Body

Tampa, FL (March 20, 2013) -- University of South Florida researchers played a key role in an international multidisciplinary project that has yielded a promising new antimalarial drug with the potential to cure the mosquito-borne disease and block its transmission with low doses.

Roman Manetsch, PhD, USF associate professor of chemistry, and Dennis Kyle, PhD, USF professor of global health, were co-leaders of the USF team, which helped to discover and develop a series of potent compounds to combat malaria known as the 4-(1H)-quinolone-3-diarylethers, or quinolones.

Two leading ecologists say a rapid proliferation of roads across the planet is causing irreparable damage to nature, but properly planned roads could actually help the environment.

"Loggers, miners and other road builders are putting roads almost everywhere, including places they simply shouldn't go, such as wilderness areas," said Professor Andrew Balmford of the University of Cambridge, UK. "Some of these roads are causing environmental disasters."

More than three quarters of new, emerging or re-emerging human diseases are caused by pathogens from animals, according to the World Health Organization.

But a widely accepted theory of risk reduction for these pathogens – one of the most important ideas in disease ecology – is likely wrong, according to a new study co-authored by Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment Senior Fellow James Holland Jones and former Woods-affiliated ecologist Dan Salkeld.

When Georgia Tech opens the doors to the Georgia Dome next month as the host institution for the 2013 Final Four, expect third-seeded Florida to walk out as the national champion. That's the prediction from Georgia Tech's Logistic Regression/Markov Chain (LRMC) college basketball ranking system, a computerized model that has chosen the men's basketball national champ in three of the last five years.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- New research from the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, published in the Journal of Surgical Research, may help clinicians determine which patients are at highest risk for post-surgical blood clots in the legs or lungs.

Imagine having a daylong Thanksgiving feast every day for a month, then, only pauper's rations the rest of the year.

University of Washington researchers have discovered Dolly Varden, a kind of trout, eating just that way in Alaska's Chignik Lake watershed.

Organs such as the stomach and intestines in the Dolly Varden doubled to quadrupled in size when eggs from spawning sockeye salmon became available each August, the researchers found. They were like vacuums sucking up the eggs and nipping at the flesh of spawned-out salmon carcasses.

By charting the differing fates of individual T cells, researchers have shown that previously unpredictable aspects of the adaptive immune response can be effectively modeled. The crucial question: What determines which of the immune system's millions of cells will mobilize to fight an acute infection and which will be held back to survive long-term, forming the basis of the immunological memory? The scientists' findings, published in the journal Science, could have implications for improved immunotherapy and vaccination strategies.

HOUSTON – (March 20, 2013) – As Syria's raging civil war approaches the two-year mark, the United States should prepare a more focused strategy that strengthens the moderate political forces in Syria and engages Syria's regional and international stakeholders, according to a new special report from Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy. The report also recommends that U.S. strategy should buttress Syria's neighbors, address the deepening humanitarian crisis and plans for a post-Assad Syria.

"We live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially", says Miami University (Ohio) computational biologist Iddo Friedberg. "But for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered." Understanding the function of genes is a problem that has emerged at the forefront of molecular biology. Many groups develop and employ sophisticated algorithms to decipher these "words".

DALLAS (SMU) – The Innovation Gym in SMU's Lyle School of Engineering was buzzing and clanking on a recent morning as students tested robots they built for a specific task – collecting and remediating water samples, as Lyle faculty and students have been doing by hand in refugee camps in Africa and Bangladesh.

Barcelona, 20th March 2013.- An international study involving dermatologists from the Hospital del Mar and Spanish subjects has concluded that a drug normally used to treat severe bronchial asthma caused by allergies (Omalizumab) rapidly eliminates the symptoms of spontaneous chronic urticaria, a development that it is expected will significantly improve the quality of life of chronic urticaria sufferers.

Independent maternal demographic factors such as social status, ethnicity and maternal age can predict the likelihood of operative births in the UK, according to a new study published today (20 March) in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

Studying a protein that gives structure to the nucleus of cells, Johns Hopkins researchers stumbled upon mutations associated with familial partial lipodystrophy (FPLD), a rare disease that disrupts normal patterns of fat distribution throughout the body.

"Our findings open new paths for learning how and why fat cells are disproportionately affected by mutations in the protein lamin A, which is found in the nucleus of most cells of the body," says Katherine Wilson, Ph.D., professor of cell biology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Researchers from The Miriam Hospital and the Rhode Island Community Food Bank report individuals who participated in a six-week cooking program and followed simple, plant-based recipes decreased their total food spending, purchased healthier food items and improved their food security.

In Norway, families receive public support that enables them to care for aging parents in their own homes and keep them out of nursing homes. This includes a salary for a son or daughter to provide care. They also focus on adapting houses to the needs of older people through municipal government-financed repairs and renovations. The nursing home is the last resort.