Body

In February, Greenpeace activist and actress Lucy Lawless, star of "Xena: Warrior Princess," was sentenced to 120 hours of community service for boarding a Shell oil rig to protest offshore Arctic drilling. Dramatic protests by Netherlands-based Greenpeace contrast sharply with the lobbying and letter-writing of the U.S.-based Sierra Club. The differences among those two groups and other international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) reflect the cultures of the nations where they are based, according to research by a University of Missouri political scientist.

A professor from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine is one of the lead authors of a study identifying seven new regions of the human genome that are associated with increased risk of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness among older adults.

Infectious disease experts at Johns Hopkins have found that among people infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), co-infection with HIV, speeds damage and scarring of liver tissue by almost a decade.

In a second study of HCV infection, the Johns Hopkins research team participated in the discovery of two genetic mutations that make it more likely that patients' immune systems can rid the body of HCV. Both studies are described in articles published online in February ahead of print in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

Ann Arbor, Mich. — Scoring methods commonly used to evaluate Newborn Intensive Care Units (NICU) are inconsistent, according to new research from the University of Michigan.

The research published last week in the journal Pediatrics compared 10 well-known scores that have been developed to evaluate NICUs. The researchers found more differences than similarities.

For hundreds of years, plant taxonomists have worked to understand how species are related. Until relatively recently, their only reliable source of information about these relationships was the plants' morphology—traits that could be observed, measured, counted, categorized, and described visually. And paramount among these morphological traits were aspects of flower shape and arrangement.

March 4, 2013 (Toronto) – A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that alcohol is now the third leading cause of the global burden of disease and injury, despite the fact most adults worldwide abstain from drinking.

This research, part of the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study, was published in this month's issue of the journal Addiction. It also found that Canadians drink more than 50 per cent above the global average.

An international team of researchers, including an investigator with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, has produced what may be the most comprehensive computer model of human metabolism yet developed.

The research shows that people with particular variations in a stretch of DNA within the FTO gene, called intron 8, could be at greater risk of developing melanoma.

Variations in a different part of the FTO gene, called intron 1, are already known to be the most important genetic risk factor for obesity and overeating. These variants are linked to Body Mass Index (BMI) – a measure of a person's shape based on their weight and height. Having a high BMI can increase the risk of various diseases including type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, womb (endometrial) cancer and more.

Eating your greens may be even more important that previously thought, with the discovery that an immune cell population essential for intestinal health could be controlled by leafy greens in your diet.

The immune cells, named innate lymphoid cells (ILCs), are found in the lining of the digestive system and protect the body from 'bad' bacteria in the intestine. They are also believed to play an important role in controlling food allergies, inflammatory diseases and obesity, and may even prevent the development of bowel cancers.

Johns Hopkins research on obese mice finds that the impact of dieting and losing weight benefits the heart health of the young, but not the older ones

In a study of the impact of weight loss on reversing heart damage from obesity, Johns Hopkins researchers found that poor heart function in young obese mice can be reversed when the animals lose weight from a low-calorie diet. However, older mice, who had been obese for a longer period of time, did not regain better heart function after they were on the same low-calorie diet.

LOS ANGELES – (March. 4, 2013) – Grandmother's cigarette smoking could be responsible for her grandchild's asthma, and the recent discovery of this multi-generational transmission of disease suggests the environmental factors experienced today could determine the health of family members for generations to come, two Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) lead researchers write in the March edition of Review of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

An important predictor of the severity of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants may be what their mothers ate during pregnancy, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

RSV is the most common cause of severe lower respiratory tract disease among infants and young children worldwide. Currently there is no effective vaccine against RSV. Outbreaks occur in communities each year, usually lasting 4-5 months during the fall, winter and/or spring months.

SEATTLE—Researchers used electronic health records to identify Group Health patients who weren't screened regularly for cancer of the colon and rectum—and to encourage them to be screened. This centralized, automated approach doubled these patients' rates of on-time screening—and saved health costs—over two years. The March 5 Annals of Internal Medicine published the randomized controlled trial.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, ILL. (March 4, 2013) – Two million Americans are allergic to insect stings, an allergy which sends more than 500,000 people to the emergency room annually. Yet, according to a study published today in the March issue of Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, the scientific journal of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAA), while fire ant allergy sufferers know allergy shots can save their life, more than 60 percent do not adhere to treatment guidelines.

A small study from Johns Hopkins adds to the growing body of evidence that red blood cells stored longer than three weeks begin to lose the capacity to deliver oxygen-rich cells where they may be most needed.