Body

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Thanks to studies of a fish that gives birth to live young and is not fished commercially, scientists at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that food availability is a critical limiting factor in the health of fish populations.

The scientists were able to attach numbers to this idea, based on 16 years of data. They discovered that the availability of enough food can drive up to a 10-fold increase in the per capita birthrate of fish. And, with adequate food, the young are up to 10 times more likely to survive than those without it.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year nearly 100,000 hospitalized patients die from infections acquired while undergoing treatment for other conditions. While many factors may contribute to the phenomenon, nurse staffing (i.e., the number of patients assigned to a nurse) has been implicated as a major cause.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – The same "green revolution" concepts that have revolutionized crop agriculture and helped to feed billions of people around the world may now offer similar potential in forestry, scientists say, with benefits for wood, biomass production, drought stress and even greenhouse gas mitigation.

Working with mice, Johns Hopkins researchers have solved a key part of a muscle regeneration mystery plaguing scientists for years, adding strong support to the theory that muscle mass can be built without a complete, fully functional supply of muscle stem cells.

CINCINNATI – Researchers have discovered a previously unknown function for a protein that could add to the expanding arsenal of potential new drugs for battling inflammation and tissue fibrosis in a number of disease processes.

Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report Sept. 27 in Developmental Cell that, a protein called TRPC6 mediates a molecular pathway critical to the body's repair processes following various forms of injury caused by disease.

Atherosclerosis – the hardening of arteries that is a primary cause of cardiovascular disease and death – has long been presumed to be the fateful consequence of complicated interactions between overabundant cholesterol and resulting inflammation in the heart and blood vessels.

BOSTON--Flipping a newly discovered molecular switch in white fat cells enabled mice to eat a high-calorie diet without becoming obese or developing the inflammation that causes insulin resistance, report scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The researchers say the results, to be published in the Sept. 28 issue of the journal Cell, provide the first known molecular link between thermogenesis (burning calories to produce heat) and the development of inflammation in fat cells.

Researchers of motor neuron diseases have long had a hunch that two fatal diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), might somehow be linked. A new study confirms that this link exists.

"Our study is the first to link the two diseases on a molecular level in human cells," said Robin Reed, Harvard Medical School professor of cell biology and lead investigator of the study.

The results will be published online in the September 27 issue of Cell Reports.

Scientists may have discovered why a protein called MYC can provoke a variety of cancers. Like many proteins associated with cancer, MYC helps regulate cell growth. A study carried out by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and colleagues found that, unlike many other cell growth regulators, MYC does not turn genes on or off, but instead boosts the expression of genes that are already turned on.

These findings, which will be published in Cell on Sept. 28, could lead to new therapeutic strategies for some cancers.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (September 27, 2012) – For a cancer patient, over-expression of the MYC oncogene is a bad omen.

Scientists have long known that in tumor cells, elevated levels of MYC's protein product, c-Myc, are associated with poor clinical outcomes, including increased rates of metastasis, recurrence, and mortality. Yet decades of research producing thousands of scientific papers on the subject have failed to consistently explain precisely how c-Myc exerts its effects across a broad range of cancer types. Until now, that is.

A team of researchers from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), headed by CNIO Director María Blasco, has demonstrated in a pioneering study on mammals that longevity is defined at a molecular level by the length of telomeres. The work—which is published today in the online edition of the journal Cell Reports—opens the door to further study of these cellular components in order to calculate the rate at which cells age and thus be able to determine life expectancy for a particular organism.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that recovery from an emerging, minimally invasive surgical technique called Laparo-Endoscopic Single-Site Surgery (LESS) was less painful for kidney cancer patients than traditional laparoscopic surgery. Study results were published in the September online edition of Urology.

WASHINGTON — Techniques ranging from running to push-ups to sit-and-reach tests have been used to measure various aspects of fitness in children and adults. However, evidence is sparse on how well some of these techniques correspond to desired health outcomes in children, fueling debate about the best fitness measures for youth.

PHILADELPHIA— Contrast-enhanced ultrasound was found to better detect high-grade prostate cancer than conventional methods, making it a more appropriate approach for screening clinically important cancers and monitoring low-risk ones with less biopsies, researchers from Thomas Jefferson University and Hospitals conclude in a phase III study published online in September in the Journal of Urology.

CLEMSON — Sports journalists covering the Penn State sex abuse scandal posted commentary on Twitter that was inherently biased, Clemson University and University of Louisville researchers say.

Their study explored how sports journalists used Twitter to develop and promote their stories during the scandal. Their research findings were published Thursday in the International Journal of Sport Communication.