Body

Melanoma is the most serious form of skin cancer, diagnosed in more than 50,000 new patients in the United States annually. While the rate of incidences continues to rise, survival rate has not improved and the race is on to find the genetic and cellular changes driving melanoma and to devise new means of detection and treatment.

Pig heart valves used to replace defective aortic valves in human patients failed much earlier and more often than expected, says a report from cardiac surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. This is the first report to demonstrate this potential problem, the researchers say.

If you are a cricket and it is a dry season on the San Pedro River in Arizona, on your nighttime ramblings to eat leaves, you are more likely to be ambushed by thirsty wolf spiders, or so a June 19 study suggests, published in the journal Ecology, and featured as an editor's choice in the journal Science.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have zeroed in on the genes responsible for changing flower color, an area of research that began with Gregor Mendel's studies of the garden pea in the 1850's.

Dallas, TX (June 29, 2009) -- A team of experts in biomechanics and physiology that conducted experiments on Oscar Pistorius, the South African bilateral amputee track athlete, have just published their findings in the Journal of Applied Physiology. Some of their previously confidential findings were presented to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, Switzerland in May of 2008. Other findings are now being released for the first time.

Adult-child conversations have a more significant impact on language development than exposing children to language through one-on-one reading alone, according to a new study in the July issue of Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

A team of researchers, including several from UCSF, has demonstrated that a new method for detecting and quantifying protein biomarkers in body fluids may ultimately make it possible to screen multiple biomarkers in hundreds of patient samples, thus ensuring that only the strongest biomarker candidates will advance down the development pipeline. The researchers have developed a method to increase accuracy in detecting real cancer biomarkers that is highly reproducible across laboratories and a variety of instruments so that cancer can be detected in its earliest stages.

Tel Aviv University researcher Prof. Noam Eliaz of the TAU School of Mechanical Engineering has developed an electrochemical process for coating metal implants which vastly improves their functionality, longevity and integration into the body.

The new process could vastly improve the lives of people who have undergone complicated total joint replacement surgeries so they can better walk, run and ultimately avoid rejection of the implant by their bodies.

Scientists have discovered gene expression differences that could lead to better ways to classify, predict outcome, and treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). Eventually such findings could enable doctors to target more aggressive treatment to children at risk of more severe arthritis, while those likely to have milder disease could be spared the stronger treatments that carry a greater risk of side effects. The researchers were supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), a part of the National Institutes of Health.

STONY BROOK, N.Y., June 29, 2009 – The Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) announced today that they will sequence the genomes of four species of labyrinthulomycetes. These little-known marine species were selected for sequencing as the result of a proposal submitted to the competitive JGI Community Sequencing Program by a team of microbiologists led by Dr. Jackie Collier, assistant professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (SoMAS) at Stony Brook University.

Discovered back in the 1600s quinine was the first effective treatment in the fight against malaria – and it continues to be a commonly used treatment against this devastating disease. But the drug is associated with a long list of side effects which can range from sickness and headaches to blindness, deafness and in rare cases death — and until now no one knew why.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have made a discovery that may explain many of the adverse side-effects associated with the drug and as a result have potentially found a way of combating them.

Arnhem, June 2009 – The July issue of European Urology, the official journal of the European Association of Urology, features an editorial by Lars Holmberg comparing the results from the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) with the results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) In the editorial, Professor Holmberg writes that "The studies illustrate that the price to pay for 20% reduction in prostate cancer deaths is high; overdiagnosis and overtreatment are great problems.

Black gay men have less choice when it comes to sexual partners than other groups and, as a result, their sexual networks are closely knit. These tightly interconnected networks make the rapid spread of HIV more likely. In a study1) looking at social and sexual mixing between ethnic groups in men who have sex with men, H. Fisher Raymond and Willi McFarland, from the San Francisco Department of Public Health in the US, show that social barriers faced by Black gay men may have a serious impact on their health and well-being.

Arnhem, June 2009 – The July issue of European Urology, the official journal of the European Association of Urology, features an editorial by Lars Holmberg comparing the results from the European Randomised Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer (ERSPC) with the results from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial (PLCO) In the editorial, Professor Holmberg writes that "The studies illustrate that the price to pay for 20% reduction in prostate cancer deaths is high; overdiagnosis and overtreatment are great problems.

It might be assumed that aquarium fish don't mind who or what they encounter in their tanks from one minute to the next, if their famously (but incorrectly) short memory is to be believed. Scientists at the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter have carried out research to show this is not the case and are striving to improve conditions for keeping fish in home aquaria.