Body

For decades, doctors have developed methods to diagnose how different types of cells and systems in the body are functioning. Now scientists have adapted an emerging biomedical technique to study the vast body of the ocean.

In a paper published this week in the journal Science, scientists demonstrate that they can identify and measure proteins in the ocean, revealing how single-celled marine organisms and ocean ecosystems operate.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation funded the research.

Feeling socially disconnected may lead us to lower our threshold for determining that another being is animate or alive, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

"This increased sensitivity to animacy suggests that people are casting a wide net when looking for people they can possibly relate to — which may ultimately help them maximize opportunities to renew social connections," explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Katherine Powers of Dartmouth College.

(9/8/14, Lebanon, NH) —An ortho-oncology team at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center successfully adapted a shoulder surgical aid (the Spider Limb Positioner) to conduct a left hip disarticulation on a melanoma patient as described in a case report published online in Medical Devices.

Hospitals across the country have seen sharp declines in rates of central line-associated blood stream infections (CLABSIs) and ventilator-associated pneumonias (VAPs) among critically ill neonates and children, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics.

The study, "Health care-associated infections among critically ill children in the U.S.," analyzed incidences rates of CLABSIs, VAPs and catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) for 173 neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) and 64 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) from 2007-2012.

A well-known biologist once theorized that many roads led to Rome when it comes to two distantly related organisms evolving a similar trait. A new paper, published in Nature Communications, suggests that when it comes to evolving some traits – especially simple ones – there may be a shared gene, one road, that's the source.

Both whales and dolphins have pelvic (hip) bones, evolutionary remnants from when their ancestors walked on land more than 40 million years ago. Common wisdom has long held that those bones are simply vestigial, slowly withering away like tailbones on humans.

New research from USC and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) flies directly in the face of that assumption, finding that not only do those pelvic bones serve a purpose – but their size and possibly shape are influenced by the forces of sexual selection.

Restoring oysters—and their ability to filter large volumes of water—is widely seen as a key way to improve the health of Chesapeake Bay. New research makes this calculus even more appealing, showing that the mussels that typically colonize the nooks and crannies of a restored oyster reef can more than double its overall filtration capacity.

The study—by researchers at the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science—appears as the cover story in the most recent issue of Restoration Ecology.

Two new potential therapeutic targets for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, a deadly disease marked by high blood pressure in the lungs, have been identified by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their findings are reported in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Scientists at the University of Illinois, Chicago, have identified a compound that effectively inhibits an enzyme crucial to the viruses that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

The drug simeprevir (trade name: Olysio) has been available since May 2014 for the treatment of adult patients with chronic hepatitis C infection. In an early benefit assessment pursuant to the Act on the Reform of the Market for Medicinal Products (AMNOG), the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) examined whether this new drug offers an added benefit over the appropriate comparator therapy.

With climate change threatening global food supplies, new research claims the rich flora of China could be crucial to underpin food security in the future.

A team from the University of Birmingham and partners in China have identified 871 wild plant species native to China that have the potential to adapt and maintain 28 globally important crops, including rice, wheat, soybean, sorghum, banana, apple, citrus fruits, grape, stone fruits and millet. 42% of these wild plant species, known as crop wild relatives (CWR) occur nowhere else in the world.

Crops that thrive in changing climates could be developed more easily, thanks to fresh insights into plant growth.

A new computer model that shows how plants grow under varying conditions could help scientists develop varieties likely to grow well in future.

Scientists built the model to investigate how variations in light, day length, temperature and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere influence the biological pathways that control growth and flowering in plants.

Wild species related to our crops which are crucial as potential future food resources have been identified by University of Birmingham scientists, however, a significant proportion are found in conflict zones in the Middle East, where their conservation is increasingly comprised.

The scientists have identified 'hotspots' around the globe where crop wild relatives (CWR) – species closely related to our crops which are needed for future crop variety development – could be conserved in the wild in order to secure future global food resources.

For the first time, wasps in the genus Spasskia (family: Braconidae) have been found in China, according to an article in the open-access Journal of Insect Science. In addition, a species in that genus which is totally new to science was also discovered.

PITTSBURGH, Sept. 8 – An unusual kind of immune cell in the tongue appears to play a pivotal role in the prevention of thrush, according to the researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who discovered them. The findings, published online today in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, might shed light on why people infected with HIV or who have other immune system impairments are more susceptible to the oral yeast infection.