Body

Berkeley — There is a higher cost to steaks and hamburgers than what is reflected on the price tags at grocery stores and restaurants. Producing food – and beef, in particular – is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, which are projected to grow as rising incomes in emerging economies lead to greater demands for meat.

Brazil may be able to curb up to 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation by encouraging the intensification of its cattle production, according to a new study from researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and international collaborators.

The hormone oxytocin appears to increase social behaviors in newborn rhesus monkeys, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Parma in Italy, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The findings indicate that oxytocin is a promising candidate for new treatments for developmental disorders affecting social skills and bonding.

Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have identified natural human antibodies against the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a step toward developing treatments for the newly emerging and often-fatal disease.

Currently there is no vaccine or antiviral treatment for MERS, a severe respiratory disease with a mortality rate of more than 40 percent that was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012.

The use of transplant organs from animals (xenotransplantation) could help to compensate for the shortage of human organs available for transplant. NIH researchers have demonstrated that by using hearts from genetically engineered pigs in combination with target-specific immunosuppression of recipient baboons, organ survival can be significantly prolonged. This has potential for paving the way for the use of animal organs for transplantation into humans.

A new study out of Western University (London, Canada) illustrates the need for a lot more education around pharmacogenetics (PGx) –the study of how a patient's genes can affect drug reaction and dosage. PGx promises to optimize patient response to therapy, but this is the first study to really investigate how patients perceive this kind of genetic testing, and whether those perceptions differ when it comes to parents and their children. The research, led by Dr. Michael Rieder of Western's Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry is published in the journal Pediatrics.

Manganites – compounds of manganese oxides - show great promise as "go-to" materials for future electronic devices because of their ability to instantly switch from an electrical insulator to a conductor under a wide variety of external stimuli, including magnetic fields, photo-excitations and vibrational excitations. This ultrafast switching arises from the many different ways in which the electrons and electron-spins in a manganite may organize or re-organize in response to such external stimuli.

A study published today in Nature Genetics has revealed mutations that could have a major impact on the future diagnosis and treatment of many human diseases. Through an international collaboration, researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute (MHI) were able to identify a dozen mutations in the human genome that are involved in significant changes in complete blood counts and that explain the onset of sometimes severe biological disorders.

The risk of a cesarean delivery was 12% lower in women whose labour was induced compared with women who were managed with a "wait-and-see" approach (expectant management), according to a research paper published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

(PHILADELPHIA) -- Most cancer vaccines have not lived up to their promise in clinical trials. The reason, many researchers suspect, is that the immune cells that would help the body destroy the tumor – even those reactions boosted by cancer vaccines – are actively suppressed.

New Michigan State University research aims to help doctors estimate the size of newborns with a new set of birth weight measurements based on birth records from across the country.

"More than 7 million records were reviewed," said Nicole Talge, an assistant professor in MSU's Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, who co-led the study which is now available in the journal Pediatrics.

Scientists at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, along with collaborators at institutions in India, Italy, and Japan, have identified the first gene linked to childhood-onset familial dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), one of the most common heart muscle diseases in children. It is a progressive and potentially fatal heart condition resulting from an enlarged and weakened heart muscle.

In a study published in Nature Genetics, scientists from the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies in Japan, in collaboration with the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences, the University of Copenhagen and the Joint Genome Institute (Walnut Creek, California) have discovered that "jumping DNA" known as retrotransposons—viral elements incorporated into the human genome—may play a key role in the maintenance of pluripotency, the ability of stem cells to differentiate into many different types of body cells.

BOSTON – Inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 tumor suppressor genes are by far the most frequent contributors to hereditary cancer risk in the human population, often causing breast or ovarian cancer in young women of child-bearing age. Attempts to test the role that the BRCA genes play in regulating a repair process associated with genome duplication have proven frustratingly difficult in living mammalian cells.

It is generally well known that men have an overall shorter life expectancy compared to women. A recent study, led by Uppsala University researchers, shows a correlation between a loss of the Y chromosome in blood cells and both a shorter life span and higher mortality from cancer in other organs.