Body

Hamilton, ON (March 11, 2009) - Someone in the developing world – particularly in rural Africa - dies from a rabid dog bite every 10 minutes.

But global elimination of this horrific disease appears to be possible, according to a team which includes scientists from McMaster University, Britain and the United States.

Biologists at the University of California, San Diego have identified a key protein that links the morning and evening components of the daily biological clock of plants.

Their discovery, detailed in the March 13 issue of Science, solves a longstanding puzzle about the underlying biochemical mechanisms that control plant clocks and could provide a new way to increase the growth and yield of agricultural crops.

Irvine, Calif. — UC Irvine researchers have discovered that circadian rhythms – our own body clock – regulate energy levels in cells. The findings have far-reaching implications, from providing greater insights into the bond between the body's day-night patterns and metabolism to creating new ways to treat cancer, diabetes, obesity and a host of related diseases.

In the life of many successful networks, the connections between elements increase over time. As connections are added, there comes a critical moment when the network's overall connectivity rises rapidly with each new link.

Now a trio of mathematicians studying networks in which the formation of connections is governed by random processes, has provided new evidence that super-connectivity can be appreciably delayed. But the delay comes at a cost: when it finally happens, the transition is virtually instantaneous, like a film of water abruptly crystallizing into ice.

(Boston) -- A team led by researchers from Boston University and the National Institutes of Health has developed a new method for uncovering functional areas of the human genome by studying DNA's three-dimensional structure -- a topographical approach that extends the more familiar analysis of the sequence of the four-letter alphabet of the DNA bases.

A team that includes researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found a new way of detecting functional regions in the human genome. The novel approach involves looking at the three-dimensional shape of the genome's DNA and not just reading the sequence of the four-letter alphabet of its DNA bases.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have for the first time made high-resolution images of the earliest stages of bone formation. They used the world's most advanced electron microscope to make three-dimensional images of the nano-particles that are at the heart of the process. The results provide improved understanding of bone, tooth and shell formation. For industrial applications, they promise better materials and processes based on nature itself. The findings form the cover story of Science magazine's Friday 13 March edition.

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Too little vitamin D could be bad for more than your bones; it may also lead to fatter adolescents, researchers say.

A Medical College of Georgia study of more than 650 teens age 14-19 has found that those who reported higher vitamin D intakes had lower overall body fat and lower amounts of the fat in the abdomen, a type of fat known as visceral fat, which has been associated with health risks such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and hypertension.

Biofilms are everywhere – in dental plaque and ear canals, on contact lenses and in water pipelines – and the bacteria that make them get more resilient with age, finds a new study in FEMS Microbiology Letters.

Because bacteria in biofilms resist antibiotics, the study may have long-term implications for medical researchers seeking to develop better drugs and less infection-prone devices.

Biofilms are bacterial cities clinging to a surface. In addition to aiding infections, they can hamper industrial processes by clogging pipelines and gumming up machinery.

ARGONNE, Ill. (March 12, 2009) — Shock waves are a well tested phenomenon on a large scale, but scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and their collaborators from Wayne State University and Cornell University have made a breakthrough that reveals the interaction between shockwaves created by high-pressure supersonic fuel jets.

Shockwaves have been studied in the past by such methods as solid impacts and shock generators, but the high-pressure liquid jets created by micrometer sized nozzles can also reach supersonic speeds.

NEW YORK (March 12, 2009) – New software developed with help from the Wildlife Conservation Society will allow tiger researchers to rapidly identify individual animals by creating a three-dimensional model using photos taken by remote cameras. The software, described in an issue of the journal Biology Letters, may also help identify the origin of tigers from confiscated skins.

The new software, developed by Conservation Research Ltd., creates a 3D model from scanned photos using algorithms similar to fingerprint-matching software used by criminologists.

INDIANAPOLIS – A large study of ethnically and racially diverse individuals with diabetes has found that home telemonitoring of their health resulted in significantly fewer deaths than in a similar group that was not monitored. Diabetes is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

The study of 387 diabetics and 387 individuals without diabetes appears in the March 2009 issue of the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare.

A new study reveals the mechanism by which a genetic mutation linked with Parkinson's disease (PD) renders dopamine neurons particularly vulnerable to cell injury and death. The research is published by Cell Press in the March 13th issue of the journal Molecular Cell.

Immunosuppressive treatment is necessary to prevent rejection of an organ after transplant and has great potential for treating chronic inflammatory diseases. However, currently available immunosuppressant drugs can pose serious health risks, restricting their long-term use. Now, new research findings may lead to the development of immunosuppressant drugs that have fewer adverse side effects.