Body

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- "And don't let the bed bugs bite" is no longer a harmless adage. In reality today, these bloodthirsty bugs infest thousands of homes. According to a team of Penn State entomologists, biopesticides -- naturally occurring microorganisms -- might provide an answer to this pest problem. Bed bugs need blood meals for growth and development throughout their life cycle. Increased travel, widespread insecticide resistance and changes in management practices have caused a resurgence in those insects throughout North America and Europe.

Some grey seal mums adopt risky tactics when it comes to the future of their young, a strategy that can give their pup a real advantage, according to scientists.

Researchers from Durham University, UK, and the University of St Andrews, looking at grey seal colonies in Scotland, found that some seal mothers are flexible in the parenting style they adopt and 'gamble' on the outcome of their actions, whilst other play it safe and steady.

Viruses can be elusive quarry. RNA viruses are particularly adept at defeating antiviral drugs because they are so inaccurate in making copies of themselves. With at least one error in every genome they copy, viral genomes are moving targets for antiviral drugs, creating resistant mutants as they multiply. In the best-known example of success against retroviruses, it takes multiple-drug cocktails to corner HIV and narrow its escape route.

Philadelphia, Pa. (November 20, 2012) – The time has come to develop a pituitary "centers of excellence" (CoE) designation for hospitals with high-level surgical skills and other capabilities needed to provide state-of-the-art care for patients with pituitary tumors, according to an article in the November issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

Philadelphia, Pa. (November 16. 2012) – Meningiomas are a common type of benign brain tumor that sometimes grows dramatically in pregnant women. A new study suggests that this sudden tumor growth likely results from "hemodynamic changes" associated with pregnancy, reports the November issue of Neurosurgery, official journal of the Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

A medical researcher with the University of Alberta and his team just published their findings about their work on developing 'homing beacon drugs' that kill only cancer cells, not healthy ones, thanks to nano-technology.

Flowers need water and light to grow. Even children learn that plants use sunlight to gather energy from earth and water. Members of Professor Dr. Olaf Kruse's biological research team at Bielefeld University have made a groundbreaking discovery that one plant has another way of doing this. They have confirmed for the first time that a plant, the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, not only engages in photosynthesis, but also has an alternative source of energy: it can draw it from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (Nov. 20, 2012) – The executive pay provisions of the TARP – the Troubled Asset Relief Program – stoked controversy. Bankers claimed the rules would thwart their efforts to attract and retain the best executives. But the pay rules may have had an unintended benefit of reducing the scope of the program, researchers say.

HEIDELBERG, 20 November 2012 – Scientists have engineered bacteria that are capable of sacrificing themselves for the good of the bacterial population. These altruistically inclined bacteria, which are described online in the journal Molecular Systems Biology, can be used to demonstrate the conditions where programmed cell death becomes a distinct advantage for the survival of the bacterial population.

November 20, 2012 -- Results of a new study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health indicate that a developmental pattern of impulsiveness in young males is linked with gambling problems in late adolescence. Respondents considered to be in the high impulsivity track as early as first grade doubled the odds of meeting criteria for at-risk/problem gambling, and tripled the odds of meeting criteria for problem gambling.

Do birds change their tune in response to urban noise? It depends on the bird species, according to Dr. Alejandro Ariel Ríos-Chelén from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and colleagues. Their work shows that while some birds do adapt their songs in noisy conditions by means of frequency changes, others like the vermilion flycatchers adapt their song by means of changes in song lengths. The work is published online in Springer's journal, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.

UNIQUE research conducted by a University of Huddersfield professor confirms just how successfully the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics were designed, organised and delivered. His findings will reveal to planners of the 2016 Games in Brazil just what they must do to meet or exceed the standards set by London.

New York, NY -- (November 20, 2012) – Wolters Kluwer Health and the International Association of Forensic Nurses (IAFN) are pleased to announce an agreement to publish Journal of Forensic Nursing, the official journal of IAFN.

As reported in the journal Science, physicists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) and the University of Michigan have shown that synthetic membrane channels can be constructed through "DNA nanotechnology." This technique employs DNA molecules as programmable building materials for custom-designed, self-assembling, nanometer-scale structures. The researchers present evidence that their nature-inspired nanostructures may also behave like biological ion channels.