Body

Researchers have uncovered a big clue as to why some of the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers pose a greater risk for serious problems like stomach cancer than others; it turns out these bacteria can exploit the surrounding stomach cells to protect them from the immune system.

BOZEMAN -- Montana State University scientist Darla Goeres knows that there is more than one way to grow a biofilm, a fact that she uses to make sure that when a product claims it kills "99 percent" of bacteria, it really does the job.

Biofilms are the extremely common communities of bacteria that form on most wet surfaces. They range from the plaque on teeth to the slime on streamside rocks to the sludge that clogs pipes.

An inexpensive web-enabled device for measuring lung function in patients with asthma and other disorders is being developed by researchers at Texas Instruments, in Bangalore, India, and co-workers. Writing in the International Journal of Biomedical Engineering and Technology, the team explains how the devise could allow physicians to monitor their patients remotely and quickly instigate medical attention in an emergency.

According to new research in the Journal of Consumer Research, simply asking people a question about whether they're willing to volunteer their time leads to increases in donations of both time and money.

Engineering researchers from UC San Diego and the University of Arizona have concluded three months of rigorous earthquake simulation tests on a half-scale three-story structure, and will now begin sifting through their results so they can be used in the future designs of buildings across the nation. The engineers produced a series of earthquake jolts as powerful as magnitude 8.0 on a structure resembling a parking garage.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif.— As Aesop said, appearances are deceiving—even in life's tiniest critters. From first detection in the 1880s, clinging to the sides of an aquarium, to its recent characterization by the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a simple and primitive animal, Trichoplax adhaerens, appears to harbor a far more complex suite of capabilities than meets the eye.

New research may explain why breast cancer tends to be more aggressive in women with denser breast tissue.

Breast cancer cells grown in dense, rigid surroundings step up their invasive activities, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators report in the Sept. 9 issue of Current Biology.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new and fast method for making biological 'chips' – technology that could lead to quick testing for serious diseases, fast detection of MRSA infections and rapid discovery of new drugs.

Researchers working at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) and The School of Chemistry have unveiled a new technique for producing functional 'protein chips' in a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), published online today (22 August 2008).

Together with colleagues from the Department of Dermatology and Allergy and the Center for Allergy and Environment of the Technische Universität München, scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum München have pinpointed a major gene for allergic diseases. The gene was localized using cutting edge technologies for examining the whole human genome at the Helmholtz Zentrum München.

Biologists and biochemists are now able to access 3D images of biomacromolecules underlying biological functions and disease. Rather than relying on text to provide the understanding of biomacromolecule structures, a collaborative website called Proteopedia now provides a new resource by linking written information and three-dimensional structural information. The wiki web resource, first described in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology, displays protein structures and other biomacromolecules in interactive format.

Throughout history, elephants have been thought of as 'different'. Shakespeare, and even Aristotle, described them as walking on inflexible column-like legs. And this myth persists even today. Which made John Hutchinson from The Royal Veterinary College, London, want to find out more about elephants and the way they move. Are they really that different from other, more fleet-footed species? Are their legs as rigid and 'columnar' as people had thought?

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Malaria Research Institute have identified a previously unknown virus that is infectious to Anopheles gambiae—the mosquito primarily responsible for transmitting malaria. According to the researchers, the discovered virus could one day be used to pass on new genetic information to An. gambiae mosquitoes as part of a strategy to control malaria, which kills over one million people worldwide each year. The study was published August 22 online in the peer-reviewed open access journal PLoS Pathogens.

One of the world's longest and largest trials of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has found that post-menopausal women on HRT gain significant improvements in quality of life.

The results of the latest study by the WISDOM research team (Women's International Study of long Duration Oestrogen after Menopause) are published today on the British Medical Journal website www.bmj.com.

A predisposition to adult snoring can be established very early in life. Research published today in BioMed Central's open access journal Respiratory Research describes possible childhood risk factors, including exposure to animals, early respiratory or ear infections and growing up in a large family.