Body

The degree to which parents sacrifice themselves for their children depends on a variety of factors. On the one hand nest predators pose a threat to the young and the parent birds. But also the time of hatching plays a role. Earlier studies have shown that birds born late in the season are more likely to be protected by their parents, as the adult birds often do not have the chance to produce replacement clutches. Older offspring also tend to be protected more readily than younger ones, as much more parental care and energy have already been invested.

A multi-disciplinary research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has made a breakthrough discovery of a new type of immune cells that may help in the development of a future treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS).

Researchers from Aarhus University have taken an important step in the fight against sleeping sickness, a disease that is a major problem in parts of Africa. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the disease threatens approximately 60 million people and the treatment options are poor.

(Boston)--Changing the way doctors practice medicine is difficult, however a new study has shown that combining traditional education with quality improvement and incentives improves Human Papilloma virus (HPV) vaccination rates in boys and girls. The study, which appears on-line in the journal Vaccine, has the potential to produce sustained improvements in these vaccination rates.

ANN ARBOR--Our bones are smart. Bones know that by adolescence it's time to stop growing longer and stronger, and from that point on bones keep their shape by healing injuries.

This question of why bones grow longer and stronger in children, but stay static in adults--yet retain the ability to heal themselves, has long perplexed scientists in the bone regeneration field. But researchers from the University of Michigan, Kyoto University and Harvard University believe they may have unearthed a big piece of this puzzle.

Tobin, who helped to develop the zebrafish as a model of TB, decided to use the system to study the blood vessels associated with granulomas. He and his postdoctoral fellow, Stefan H. Oehlers, Ph.D., wanted to determine whether these new blood vessels were benefiting the host or the bacteria.

Boston, MA - Researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have found a novel mechanism causing type 2 diabetes that could be targeted to prevent or treat the disease. The research highlights a previously unrecognized molecular pathway that contributes to the malfunction of liver cells in obesity, leading to insulin resistance and diabetes.

The study appears online November 24, 2014 in Nature Medicine.

Cloaking immune cells with antibodies that block T cell trafficking to the gut can substantially reduce the risk of viral transmission in a non-human primate model of HIV infection, scientists report.

The findings suggest that drugs that are already in clinical trials for inflammatory bowel diseases might be effective in the treatment or prevention of HIV infection.

The results are scheduled for publication in Nature Medicine.

It's a dog eat dog world, and bacteria have been living in it for a long time. It's of no surprise that bacteria have a sophisticated arsenal to compete with each other for valuable resources in the environment. In 2010, work led by University of Washington Department of Microbiology Associate Professor Joseph Mougous uncovered a weaponry system used in this warfare between bacteria. The combatants inject deadly toxins into rival cells.

Are Italian natural history museums (NHMs) on the verge of collapse? A new analysis published in the open access journal ZooKeys points out that these institutions are facing a critical situation due to progressive loss of scientific relevance, decreasing economic investments and scarcity of personnel.

The study proposes that existing museums associate and collaborate to form a diffused structure, able to better manage their scientific collections and share resources and personnel.

Scientists from Uppsala University, the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm and Uppsala University Hospital have developed a new method of rapidly identifying which bacteria are causing an infection and determining whether they are resistant or sensitive to antibiotics. The findings are now being published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

HOUSTON - (Nov. 24, 2014) - New computer models that show how microtubules age are the first to match experimental results and help explain the dynamic processes behind an essential component of every living cell, according to Rice University scientists.

The results could help scientists fine-tune medications that manipulate microtubules to treat cancer and other diseases. Rice theoretical biophysicist Anatoly Kolomeisky and postdoctoral researcher Xin Li reported their results in the Journal of Physical Chemistry B.

Conventional treatment seeks to eradicate cancer cells by drugs and therapy delivered from outside the cell, which may also affect (and potentially harm) nearby normal cells.

In contrast to conventional cancer therapy, a University of Cincinnati team has developed several novel designs for iron-oxide based nanoparticles that detect, diagnose and destroy cancer cells using photo-thermal therapy (PTT). PTT uses the nanoparticles to focus light-induced heat energy only within the tumor, harming no adjacent normal cells.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - When researchers wanted to verify alcohol-use survey results at a senior housing center, they came up with a novel way to measure residents' drinking: Count the empty bottles in recycling bins.

Scientists compared the recycling bin results with two residential surveys gauging drinking habits of people living in a San Diego complex for low-income, older adults.

When it comes to teaching dogs how to sniff out explosives, there's nothing quite like the real thing to make sure they're trained right. That's the message from William Kranz, Nicholas Strange and John Goodpaster of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in the US, after finding that dogs that are trained with so-called "pseudo-explosives" could not reliably sniff out real explosives (and vice versa). Their findings are published online in Springer's journal Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.