Body

A study in the Sept. 19 New England Journal of Medicine finds that colonoscopy appears to reduce the risk of developing or dying from colorectal cancer more powerfully than does sigmoidoscopy, a similar procedure that examines only a portion of the colon. The investigation, which analyzes data from two long-term studies, also identifies molecular features that may help explain tumors that are diagnosed despite an individual's having recently undergone colonoscopy.

BOSTON—A team of researchers, including those from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard School of Public Health, will be reporting study findings that lend powerful scientific backing to the recommendation that people receive a colonoscopy screening to prevent colorectal cancer.

E-readers are more effective than reading on paper for some with dyslexia, according to results published September 18 in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Mathew Schneps from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and colleagues from other institutions. Their results suggest it is the use of short lines on the display, and not the device itself, that leads to the benefits observed in this study.

Taste can be classified into five flavors that we sense, but how many odors can we smell? There are likely about 10 basic categories of odor, according to research published September 18th in the open access journal PLOS ONE by Jason Castro from Bates College, Chakra Chennubhotla from the University of Pittsburgh, and Arvind Ramanathan from Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The researchers used advanced statistical techniques to develop an approach for systematically describing smells.

Boston, MA -- According to a large, long-term study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), 40% of all colorectal cancers might be prevented if people underwent regular colonoscopy screening. The new research also supports existing guidelines that recommend that people with an average risk of colorectal cancer should have a colonoscopy every 10 years.

Bethesda, MD (Sept. 18, 2013) — A study published in the Sept. 19 New England Journal of Medicine provides some of the clearest evidence to date that colonoscopy has advantages over sigmoidoscopy for the prevention of colorectal cancer.

Researchers followed 88,902 study participants for 22 years and found that 1,815 developed colorectal cancer. Investigators estimated that 40 percent of those cancers could have been prevented if all of the patients in the study had received colonoscopy.

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) –– The female common market squid –– AKA Doryteuthis opalescens –– may not be so common after all. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have discovered that this glamorous cephalopod possesses a pair of stripes that can sparkle with rainbow iridescence. These flank a single stripe, which can go from complete transparency to bright white.

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Pioneering new research from a team of Indiana University Bloomington biologists has shown for the first time that a protein which has been long known to be critical for the initiation of protein synthesis in all organisms can also play a role in the regulation of gene expression in some bacteria, and probably land plants as well.

MINNEAPOLIS – New evidence suggests that taking vitamin B supplements may help reduce the risk of stroke. The research appears in the September 18, 2013, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"Previous studies have conflicting findings regarding the use of vitamin B supplements and stroke or heart attack," said author Xu Yuming, with Zhengzhou University in Zhengzhou, China. "Some studies have even suggested that the supplements may increase the risk of these events."

We often ignore what we cannot see, and yet organisms below the soil's surface play a vital role in plant functions and ecosystem well-being. These microbes can influence a plant's genetic structure, its health, and its interactions with other plants.

Sequencing the DNA of an organism, whether human, plant, or jellyfish, has become a straightforward task, but assembling the information gathered into something coherent remains a massive data challenge. Researchers using computational resources at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, have created a faster and more effective way to assemble genomic information, while increasing

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To stay ahead in the race against drug-resistant infections, scientists constantly search for and exploit vulnerabilities in deadly bacteria. Now, researchers from Brown and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used a novel compound to exploit an Achilles' heel in the bacterium that causes tuberculosis.

CLEMSON, S.C. — Cattle are what they eat. The forage — grasses and other plants ­— beef cattle eat affects the nutrition and tastiness of the meat. Clemson University animal science researchers report that steers grazing on one of five forages kept in paddocks showed significant differences in growth, carcass and meat quality.

The research can help cattle producers with alternatives to corn and feed when they are looking to add weight and value to their animals prior to sale.

MIAMI, FLORIDA, (September 18, 2013)—You might find it hard to believe that dust clouds from the African Sahara can travel thousands of miles across the Atlantic Ocean, but it does every year and in large quantities. In a recent study, Joseph Prospero, professor emeritus at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and collaborators at the University of Houston and Arizona State University found that the average air concentrations of inhalable particles more than doubled during a major Saharan dust intrusion in Houston, Texas.

Using technology he helped develop, Vanderbilt University scientist Bryan Venters, Ph.D., has shed new light on the "dark matter" of the genome and has begun to explore a possible new approach to treating cancer.

"Clarity is everything," said Venters, assistant professor of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics who further developed the high-resolution technology as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Frank Pugh, Ph.D., at Pennsylvania State University before moving to Vanderbilt in January.