Body

Imagine you're dining out with a friend who insists on sharing some chocolate cake for dessert. Since the decision has already been made for you, you gladly join in without feeling any regret. According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, consumers are happier when someone else decides they can indulge in dessert or other guilty pleasures.

Consumers worldwide associate France with fashion and luxury and are willing to pay a lot for French luxury products such as perfume and wine. But what about products made in countries with less favorable reputations? A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research shows that consumers won't judge a country's products by its reputation if the products are well-made.

October 14, 2014 –Adolescents whose parents better understand their daily experiences have better psychological adjustment, suggests a study in the October issue of Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine, the official journal of the American Psychosomatic Society.

It might not be obvious on the scales, but healthy eating and increased physical activity from walking during pregnancy is directly associated with a range of improved outcomes at birth, according to researchers from the University of Adelaide.

Results of the world's biggest study of its kind – offering healthy eating and exercise advice to pregnant women who are overweight or obese – are published today in two papers in the journal BMC Medicine.

The application of a new, precise way to turn genes on and off within cells, described online October 9, 2014 in two articles in the journal Cell, is likely to lead to a better understanding of diseases and possibly to new therapies, according to UC San Francisco scientists.

In the first study to look at would-be diseases carried by New York City rats, scientists at the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health identified bacterial pathogens, including E. coli, Salmonella, and C. difficile, that cause mild to life-threatening gastroenteritis in people; Seoul hantavirus, which causes Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever and kidney failure in humans; and the closest relative to human hepatitis C. Results appear in the journal mBio.

This news release is available in German.

In order to invade healthy tissue, tumor cells must leave the actual tumor and enter the bloodstream or lymphatic system. For this purpose, they use certain enzymes, proteases that break down the tissue surrounding the tumor, thus opening the way for tumor cells to reach blood or lymphatic vessels. To keep the proteases in check, the body produces inhibitors such as the protein TIMP-1, which thwart the proteases in their work.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have identified a new fusion protein found in approximately 15 percent of secondary glioblastomas or brain tumors. The finding offers new insights into the cause of this cancer and provides a therapeutic target for personalized oncologic care. The findings were published this month in the online edition of Genome Research.

Recent studies have found that crocodiles and their relatives are highly intelligent animals capable of sophisticated behavior such as advanced parental care, complex communication and use of tools for hunting.

New University of Tennessee, Knoxville, research published in the journal Ethology Ecology and Evolution shows just how sophisticated their hunting techniques can be.

Like a marching band falling out of step, muscle cells fail to perform in unison in patients with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. A new study in The Journal of Cell Biology reveals how this breakdown leads to the proliferation of stiff fibrotic tissue within muscles.

Substance abuse counselors and social workers often recommend recovering addicts establish new networks of non-using friends and supporters.

But researchers at Case Western Reserve University's social work school found, for many women in poverty, it's not so easy to drop the users in their lives. Many are people that women depend on for childcare, transportation and other necessities to live.

Women who worry, cope poorly with stress and/or experience mood swings in middle age run a higher risk of developing Alzheimer disease later in life. This is the conclusion of a study carried out at the Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, that followed 800 women for nearly 40 years.

The study, which will be published in the scientific journal Neurology, started in 1968 when 800 women in Gothenburg took a personality test that measured, among other things, their levels of neuroticism and extroversion.

High Stress

Extreme adaptations of species often cause such significant changes that their evolutionary history is difficult to reconstruct. Zoologists at the University of Basel in Switzerland have now discovered a new parasite species that represents the missing link between fungi and an extreme group of parasites. Researches are now able to understand for the first time the evolution of these parasites, causing disease in humans and animals. The study has been published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The dirt in your backyard may hold the key to isolating cancerous tumors and to potential new treatments for a host of cancers.

University of Iowa researchers have found a gene in a soil-dwelling amoeba that functions similarly to the main tumor-fighting gene found in humans, called PTEN.

CLIP2 serves as a radiation marker: After exposure to radiation from radioiodine, both the genetic activity and the protein expression are increased, as the scientists' studies were able to substantiate.