Body

(July 15, 2009) – HOBOKEN, NJ – A recent study published in International Immunopharmacology, reveals why Pycnogenol® (pic-noj-en-all), an antioxidant plant extract from the bark of the French maritime pine tree, is effective for reducing inflammation and soothing pain associated with various health problems. Dr. Raffaella Canali of the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition in Rome, Italy, found that Pycnogenol® inhibits the generation of COX-2 and 5-LOX, two naturally occurring enzymes associated with a host of inflammatory conditions.

Leading medical researchers from Australia's George Institute for International Health are surprised by recent statements made by a Western Australian Member of Parliament, Hon. Carol Anne Martin MLA, who is calling for the removal of the alcohol restrictions in the Kimberley towns of Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing. The George Institute considers these statements a disappointing response to the positive community impacts of the alcohol restriction.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have identified 27 genes that are associated with either Asperger Syndrome (AS) and/or autistic traits and/or empathy. The research will be published tomorrow in the journal Autism Research. This is the first candidate gene study of its kind.

The abrupt withdrawal of morphine-like analgesics - opioids - can increase sensitivity to pain. Experiments have now shown that this effect is caused by a memory-like process, the long-term potentiation of synaptic strength in the spinal cord. The study, which was supported by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), also found ways of avoiding this increase in pain sensitivity. These pioneering results have now been published in the prestigious journal SCIENCE.Opioids are the oldest and most effective analgesics.

The Gene Ontology is a powerful language that gives researchers a shared vocabulary to describe disease-related and beneficial interactions between a microbe and its host. By allowing scientists to link experimental results to a computer-readable language, the Gene Ontology provides scientists with an important bridge between specific experiments that characterize gene function, and biology efforts to provide a global picture of host-microbe interactions.

Biologically speaking, many animals besides dogs bark, according to Kathryn Lord at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, but the evolutionary biologist also says domestic dogs vocalize in this way much more than birds, deer, monkeys and other wild animals that use barks. The reason is related to dogs’ 10,000-year history of hanging around human food dumps, she suggests.

PORTLAND, Ore. – Researchers have identified a potential biological mechanism that could explain why oral contraceptives may be less effective at preventing pregnancy in obese women, as some epidemiological studies have indicated.

Although conventional oral contraceptives appear to eventually reach the effective blood concentrations needed in the body to prevent conception in obese women, it appears to take twice as long, leaving a "window of opportunity" every month where the contraceptive may not be at a high enough level to prevent a pregnancy.

BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, July 14, 2009 – Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) researchers, in a collaboration with colleagues from the University of Leipzig, Germany, have identified a signaling pathway that is operational in intra-abdominal fat, the fat depot that is most strongly tied to obesity-related morbidity.

The paper was just published in the Endocrine Society's the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism ( J. Clin. Endocrinol. Metab. 2009; 94:2507-251)

BOSTON – Earlier this year, a scientific team from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and the Broad Institute identified a class of RNA genes known as large intervening non-coding RNAs or "lincRNAs," a discovery that has pushed the field forward in understanding the roles of these molecules in many biological processes, including stem cell pluripotency, cell cycle regulation, and the innate immune response.

But even as one question was being answered, another was close on its heels: What, exactly, were these mysterious molecules doing?

The death penalty for those convicted of drug trafficking and other drug-related offences should be abolished as it is both ineffective as a policy measure and a violation of human rights.

So write a group of prominent addiction scientists who believe that the international addiction community has a responsibility to support the abolitionist cause.

When it comes to investigating mysteries, Sherlock Holmes has nothing on Rice University biologist Amy Dunham. In a newly published paper, Dunham offers a new theory for one of primatology's long-standing mysteries: Why are male and female lemurs the same size?

New findings from Queen's University biologists show that in the plant world, bigger isn't necessarily better.

"Until now most of the thinking has suggested that to be a good competitor in the forest, you have to be a big plant," says Queen's Biology professor Lonnie Aarssen. "But our research shows it's virtually the other way around."

New research published in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons reveals that African Americans with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), a rare cancer that begins in the wall of the gastrointestinal tract, now have survival rates equivalent to those of Caucasians. Prior to 2000, African Americans were more likely to develop GIST and less likely to undergo surgical treatment for this type of cancer.

Plastic surgeons are turning to mathematics to take the guesswork out of efforts to ensure that selected live tissue segments to restore damaged body parts will have enough blood and oxygen to survive the surgical transfer.

In the world's first published mathematical model of tissue transfer, mathematicians have shown that they can use differential equations to determine which tissue segments selected for transfer will receive the level of oxygen required to sustain the tissue. The transfer occurs from one part of the body to another location on the same body.

Drifting across the world's oceans are a group of unicellular marine microorganisms that are not only a crucial source of food for other marine life — but their fossils, which are found in abundance, provide scientists with an extraordinary record of climatic change and other major events in the history of the earth.

Now, planktonic foraminifera — single-celled shell building members of the marine microplankton community — have given up a secret of their very own.