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A multi-university research group which includes several University of Notre Dame faculty and graduate students, has recently published a paper detailing new work on the analysis and dating of human bruises. The research, which is funded by the Gerber Foundation, will have particular application to pediatric medicine, as bruise age is often key evidence in child abuse cases.

LA JOLLA, CA -- A team led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute has discovered key elements of a strategy commonly used by tumor cells to survive when they spread to distant organs. The finding could lead to drugs that could inhibit this metastasis in patients with tumors.

CORAL GABLES, FL. -- The key to understanding how future hurricanes and sea level rise may trigger changes to South Florida's native coastal forests lurks below the surface, according to a new model linking coastal forests to groundwater. Just inland from the familiar mangroves that line the coasts lie hardwood hammocks that are sensitive to salinity changes in water found in the soils.

Bethesda, Md. -- Women have long bemoaned the fact that as they have more children, their weight gain from pregnancy becomes more difficult to lose. A new study using a mouse model that mimics the human effects of multiparity (giving birth more than once) has found that mouse moms who gave birth four times accrued significantly more fat compared to primiparous females (those giving birth once) of similar age. The study also found significantly more inflammation in the livers of multiparous animals.

Dr. François Robert, molecular biology researcher at the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal (IRCM), and his team confirmed that the phosphorylation of RNA polymerase II, a key enzyme in the process of gene expression, is uniform across all genes. This discovery, which contributes to numerous debates on the topic within the scientific community, will be published tomorrow in the scientific journal Molecular Cell.

Los Angeles, CA - Distrust and paranoia about government has a long history, and the feeling that there is a conspiracy of elites can lead to suspicion for authorities and the claims they make. For some, the attraction of conspiracy theories is so strong that it leads them to endorse entirely contradictory beliefs, according to a study in the current Social Psychological and Personality Science (published by SAGE).

While residents of the United States and much of Europe think of locust plagues as biblical references, locust swarms still have devastating effects on agriculture today, especially in developing countries in Asia and Africa.

In a study in the journal Science on Jan. 27, scientists from Arizona State University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences show that insect nutrition and agricultural land management practices may partially explain modern day locust outbreaks.

Ecologists are still arguing about the nature of the factors that determine the species composition of ecological communities. On the one hand, there are those who view interspecies competition as the key element. A second group of influential ecologists postulates that random fluctuations in population structure and rates of species dispersal play the dominant role, particularly in the biological communities found in species-rich tropical rainforests. LMU biologist Professor Susanne Renner, who is Director of the Botanic Garden and herbaria in Munich, and Professor Robert E.

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 26, 2012 – Location matters for birds on the hunt for caterpillars, according to researchers at UC Irvine and Wesleyan University. Findings suggest that chickadees and others zero in on the type of tree as much as the characteristics of their wriggly prey.

(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) -- Patients with head and neck cancers who have been treated with newer, more sophisticated radiation therapy technology enjoy a better quality of life than those treated with older radiation therapy equipment, a study by UC Davis researchers has found.

WASHINGTON, DC – Research physicians from Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center will present new data about a complex group of cancers known as head and neck cancers at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium, January 26 through 28, in Phoenix, Arizona.

Should patients with HPV+ head and neck cancers receive less chemotherapy?

Georgetown researchers are examining a hypothesis about whether HPV+ patients with a head and neck cancer should receive more or less chemotherapy.

Could depression in adulthood be tied to a parent's level of education? A new study led by Amélie Quesnel-Vallée, a medical sociologist from McGill University, suggests this is the case.

Drawing from 29 years of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), Quesnel-Vallée and co-author Miles Taylor, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University, looked at pathways between a parent's education level and their children's education level, household income and depressive symptoms.

PHILADELPHIA — A tiny mountainous region in southern Siberia may have been the genetic source of the earliest Native Americans, according to new research by a University of Pennsylvania-led team of anthropologists.

A new study uses a mouse model of a human autoimmune disease to reveal how abnormal regulation of the intracellular sensors that detect invading viruses can lead to autoimmune pathology. The research, published online on January 26th in the journal Immunity by Cell Press, provides key insight into mechanisms that underlie the development of autoimmune disease and may lead to more effective strategies for therapeutic intervention.

A new study unravels key signals that regulate protective and sometimes pathological inflammation of the skin. The research, published online on January 26th in the journal Immunity by Cell Press, identifies a "gatekeeper" that, when lost, can cause inflammatory skin disease in the absence of injury or infection. The findings may eventually lead to new treatment strategies for the more than 10% of people in the western world that suffer from inflammatory skin diseases.