Body

High blood phosphate levels can set chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients on a rapid path to kidney failure, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the American Society Nephrology (JASN). To make matters worse, phosphate appears to interfere with the effectiveness of important kidney medications.

A single flexible sigmoidoscopy screening between the ages of 55-64 years is associated with a lower level of colorectal cancer incidence and mortality, according to a study published online August 18 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

As they grow, children learn a lot about the world from what other people tell them. Along the way, they have to figure out who is a reliable source of information. A new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that when children reach around 4 years, they start noticing whether someone is actually knowledgeable or if they're just getting the answers from someone else.

In a new Genome Biology article, researchers presented the first kangaroo genome sequence, that of the tammar wallaby species, and found hidden in their data the gene that may well be responsible for the kangaroo's characteristic hop.

The tammar wallaby is only the third marsupial, and only the second Australian marsupial (after the Tasmanian devil), to have its genome sequenced.

When an egg cell is being formed, the cellular machinery which separates chromosomes is extremely imprecise at fishing them out of the cell’s interior, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, have discovered. The unexpected degree of trial-and-error involved in this process could explain why errors in the number of chromosomes in the egg cell are the leading cause of miscarriages and severe congenital diseases such as trisomies like Down’s syndrome, as well as an important cause of female infertility.

Boys are maturing physically earlier than ever before. The age of sexual maturity has been decreasing by about 2.5 months each decade at least since the middle of the 18th century. Joshua Goldstein, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock (MPIDR), has used mortality data to prove this trend, which until now was difficult to decipher. What had already been established for girls now seems to also be true for boys: the time period during which young people are sexually mature but socially not yet considered adults is expanding.

When it comes to improving bone health in postmenopausal women — and people of all ages, actually — a Florida State University researcher has found a simple, proactive solution to help prevent fractures and osteoporosis: eating dried plums.

In the United States, about 8 million women have osteoporosis because of the sudden cessation of ovarian hormone production at the onset of menopause. What's more, about 2 million men also have osteoporosis.

Sniffer dogs could be used for the early detection of lung cancer, according to new research published in the European Respiratory Journal.

The study, carried out by researchers from Schillerhoehe Hospital in Germany, is the first to find that sniffer dogs can reliably detect lung cancer.

Lung cancer is the second most frequent form of cancer in men and women across Europe with over 340,000 deaths per year. It is also the most common cause of death from cancer worldwide.

Active children need to be watered with milk. It’s a more effective way of countering dehydration than a sports drink or water itself, say researchers at McMaster University.

That’s particularly important during hot summer weather, says Brian Timmons, research director of the Child Health and Exercise Medicine Program at McMaster and principal investigator of the study.

Reorganization of the brain and sense organs could be the key to the evolutionary success of vertebrates, one of the great puzzles in evolutionary biology, according to a paper by an international team of researchers, published today in Nature.

The study claims to have solved this scientific riddle by studying the brain of a 400 million year old fossilized jawless fish – an evolutionary intermediate between the living jawless and jawed vertebrates (animals with backbones, such as humans).

Scientists at the Smithsonian and partnering organizations have discovered a remarkably primitive eel in a fringing reef off the coast of the Republic of Palau. This fish exhibits many primitive anatomical features unknown in the other 19 families and more than 800 species of living eels, resulting in its classification as a new species belonging to a new genus and family.

It has five times the tensile strength of steel and is stronger than even the best currently available synthetic fibers: Spider thread is a fascinating material. Yet, to date no one has managed to produce the material on an industrial scale. Scientists of the TU Muenchen (TUM) and the Universitaet Bayreuth (UBT) have now succeeded in unveiling a further secret of silk proteins and the mechanism that imparts spider silk with its strength. They have published the results of their work in the professional journal Angewandte Chemie.

Stem cell researchers at UCLA have discovered that three types of cells derived from human embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells are similar to each other, but are much more developmentally immature than previously thought when compared to those same cell types taken directly from human tissue.

Researchers have discovered a faster, cheaper method for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB). A major barrier in TB prevention, especially in developing countries, is that diagnosis is slow and costly. Dr. Olivier Braissant and his colleagues have developed a method which could potentially decrease the time taken to make a diagnosis. Their method is also cheaper than the current fastest methods. This research has been published today in the Society for Applied Microbiology's Journal of Applied Microbiology.

There is a large variation in unplanned reoperation rates after colorectal surgery in English NHS hospitals, finds a study published online today.