gestational weight gain."

December 22, 2008, Cambridge, UK –New research sheds light on a common link between tumor formation and Costello Syndrome, an inherited developmental disorder in which patients have cardiac defects, mild mental retardation, and face-shape abnormalities. The study published in the journal Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM), dmm.biologists.org uses a zebrafish model to help explain a puzzling connection between Costello syndrome and cancer.

Individuals with particular variants of certain genes involved in metabolizing the most potent carcinogen found in cigarette smoke have an increased risk of developing lung cancer. That is the conclusion of a new study published in the February 1, 2009 issue of CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society. The study's results may help shed light on how lung cancer develops and could have important implications for preventing smoking-related cancers.

Body image is a tricky thing for many women. Like looking into a funhouse mirror, the way they perceive their bodies can make them think they're thinner or more obese than they actually are. Researchers led by Temple University's Sharon Herring, MD, MPH, have found that this misperception is associated with excess weight gain during pregnancy – which can cause complications for both mother and baby.