Body

NARRAGANSETT, R.I. – August 29, 2012 -- Estimates of the total mass of all life on Earth should be reduced by about one third, based on the results of a study by a team of scientists at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography and colleagues in Germany.

The research was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine have identified the genetic cause of a rare and fatal bone disease by studying frozen skin cells that were taken from a child with the condition almost fifty years ago. Their study, which details how the MT1-MMP gene leads to the disease known as Winchester syndrome, appears in the August 23, 2012 online edition of The American Journal of Human Genetics.

Aplastic anaemia is characterised by a reduction in the number of the bone marrow cells that go on to form the different cell types present in blood (essentially red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets). In most cases, the causes of the disorder are hard to determine, but some patients have been found to have genetic alterations leading to a shortening of their telomeres (the end regions of chromosomes that protect and stabilise DNA).

KANSAS CITY, MO—As the national waistline expands, so do pools of intra-cellular fat known as lipid droplets. Although most of us wish our lipid droplets would vanish, they represent a cellular paradox: on the one hand droplets play beneficial roles by corralling fat into non-toxic organelles. On the other, oversized lipid droplets are associated with obesity and its associated health hazards.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Rising sea levels, melting glaciers, more intense rainstorms and more frequent heat waves are among the planetary woes that may come to mind when climate change is mentioned. Now, two University of Michigan researchers say an increased risk of avian influenza transmission in wild birds can be added to the list.

Population ecologists Pejman Rohani and Victoria Brown used a mathematical model to explore the consequences of altered interactions between an important species of migratory shorebird and horseshoe crabs at Delaware Bay as a result of climate change.

The analysis was conducted using five editions of the EHRA White Book, which is produced by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

Fabio Ciulla from Northeastern University, Boston, USA, and his colleagues demonstrated that the elimination of contestants in TV talent shows based on public voting, such as American Idol, can be anticipated. They unveiled the predictive power of microblogging Twitter signals--used as a proxy for the general preference of an audience--in a study recently published in EPJ Data Science¹.

Biomarkers are important tools for diagnosing and monitoring diseases and are useful in assessing patient responses to new therapies. Neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD) are particularly difficult to monitor because the site of disease (the brain) isn't readily accessible.

DALLAS – Aug. 28, 2012 – Men who have been treated for prostate cancer, either with surgery or radiation, could benefit from taking aspirin regularly, says a new study that includes a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Scientists have taken a step closer to solving one of life's mysteries – why family size generally falls as societies become richer.

Evolutionary biologists have long puzzled over this because natural selection is expected to have selected for organisms that try to maximise their reproduction. But in industrialised societies around the world, increasing wealth coincides with people deliberately limiting their family size – the so-called 'demographic transition'.

Researchers at the University of Hawaii – Manoa (UHM) School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) made a discovery that challenges a major theory in the field of coral reef ecology. The general assumption has been that the more flexible corals are, regarding which species of single celled algae (Symbiodinium) they host in coral tissues, the greater ability corals will have to survive environmental stress.

Increasingly humanitarian organizations will find themselves responding to health emergencies provoked by the adverse effects of mining and other extractive industries, setting up a potential clash to do with the core principles and values at the heart of humanitarian medicine, writes Philippe Calain from the humanitarian medical organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), in this week's PLOS Medicine.

In their August editorial, the PLOS Medicine Editors reflect on a recent Policy Forum article by Jason Corburn and Alison Cohen*, which describes the need for urban health equity indicators to guide public health policy in cities and urban areas. The Editors focus on the need for better air quality data for the world's cities because many cities with the worst airborne particulate levels are in low- and middle-income countries and often have limited data.

There are more than 400,000 species of beetles and only two species of the tuatara, a reptile cousin of snakes and lizards that lives in New Zealand. Crocodiles and alligators, while nearly 250 million years old, have diversified into only 23 species. Why evolution has produced "winners" — including mammals and many species of birds and fish — and "losers" is a major question in evolutionary biology.

Pity the male of the marine whelk, Solenosteira macrospira. He does all the work of raising the young, from egg-laying to hatching — even though few of the baby snails are his own.

The surprising new finding by researchers at the University of California, Davis, puts S. macrospira in a small club of reproductive outliers characterized by male-only child care. Throw in extensive promiscuity and sibling cannibalism, and the species has one of the most extreme life histories in the animal kingdom.