Body

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida State University researcher is on a mission to explore the gene-controlling effects of addictive drugs in pursuit of new HIV treatments.

Working under the support of a $1.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Florida State biologist Jonathan Dennis is studying a unique ability shared between a promising class of HIV treatments known as histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDIs) and psychostimulant drugs such as cocaine.

TEMPE (Sept. 21, 2012) - It's called mile-a-minute weed or "forest killer." Mikania micrantha is an exotic, invasive species that spreads quickly, covering crops, smothering trees and rapidly altering the environment.

LONDON, ON – A team of researchers led by London's Dr. Daniel Bainbridge have compiled data from 87 studies worldwide that shows post-anaesthetic deaths have declined as much as 90 percent since before the 1970s. During the same period, the risk of dying from any cause within 48 hours of surgery has decreased by 88 percent. The study covered outcomes in both developed and developing countries, with the findings published in the current issue of the high-profile journal The Lancet.

Several years ago researchers at Michigan State University (MSU) reported discovering a novel, evolutionary trait in a long-studied population of Escherichia coli, a rod-shaped bacterium commonly found in the lower intestine of mammals. The E. coli added a helping of citrate to its traditional diet of glucose, even though other E. coli can't consume citrate in the presence of oxygen.

PHILADELPHIA — Treatment with denosumab, a drug targeted against a protein that helps promote bone destruction, decreased the number of tumor giant cells in patients with giant-cell tumor of the bone, and increased new bone formation, according to the results of a phase II study published in Clinical Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

It's a battleground down there — in the soil where plants and bacteria dwell.

Even though beneficial root bacteria come to the rescue when a plant is being attacked by pathogens, there's a dark side to the relationship between the plant and its white knight.

According to research reported by a University of Delaware scientific team in the September online edition of Plant Physiology, the most highly cited plant journal, a power struggle ensues as the plant and the "good" bacteria vie over who will control the plant's immune system.

Scientists have discovered an unusual symbiosis between tiny single-celled algae and highly specialized bacteria in the ocean.

The partnership plays an important role in fertilizing the oceans by taking nitrogen from the atmosphere and "fixing" it into a form that other organisms can use.

Details of the finding, published in this week's issue of the journal Science, emerged from the investigation of a mysterious nitrogen-fixing microbe that has a very small genome.

Lithium is a 'gold standard' drug for treating bipolar disorder, however not everyone responds in the same way. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Biology of Mood & Anxiety Disorders finds that this is true at the levels of gene activation, especially in the activation or repression of genes which alter the level the apoptosis (programmed cell death). Most notably BCL2, known to be important for the therapeutic effects of lithium, did not increase in non-responders. This can be tested in the blood of patients within four weeks of treatment.

Philadelphia, PA, September 21, 2012 – Coronary heart disease is a major cause of death in women. A new study has found that a diet rich in antioxidants, mainly from fruits and vegetables, can significantly reduce the risk of myocardial infarction. The study is published in the October issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

September 21, 2012 – (BRONX, NY) – Primary care physicians – America's front line healthcare practitioners – are usually the first to diagnose illness, refer patients to specialists and coordinate care. Yet, despite that critical role, primary care physicians remain among the lowest paid of all doctors at a time when there's an acute primary care shortage.

An enzyme in the bacterium that causes potato scab could help create new, environmentally-benign biocatalysts with the potential to cut use of the highly corrosive chemical nitric acid.

Chemists at the University of Warwick in the UK, in collaboration with researchers at Cornell University in the USA, have reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology the discovery of an enzyme in the bacterium Streptomyces scabies that catalyses an aromatic nitration reaction.

If approached in the right way, citizens are willing to change their behaviour and do more to help themselves and others, according to research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The project, carried out jointly at the universities of Manchester and Southampton, experimented with different interventions techniqueswhich encourage citizen participation and explored people's motivations for community involvement.

When elite-level athletes retire, they often struggle to adapt to their new lives. When finding that the characteristics that were valuable in sport are not equally useful in 'ordinary' life, they often start experiencing disorientation, depression, self-doubt or even illness. This is concluded in research from the University of Gothenburg.

Successful athletes at the elite level develop characteristics that should generate success also later in life. However, this notion may be wrong, according to the new research.

The rotten egg gas leaking from sewer pipes and costing billions of dollars worldwide in odour control may soon be far less of a problem thanks to new research discussed at the 2012 International Water Association (IWA) conference this week.

Trials with a magic mix of chemicals, called Cloevis, on sewers in the Gold Coast region in Australia stopped 99 per cent of the rotten egg gas or hydrogen sulphide emitted from these pipes.

A mosquito sample collected three decades ago in Israel's Negev Desert has yielded an unexpected discovery: a previously unknown virus that's closely related to some of the world's most dangerous mosquito-borne pathogens but, curiously, incapable of infecting non-insect hosts.