Body

In terms of environmental and economic impact, the Columbia River is the most important river in the US Pacific Northwest.

To characterize the microbial diversity within its estuary, Holly M. Simon and colleagues from Oregon Health & Science University's Center for Coastal Margin Observation and Prediction and the J. Craig Venter Institute, sequenced total DNA from water in four habitats: the Columbia River's immediate outflow; the river plume that extends into Pacific Ocean; upwelling low-oxygen water off the coast; and the ocean bottom.

Dextrose prolotherapy – injection therapy using a sugar solution to relieve musculoskeletal pain – offers sustained improvement of pain, function and stiffness for patients with knee osteoarthritis.

Ninety adults who had at least three months of painful knee osteoarthritis were randomized to receive dextrose prolotherapy injections, saline injections or at-home exercise.

Borrelia miyamotoi infection, a newly-recognized tick-borne illness, has been observed in patients thought to have human granulocytic anaplasmosis (HGA).

There are 11 recognized tick-borne illnesses in the northeastern United States and all can present as undifferentiated flu-like illness. In areas where deer ticks are common and Lyme disease, babesiosis, and HGA are prevalent, patients presenting with sudden fever, myalgia, leucopenia, and elevated aminotransferase levels are presumptively diagnosed with HGA.

Many microbes use nitrate in the environment for growth. Nitrate can be converted to ammonium and used in molecules such as proteins, or used as a terminal electron acceptor to make energy.

A new report in Frontiers in Microbiology sheds light on how the deep-sea hydrothermal vent bacterium Nautilia profundicola strain AmH carries out these functions.

Electrical phenomena in plants have attracted scientists since the eighteenth century.

Similar to animal cells, also plant cells possess the ability to become excited under the influence of certain environmental factors and to generate rapid electrical signals propagating over long distances. The reason why plants have developed pathways for fast signal transmission presumably lies in the necessity to rapidly respond to environmental stress factors.

An estimated one-third of people around the world are infected by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii, a distant relative of the malaria parasite, although normally only persons with a weakened immune response show any symptoms.

Researchers have found that bipedal desert rodents manage to compete with their quadrupedal counterparts by using a diverse set of jumps, hops and skips. A new study, to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology meeting in Valencia on July 6, suggests that it is this unpredictable movement that allows the bipedal rodents to coexist in Old World deserts with quadrupedal rodents.

Researchers have found that the amphibious mangrove rivulus performs higher force jumps on land than some other fishes that end up on land. This new study shows that unlike the largemouth bass, which makes very few excursions on land, the mangrove rivulus, which can live out of water for extended periods, has a strong jumping technique on land to locate new food resources, avoid predators, escape poor water conditions and also to return to the water.

Why did animals with limbs win the race to invade land over those with fins? A new study comparing the forces acting on fins of mudskipper fish and on the forelimbs of tiger salamanders can now be used to analyze early fossils that spanned the water-to-land transition in tetrapod evolution, and further understand their capability to move on land.

Research conducted by Sandy Kawano and Richard Blob at Clemson University compared terrestrial locomotion in tiger salamanders and mudskipper fish, which have similar characteristics to early tetrapod ancestors.

Bats are uniquely able to stretch and store energy in their bicep and tricep tendons during take-off and climbing flight, giving them an extra power boost. A new study on fruitbats, to be presented at the meeting of the Society for Experimental in Valencia on July 4, used cutting edge technology to image how these small mammals move through the air.

Why do so many mothers have difficulty making enough milk to breastfeed? A new study by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of California Davis adds to their previous research implicating insulin's role in lactation success.

The study is the first to describe how the human mammary gland becomes highly sensitive to insulin during lactation. It is also the first study to get an accurate picture of how specific genes are switched on in the human mammary gland during lactation.

Many black or racially mixed women in Venezuela are undergoing nose jobs in an effort to look whiter, but the procedure only temporarily improves their self-esteem and body image in a culture that values whiteness, a Dartmouth College study finds.

The genes that code for proteins—more than 20,000 in total—make up only about 1 percent of the complete human genome. That entire thing—not just the genes, but also genetic junk and all the rest—is coiled and folded up in any number of ways within the nucleus of each of our cells. Think, then, of the challenge that a protein or other molecule, like RNA, faces when searching through that material to locate a target gene.

It's squishy, synthetic, flexible, mostly water and almost as tough as rubber.

No, it's not "flubber" — it's a hydrogel, and now scientists at The University of Akron are exploring new biomedical uses for this polymer-based product.

TORONTO - A team of Toronto-based researchers may be one step closer to a 'recipe' for large-scale production of stem cells for use in research and therapy.

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) can be of great value for medical research because they can flexibly develop into many different types of cells. However, producing these cells is challenging because the proteins that control their generation are largely unknown.