Body

Boston – More than three years after the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended against routine mammogram screening for women between the ages of 40 and 49, a study from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) finds that mammogram rates in the United States have not declined in that age group, or any other. The study results are published in the April 19, 2013 online edition of the journal Cancer.

The proportion of young women diagnosed with genital warts in Australia has seen a significant decline thanks to the HPV vaccine, suggests a paper published today on bmj.com.

Claremont, CA – The first new species of dinosaur from Madagascar in nearly a decade was announced today, filling an important gap in the island's fossil record.

The most common cause of lower respiratory tract infections in infants and young children, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), can be transferred during pregnancy to an unborn baby, according to Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital research published online this week in the journal PLOS ONE.

People who participate in community gardening have a significantly lower body mass index—as well as lower odds of being overweight or obese—than do their non-gardening neighbors. Researchers at the University of Utah reported these and other findings in the American Journal of Public Health published online today.

Boston (April 18, 2013) – Natural lubricants play an important role in health, including a well-known effect to help prevent osteoarthritis in knee and ankle joints. However, much is still unknown about their role and function in other areas of the body. Researchers for the first time have discovered that the surface of the eye produces "lubricin," the same substance that protects the joints, and have explained its role in this sensory organ. These findings provide new hope for the millions suffering from dry eye disease and complications from contact lens wear and refractive surgery.

Fairfax, Va., April 18, 2013 – The American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) has issued a new white paper, "Assuring Safety and Quality in Image Guided Delivery of Radiation Therapy," that recommends best practices to improve the safety and effectiveness of image guided radiation therapy (IGRT), according to the manuscript published as an article in press online in Practical Radiation Oncology (PRO), the official clinical practice journal of ASTRO.

Numerous epidemiologic studies have shown that a diet high in salt is associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer. Now Timothy L. Cover and colleagues of Vanderbilt University show that high dietary salt combined with infection by the ulcer-causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori greatly increases the risk of cancer. The study was published ahead of print in the journal Infection and Immunity.

URBANA – Although advances in agronomy, breeding, and biotechnology have dramatically increased corn grain yields, soil test values indicate that producers may not be supplying optimal nutrient levels. Moreover, many current nutrient recommendations, developed decades ago using outdated agronomic management practices and lower-yielding, non-transgenic hybrids, may need adjusting.

Researchers with the University of Illinois Crop Physiology Laboratory have been re-evaluating nutrient uptake and partitioning in modern corn hybrids.

'Keep it simple' is a good rule of thumb when designing biocontrol programs to combat weeds and invasive plants, according to a meta-analysis of studies by UBC biodiversity experts.

Biocontrol programs use an invasive plant's natural enemies (insects and pathogens) to reduce its population. Most biocontrol programs combine many different enemies – typically about three different species, but sometimes as many as 25 – with the hope that at least one will prove effective.

Smoking tobacco through a hookah is a pastime gaining popularity among the college crowd, but many of them mistakenly believe that using the fragrant water pipe is less harmful than smoking cigarettes.

In a new study at UC San Francisco, researchers measuring chemicals in the blood and urine concluded that hookah smoke contains a different – but still harmful – mix of toxins. The findings are published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

EAST LANSING, Mich. — When the woods get crowded, female squirrels improve their offspring's odds of survival by ramping up how fast their offspring grow.

In a study led by Michigan State University and the University of Guelph (Canada), researchers showed for the first time how females' use social cues to correctly prepare their offspring for life outside the nest. The results, published in the current issue of Science, confirm that red squirrel mothers boosted stress hormone production during pregnancy, which increased the size and the chances of survival of their pups.

Frankfurt/Main, Germany, April 18, 2013. The circum-Antarctic Southern Ocean is an important region for global marine food webs and carbon cycling because of sea-ice formation and its unique plankton ecosystem. The origin of its ecosystems can be traced back to the emergence of the Antarctic ice sheets approximately 33.6 million years ago. This discovery was made by an international team including scientists from the Goethe University and the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre in Frankfurt, Germany.

Cracking the DNA code for a complex region of the human genome has helped 14 North American scientists, including five at Simon Fraser University, chart new territory in immunity research.

They have discovered that a good number of our antibody genes, how well they operate and, potentially, what they fight off, actually vary from person to person. That means even though drugs, treatments and vaccinations are designed to treat whole populations our response to them could be individualistic.

Health disparities between white and black adults in the South are not connected to a lack of exercise but more likely related to other factors such as access to health care, socioeconomic status and perhaps genetics, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the journal PLOS ONE.

In fact, more than 80,000 residents enrolled in the long-term Southern Community Cohort Study (SCCS) spent an equal amount of time — about nine hours or 60 percent of their waking day — in sedentary behaviors regardless of race.