Body

A study of how penguin populations have changed over the last 30,000 years has shown that between the last ice age and up to around 1,000 years ago penguin populations benefitted from climate warming and retreating ice. This suggests that recent declines in penguins may be because ice is now retreating too far or too fast.

In nature, it is very rare to find a proverbial much smaller David able to overpower and kill a Goliath for supper. This is exactly the modus operandi of a solitary tiny spider from the Negev desert in Israel that routinely kills ants up to almost four times its own size. Details about how it attacks and kills its prey with a venomous bite is published in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften – The Science of Nature. The study was led by Stano Pekár of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic.

White sharks are among the largest, most widespread apex predators in the ocean, but are also among the most vulnerable. A new study, the most comprehensive ever on seasonal distribution patterns and historic trends in abundance of white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in the western North Atlantic Ocean, used records compiled over more than 200 years to update knowledge and fill in gaps in information about this species.

The use of nanoparticles in cancer research is considered as a promising approach in detecting and fighting tumour cells. The method has, however, often failed because the human immune system recognizes the particles as foreign objects and rejects them before they can fulfil their function. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and at University College Dublin in Ireland have, along with other partners, developed nanoparticles that not only bypass the body's defence system, but also find their way to the diseased cells.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] —The immune system maintains a rich abundance of "natural killer" cells to confront microbial invaders, but as the body gains the upper hand in various infections it sometimes starts to produce even more of the cells. For three decades, scientists haven't understood what purpose that serves. In a new paper, Brown University researchers show one: proliferation helps change the NK cells' function from stimulating the immune response to calming it down, lest it get out of hand.

Proteins are chains of amino acids that, when folded into certain structural patterns and also when unfolded, exert functions within cells. Proteins receive signals that are transmitted from one to the next and that are essential for life. However, within a given protein, are there "highways" along which the signals travel, like a in a relay event? That is to say, how is the information transmitted in a given protein?

Since the days of Darwin, biologists have questioned why certain plants occur in widely separated places, the farthest reaches of North American and the Southern tip of South America but nowhere in between. How did they get there? An international team of researchers have now found an important piece of the puzzle: migratory birds about to fly to South America from the Arctic harbor small plant parts in their feathers.

DNA methylation has been identified as a potential biomarker of response to etanercept and adalimumab in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) according to preliminary results from one of the largest methylome-wide investigations of treatment response to anti-TNF therapies.1 These data, presented today at the European League Against Rheumatism Annual Congress (EULAR 2014), bring clinicians a step closer to being able to personalise a patient's treatment pathway.

Case Western Reserve University researchers have discovered that an existing drug used to help cancer patients has the potential to protect thousands of others from the often-deadly impact of vascular clots.

In 2008, the Food and Drug Administration approved bortezomib (Velcade) to treat multiple myeloma, which is a type of bone cancer and mantle cell lymphoma — a particularly aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In addition to attacking cancer cells, the drug has been shown to help prevent clot development common to many forms of the disease.

PHILADELPHIA — Survivors of childhood cancers were hospitalized more often and for longer durations because of blood disorders and other problems, many years after cancer treatment was completed, compared with the general population, according to a study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

A new study shows that walking reduces risk of functional limitation associated with knee osteoarthritis (OA). In fact, the study funded in part by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) journal, Arthritis Care & Research, suggests that walking 6,000 or more steps per day may protect those with or at risk of knee of OA from developing mobility issues, such as difficulty getting up from a chair and climbing stairs.

People are often told to reduce their cholesterol to improve their heart health, but new research suggests that low cholesterol may increase kidney cancer patients' risk of dying from their disease. The findings, which are published in BJU International, indicate that cholesterol testing may help doctors as they monitor and treat patients with kidney cancer.

Much to the chagrin of gardeners, hikers, and virtually anyone enjoying the outdoors, one of the hazards of summer is picking up an itchy poison ivy rash.

In women with advanced (or metastatic) breast cancer, treatment with the breast cancer drug Trastuzumab (Herceptin®) is associated with prolonged survival but also increases the risk of developing heart problems, a new systematic review shows. However, the review, published in The Cochrane Library, concludes that more women benefit from use of Trastuzumab than are harmed.

Parents often complain that child-rearing is exhausting, but consider the poor sea otter mom. By the time a sea otter pup is weaned, its mother may be so depleted physiologically that she is unable to survive the stress of a minor wound or infection. Sea otter researchers have a term for it--"end-lactation syndrome"--and believe it accounts for high mortality rates among female sea otters in some areas.