Body

A first-ever vaccine created by University of Guelph researchers for gut bacteria common in autistic children may also help control some autism symptoms.

The groundbreaking study by Brittany Pequegnat and Guelph chemistry professor Mario Monteiro appears this month in the journal Vaccine.

They developed a carbohydrate-based vaccine against the gut bug, Clostridium bolteae.

C. bolteae is known to play a role in gastrointestinal disorders, and it often shows up in higher numbers in the GI tracts of autistic children than in those of healthy kids.

In an advance toward coping with bacteria that shrug off existing antibiotics and sterilization methods, scientists are reporting development of a new family of selective antimicrobial agents that do not rely on traditional antibiotics. Their report on these synthetic colloid particles, which can be custom-designed to recognize the shape of specific kinds of bacteria and inactivate them, appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

An international team of scientists, including Dr Paul Brotherton from the University of Huddersfield, reveal that events after the initial migration of farmers into Europe had a major impact on the modern gene pool.

Professor Davis says: "These results were really unexpected. It was only possible for us to unravel the mystery of why this drug was so effective, through the use of video microscopy. By watching what happened within the cells we could clearly identify just why rituximab is such an effective drug – because it tended to reorganise the cancerous cell and make it especially prone to being killed."

Scientists in Mainz and Aachen have discovered a new mechanism that controls egg cell fertility and that might have future therapeutic potential. It was revealed by Professor Dr. Walter Stöcker of the Institute of Zoology at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) that the blood protein fetuin-B plays an important and previously unknown role in the fertilization of oocytes. Fetuin-B, first identified in the year 2000, is formed in the liver and secreted into the blood stream. During a joint research project with researchers at RWTH Aachen University headed by Professor Dr.

BOSTON—A fur trader who suffered an accidental gunshot wound in 1822 and the physician who saw this unfortunate incidence as an opportunity for research are key to much of our early knowledge about the workings of the digestive system, say speakers of an upcoming symposium.

Mymaridae, commonly known as fairyflies, are one of about 18 families of chalcid wasps. Fairyflies occur worldwide, except in Antarctica. They include the world's smallest known insect - Kikiki huna, the body length of which is only 0.13 mm. Although fairyflies are among the most common chalcid wasps, they are seldomly noticed by humans because of their minute size.

As demands for long work hours continue to increase, an Indiana University study found that mothers are more likely than other employees to leave jobs in male-dominated fields. This trend was not seen in balanced or female-dominated occupations.

"Mothers were 52 percent more likely than other women to leave their jobs if they were working a 50-hour week or more, but only in occupations dominated by men," said Youngjoo Cha, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at IU Bloomington. "Many of these are lucrative fields, such as law, medicine, finance and engineering."

Nearly two-thirds of children receiving stem cell transplants returned to the hospital within six months for treatment of unexplained fevers, infections or other problems, according to a study performed at Dana-Farber/Children's Hospital Cancer Center in Boston. Children who received donor cells were twice as likely to be readmitted as children who received their own stem cells.

BOSTON — New research published as abstracts in The FASEB Journal and presented at Experimental Biology 2013 (EB 2013) ties mushrooms to potential health outcomes – demonstrating that mushrooms provide more to a dish than just flavor.

Nine mushroom research abstracts were presented at Experimental Biology this week, which found:

Microwave imaging can be used to monitor how well treatment for breast cancer is working, finds new research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Breast Cancer Research. Microwave tomography was able to distinguish between breast cancer, benign growths, and normal tissue.

New scientific research published today in the journal PLoS Biology shows that bacteria can evolve resistance more quickly when stronger antibiotics are used.

Researchers from the University of Exeter and Kiel University in Germany treated E. coli with different combinations of antibiotics in laboratory experiments.

Unexpectedly they found that the rate of evolution of antibiotic resistance speeds up when potent treatments are given because resistant bacterial cells flourish most during the most aggressive therapies.

White people who have types of skin cancer other than melanoma (non-melanoma skin cancer) may be at increased risk of having other forms of cancer in the future, according to a study by US researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

The alcohol industry – including supermarkets, drinks companies, and trade associations – distorted international evidence on effective alcohol control measures in an attempt to influence the Scottish Government's public health policy to its advantage, according to a study published today in PLOS Medicine.

A group of researchers from the University of Copenhagen has taken a significant step towards understanding the reasons for both diabetes and growth hormone deficiency. Their new discoveries centre on the body's ability to regulate certain hormones, and their findings have just been published in the respected scientific journal PLOS Biology.

Some people suffering from diabetes or affected by poor growth most likely have problems with the so-called PICK1 protein,a protein that plays a decisive role in the formation of both growth hormone and insulin in the human body.