Body

(PROVIDENCE, R.I.) -- Adult women whose mothers had increased levels of stress hormones while they were pregnant are at greater risk of becoming addicted to nicotine, according to a new study led by a Miriam Hospital researcher.

The 40-year longitudinal study provides the first evidence that prenatal exposure to the class of stress hormones known as glucocorticoids predicts nicotine dependence later in life – but only for daughters. It also confirms previous research that babies born to moms who smoked when pregnant have an increased risk of nicotine addiction in adulthood.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Researchers have developed a new quantitative – rather than qualitative – method of identifying pollen grains that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Since the invention of the earliest light microscopes, the classification and identification of pollen and spores has been a highly subjective venture for those who use these tiny particles to study vegetation in their field, palynology.

Scientists have discovered how a tick which transmits devastating diseases to cattle has developed resistance to one of the main pesticides used to kill it.

Approximately 80% of cattle around the world, mostly in the tropics and sub-tropics, are exposed to the cattle tick – Rhipicephalis microplus – which can cause anaemia, reduced rate of growth and death, resulting in a major economic impact on farmers.

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Most patients whose breast cancer has spread to their lymph nodes have most of the lymph nodes in their armpit area removed after chemotherapy to determine if any cancer remains. A study conducted through the American College of Surgeons Oncology Group and led by Judy Boughey, M.D., a breast surgeon at Mayo Clinic, shows that a less-invasive procedure known as sentinel lymph node surgery successfully identified whether cancer remained in lymph nodes in 91 percent of patients with node-positive breast cancer who received chemotherapy before their surgery.

Judy C. Boughey, M.D., Kelly K. Hunt, M.D., and colleagues for the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology conducted a study to determine the false-negative rate of sentinel lymph node surgery in patients with node-positive breast cancer receiving chemotherapy before surgery. A false-negative is occurrence of negative test results in subjects known to have a disease for which an individual is being tested. The study, published by JAMA, is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Surgeons 2013 Annual Clinical Congress.

Emergency surgery and advanced cardiac disease are risk factors for major adverse cardiac events (MACE) after noncardiac surgery in patients with recent coronary stent implantation, according to a study published by JAMA. The study is being released early online to coincide with its presentation at the American College of Surgeons 2013 Annual Clinical Congress.

Retinal damage is one of the most common complications of diabetes, affecting about 90 percent of type 1 diabetics and 75 percent of type 2 diabetics. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness in adults of working age, and its incidence is showing an upward trend.

Leipzig/ Halle. The Leipzig Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research has gained new insights on the influence of tobacco smoke in utero. For the first time, it could be demonstrated with smoking pregnant women and their children, how exposure to tobacco smoke affects the development of human immune system on molecular level. The focus thereby was on microRNA – a short, single-stranded RNA molecule that is now recognised as playing an important role in gene regulation.

CINCINNATI – New research in the Journal of Experimental Medicine identifies a protein that controls the formation of different types of mature blood cells – a finding that could be important to developing new treatments for blood diseases and helping realize the potential of regenerative medicine.

Researchers from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center report their results in a study published online by the journal Oct. 7. The authors focus on a protein called RhoA, a GTPase that serves as a molecular switch in the cytoplasm of cells to control cell function.

WASHINGTON, DC – October 7, 2013 – A universal infant vaccination campaign in China has led the Hepatitis B virus (HBV) to more than double its rate of "breakout" mutations. These mutations may enable the virus to elude the vaccine, necessitating new vaccination strategies. Researchers at the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, report their findings in an article published ahead of print in the Journal of Virology.

A team of researchers based at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich and the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has shown how temporal control of a single gene solves two problems during fruit ripening in strawberry.

BOSTON – Although Parkinson's disease is the second most prevalent neurodegenerative disorder in the U.S., there are no standard clinical tests available to identify this widespread condition. As a result, Parkinson's disease often goes unrecognized until late in its progression, when the brain's affected neurons have already been destroyed and telltale motor symptoms such as tremor and rigidity have already appeared.

Now researchers from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have discovered that an important clue to diagnosing Parkinson's may lie just beneath the skin.

The kinds of traits that show genealogical relationships between species are often minute and easily overlooked.

Dr. Neil Snow, a botanist at Pittsburg State University, published a paper in 1996 that included observations of some odd-shaped hairs on three species of grass native to Africa. Their odd shape stems from distinctly swollen tips that are then pinched into a small party-hat structure at the very apex.

Hercules, CA — October 7, 2013 — Since its introduction in 2011, Bio-Rad Laboratory's Droplet Digital PCR (ddPCR™) technology has demonstrated the potential to be a transformative technology, particularly in clinical applications. At the second annual CHI Digital PCR Conference in San Diego, CA, Oct.

The structure and plasticity of root systems play an important role in determining the growth and yield of crop plants, and understanding how environmental and biological factors affect root structure is of key importance for plant scientists—particularly agricultural scientists.