Body

Now, the researchers have taken an even closer peek. They froze ant rafts and scanned them with a miniature CT scan machine to look at the strongest part of the structure – the inside – to discover how opaque ants connect, arrange and orient themselves with each other.

"Now we can see how every brick is connected," said Georgia Tech Assistant Professor David Hu. "It's kind of like looking inside a warehouse and seeing the scaffolding and I-beams."

He found a lot of beams.

PHILADELPHIA - Obesity and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) tend to co-exist and are associated with a variety of cardiovascular risk factors, including inflammation, insulin resistance, abnormal cholesterol, and high blood pressure. While effective therapies are available for OSA, researchers are still unclear about what interventions are most effective in reducing the burden of risk factors for cardiovascular disease associated with OSA in obese patients.

A provocative study links prolonged episodes of sepsis — a life-threatening infection and leading cause of death in hospitals — to the reactivation of otherwise dormant viruses in the body.

ITHACA, N.Y. – Forgetful immune systems leave infants particularly prone to infections, according to a new Cornell University study. Upending the common theory that weak immune cells are to blame, the study has found that infants' immune systems actually respond to infection with more speed and strength than adults, but the immunities they create fail to last.

Published in the Journal of Immunology, the discovery reveals a new angle immunizations could take in protecting infants and children from infectious diseases.

MINNEAPOLIS – People with diets higher in protein, especially from fish, may be less likely to have a stroke than those with diets lower in protein, according to a meta-analysis published in the June 11, 2014, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Diagnoses of both posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a major depressive episode appear to be associated with a sizable increase in risk for preterm birth that seems to be independent of antidepressant and benzodiazepine medication use.

Preterm birth is responsible for many infant deaths. Clinicians and patients are concerned about the risks associated with psychiatric illness during pregnancy and the medications used for treatment.

WASHINGTON, DC, June 11, 2014 — Adolescents tend to be more powerful in influencing their friends to start smoking than in helping them to quit, according to sociologists.

In a study of adolescent friendship networks and smoking over time, the researchers found that friends exert influence on their peers to both start and quit smoking, but the influence to start is stronger.

Quebecers are particularly hostile toward the development of shale gas, but this aversion is driven less by 'not in my backyard' (NIMBY) attitudes than 'not in anyone's backyard (NIABY), according to a comparative study of 2,500 Quebecers and Americans conducted by Éric Montpetit and Erick Lachapelle of the University of Montreal's Department of Political Science. Professors Barry G. Rabe of the University of Michigan and Christopher P. Borick of Muhlenberg College co-led the study in the United States.

ITHACA, N.Y. – With news reports of toxic, cadmium-tainted rice in China, a new study describes a protein that transports metals in certain plants and holds promise for developing iron-rich but cadmium-free crops.

ITHACA, N.Y. – A sack-hauling time traveler from the 21st century lands in an Irish potato field in 1849, just before a terrible famine, and asks: If you thought genetically modified potatoes could avert late blight disease, spare a million countrymen from starvation and keep another million from emigrating off the Emerald Isle, would you plant these newfangled spuds?

CHICAGO (June 1, 2014) – As central-line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) pose a danger to vulnerable patients, infection prevention and control experts released new practical recommendations to assist acute care hospitals in implementing and prioritizing prevention efforts.

CHICAGO (June 11, 2014) – A new study found a nationwide effort to control carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) in Israel reduced CRE cases by improving compliance of infection control standards and using a coordinated intervention focused on long-term care facilities. The study was published in the July issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, the journal of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America.

Research aimed at developing germ cells—the progenitors of eggs and sperm—in vitro should be held to especially rigorous scientific standards, a distinguished team of reproductive biologists declares in the journal Cell.

In the article, authors John Schimenti, Ph.D., of Cornell University and his Jackson Laboratory colleagues, Mary Ann Handel, Ph.D., and John Eppig, Ph.D., note that because "germ cells are the ultimate stem cells," laboratories are racing to develop these cells in vitro for assisted reproduction.

MADISON, Wis. — Scientists at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center (UWCCC) report that a new class of tumor-targeting agents can seek out and find dozens of solid tumors, even illuminating brain cancer stem cells that resist current treatments.

What's more, years of animal studies and early human clinical trials show that this tumor-targeting, alkylphosphocholine (APC) molecule can deliver two types of "payloads" directly to cancer cells: a radioactive or fluorescent imaging label, or a radioactive medicine that binds and kills cancer cells.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — This spring has brought rare but tangible moments of progress against the devastating lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which afflicts millions of people worldwide. Two drugs recently showed promise in clinical trials, and now a study in Science Translational Medicine offers both an unprecedentedly deep explanation of how the disease progresses and introduces another potential therapeutic avenue.