Body

Depression is common enough – afflicting one in ten adults in the United States – that it seems the possibility of depression must be "hard-wired" into our brains. This has led biologists to propose several theories to account for how depression, or behaviors linked to it, can somehow offer an evolutionary advantage.

A report published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that the 50 percent of metastatic melanoma patients with a specific genetic mutation benefit from the drug Vemurafenib – increasing median survival from about 6 months to 15.9 months. In patients who responded, the drug stopped cancer progression for a median 6.7 months.

A*STAR scientists have for the first time, identified that precise regulation of polyamine levels is critical for embryonic stem cell (ESC) self-renewal – the ability of ESCs to divide indefinitely – and directed differentiation. This paper is crucial for better understanding of ESC regulation and was published in the journal Genes & Development on 1st March by the team of scientists from the Institute of Medical Biology (IMB), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

As the world's population moves towards urbanisation, an international research team involving Queen Mary, University of London, has begun to unlock the factors driving the growing phenomenon.

The study, published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, examined almost 200 years of data on the evolution of the road network in an area north of Milan, called Groane.

Co-author Professor Vito Latora, from Queen Mary's School of Mathematical Sciences, said: "Urbanisation is a complex phenomenon that affects our society and shapes the environment where we live.

WASHINGTON -- Go ahead. Call digestion a disassembly line. The body takes that carrot, burger, tofu — whatever morsel of food makes a journey once whimsically described as "through the lips, past the gums, lookout stomach, here it comes!" Digestion breaks the food down, extracts nutrients, and discards the waste.

RICHLAND, Wash. – Leafcutter ants, the tiny red dots known for carrying green leaves as they march through tropical forests, are also talented farmers that cultivate gardens of fungi and bacteria. Ants eat fungi from the so-called fungal gardens, but the bacteria's role has been unclear until now.

Reston, VA -- Residency training requirements in competencies related to radiology business practice and health care policy have been in place for more than a decade. However, a recent study, published in the March issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, suggests curricula addressing these items still seem to be in a stage of acceptance and development.

Non-fouling materials that resist cell adhesion are very important in fundamental research on cell–biomaterial interactions and for practical applications. Thus, they have been extensively investigated during the last decade. Natural biomacromolecules such as bovine serum albumin (BSA) have conventionally been used to block cell adhesion. Zhao and Ding (Fudan University, Shanghai, China) recently reported that the purple membrane (PM) containing a natural photoresponsive protein, bacteriorhodopsin (BR), can serve as a new basic substance that resists adhesion of mammalian cells.

DALLAS – March 1, 2012 – Working in the emerging field of systems biology, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers mathematically predicted how bacteria that cause food poisoning hijack a cell's sense of direction and then confirmed those predictions in living cells.

Urgent action is needed to reduce the high concentrations of dangerous air pollutants in Europe, according to experts writing in the European Respiratory Journal today (1 March 2012).

The European Respiratory Society's Environment and Health Committee are urging policymakers in Europe to introduce changes that will ensure the air that we breathe is safe and clean.

Blue whale vocal behavior is affected by man-made noise, even when that noise does not overlap the frequencies the whales use for communication, according to new research published Feb. 29 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The whales were less likely to emit calls when mid-frequency sonar was present, but were more likely to do so when ship sounds were nearby, the researchers report.

Knowledge about animal diet can inform conservation strategy, but this information can be difficult to gather. A new DNA-based method, which analyzes genetic material from feces, could be a useful tool, and researchers have shown its utility to characterize the diet of snow leopards in Mongolia.

The full results are reported Feb. 29 in the open access journal PLoS ONE.

Millions of years after its extinction, Triceratops is inciting controversy about how to classify the ancient animals. New analysis, published Feb. 29 in the open access journal PLoS ONE, suggests that the specimens in question should be classified into two separate groups, Triceratops and Torosaurus, and are not individuals of different ages from the same genus, as others have proposed.

New Rochelle, NY, February 29, 2012—Although industrial parks are often considered major economic engines for the communities in which they reside, they can also consume environmental resources and produce significant pollution that can negatively affect human health and quality of life. A case study published in Environmental Engineering Science (http://www.liebertpub.com/ees), a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

Infectious diseases can spread very rapidly, so quickly identifying them can be crucial to stopping an epidemic. However, current testing for such diseases can take hours and days. But not for much longer.