Body

Our genetic makeup influences whether we are fat or thin by shaping which types of microbes thrive in our body, according to a Cornell-led study published today in the journal Cell.

By studying pairs of twins, researchers identified the Christensenellaceae bacterial family, which is highly heritable and more common in lean individuals. Moreover, a member of this class of bacteria, Christensenellaceae minuta, protected against weight gain when transplanted into mice.

The distribution of birds in the United States today will probably look very different in 60 years as a result of climate, land use and land cover changes.

A new U.S. Geological Survey study predicts where 50 bird species will breed, feed and live in the conterminous U.S. by 2075. While some types of birds, like the Baird's sparrow, will likely lose a significant amount of their current U.S. range, other ranges could nearly double. Human activity will drive many of these shifts. The study was published today in the journal PLOS ONE.

When the dinosaurs ruled the earth, they were already bugged by creatures who had gotten there many millions of years earlier: Dragonflies and damselflies. In fact, says Rutgers University-Newark biologist, Dr. Jessica Ware, the first creatures to take to the skies of earth did so 406 million years ago.

(SALT LAKE CITY)--One of the big hurdles in bringing drugs to market is the difficulty of producing large enough quantities of potential compounds to conduct clinical trials. This is particularly true with compounds made by organisms, which usually are produced in exceedingly small amounts and are difficult to synthesize in the laboratory.

Most cancer deaths occur because of metastasis, yet progress in preventing and treating migratory cancer cells has been slow.

"It's been particularly challenging to design drugs that work against metastasis," said Taran Gujral, research fellow in systems biology at Harvard Medical School.

"Unfortunately, many cancers aren't detected until after they've already metastasized."

Pain is a common symptom of cancer and side effect of cancer treatment, and treating cancer-related pain is often a challenge for health care providers.

The Penny George Institute for Health and Healing researchers found that integrative medicine therapies can substantially decrease pain and anxiety for hospitalized cancer patients. Their findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs.

MADISON, Wis. -- Here is an idea worth following: "share" for tenure; "like" to get cited.

Academic researchers are turning to social media more and more, according to Dominique Brossard, and not just to post family photos or crack wise via hashtag.

"I've been in science communication for a while now, and I am really seeing a change -- especially among the younger scientists -- in their willingness to share their work," says Brossard, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication.

NEW YORK, NY (November 6, 2014) --The most in-dept survey of its kind found that arm pain is common among supposedly healthy young baseball players and nearly half have been encouraged to keep playing despite arm pain. The findings suggest that more detailed and individualized screening is needed to prevent overuse injury in young ballplayers. The study, led by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers, was published this week in the online edition of the American Journal of Sports Medicine.

In a paper published by PLOS ONE, researchers concluded that a national strategy must be implemented in order to compensate for environmental damage caused by development projects in Africa.

Studying these issues and other serious ethical concerns, the research discovered that current offset programs - which are planned and designed on a project-by-project basis - fail to take into account the cumulative impacts of various conservations projects taking place in the same country or region.

Berlin, Germany (November, 2014) - Many large charismatic mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age (approx 11,000 years ago), including the Steppe bison, Bison priscus. A recent find in Eastern Siberia has uncovered one of these bison, literally, frozen in time.

There is no doubt that pregnant and breastfeeding women try to do everything they can to ensure a healthy outcome for their baby, including eating a healthy, well-balanced diet that provides the necessary nutrients for fetal growth and development. In recent years, there has been significant debate about the consumption of fish among pregnant and breastfeeding women.

COLUMBUS, Ohio - The health benefits of over-the-counter curcumin supplements might not get past your gut, but new research shows that a modified formulation of the spice releases its anti-inflammatory goodness throughout the body.

Curcumin is a naturally occurring compound found in the spice turmeric that has been used for centuries as an Ayurvedic medicine treatment for such ailments as allergies, diabetes and ulcers.

The modern sequencing techniques have shown that bats can carry a bacterial species previously been shown to cause deadly human infections in USA.

MANHATTAN, KANSAS -- A Kansas State University psychological sciences professor is using twin studies to understand the nature versus nurture debate of the workplace: Do genetic factors or environmental factors influence employee proactivity?

His answer: The interaction between the genetic and environmental factors determines why some employees are more proactive than others.

For decades, scientists have been perfecting models of how contagions spread, but newly published research takes the first steps into building a model that includes the loop linking individual human behavior and the behavior of the epidemic itself.

The first results of the highly complex modeling led by researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering were recently spotlighted as "brilliant research" by the American Physical Society.