Body

"When they are healthy, they look like tiny spheres; when they are malignant, they appear as cubes" stated Giuseppe Legname, principal investigator of the Prion Biology Laboratory at the Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati (SISSA) in Trieste, when describing prion proteins. Prions are "misfolded" proteins that cause a group of incurable neurodegenerative diseases, including spongiform encephalopathies (for example, mad cow diseases) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Legname and coworkers have recently published a detailed analysis of the early mechanisms of misfolding.

MAYWOOD, Ill. – A recent study shows that many internists feel ill-equipped to care for adult patients who are childhood cancer survivors. Eugene Suh, MD, assistant professor in the division of Pediatric Hematology and Oncology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, was the first author on the study that was conducted at the University of Chicago with Tara Henderson, MD, MPH.

January 24, 2014, Bangladesh, and Shenzhen, China-Lal Teer Livestock Limited, an associate of LalTeer Seed Ltd., the largest seed company in Bangladesh with strong hybrid research program, and BGI, the world's largest genomics organization, jointly announced today that they have completed the genome sequencing of water buffalo and the bioinformatics analysis. The outstanding work lays an important foundation for molecular breeding of water buffalo, and sheds new light on the understanding of its origin and domestication process.

Ghent – 22 January 2014. Mechanisms that determine the size of plants have fascinated plant scientists of all times, however they are far from understood. An international research team led by plant scientists from VIB and Ghent University report an important breakthrough in the scientific journal The Plant Cell. They identified a protein complex that controls the transition from cell division to cell specialization. By extending the activity of the complex during leaf growth, more cells divide, giving rise to larger leaves.

Why did life forms first begin to get larger and what advantage did this increase in size provide? UCLA biologists working with an international team of scientists examined the earliest communities of large multicellular organisms in the fossil record to help answer this question.

PARK RIDGE, Ill., (January 24, 2014) – A new study published in Poultry Science shows that while U.S. egg production has increased over the past 50 years, the industry has also been able to significantly decrease its environmental footprint. Researchers conducted a lifecycle analysis of U.S. egg production from 1960 to 2010 to evaluate environmental performance measures for the complete lifecycle from crops to hens to the farm gate.

BOSTON (Jan. 24, 2014) — Researchers from Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Massachusetts General Hospital have demonstrated, for the first time, that aspirin intake correlates with halted growth of vestibular schwannomas (also known as acoustic neuromas), a sometimes lethal intracranial tumor that typically causes hearing loss and tinnitus.

Scientists have discovered the use of a simple single-celled amoeba to understand the function of human proteins in causing Alzheimer's disease.

Poor growth in the first three months of pregnancy is associated with a range of cardiovascular risk factors in childhood, finds a study published on bmj.com today.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence and suggest that the first trimester of pregnancy may be a critical period for cardiovascular health in later life.

An editorial in this month's edition of Global Heart (the journal of the World Heart Federation) suggests the world of medicine could be experiencing its final days of the stethoscope, due to the rapid advent of point-of-care ultrasound devices that are becoming increasingly accurate, smaller to the point of being hand-held and less expensive as the years roll by.

The study, published in PLOS Computational Biology, demonstrates the power of path tracking to measure social behaviour and automatically determine dogs' personalities. In future, one possible use of the technology would be to assess search and rescue dogs to see which dogs work best together. As dogs are ideal models of human behaviour, the same methods could be used to study social interactions in humans such as parents walking with their children.

Back in the Middle Ages, Central Europeans were already capable of digesting milk, yoghurt and cheese just as well as us today. Researchers at the University of Zurich's Centre for Evolutionary Medicine have discovered that the population of the medieval town of Dalheim had a similar genetic predisposition for milk digestion to present-day Germans and Austrians. Moreover, the study reveals that lactose tolerance was more widespread than previously believed.

A team of scientists, led by principal investigator David D. Schlaepfer, PhD, a professor in the Department of Reproductive Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, has found that a protein involved in promoting tumor growth and survival is also activated in surrounding blood vessels, enabling cancer cells to spread into the bloodstream.

The findings are published in this week's online issue of the Journal of Cell Biology.

Soils of southern South America, including Patagonia, have endured a high frequency of disturbances from volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, landslides, and erosion. In addition, massive fires in the mid-20th century were set to forests in the region in an effort to promote colonization. In 2010, another 17,000 acres of Patagonia burned, fueling an international reforestation effort. Although the young soils of southern South America may contain high phosphorus levels, the element is tightly bound to the soil, offering limited phosphorus available to plants.

New York, NY, January 23, 2014 – A new study published in the Journal of Urology® reports that prostate cancer patients treated with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) experienced changes in mental and emotional well-being during treatment, although there was no meaningful decline in emotional quality of life two years after treatment. Investigators at the University of California-San Francisco recommend counseling men about the potential adverse effects of ADT as well as the interventions to improve mental and emotional health such as exercise programs and diet.