Body

This week in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a team of French and Swedish researchers present the earliest fossil evidence for the presence of bone marrow in the fin of a 370 million-year-old fish.

New Rochelle, NY, March 19, 2014—The number of menopausal women is projected to reach 50 million by 2020. With changing views on appropriate therapies to control symptoms and new treatments available and on the horizon, most internists lack the core competencies and experience to meet the needs of women entering menopause, according to a provocative Commentary published in Journal of Women's Health, a peer-reviewed publication from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

A non-invasive test that includes detection of the genetic abnormalities related to cancer could significantly improve the effectiveness of colon cancer screening, according to research published by a team of scientists including David Ransohoff, MD, professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine and UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center member. The large-scale, cross-sectional study was published online today in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new processing technique that makes light emitting diodes (LEDs) brighter and more resilient by coating the semiconductor material gallium nitride (GaN) with a layer of phosphorus-derived acid.

DALLAS, March 19, 2014 — A new kind of single-dose vaccine that comes in a nasal spray and doesn't require refrigeration could dramatically alter the public health landscape — get more people vaccinated around the world and address the looming threats of emerging and re-emerging diseases. Researchers presented the latest design and testing of these "nanovaccines" at the 247th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society.

Older persons, in particular, tend to suffer from memory lapses and other types of cognitive impairment after undergoing surgical procedures (postoperative cognitive dysfunction, POCD). Surgery has been performed on older patients much more commonly in recent years than ever before, and their pre- and postoperative care has become an important matter. Ingrid Rundshagen, an anesthesiologist, has surveyed the available literature to find out what kinds of patients are more likely to have cognitive impairment after surgery, and how the clinical manifestations should best be dealt with.

The global diversity of plants being cultivated by Britain's gardeners is playing a key role in the fight to save the nation's threatened bumblebees, new research has revealed.

Ecologists at Plymouth University, in a study published this week, have shown the most common species of bumblebee are not fussy about a plant's origin when searching for nectar and pollen among the nation's urban gardens.

A recently-developed mobile phone application could make monitoring conditions such as diabetes, kidney disease, and urinary tract infections much clearer and easier for both patients and doctors, and could eventually be used to slow or limit the spread of pandemics in the developing world.

The app, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, accurately measures colour-based, or colorimetric, tests for use in home, clinical or remote settings, and enables the transmission of medical data from patients directly to health professionals.

University of Adelaide mathematicians have devised a method for identifying how cell clusters have formed by analysing an image of the cluster.

Published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, their mathematical modelling tool will be useful in helping biologists and tissue engineers to move towards growing human tissue such as liver in the laboratory.

A study by Curtin University researchers and colleagues from Denmark and New Zealand strengthens the case for human involvement in the disappearance of New Zealand's iconic megaherbivore, the moa - a distant relative of the Australian Emu.

All nine species of New Zealand moa, the largest weighing up to 250 kilograms, became extinct shortly after Polynesians arrived in the country in the late 13th century.

The heart disease drug perhexiline is one of 101 compounds predicted to prevent cancer growth in most patients suffering from our most common liver cancer, HCC. This is an outcome from a novel simulation-based approach using personal sets of proteins of six HCC patients.

"This is the first time personalized models have been used to find and evaluate new potential drugs," says Professor Jens Nielsen at Chalmers University of Technology.--

Babies born prematurely are surviving in increasing numbers. But many withstand complications of early birth only to suffer late-onset sepsis — life-threatening bloodstream infections that strike after infants reach 72 hours of age.

While early-onset sepsis often is caused by pathogens acquired from the amniotic sac or birth canal, the causes of late-onset sepsis have been far less clear.

But now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that preterm babies' guts harbor infectious microbes that can cause late-onset sepsis.

Ottawa, ON, March 19, 2014 — Scientists at the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute have discovered a cellular pathway that is responsible for keeping blood sugar levels low in obese or pre-diabetic people, and may prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes. The discovery published this month in a leading journal Nature Cell Biology.

One hundred years ago on the brink of WWI, American botanists changed the course of plant science with the founding of a national publication, the American Journal of Botany. The journal not only endured through the Great War, it also continued to evolve through the wars that followed, the Great Depression, and the ever-changing arena of plant research.

A newly deciphered 1,800-year-old letter from an Egyptian solider serving in a Roman legion in Europe to his family back home shows striking similarities to what some soldiers may be feeling here and now.

Rice Religious Studies graduate student Grant Adamson took up the task in 2011 when he was assigned the papyrus to work on during a summer institute hosted at Brigham Young University (BYU).