Body

Your skin tone and the amount of sunshine you receive--in addition to what foods you eat--all can influence the amount of vitamin D that your body has on hand for optimum health. In a preliminary and apparently first-of-its-kind study, Agricultural Research Service (ARS) research physiologist Charles B. Stephensen and colleagues have developed a preliminary model that predicts an individual's vitamin D requirements.

Stephensen is based at the ARS Western Human Nutrition Research Center at the University of California-Davis.

More than 20 percent of deaths in a study of 12,000 Bangladeshis were attributable to arsenic exposure from contaminated drinking water, new research reports.

The large 10-year study is the first to prospectively measure the relationship between individual exposure to arsenic and its associated mortality risk, the authors said. The data, collected by an international team from Chicago, New York, and Bangladesh, will be published early online Saturday in The Lancet.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins report using a laser beam to activate a protein that makes a cluster of fruit fly cells act like a school of fish turning in social unison, following the lead of the one stimulated with light.

Are stem cells ready for prime time?

The pancreas has its own molecular clock. Now, for the first time, a Northwestern University study has shown this ancient circadian clock regulates the production of insulin. If the clock is faulty, the result is diabetes.

The researchers show that insulin-secreting islet cells in the pancreas, called beta-cells, have their own dedicated clock. The clock governs the rhythmic behavior of proteins and genes involved in insulin secretion, with oscillations over a 24-hour cycle.

ST. LOUIS – In research led by a Saint Louis University investigator, molecular biologists have discovered a way to harness the enzyme thrombin's anti-blood clotting properties. The finding opens the door to new medications that will treat diseases related to thrombosis, the presence of blood clots in blood vessels, which is responsible for nearly a third of all deaths in the U.S.

Buruli ulcers, one of the 'neglected tropical diseases' left aside by big pharma and governments alike, are reasonably well treatable, also in poor regions. But then more attention has to be paid to early diagnosis and correct treatment. This means the rules of the World Health Organization urgently need to be changed. So say scientists of the Antwerp Institute of Tropical Medicine (ITM), based on ten years of research in Congo.

Rome, Italy, Friday 18 June 2010: There is significant disparity between 'richer' and 'poorer' countries in terms of access to biological treatments for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to results from a multinational study across four continents presented today at EULAR 2010, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism in Rome, Italy. Furthermore, findings from a separate study show that RA patients report the severity of their disease in the same way, irrespective of the country where they live.

Durham, NC – Millions of years before humans began battling it out over beachfront property, a similar phenomenon was unfolding in a diverse group of island lizards.

An international team of researchers, led by the members of the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has published the first registers of the evolution of Northern Pacific and Southern Atlantic sea-surface temperatures, dating from the Pliocene Era -some 3.65 million years ago- to the present. The data obtained in the reconstruction indicate that the regions closer to the poles of both oceans have played a fundamental role in climate evolution in the tropics.

Corals right out on the exposed edges of the world's great coral reef zones may hold an important clue to the survival of coral ecosystems facing intensifying pressure from human activities and climate change.

Rome, Italy, Friday 18 June: The expression of a transporter protein called the Breast Cancer Resistance Protein (BCRP) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients may indicate higher disease activity and could be a barrier to the effectiveness of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), according to the results of a study presented today at EULAR 2010, the Annual Congress of the European League Against Rheumatism in Rome, Italy.

KNOXVILLE -- By examining 800,000-year-old polar ice, scientists increasingly are learning how the climate has changed since the last ice melt and that carbon dioxide has become more abundant in the Earth's atmosphere.

More than five tonnes of illegal bushmeat is being smuggled in personal luggage each week through one of Europe's busiest airports, reveals new research published in Conservation Letters today.

Working alongside customs officials at France's Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, researchers from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), The Royal Veterinary College (RVC) and The National Veterinary School and the Natural History Museum of Toulouse identified eleven bushmeat species from confiscated luggage, including species of primate, crocodiles and pangolins.

Cold sensing neural circuits in newborn mice take around two weeks to become fully active, according to a new study.

The finding adds to understanding of the cold sensing protein TRPM8 (pronounced trip-em-ate), first identified in a Nature paper in 2002 by David McKemy of the University of Southern California.

McKemy's latest study, published online by Neuroscience, shows that the cold sensing circuit starts to develop in utero but does not mature until well after birth.