Body

Researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) are strongly encouraging prenatal vitamin manufacturers to use only potassium iodide and not other sources of iodine in their products. According to the researchers, potassium iodide is the best way to ensure that prenatal vitamins given to expectant mothers receive 150µg of supplemental daily iodine as recommended by the American Thyroid Association. The researchers' recommendation appears as a research letter in the February 26th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Researchers at Purdue University have precisely measured the impact of a high-fat diet on the spread of cancer, finding that excessive dietary fat caused a 300 percent increase in metastasizing tumor cells in laboratory animals.

The researchers used an imaging technique to document how increasing fat content causes cancer cells to undergo changes essential to metastasis. Then they used another technique to count the number of cancer cells in the bloodstream of mice fed a high-fat diet compared to animals fed a lean diet.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Global airlines be forewarned: June 2010 could be a busy month for invasive plants, insects and animals seeking free rides to distant lands.

For centuries, people have preserved fruit by mixing it with sugar, making thick jams that last for months without spoiling. Now scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have discovered* a fundamental property of mixture behavior that might help extend the life of many things including vaccines, food and library books—and save money while doing it.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A newly released joint guideline produced by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the American Urological Association (AUA) recommends that healthy men who are screened regularly for prostate cancer and show no symptoms of the disease should talk to their doctors about using a 5-alpha reductase inhibitor (5-ARI) to prevent the disease. 5-ARIs lower the level of the hormone dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which can contribute to the growth of prostate cancer.

Scientists have discovered the secrets of a sophisticated molecule that plays a role in many aspects of human health from fertility to blood pressure; digestion to mental health. This has opened up the potential for discovery of new drugs to treat an enormous variety of conditions.

CINCINNATI – Researchers have discovered a gene that modifies the severity of lung disease in people with the lethal genetic condition, cystic fibrosis, pointing to possible new targets for treatment, according to a new study in Nature.

MADISON — To understand friction on a very small scale, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers had to think big.

Friction is a force that affects any application where moving parts come into contact; the more surface contact there is, the stronger the force. At the nanoscale — mere billionths of a meter — friction can wreak havoc on tiny devices made from only a small number of atoms or molecules. With their high surface-to-volume ratio, nanomaterials are especially susceptible to the forces of friction.

A team of Vanderbilt scientists have invented the world's smallest version of the periscope and are using it to look at cells and other micro-organisms from several sides at once.

"With an off-the-shelf laboratory microscope you only see cells from one side, the top," says team member Chris Janetopoulos, assistant professor of biological sciences. "Not only can we see the tops of cells, we can view their sides as well – something biologists almost never see."

A new study suggests that the metabolic response to obesity and insulin resistance, particularly as it pertains to the liver, differs among ethnic groups in the U.S. African-Americans are more resistant to the buildup of fat in the abdominal adipose tissue and liver, and to high triglyceride levels associated with insulin resistance. These findings are in the March issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD).

Liver cancer in patients whose only risk factor is metabolic syndrome has distinct forms and structures compared to other liver tumors. These findings are in the March issue of Hepatology, a journal published by John Wiley & Sons on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD). The article is also available online at Wiley Interscience (www.interscience.wiley.com).

February 25, 2009, New York, NY – Researchers at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) have identified a set of compounds that can trigger the proliferation of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, using sophisticated high-throughput screening techniques.

From hair color to the ancestral line of parasitic bacteria, scientists can glean a lot from genes. But imagine if genes also revealed where you lived or who you spent time with. It turns out they do, if you know where and how to look.

Next time you have an unlucky encounter with a crab's pinchers, consider that the claw tips may be reinforced with bromine-rich biomaterial 1.5 times harder than acrylic glass and extremely fracture resistant, says a University of Oregon scientist.

CHICAGO — Physicians at Northwestern Memorial Hospital successfully removed a patient's gallbladder through the vagina, making them the first in the Midwest and the third in the country to perform the innovative procedure. The technique, known as NOTES—natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery—is gaining in popularity and has been characterized by many in the medical profession as laying the groundwork for truly "incisionless" surgery.