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Research involving scientists at the University of York has provided important new information about transmission of human leishmaniasis, a group of infectious diseases which kills more than 100,000 people a year.

Professor Deborah Smith of the Centre for Immunology and Infection at York, working with colleagues at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Charles University in Prague, has shown that Leishmania parasites reproduce sexually in the wild.

Simon Fraser University's Bruce Archibald and Rolf Mathewes are part of a team of biologists, including Christian Kehlmaier from Germany's Senkenberg Natural History Collections, that has discovered three new, extinct fossil species of big-headed flies.

According to their research, published recently by The Canadian Entomologist, these fossils show their early evolution parallels an ecological revolution, one that formed the character of our modern natural communities.

Many premature infants suffer a life-threatening bowel infection called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC).

Researchers at Loyola University Health System have identified a marker to identify those infants who are at risk for the infection, enabling doctors to employ early preventive strategies. These findings were published in the latest issue of the Journal of Pediatric Surgery.

A new paper details a collaboration between the National Park Service (NPS) and outside experts, including Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) scientists, in developing recommendations to conserve aerial, marine, and terrestrial populations of migrating wildlife that move in and out of U.S. national parks, often coming from distant regions of the globe.

New research from David Westaway, PhD, of the University of Alberta and Jiri Safar, PhD, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine has uncovered a quality control mechanism in brain cells that may help keep deadly neurological diseases in check for months or years.

Gene therapies developed by University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine researchers have worked to correct different forms of blindness. While effective, the downside to these approaches to vision rescue is that each disease requires its own form of gene therapy to correct the particular genetic mutation involved, a time consuming and complex process.

PHILADELPHIA — Klaus Kaestner, PhD, professor of Genetics and postdoctoral fellow Dana Avrahami, PhD, from the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, published a study this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, with colleague Benjamin Glaser, MD, from the Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center, Jerusalem, and colleagues. In this study, they were able to replicate human pancreatic beta cells – the cells in our body that produce the critical hormone insulin – in a mouse model in which donor cells were transplanted.

Research involving rats suggests that there is a biological link between paternal diet, bodyweight and health at the time of conception and the health of his offspring. In a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal, scientists show that if male rats ate a high fat diet, had diabetes and were obese, their offspring had altered gene expression in two important metabolic tissues--pancreas and fat (even though they were not yet obese).

A team of Australian researchers has taken a giant step towards controlling a growing problem in the wine community. They have identified special yeast that produce a lower level of alcohol, helping to preserve the flavor. Their research is published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

COLUMBIA, Mo. – ATP (adenosine triphosphate) is the main energy source inside a cell and is considered to be the high energy molecule that drives all life processes in animals and humans. Outside the cell, membrane receptors that attract ATP drive muscle control, neurotransmission, inflammation and development. Now, researchers at the University of Missouri have found the same receptor in plants and believe it to be a vital component in the way plants respond to dangers, including pests, environmental changes and plant wounds.

A new study by a team of KU Leuven and international researchers has found that the chemical structure of queen pheromones in wasps, ants and some bees is strikingly similar, even though these insects are separated by millions of years of evolution and each evolved eusociality independently of the other. The results suggest that queen pheromones used by divergent groups of social insects evolved from conserved signals of a common solitary ancestor.

STANFORD, Calif. — Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford have found a new way to boost the survival of pediatric patients whose hearts stop while they are hospitalized.

The researchers developed a broader approach to resuscitation training to include everyone who responds to a pediatric "code" event, the emergency call broadcast through the hospital when a patient's heart stops.

A new USGS study quantifies change in fish diversity in response to streamflow alteration in the Tennessee River basin.

The USGS study highlights the importance of the timing, magnitude, and variability of low streamflows and the frequency and magnitude of high streamflows as key characteristics critical to assessing how fish communities change in response to streamflow alteration. This study was completed using fish community data collected by the Tennessee Valley Authority, and predictions of streamflow characteristics at more than 600 locations.

Many women are encouraged to quit smoking when they become pregnant using nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) whether as gum, transdermal patches, nasal spray or lozenges. But new research from Western University in London, Canada, has shown that nicotine from either smoking or NRT causes a wide range of long-term adverse reactions for the offspring, including an increased risk of obesity and metabolic syndrome by influencing the liver to produce more triglyceride.

Chevy Chase, MD—Traditional Chinese herbal medicines hold promise for slowing the progression from prediabetes to an official diabetes diagnosis, according to new research accepted for publication in the Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).