Body

— Restricting calories may improve obstructive sleep apnea and reduce high blood pressure in obese adults, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's High Blood Pressure Research Scientific Sessions 2014.

People with sleep apnea may experience pauses in breathing five to 30 times per hour or more while sleeping. It prevents restful sleep and is associated with high blood pressure, arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm), stroke and heart failure.

Paleontologists have described three new small squirrel-like species that place a poorly understood Mesozoic group of animals firmly in the mammal family tree. The study, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, supports the idea that mammals—an extremely diverse group that includes egg-laying monotremes such as the platypus, marsupials such as the opossum, and placentals like humans and whales—originated at least 208 million years ago in the late Triassic, much earlier than some previous research suggests.

International research involving the University of Adelaide has found that the risk of preterm birth could be halved for a specific group of "super high-risk" twin pregnancies.

The results could help to save babies' lives throughout the world and prevent serious health complications after birth.

Twitter provides an avenue for female sports broadcasters to break down gender barriers, yet it currently serves to express their subordinate sports media roles.

This is the key finding of a new study by Clemson University researchers and published in the most recent issue of Journal of Sports Media.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Older men who lead high-stress lives, either from chronic everyday hassles or because of a series of significant life events, are likely to die earlier than the average for their peers, new research from Oregon State University shows.

People with diabetes who appear otherwise healthy may have a six-fold higher risk of developing heart failure regardless of their cholesterol levels, new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health research suggests.

MINNEAPOLIS – People with blood type AB may be more likely to develop memory loss in later years than people with other blood types, according to a study published in the September 10, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

PORTLAND, Ore. — A team led by an Oregon Health & Science University researcher has sequenced and annotated the genome of the only ape whose DNA had yet to be sequenced — the gibbon, an endangered small ape that inhabits the tropical forests of Southeast Asia.

BATON ROUGE – LSU's Mark Batzer, LSU Boyd Professor and Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor, along with Research Assistant Professor Miriam Konkel and Research Associate Jerilyn Walker in Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Science, contributed to an article featured on the cover of the scientific journal Nature, titled "Gibbon Genome and the Fast Karyotype Evolution of Small Apes."

Ithaca, N.Y.—Migratory songbirds enjoy the best of both worlds—food-rich summers and balmy winters—but they pay for it with a tough commute. Their twice-a-year migrations span thousands of miles and are the most dangerous, physically demanding parts of their year.

Belly dancers have fewer hang-ups about their bodies. Most women who participate in this torso-driven dance do so because it is fun and they get to perform interesting moves – not because they necessarily feel sexier while doing so. This is the conclusion of Marika Tiggemann of Flinders University in Australia, leader of a study in Springer's journal Sex Roles about the body image of people who belly dance in their free time.

Research has told us that infants whose mothers respond quickly, consistently, and warmly when they cry have healthier emotional development than infants whose mothers are less sensitive to their cries. A new study has found that mothers whose childhood experiences with caregivers was positive and those who have come to terms with negative experiences are more infant-oriented when they see videos of babies crying and respond more sensitively to their own babies' cries.

PHILADELPHIA, PA, September 10, 2014 – African American women and their female children have the highest obesity prevalence of any demographic group and are more likely to underestimate their body weight than white women. Yet, according to new research from Rush University Medical Center, cultural norms for body size may prevent awareness among many African American women about the potential health benefits they and others in their cultural group might achieve through weight loss.

Today's sloths might be known as slow, small animals, but their ancestors developed large body sizes at an amazing rate, according to an evolutionary reconstruction published today in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology. The fast rate of change suggests that factors such as environmental conditions, or competition with other species must have strongly favored the bigger sloths, before they died out.

SEATTLE — An oral tablet form of a PARP inhibitor, olaparib, given in combination with chemotherapy, was safe in heavily pretreated ovarian cancer patients, and patients with BRCA mutations may have a better response compared with those without a BRCA mutation, according to phase Ib clinical trial data presented at the Marsha Rivkin Center for Ovarian Cancer Research-AACR 10th Biennial Ovarian Cancer Research Symposium, held Sept. 8-9.