Body

Many parents have a difficult time persuading their preschool-aged children to try vegetables, let alone eat them regularly. Food and nutrition researchers have found that by offering a dip flavored with spices, children were more likely to try vegetables -- including those they had previously rejected.

WHAT:

The emergence of a novel H7N9 avian influenza virus in humans in China has raised questions about its pandemic potential as well as that of related influenza viruses. In a commentary published online today, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, address these questions by evaluating past outbreaks of H7 subtype influenza viruses among mammals and birds and comparing H7 viruses with other avian influenza viruses and strains.

An unusual posthumous honour for physicist Max Planck: Biologists in Tübingen working with Ralf J. Sommer have named a newly discovered nematode after the German Nobel laureate. Pristionchus maxplancki is thus the first species to carry the name of the scientist, who died in 1947. The discovery from the Far East is assisting the researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology to attain new insights and knowledge about the many interdependencies between evolution, genetics, and ecology.

CHICAGO (July 9, 2013) – After a 2011 outbreak of P. aeruginosa, investigators at Beaumont Health System near Detroit, Michigan determined contaminated ultrasound gel was the source of bacteria causing the healthcare-associated infection. The findings emphasize the need for increased scrutiny of contaminated medical products. This study is published in the August issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

LA JOLLA, Calif., July 8 2013 – Silencing genes that have malfunctioned is an important approach for treating diseases such as cancer and heart disease. One effective approach is to deliver drugs made from small molecules of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, which are used to inhibit gene expression. The drugs, in essence, mimic a natural process called RNA interference.

"Pain begone!" In order to send out this signal, the human body produces tiny messenger molecules that dock to certain receptors. Using traditional biochemical methods, this interaction between the messengers, so-called enkephalins, and opioid receptors is very difficult to study. An interdisciplinary team of biochemists and inorganic chemists at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) has now succeeded in identifying the structure of an enkephalin in solution and to track its interaction with the opioid receptor in detail.

(WASHINGTON, July 9, 2013) – New evidence suggests that using advanced genetics technologies to monitor for remaining cancer cells after treatment may soon become an effective tool to inform treatment decisions and ultimately predict patient outcomes for patients with a particularly aggressive form of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL).

LA JOLLA, CA - Scientists studying cancer development have known about micronuclei for some time. These erratic, small extra nuclei, which contain fragments or whole chromosomes that were not incorporated into daughter cells after cell division, are associated with specific forms of cancer and are predictive of poorer prognosis.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- The U.S. News & World Report graduate school rankings inspire discussion and marketing, but do they actually reflect quality differences between schools when it comes to medical education in primary care?

Researchers at the UC Davis School of Medicine are believed to be the first to take on that question by analyzing the primary care rankings from 2009 through 2012, reconstructing scores and proposing alternative measurements. Their findings are published online now, ahead of the August 13 print issue of the journal Academic Medicine.

University of British Columbia researchers have developed a vaccine that may halt the spread of West Nile Virus (WNV) among common and endangered bird species.

WNV, a mosquito borne pathogen, arrived in North America in 1999 and is now endemic across the continent. In 2012 alone, WNV killed 286 people in the United States, and 42 people have died from the virus in Canada since 2002. There is currently no effective vaccine against WNV infection in humans or birds.

Genetic mutations aren't the only thing that can keep a protein called PTEN from doing its tumor-suppressing job. Johns Hopkins researchers have now discovered that four small chemical tags attached (reversibly) to the protein's tail can have the same effect, and they say their finding may offer a novel path for drug design to keep PTEN working.

In a report published on July 9 in the journal eLife, the Johns Hopkins scientists describe how a cluster of four phosphate groups, first found 13 years ago to bind to PTEN's tail, controls its activity.

London -- Women who give birth to multiple babies following IVF treatment are at a higher risk of breast cancer than those giving birth to singletons or who remain childless. Dutch investigators from the Omega study group said the explanation may not be the multiple pregnancy per se but a maternal trait related to a higher implantation potential and to breast cancer itself.

London, 9 July 2013: Children born as a result of assisted reproduction (ART) are at no greaterrisk of cancer than children born spontaneously in the general population, according to resultsof one of the largest ever cohort studies of ART children. "This is reassuring news for couplesconsidering assisted conception, their subsequent children, fertility specialists and for the widerpublic health," said the investigators.

Results of the study were presented today at the annual meeting of ESHRE by Dr CarrieWilliams from the Institute of Child Health, University College London, UK.

London, 9 July 2013: Shift work, which encourages sleep deprivation and patterns of activityoutside the circadian rhythm, has been associated with a greater risk of ill health and loss ofwell-being in some (but not all) studies.(1) However, little is known about the effects of shiftwork on reproductive health and fertility.

Now, a study reported today at the annual meeting of ESHRE, by Dr Linden Stocker from theUniversity of Southampton, UK, indicates that working shift patterns is associated with anincreased risk of menstrual disruption and subfertility.

London, 9 July 2013: Egg freezing as insurance against age-related infertility is a growing trend inmany countries. Women who bank oocytes for use at some time in the future hope to buy alittle time in their search for a suitable partner.

However, a study from one of Europe's largest centres in reproductive medicine suggests thatmany of those banking eggs believe they will never use them - even though they still recognisethe experience as "positive". The majority of those who did (and did not) freeze their eggswished they had done so at an earlier age.