Body

A new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine* highlights the injury risks for schoolboys playing rugby.

The research shows that the chance of a school player suffering an injury during a single season is at least 12 per cent and, according to some research, could be as high as 90 per cent.

The researchers from Queen Mary, University of London and Cass Business School, City University say there is an urgent need to inform children, parents and coaches alike about the level of risk involved and that more should be done to reduce the risk.

People with dementia can still make decisions in their everyday lives and with support from partners can continue to do so as their condition advances. This is one of the preliminary findings of a two-year research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) into how married couples living with dementia make decisions on a daily basis.

Sharks are in big trouble on the Great Barrier Reef and worldwide, according to an Australian-based team who have developed a world-first way to measure rates of decline in shark populations.

"There is mounting evidence of widespread, substantial, and ongoing declines in the abundance of shark populations worldwide, coincident with marked rises in global shark catches in thelast half-century," say Mizue Hisano, Professor Sean Connolly and Dr William Robbins from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University.

New research in The FASEB Journal suggests that rats fed homobrassinolide, found in the mustard plant, produced an anabolic effect, and increased appetite and muscle mass, as well as the number and size of muscle fibers.

A single high dose of the hallucinogen psilocybin, the active ingredient in so-called "magic mushrooms," was enough to bring about a measureable personality change lasting at least a year in nearly 60 percent of the 51 participants in a new study, according to the Johns Hopkins researchers who conducted it.

Autism spectrum disorders, including Asperger syndrome, have generally been associated with uneven intellectual profiles and impairment, but according to a new study of Asperger individuals published in the online journal PLoS ONE, this may not be the case – as long as intelligence is evaluated by the right test. Both autistic and Asperger individuals display uneven profiles of performance in commonly used intelligence test batteries such as Wechsler scales, and their strongest performances are often considered evidence for deficits.

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- A recent, large-scale study on cat intestinal cancer has provided new insight into a common pet disease and its causes; the findings could ultimately benefit humans.

The first video of tool use by a fish has been published in the journal Coral Reefs by Giacomo Bernardi, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

In the video, an orange-dotted tuskfish digs a clam out of the sand, carries it over to a rock, and repeatedly throws the clam against the rock to crush it. Bernardi shot the video in Palau in 2009.

In the animal world, males typically search for their female partners. The mystery is that in some species, you get a reversal—the females search for males.

A new study of katydids in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B—co-authored by U of T Mississauga professor Darryl Gwynne-- supports a theory that females will search if males offer a lot more than just sperm.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 28 – Researchers at the John G. Rangos Sr. Research Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine have identified a powerful molecular pathway that regulates the liver's management of insulin and new glucose production, which could lead to new therapies for diabetes. The findings were published online this week in Diabetes, a journal of the American Diabetes Association.

Microfluidic Device" and "Sorting Human Prostate Epithelial (HPET) Cells in an Inertial Microfluidic Device."

The shortage of available organs for transplantation has driven up use of high-risk donor livers. New research published in the October issue of Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, reported that high volume transplant centers more frequently utilized livers with a high donor risk index, but achieved better risk-adjusted graft and recipient survival rates compared with lower volume centers.

Kentucky women who smoke heavily may experience more chronic musculoskeletal pain, suggests a new study led by University of Kentucky researchers.

More than 6,000 Kentucky women over the age of 18 were surveyed on their smoking habits and symptoms of chronic pain. Syndromes included in the analysis were fibromyalgia, sciatica, chronic neck pain, chronic back pain, joint pain, chronic head pain, nerve problems, and pain all over the body.

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that low-tech, inexpensive interventions for bedsores could improve health for long-term care residents and reduce health-care costs for the facilities that house them.

For all long-term care residents, pressure reduction foam mattresses were cost-effective 82% of the time compared to standard mattresses, with average savings of $115 per resident, the researchers showed. Foam cleansers for incontinence care would be cost-effective 94% of the time compared to soap and water, saving an average of $179 per resident.

University of Alberta researchers have identified a key regulator that controls the speed of development in the fruit fly. When the researchers blocked the function of this regulator, animals sped up their rate of development and reached maturity much faster than normal.

The U of A research team, led by molecular geneticist Kirst King-Jones, noticed a peculiar behaviour of the protein they were studying, DHR4: The protein acted as a sentinel to either allow or prohibit the production of steroid hormones by moving periodically between the cell nucleus to the cytoplasm.