Body

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – You can train your body, your mind … and your willpower? That's according to a new study by researchers at The Miriam Hospital's Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center, who say that with a little practice, it may be possible to strengthen and improve your self-control – and lose more weight.

HOUSTON – An engineered peptide provides a new prototype for killing an entire category of resistant bacteria by shredding and dissolving their double-layered membranes, which are thought to protect those microbes from antibiotics.

The synthetic peptide was effective in lab experiments against antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, which cause a variety of difficult-to-treat, potentially lethal infections such as pneumonia and sepsis.

WASHINGTON, January 23, 2013─Important findings on the impact of banning affirmative action in higher education were just published in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ) in Online First. Affirmative action in university admissions has long been a matter of public debate, and Fisher v. University of Texas, Austin has placed its use in admissions policy as an issue before the U.S. Supreme Court. AERJ is a top-ranked peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association.

This press release is available in Spanish.

Biopesticides containing beneficial fungi are often grown on grains or other solids, but U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientists have shown a liquid diet can work better.

The approach, dubbed "liquid culture fermentation," offers several benefits, including lower material costs and increased yields of certain forms of insect-killing fungi, including Isaria or Metarhizium, which can serve as biobased alternatives to synthetic pesticides.

What to fear most if faced by a cancer diagnosis is the spread of the cancer to other parts of the body. This process called metastasis accounts for over 90% of cancer patient deaths and therefore is a strong focus for cancer researchers. Researchers at BRIC, University of Copenhagen have shown that the enzyme Lysyl Oxidase (LOX) can create a "scarred" microenvironment that enhances cancer spreading. By blocking activity of the LOX enzyme, the researchers succeeded in significantly decreasing metastasis in a model of breast cancer.

A team of researchers led by the UAB has found the first ancient remains of a calcified ovarian teratoma, in the pelvis of the skeleton of a woman from the Roman era. The find confirms the presence in antiquity of this type of tumour - formed by the remains of tissues or organs, which are difficult to locate during the examination of ancient remains. Inside the small round mass, four teeth and a small piece of bone were found.

Michael Baum, Professor emeritus of surgery at University College London says that, while deaths from breast cancer may be avoided, any benefit will be more than outweighed by deaths due to the long term adverse effects of treatment.

He estimates that, for every 10, 000 women invited for screening, three to four breast cancer deaths are avoided at the cost of 2.72 to 9.25 deaths from the long term toxicity of radiotherapy.

The mosquitoes that spread dengue fever tap into the domestic networks of humans, along with their bloodstreams, finds a study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The data from Iquitos, Peru, shows that the trail of the most rapid transmission of human infections does not lead through large, public gathering places, as might be expected, but from house-to-house, as people visit nearby friends and relatives.

Estrogen levels drop dramatically in menopause, a time when the risk of urinary tract infections increases significantly.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found new evidence in mice that the two phenomena are connected by more than just timing. If further research confirms these links, boosting estrogen levels may get a second look as an approach for reducing urinary infections in menopausal women.

Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of late-life dementia. The disorder is thought to be caused by a protein known as amyloid-beta, or Abeta, which clumps together in the brain, forming plaques that are thought to destroy neurons. This destruction starts early, too, and can presage clinical signs of the disease by up to 20 years.

For decades now, researchers have been trying, with limited success, to develop drugs that prevent this clumping. Such drugs require a "target" — a structure they can bind to, thereby preventing the toxic actions of Abeta.

CINCINNATI—University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers have found that lightning may affect the onset of headache and migraines.

These results, published in the Jan. 24, 2013 online edition of the journal Cephalalgia, are the first tying lightning to headache and could help chronic sufferers more efficiently anticipate headache and migraine arrival and begin preventive treatment immediately.

TORONTO, Jan. 23, 2013—Smokers who quit when they are young adults can live almost as long as people who never smoked, groundbreaking new research has found.

Smoking cuts at least 10 years off a person's lifespan. But a comprehensive analysis of health and death records in the United States found that people who quit smoking before they turn 40 regain almost all of those lost years.

Liquid crystal displays are ubiquitous. Now, Polish physicists have demonstrated that the application of a very strong alternating electric field to thin liquid crystal cells leads to a new distinct dynamic effect in the response of the cells. The theory of spatio-temporal chaos explains this effect. It was elucidated by Wojciech Jeżewski and colleagues from the Institute of Molecular Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, in Poznań, Poland, and is about to be published in EPJ E.

Quality sexual and reproductive health care is an essential component of public health. However, there are insufficient evidence-based policies related to adolescent sexual and reproductive health in low- and middle-income countries. In an effort to address the research gap, faculty from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health led a project to identify research priorities for adolescent sexual and reproductive health in these countries.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — University of Michigan research sheds new light on why certain people are more likely to suffer from rheumatoid arthritis – paving the way to explore new treatments for both arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.

The new UMHS research in mice identifies how a specific group of genes works behind the scenes to activate the bone-destroying cells that cause severe rheumatoid arthritis, a debilitating health issue for millions of Americans.