Body

The last 10 years has seen a huge increase in the popularity of exotic pets. Among the weird and wonderful animals being kept in our homes are monkeys, tarantulas, iguanas, salamanders, snakes, even hedgehogs.

And as animal collections and reserves around the world develop their conservation and captive breeding programmes there is an insatiable demand for expertise in the husbandry of exotic animals.

A large-scale genetic study of native North Americans offers new insights into the migration of a small group of Athapaskan natives from their subarctic home in northwest North America to the southwestern United States. The migration, which left no known archaeological trace, is believed to have occurred about 500 years ago.

New Orleans, LA – A ground-breaking study by researchers at the School of Medicine at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans published in the August 2008 issue of Resuscitation has major implications for the #1 cause of death of Americans -- sudden cardiac arrest. The researchers stopped the heart of laboratory swine kept at room temperature, declared them dead from cardiac arrest, waited 25 minutes, and then resuscitated them with high doses of oxygen using hyperbaric oxygen therapy.

Philadelphia, PA, July 15, 2008 – A systematic literature review conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Connecticut, the Hispanic Health Council (Hartford), and the Connecticut Center for Eliminating Health Disparities among Latinos assessed the impact of peer education/counseling on nutrition and health outcomes among Latinos living in the United States.

Madison, Wis. – July 15, 2008 – A new study in the Journal of Communication reveals that access to an integrated system of internet health resources helps patients more than simply providing a list of URLs to accredited sites.

Breast cancer affects one in eight women and is the second leading cause of cancer death among women. Led by David H. Gustafson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the study set out to examine what type of access to internet resources would be expected to help newly diagnosed breast cancer patients during these stressful months.

An international group of European and US scientists led by the Centre for Plant Integrative Biology at The University of Nottingham have uncovered a fascinating new insight into the unseen side of plant biology — the root.

Although less visible than shoots, leaves and flowers, plant roots are critical to our lives. They provide the crops we eat with water, nutrients, a firm anchor and a place to store food. Roots are complex branching organs and show a wide variation in the way they grow through the soil to exploit the available resources.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered diabetes could be a hidden condition for some patients with coronary heart disease.

In a study led by Dr Saverio Stranges, Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Warwick Medical School, the team looked at levels of oxidative stress in the body (a toxic effect which causes cell damage).

The invasion and spread of cancer cells to other parts of the body, known as metastasis, is a principal cause of death in patients diagnosed with breast cancer. Although patients with early stage, small, breast tumours have an excellent short term prognosis, more than 15 to 20 per cent of them will eventually develop distant metastases, and die from the disease. Vascular invasion — through lymphatic and blood vessels — is the major route for cancer spreading to regional lymph nodes and to the rest of the body.

Researchers at The University of Nottingham have shown an association between certain past diagnostic radiation procedures and an increased risk of young-onset prostate cancer — a rare form of prostate cancer which affects about 10 per cent of all men diagnosed with the disease.

Every year, many thousands of people die as a result of poisoning by pesticides; one of the commonest types of pesticides involved are the organophosphates. In a research paper published today in PLoS Medicine, a group of investigators from Sri Lanka, Australia, and the UK led by Pradeepa Jayawardane report that amongst individuals with organophosphate poisoning, changes in nerve transmission are seen before the development of intermediate syndrome (IMS), a complication involving muscle weakness that can lead to respiratory failure and poor outcome.

Taken together, studies show that diabetes increases risk of tuberculosis

People with diabetes mellitus are at increased risk of developing active tuberculosis (TB), according to an analysis published in PLoS Medicine.

A key aspect of the international climate change agreement slated to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 focuses on reducing carbon emissions due to deforestation and degradation (REDD). But most REDD discussions focus on tropical deforestation while ignoring the potential carbon savings that could be realized from reduced forest degradation.

Not much is known about the world's largest living turtle, the leatherback. So-called for its tough, oily skin and lack of a hard shell, the behavior and habitats of this critically endangered turtle have remained a mystery. In this week's PLoS Biology, marine biologist Barbara Block and colleagues give us the largest study to date on leatherback turtles, unveiling the turtles' behavior, in doing so, providing methods that could be used to protect them.

With a name like "Leatherback Turtle" you might think the sea turtles could stand up to just about anything the ocean can throw at them, and for more than a hundred million years, they have. But tough, long-lived critters though they are, the population of leatherbacks in the eastern Pacific Ocean has plummeted by over 90 percent in the last 20 years.

Preschoolers who are aggressive, angry, and inattentive tend to have fewer playmates than their non-aggressive classmates, whether they are boys or girls. In comparison, non-aggressive children do better at interactions with many peers over time.