Body

Health problems linked to obesity – like heart disease and diabetes – could skip an entire generation, a new study suggests.

Researchers have found that the offspring of obese mothers may be spared health problems linked to obesity, while their own children then inherit them.

Currently, concern about the obesity epidemic is mainly focused on the health of obese women and their children, rather than the wider family.

A new species of lizard doesn't come along every day. Even less common is a new lizard species named for a 1960s rock star.

But that's exactly what University of Iowa paleoanthropologist Russell Ciochon and his co-authors reveal in an article published in the June 5 issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Chicago (June 4, 2013): Researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, have developed a novel graduate medical education initiative that enables surgical residents to hone their skills in quality improvement (QI). Surgical trainees who completed the year-long educational program found the QI training to be beneficial, and more importantly, believe it put them in a position to lead QI initiatives in the future. The report appears in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.

The emerald ash borer (EAB), a relatively new invasive insect pest, has killed tens of millions of ash trees throughout the eastern United States since it was first detected in 2002 in Michigan and Canada. This insect has the potential to kill an estimated seven billion ash trees in urban and rural forests and could cause tens of billions of dollars in damage.

As populations of wild turkeys have increased, the number of complaints about crop damage has also increased. However, a literature review which will be published in the June 2013 issue of Journal of Integrated Pest Management, finds that these claims are mostly exaggerated.

ST. LOUIS -- Everyone older than 70 should be checked for frailty, a condition that is both easily treated and potentially deadly, according to an article by representatives from six major international and U.S. medical organizations.

"Frailty is extraordinarily common, affecting between 5 and 10 percent of those who are older than 70. Women are more likely to be frail than men," said John Morley, M.D., director of the division of geriatric medicine at Saint Louis University and lead author of the article that appeared in the June edition of the JAMDA.

CLEVELAND, Ohio (June 5, 2013)—A satisfying sex life is an important contributor to older adults' quality of life, but the sexual pain that can come after menopause can rob women and their partners of that satisfaction. Treatment can help restore it, shows a global survey including some 1,000 middle-aged North American men and women, published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).

American entrepreneurs pray more frequently, are more likely to see God as personal and are more likely to attend services in congregations that encourage business and profit-making, according to a study by Baylor University scholars of business and sociology.

Researchers at the University of Exeter and the University of Hamburg investigated how personality is transferred between generations. They found that foster parents have a greater influence on the personalities of fostered offspring than the genes inherited from birth parents.

Biologists have uncovered new insights into how the male sexual behaviour of the peculiar southern bottletail squid is primed to produce the greatest number of offspring.

Recent studies published in the journals Biology Letters and Behavioral Ecology, have revealed the female squid ingest the ejaculates of their mates, a trait never before associated with any species of cephalopod – a group including squid, octopus, cuttlefish and nautilus.

In the first genome-wide association study to focus on warfarin dose requirement in African-Americans, a multi-institutional team of researchers has identified a common genetic variation that can help physicians estimate the correct dose of the widely used blood-thinning drug warfarin.

The discovery, reported online first in The Lancet, suggests that people of African ancestry who carry this variant—more than 40 percent of the patients enrolled in this study—need significantly less warfarin to obtain optimal benefits compared to those who lack this variant.

Evergreening strategies—where pharmaceutical companies slightly change the formulation of their brand drug into "follow on" drugs by combining formulations or producing slow-release forms, for example, so that they can extend the patent—substantially contributed to an increase in overall healthcare costs in the Swiss canton of Geneva, according to a study by international researchers published in this week's PLOS Medicine.

Increased iron levels may be causally associated with a decreased risk of developing Parkinson's disease, says a new paper published this week in PLOS Medicine. Irene Pichler from EURAC in Italy and a group of international colleagues investigated whether there was any evidence of an association between serum iron levels and the risk of Parkinson's disease. While the causes of Parkinson's disease are currently unknown, a combination of genetic and environmental factors are said to be attributed to the disease.

Addressing the burden of household air pollution from solid fuel combustion— the leading environmental cause of death and disability in the world—has led to the implementation of many important interventions to promote access to improved stoves and clean fuels, but there is little demonstrated evidence of health benefits from most of these programs or technologies. Such are the conclusions of a new Policy Forum article published in this week's PLOS Medicine by authors who also outline a set of research priorities for addressing household air pollution.

A joint project between the Griffith University and the UQ Centre for clinical Research (UQCCR) has characterised an in vitro model that allows further studies on the breast cancer biology.

These studies include the confirmation that primary tissue obtained from patients with breast cancer behaves similarly to those derived from long-term cultured cell lines.

Griffith University's Associate Professor Alejandro Lopez said the team was working towards making breast cancer stem cells the target of specific cancer therapies, to improve current treatment outcomes.