Body

A heartier appetite is linked to more rapid infant growth and to genetic predisposition to obesity, according to two papers published in JAMA Pediatrics today (Monday).

The studies investigated how weight gain is linked to two key aspects of appetite, namely lower satiety responsiveness (a reduced urge to eat in response to internal 'fullness' signals) and higher food responsiveness (an increased urge to eat in response to the sight or smell of nice food).

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 17, 2014 -- Dengue fever, an infectious tropical disease caused by a mosquito-borne virus, afflicts millions of people each year, causing fever, headache, muscle and joint pains and a characteristic skin rash. In some people the disease progresses to a severe, often fatal, form known as dengue hemorrhagic fever. Despite its heavy toll, the prevention and clinical treatment of dengue infection has been a "dramatic failure in public health compared to other infectious diseases like HIV," said Ping Liu of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

High levels of the stress hormone cortisol may contribute to the risk aversion and 'irrational pessimism' found among bankers and fund managers during financial crises, according to a new study.

Why does a mouse's heart beat about the same number of times in its lifetime as an elephant's, although the mouse lives about a year, while an elephant sees 70 winters come and go? Why do small plants and animals mature faster than large ones? Why has nature chosen such radically different forms as the loose-limbed beauty of a flowering tree and the fearful symmetry of a tiger?

While many endemic infectious diseases of humans have been largely contained, new microbes continue to emerge to threaten human and animal health. Such emerging infectious diseases are not confined to humans and their livestock but extend to wildlife ecosystems; the finely-tuned dynamic balance of which is destabilised by human interventions.

Small non-coding RNAs can be used to predict if individuals have breast cancer conclude researchers who contribute to The Cancer Genome Atlas project. The results, which are published in EMBO reports, indicate that differences in the levels of specific types of non-coding RNAs can be used to distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. These RNAs can also be used to classify cancer patients into subgroups of individuals that have different survival outcomes.

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — New research from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center and Georgia Regents University finds that a protein that fuels an inflammatory pathway does not turn off in breast cancer, resulting in an increase in cancer stem cells. This provides a potential target for treating triple negative breast cancer, the most aggressive form of the disease.

BOSTON (Feb. 17, 2014) —The longer the period of time a child is bullied, the more severe and lasting the impact on a child's health, according to a new study from Boston Children's Hospital published online Feb. 17 in Pediatrics. The study is the first to examine the compounding effects of bullying from elementary school to high school.

A new layer in the human cornea — discovered by researchers at The University of Nottingham last year — plays a vital role in the structure of the tissue that controls the flow of fluid from the eye, research has shown.

The findings, published in a paper in the British Journal of Ophthalmology, could shed new light on glaucoma, a devastating disease caused by defective drainage of fluid from the eye and the world's second leading cause of blindness.

The spread of antibiotic-resistance to one of the most pristine locations in Asia is linked to the annual human pilgrimages to the region, new research has shown.

Experts from Newcastle University, UK, and the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT-Delhi), sampled water and sediments at seven sites along the Upper Ganges River, in the foothills of the Himalayas.

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- Tularemia, aka "rabbit fever," is endemic in the northeastern United States, and is considered to be a significant risk to biosecurity -- much like anthrax or smallpox -- because it has already been weaponized in various regions of the world.

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- A research team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn., is the first to decipher the 3-D structure of a protein that confers antibiotic resistance from one of the most worrisome disease agents: a strain of bacteria called methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which can cause skin and other infections. The Vanderbilt team's findings may be an important step in combatting the MRSA public health threat over the next 5 to 10 years.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The South Pacific archipelago of Samoa and American Samoa harbors a global health mystery that may seem both remote and extreme but could foretell trends in obesity and related conditions across much of the developing world.

About three-quarters of the U.S. territory's adult population is obese, the highest rate in the world with independent Samoa quickly catching up. Rates of type 2 diabetes top one in five and a recent study found that the elevated obesity rates are present even in newborns.

WASHINGTON D.C. Feb. 16, 2014 -- New insights into one of the molecular mechanisms behind light harvesting, the process that enables photosynthetic organisms to thrive, even as weather conditions change from full sunlight to deep cloud cover, will be presented at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, taking place in San Francisco from Feb. 15-19.

Chicago — Americans' moral opposition to animal testing has grown significantly since 2001, according to a new study presented today at the annual meeting of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Chicago.

Researchers from PETA and Western Governors University examined data collected in independent surveys by the Gallup organization from 2001 to 2013, in which approximately 1,000 American adults each year were asked whether they found "medical testing on animals" to be "morally acceptable" or "morally wrong."