Body

HOUSTON – (June 22, 2009) – Researchers at The University of Texas School of Public Health have developed a game for HIV-positive youth, +CLICK, designed to reduce secondary transmission of the virus.

+CLICK was developed by Christine Markham, Ph.D., and Ross Shegog, Ph.D., assistant professors of behavioral sciences. The game's usability and credibility were assessed by HIV-positive (HIV+) youth at a Texas Children's Hospital clinic. Results from the study were published in the May issue of AIDS Care.

NEWPORT, Ore. – Scientists are warning that a new form of unregulated whaling has emerged along the coastlines of Japan and South Korea, where the commercial sale of whales killed as fisheries "bycatch" is threatening coastal stocks of minke whales and other protected species.

Four of the biologists who described the underlying causes of aging will soon share their findings with an international audience during a symposium at the upcoming World Congress of Gerontology and Geriatrics, taking place from July 5-9, 2009, in Paris, France.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (June 23, 2009) – University of Minnesota Medical School researchers have discovered an important new insight into how a commonly prescribed drug may work to treat those infected by a parasitic flatworm.

Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease with poor prognosis. This warrants the development of novel therapies including gene therapy. However, clinical studies have demonstrated poor efficacy of adenoviral gene therapy because of the absence of adenoviral binding sites on pancreatic cancer cells such as the coxsackie and adenovirus receptor (CAR). Circumventing CAR-mediated entry therefore seems a promising option to improve adenoviral entry into pancreatic cancer cells and to enhance the efficacy of adenoviral vectors.

Meckel's diverticulum (MD) is the most frequent congenital abnormality of the small bowel and it is often difficult to diagnose. It is usually asymptomatic but approximately 4% are symptomatic with complications such as bleeding, intestinal obstruction, and inflammation. Daniela Codrich et al presents a case of Meckel's diverticulum masked by a long period of intermittent recurrent subocclusive episodes. Their foundings will be published on June 14, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology.

Acute hepatic radiation injury could lead to necrosis of hepatocytes, fatty degeneration and hepatic fibrosis. At the present, the gold standard test is liver biopsy. However, this procedure is invasive, uncomfortable for the patients and sometimes results in serious complications. 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) has been used to study liver metabolism in vivo for several years.

Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the University Clinic Heidelberg, Germany, have produced a three-dimensional reconstruction of HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus), which shows the structure of the immature form of the virus at unprecedented detail. Immature HIV is a precursor of the infectious virus, which can cause AIDS. The study, published in the 22-26 June online edition of PNAS, describes how the protein coat that packages the virus' genetic material assembles in human cells.

Berkeley -- Although it is known that infants are more susceptible than adults to the toxic effects of pesticides, this increased vulnerability may extend much longer into childhood than expected, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Researchers at the Universities of Leeds and Bristol (UK) have developed a model of how errors are corrected whilst proteins are being built.

Ensuring that proteins are built correctly is essential to the proper functioning of our bodies, but the 'quality assurance' mechanisms that take place during this manufacturing process are not fully understood.

"Scientists have been puzzled as to how this process makes so few mistakes", says Dr Netta Cohen, Reader at the University of Leeds' School of Computing.

San Jose, California, June 23, 2009 – Chronix Biomedical today reported that a new study in a peer-reviewed journal further confirms the potential diagnostic and prognostic utility of using circulating fragments of DNA to detect early stage disease. These DNA fragments, referred to as serum DNA, are released into the blood stream in trace amounts during the disease process.

Appendicitis is the most common childhood surgical emergency, but the diagnosis can be challenging, especially in children, often leading to either unnecessary surgery in children without appendicitis, or a ruptured appendix and serious complications when the condition is missed. Now, emergency medicine physicians and scientists at the Proteomics Center at Children's Hospital Boston demonstrate that a protein detectable in urine might serve as a "biomarker" for appendicitis. Their report was published online June 23 by the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

The effect of anxiety on academic performance is not always obvious but new research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council suggests that there may be hidden costs. The research found that anxious individuals find it harder to avoid distractions and take more time to turn their attention from one task to the next than their less anxious peers.

According to the most recent report on the status of the world's fisheries by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, fisheries supply at least 15% of the animal protein consumed by humans, provide direct and indirect employment for nearly 200 million people worldwide and generate $US85 billion annually. This same report indicates that 28% of the world's fisheries stocks are currently being overexploited or have collapsed and 52% are fully exploited.

A study published this week in the open access journal PLoS Medicine shows that for elderly people at risk of cardiovascular disease, the presence of inflammatory markers in the blood can identify that an individual is at a higher risk of a fatal rather than a non-fatal heart attack or stroke.