Body

OTTAWA - July 25, 2011 – Researchers in Ottawa report new hope for the treatment of infants born with serious genetic disorder.

Preschool children consumed nearly twice as many vegetables and 11 percent fewer calories over the course of a day when researchers Penn State added pureed vegetables to the children's favorite foods.

"Childhood obesity rates are on the rise, and at the same time children are not eating the recommended amount of vegetables," said Barbara Rolls, holder of the Helen A. Guthrie Chair in Nutritional Sciences. "Vegetables have been shown to help lower calorie intake. The problem is getting kids to eat enough vegetables."

A new strategy to quantify the levels of titanium in the blood of patients fitted with titanium orthopaedic implants is presented in Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, a Springer journal. Yoana Nuevo-Ordóñez and colleagues of the Sanz-Medel research group from the University of Oviedo in Spain have developed a highly sensitive method to determine the levels of titanium in human blood, establishing a baseline for natural levels of titanium in untreated individuals as well as measuring levels in patients with surgical implants.

An artificial lung built by Cleveland researchers has reached efficiencies akin to the genuine organ, using air – not pure oxygen as current man-made lungs require - for the source of the essential element.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Contrary to expectations, researchers have discovered that the conifers of the Pacific Northwest, some of the tallest trees in the world, face their greatest water stress during the region's eternally wet winters, not the dog days of August when weeks can pass without rain.

Researchers have identified an elusive gene responsible for Gray Platelet Syndrome, an extremely rare blood disorder in which only about 50 known cases have been reported. As a result, it is hoped that future cases will be easier to diagnose with a DNA test.

New Rochelle, NY, July 25, 2011— Emerging data clarifying the risks of insufficient thyroid activity during pregnancy on the health of the mother and fetus, and on the future intellectual development of the child, have led to new clinical guidelines for diagnosing and managing thyroid disease during this critical period.

BAR HARBOR − Famous for their sluggishness, turtles have been slow to give up the secrets of their evolution and place on the evolutionary tree. For decades, paleontologists who study fossils and molecular biologists who study genetics have disagreed about whether turtles are more closely related to birds and crocodiles or to lizards. Now, two scientists from the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and their colleagues from Dartmouth College and Harvard and Yale Universities have developed a new technique for classifying animals, and the secret is out.

Animal species all follow the same rule for how common they are in an ecosystem, scientists have discovered. And the rule is simple.

Everything from birds to fishes, crabs to snails to worms, and the parasitic animals that live inside or on them, follows it.

"You can predict how common something might be just by knowing its body weight--how big an individual is--and how high up the food chain it is," says biologist Ryan Hechinger of the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), lead author of a paper in this week's issue of the journal Science.

Research scientists at the Ruhr University Bochum discovered a new enzyme, which gives decisive insights into protein import into specific cellular organelles (peroxisomes). In the Journal of Biological Chemistry, the team of Prof. Erdmann (Medical Faculty, Department of Systemic Biochemistry) reports that the enzyme Ubp15p collaborates with two other proteins to convert the protein transport machinery back into its initial condition after work has been completed.

Political ideology and partisanship don't play much of a role in whether a state considers extending in-state college tuition to undocumented immigrants, according to a new study in the American Journal of Education.

A chance discovery of a genetic mutation in wild barley that grows in Israel's Judean Desert, in the course of a doctoral study at the University of Haifa, has led to an international study deciphering evolution of life on land. The study has been published in the prestigious journal PNAS. "Life on Earth began in the water, and in order for plants to rise above water to live on land, they had to develop a cuticle membrane that would protect them from uncontrolled evaporation and dehydration.

A scientist analyzing ancient plankton DNA signatures in sediments of the Black Sea has found that the same genetic populations of a virus and its algal host can persist--and coexist--for centuries.

The findings have implications for the ecological significance of viruses in shaping ecosystems in the ocean, and perhaps in fresh water.

"The finding that the DNA of viruses and their algal hosts can be preserved in the geologic record is of great interest to microbial ecologists," said Marco Coolen of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

Type 2 diabetes and obesity in pregnancy is a daunting duo, according to new research published this month in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. The study shows that both conditions independently contribute to higher risks, opening the door to a wide range of pregnancy, delivery and newborn complications.

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A molecular technique originally developed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has taken one step closer to becoming a treatment for the devastating genetic disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy.