Body

PHILADELPHIA, PA, November 7, 2014 - Researchers try to develop interventions that are most likely to work. Some times that involves deciding which activities should be included, such as whether to have cooking classes or be involved in a garden. Some times that involves deciding how many people should be involved to find truly meaningful results. However, a little talked about consideration is whether to include behavior theory within the intervention.

A 47-year-old American woman with intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is the first person with her condition to receive a uniquely personalised treatment based on her genetic profile.

"Using the information from the genetic makeup of our patient's cancer, we were able to formulate a personalised treatment," says Dr Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla of the University of Pennsylvania, lead author of the case report published in ecancermedicalscience.

Many tumours have regions of hypoxia, where there is a shortage of oxygen. These tumours show a change in energy production - they switch to using glycolysis, which produces lactate as a by-product.

To prevent it being toxic, this lactate must be transported out of cells by molecules known as monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs).

A bacterial sample from a World War I soldier is helping researchers to tackle dysentery, a disease that kills hundreds of thousands of children under five each year in developing nations.

As scientists were working on reconstructing the complex genome of this bacterium, they felt compelled to piece together the story of the man who had been infected by it while fighting on the front lines in 1915. The research is reported in a special World War I edition of The Lancet, to be published on Saturday 8 November.

Pregnant women with post-traumatic stress disorder are at increased risk of giving birth prematurely, a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs has found.

The study, which examined more than 16,000 births to female veterans, is the largest ever to evaluate connections between PTSD and preterm birth.

Philadelphia - Olaparib, an experimental twice-daily oral cancer drug, produces an overall tumor response rate of 26 percent in several advanced cancers associated with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations, according to new research co-led by the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The positive response provides new hope for patients with ovarian, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers whose conditions have not responded to standard therapies. Results of the phase II study are available online in the current issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A groundbreaking paper from a team of Florida State University biologists could lead to a better understanding of how plants could adapt to and survive environmental swings such as droughts or floods.

The research, published in the latest issue of the journal The Plant Cell, sheds light on how chromatin (the complex of DNA and proteins) is organized in a cell and how plants regulate genetic material, so that some genes are turned on and others are turned off.

The location of oral cancers differed in smokers and nonsmokers with nonsmokers having a higher proportion of cancers occur on the edge of the tongue, according to a study published online by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

Humane transport of livestock is important for both carcass quality and animal welfare. However, it is difficult to mitigate stress for animals in-transit. During a typical journey, calves lose weight due to the stress of weaning and being withdrawn from feed and water during transport. Many factors contribute to this stress, including welfare of the calves before transportation, and temperature and space allowance inside the trailer during transportation.

Food waste has become a serious problem in the United States and other countries. Approximately 34 million tons of food waste is deposited in landfills each year in the United States alone (EPA, 2014). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized the use of food waste as animal feed as one of the best means to add value to food waste, while reducing landfill costs and greenhouse gas emissions, and at the same time improving food security.

Wheat, along with corn and barley, is one of the three major feed grains used in North America. Most of the feed-class wheat is fed to poultry and swine. Beef producers are reluctant to use large quantities of wheat in diets of feedlot cattle because wheat ferments considerably more rapidly in the rumen than corn or barley and increases the risk of ruminal acidosis, which can compromise the health, wellbeing, and productivity of cattle.

Virus multiplication continually generates new variants at a rate that is much faster than their hosts. One consequence of their higher mutation rate is that many viruses can rapidly adapt to new hosts. A study published on November 6th in PLOS Pathogens reports on the systematic analysis of the host range of canine parvovirus (CPV) and reveals different factors that determine which carnivores the virus can infect.

October 30, 2014/Novato, CA Scientists who have been successful in delaying mammalian aging with genetic, dietary and pharmacological approaches have developed a research strategy to expand Geroscience research directed at extending human healthspan. The strategy comes at a critical time, given the dramatic increase in the elderly population and a growing recognition that aging is the greatest risk factor for a majority of the chronic diseases that drive later-life disability and death. The strategy is set forth in a commentary published in the November 6th edition of Cell.

Our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping which types of microbes thrive in our body, according to a study published by Cell Press November 6th in the journal Cell. By studying pairs of twins, researchers identified a specific bacterial family that is highly heritable and more common in lean individuals. Moreover, a member of this class of bacteria protected against weight gain when transplanted into mice.

SAN FRANCISCO (November 6, 2014) --An international team of more than 100 researchers--including Dr. Michelle Trautwein of the California Academy of Sciences--has published the first modern roadmap of insect evolution. Understanding how insects are related uncovers their true ecological, economic, and medical importance, and, until now, has been largely unknown.