Body

Milk, as the popular slogan goes, does a body good. It contains essential nutrients including fats, proteins, sugars, as well as the calcium, other minerals, and vitamin D needed for bones. Most people in the world lose the ability to digest lactose, the main sugar in milk, shortly after weaning. For them drinking fresh milk can lead to unpleasant bloating, flatulence and cramps.

Ancient DNA from early Iberian farmers shows that the wideheld evolutionary hypothesis of calcium absorption was not the only reason Europeans evolved milk tolerance.

Most of us grew up drinking milk. We were told it was the ultimate health drink. It is packed full of nutrients like calcium and other minerals, vitamins, including vitamin D, protein, fat and sugar in the form of lactose.

The baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been associated with human activities for thousands of years, being the primary biological agent in baking, brewing, winemaking and other fermentation processes. It is also one of the most important model organisms in molecular biology and genetics research. For a long time, the history and evolution of this important yeast has been a completely mystery, but recent advances in genome sequencing technologies now allow it to be studied in great detail.

Long term exposure to particulate matter in outdoor air is strongly linked to heart attacks and angina, and this association persists at levels of exposure below the current European limits, suggests research conducted at the Department of Epidemiology in Rome, Italy and published on bmj.com today.

The results support lowering of the EU limits for particulate matter air pollution.

Experiencing a family death in childhood is associated with a small but significant increase in risk of psychosis, suggests a paper published today on bmj.com.

The researchers say that the risks are highest for children who have experienced a suicide in the 'nuclear family' (brothers, sisters, parents).

In an individual patient data meta-analysis of studies published before July 2013, Jan A Staessen and colleagues (University of Leuven, Belgium) found that patients with masked hypertension, or normal BP in clinic but elevated BP when measured at home, had an increased risk of death and cardiovascular events compared with those who had normal BP in both the clinic and at home.

A study led by Denis Duboule shows that limbs emerged during evolution by modernisation of a preexisting DNA structure.

Our first four-legged land ancestor came out of the sea some 350 million years ago. Watching a lungfish, our closest living fish relative, crawl on its four pointed fins gives us an idea of what the first evolutionary steps on land probably looked like. However, the transitional path between fin structural elements in fish and limbs in tetrapods remains elusive.

The transition from water to land is one of the most fascinating enigmas of evolution. In particular, the evolution of limbs from ancestral fish fins remains a mystery. Both fish and land animals possess clusters of Hoxa and Hoxd genes, which are necessary for both fin and limb formation during embryonic development. Denis Duboule's team, at the UNIGE and the EPFL, Switzerland, compared the structure and behavior of these gene clusters in embryos from mice and zebrafish.

TORONTO, Jan. 21, 2014---Folic acid supplements at levels consumed by breast cancer patients and survivors in North America promoted the growth of existing breast cancer in rats, new research found.

The role of folate, a B vitamin, and its synthetic form, folic acid, in the development and progression of breast cancer is highly controversial. Although some studies have found it may offer protection against breast cancer, recent studies have suggested that taking high amounts of folic acid may increase the risk of developing breast cancer.

Scientists have identified a channel present in many pain detecting sensory neurons that acts as a 'brake', limiting spontaneous pain. It is hoped that the new research, published today [22 January] in the Journal of Neuroscience, will ultimately contribute to new pain relief treatments.

WASHINGTON — Genetic counseling delivered over the telephone is as effective as face-to-face counseling, finds the largest randomized study to date comparing the two methods. The multi-center study, led by researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, was reported today in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Sitting for long periods increases heart failure risk in men, even for those who exercise regularly, according to new research published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

Preventing heart failure, researchers found, requires a two-part behavioral approach: high levels of physical activity plus low levels of sedentary time. The study is the first to examine the link between heart failure risk and sedentary time, said Deborah Rohm Young, Ph.D., lead researcher and a senior scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, Calif.

Researchers have identified diagnostic microRNA panels in whole blood that had the ability to distinguish, to some degree, patients with and without pancreatic cancer, according to a study in the January 22/29 issue of JAMA. The authors caution that the findings are preliminary, and that further research is necessary to understand whether these microRNAs have clinical implications as a screening test for early detection of pancreatic cancer.

DETROIT – A collaboration of surgeons at Henry Ford Hospital and Medanta Hospital in India successfully transplanted kidneys into 50 recipients using an innovative robot-assisted procedure in which the organ is cooled with sterile ice during the operation.

The research project – published online ahead of print in European Urology, the journal of the European Association of Urology – advances minimally invasive robotic surgery as a safe alternative to traditional open surgery.

Leipzig: An international team of researchers has made important progress in understanding the distribution of the deadly amphibian chytrid pathogen. In some regions, the deadly impact of the pathogen appears to be hampered by small predators, naturally occurring in freshwater bodies. These micropredators may efficiently reduce the number of free-swimming infectious stages (zoospores) by consuming them.