Body

A research team led by Carole Thivierge, from Université Laval’s Institute of Nutraceutics and Functional Foods, shows that omega-3 fatty acids from fish oil have a positive effect on the metabolism of muscle proteins. This finding, published in a recent edition of the Journal of Physiology, could have significant implications in the fields of animal farming as well as human health.

Call it sperm competition.

According to a study appearing in Current Directions in Psychological Science, sexual characteristics exhibited by human males indicate that men have evolved to deliver their sperm more effectively to females who have multiple partners to choose from.

Temple University School of Medicine researchers have developed a new biosensor that sniffs out explosives and could one day be used to detect landmines and deadly agents, such as sarin gas.

No snowflake in an avalanche takes the blame.

Using the same database that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses to confirm the rise in obesity rates, researchers have concluded that 100 percent juice is not associated with young children being overweight or at risk for becoming overweight.

The research abstract, presented today at the Pediatric Academic Societies’ annual meeting in Toronto, looked at dietary intakes of 3,618 children ages 2-11 using the well-known National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES).

Ever since the relationship between land area and number of species crystallized into a mathematical power function, islands and island archipelagoes have been thought of as biological destinations where species from large continents arrive and, over time, evolve into new species in geographic seclusion.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine have developed new technology which, combined with proteomics – the large-scale study of the structure and function of proteins and their functions – has allowed them to map an extensive network of the signaling proteins that control cell movement.

XDx, a molecular diagnostics company, today announced its AlloMap® molecular expression test will be the subject of presentations and discussions at the American Transplant Congress 2007.

The test, currently used to detect the absence of heart transplant rejection instead of routine invasive heart muscle biopsies, has now been shown to correlate with oxygen saturation levels, cardiac filling pressures, and the electrical properties of the transplanted heart.

It is highly unlikely that older women generate new eggs, report researchers at the University of South Florida in collaboration with a center in China.

The USF study counters the controversial findings of reproductive endocrinologist Jonathan Tilly, PhD, and his team of Harvard scientists. Tilly's work, published in 2004 in Nature with a follow-up study a year later in Cell, challenged the biological dogma that mammals, including women, are born with a limited lifetime supply of eggs.

The drug trastuzumab (Herceptin) is used to treat HER2-positive breast cancer (a type of breast cancer that overexpresses the HER2 gene and accounts for about 25% of all breast cancers). Trastuzumab therapy improves the chances of survival; however, it has deleterious side effects and is expensive. Thus, it is important to accurately determine the patient’s HER2 status.

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a simple and economical technique for imaging and mapping fruit fly chromosomes. This new approach will enable them to construct the first accurate map of the chromosomes and tease out the secrets hidden in their stripes. Developers of the new approach use a technology called Computer Vision to analyze hundreds of crisp images of the same chromosomes. This will allow the production of a much more precise map of the chromosome bands. Credit: Photo courtesy of Dmitri Novikov

Implanted pumps improved heart function enough in a small percentage of patients awaiting a heart transplant that they were able to leave the hospital without a pump and without a new heart, according to a study in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

The heart-assist devices also significantly improved the cardiac function in many other heart failure patients.

New immigrants to Western nations are believed to experience fewer chronic health problems (e.g., diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease) than long-time residents of those countries. Dr. Joel Ray and coauthors tested whether this "healthy immigrant effect" extends to complications during pregnancy.

Coral reefs, among Earth's richest ecosystems, traditionally teem with an abundance of life. But in recent years, corals have been dying in droves. Scientists suspect a variety of factors, ranging from accidental damage from fishing activity to the effects of polluted runoff from land.

One simple blood test could predict relapse or survival for children and young adults with acute leukemias, researchers from the Children's Cancer Hospital at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported at the American Society of Pediatric Hematology Oncology's annual meeting Saturday, May 5.

A review of young leukemia patients over the past decade has shown that the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), a measure of normal immune cells found on every complete blood count report, is a powerful predictor of survival for young patients with leukemia.

Imagine a world where you can eat any kind of fat you want without raising your risk of heart disease.

A new study in mice raises just that possibility.

"We deleted an enzyme in mice and they could eat any type of fat and not get heart disease," said Lawrence Rudel, Ph.D., a professor of comparative medicine. "If you’re a mouse, it’s great. Of course, we don’t know yet if it will be the same in humans."

Rudel’s findings are reported online by Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology and will appear in a future print issue.