Body

While most people would consider a big heart to be a good thing, for heart disease experts, it is often a sign of serious disease. Now, Dr. Lynn Megeney of the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute (OHRI) and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) has made the surprising discovery that proteins involved in cell death also play a key role in abnormal heart muscle thickening. The research, published in the October 13, 2013 online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), could lead to new treatments for certain forms of heart disease.

For years scientists have been working to fundamentally understand how nanoparticles move throughout the human body. One big unanswered question is how the shape of nanoparticles affects their entry into cells. Now researchers have discovered that under typical culture conditions, mammalian cells prefer disc-shaped nanoparticles over those shaped like rods.

By caging bacteria in microscopic houses, scientists at The University of Texas at Austin are studying how communities of bacteria, such as those found in the human gut and lungs, interact and develop infections.

In a recent experiment they demonstrated that a community of Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause some skin infections, became more resistant to antibiotics when it was contained within a larger community of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria involved in various diseases, including cystic fibrosis.

Now that Major League Baseball's regular season has ended with the exciting one-game tiebreaker that got the Rays to the next round, and with the Rays and the Pirates winning the one game playoff for the wild card team, NJIT math professor Bruce Bukiet has once again begun analyzing the probability of each team advancing through each round of baseball's postseason.

Not only do some online video games promote a less-than-active lifestyle for children, the content of some of these games also may be contributing to unhealthy diets.

A team of Michigan State University researchers took a closer look at what are called advergames and found they have a tendency to promote foods that are chock full of fat, sugar and sodium.

An advergame is defined as an online video game that promotes a particular product, service or company by integrating it into the game, and is typically offered for free.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Got heartburn? More than 60 million adults in the U.S. have acid reflux, or heartburn, and approximately 10 percent are at risk for developing esophageal cancer, due in part to complications from Barrett's esophagus. But researchers at Rhode Island Hospital discovered a pathway they believe links Barrett's esophagus to the development of esophageal cancer. Their data suggest that blocking this pathway, such as with a proton pump inhibitor (e.g. omeprazole), may prevent the development of esophageal cancer.

CLEVELAND: Advanced imaging with Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan shows great promise in predicting which patients with inoperable lung cancer have more aggressive tumors and need additional treatment following standard chemotherapy/radiation therapy, according to new research recently published online in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

An international research team led by medical scientists at the University of Alberta has shown that new medications based on resveratrol — a compound found in red wine and nuts — may be used to treat a common heart-rhythm problem known as atrial fibrillation.

Scientists at USC have created a mathematical model that explains and predicts the biological process that creates antibody diversity – the phenomenon that keeps us healthy by generating robust immune systems through hypermutation.

The work is a collaboration between Myron Goodman, professor of biological sciences and chemistry at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; and Chi Mak, professor of chemistry at USC Dornsife.

According to a common myth, today's young people are all glued to the Internet. But in fact, only 30 percent of the world's youth population between the ages of 15 and 24 years old has been active online for at least five years. In South Korea, 99.6 percent of young people are active, the highest percentage in the world. The least? The Asian island of Timor Leste with less than 1 percent.

Many subalpine lakes may look beautiful and even pristine, but new evidence suggests they may also be contaminated with potentially hazardous plastics. Researchers say those tiny microplastics are likely finding their way into the food web through a wide range of freshwater invertebrates too.

The findings, based on studies of Italy's Lake Garda and reported on October 7th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, suggest that the problem of plastic pollution isn't limited to the ocean.

Two gene alterations pair up to promote the growth of leukemia cells and their escape from anti-cancer drugs, according to a study in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Subordinate female meerkats who try to breed often lose their offspring to infanticide by the dominant female or are evicted from the group. These recently bereaved or ostracised mothers may then become wet-nurses for the dominant female, an activity that may be a form of "rent" that allows them to remain in the community.

Philadelphia, Pa. (October 7, 2013) – Over the past decade, South Africa has made a dramatic reversal in child survival—mainly because of improvements in HIV/AIDS care, reports a study in AIDS, official journal of the International AIDS Society. AIDS is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

For more than a decade the research group of Brown University Professor Walter Atwood has doggedly pursued the workings of the JC polyomavirus, which causes a disease called PML that fatally degrades the central nervous system of patients with weakened immune systems. In a study published online Oct. 2 in the Journal of Virology, his team describes how it gains entry into cells: It breaks in via certain receptors of the neurotransmitter serotonin called 5-HT2 receptors.